Margaret Atwood's quote about male fantasies is revolutionary:

"Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur"

Managing the male gaze is exhausting! Pretending you're unseen is quintessentially "feminine" because women are socialized not to bring attention to themselves. We need to be beautiful, but believe we aren't. We need to be attractive without trying to be. Ladies you've heard of it: "effortless curls", the "messy bun", and the "no make-up, makeup look"🙄. How dare women invest in their looks? How dare they think they're attractive?

Our self-esteem needs to be low enough to accept LVM piss-poor treatment, but high enough to leave abusive relationships, withstand shit-tests, and also be the envy of other women who can't get their husband to do the dishes. We police ourselves to not seem desperate because appeasing men with an avoidant attachment style is - how not to lose a man's respect 101- . We're policed by society for scaring men away with our resting bitch faces, boundaries, and feminist ways. It's not our responsibility to keep men entertained!

Ultimately, the internalized male gaze robs women of the right to self-protection. I was raised to believe that looking at men is attention seeking. No eye contact with men keeps the predators away, but I want to check my surroundings without checking my surroundings being synonymous with attention seeking. Just yesterday, I was parked next to a man with his window rolled down. I'm alone in the car and my safety is my top priority. But why is it when I make eye contact with this jerk, I feel discouraged from looking in that direction again? What if he did something I could've mediated, but didn't because I was too busy acting unseen😐

And that is he reality of all women.