The Female Gaze Pt. II

Rita Banerjee’s essay in three parts, “The Female Gaze,” is an excerpt from her memoir and manifesto on how young women of color keep their cool against social, sexual, and economic pressure. In her essay exploring the female gaze, female agency, and female cool, Banerjee asks:

What if women, especially women of color, were the progenitors of cool? That is, did women have to cultivate their own cool—their own sense of style, creative expression, and coldness—in order to survive patriarchy across millennia across cultures? If the male gaze aims subordinate and colonize, what does the female gaze, tempered by cool, desire? What does the female gaze cherish or hold dear? If a woman were fully aware of her gaze, would she use it to objectify and colonize, or could her gaze destabilize and decolonize?

Poster from The Museum of Sex’s The Female Gaze NSFW Exhibit.

II. Be an Object of the Gaze

In Le deuxième sexe, Simone de Beauvoir throws down the gauntlet: On ne naît pas femme: on le devient. One is not born a woman: one becomes it.

Whatever it is or was or could be—female, feminine, feminist, second, subaltern, subordinate, submissive, other sex—Beauvoir asserts that an individual is actively trained, educated, and thus, indoctrinated on how to perform the role of the woman and eventually become it (neutered, masculine category). La femme est une autre. La femme est l’Autre. Je suis l’ Autre. The woman is an Other. The woman is the Other. I am the Other. What did Rimbaud know? Je est un Autre. Godard, too, when he exclaimed, Une femme est une femme? Is a woman just a woman? Who makes a woman? You? Me? Society? A man?

* * *

The first time I consciously remember encountering the male gaze was when I was a child, just about four years old, in a hotel room in Bangkok.

I was flying with Nani from San Francisco to Ranchi, with a day-long layover in Thailand, on what I would soon realize would be a one-way trip.

My memories of the city are yellow. That is, every time I try to conjure up the landscape, buildings, traffic and the bustle of Bangkok, I feel like I’m watching myself watch others through a shard of amber glass.

When we land in Bangkok, I feel like we’ve arrived by train. In the whirling ride to our hotel, my hands grip the bars of our auto-rickshaw and Nani’s palm as my eyes glide over the people and the beauty of the city. Yellow. Everything is yellow and amber and gold. The late afternoon makes even the light look a little orange.

I have no language for the architecture or history I encounter in Bangkok. When our cab glides by the Golden Palace, I think the building looks vaguely European. Because that’s what the Old World should look like, right?

Our tuk-tuk driver deposits us in the lobby of the hotel. Its style is a blend of 60’s mod and 80’s decadence. The concierge hands the access cards for our room to my grandmother. He eyes her two rather large suitcases, human-sized carry-on, and oversized white hand-bag. He takes in my compact baby-blue suitcase with the images of apples and cartoon airline tickets printed onto it.

“We’ll have the bell-hop bring your luggage up,” he murmurs, not smiling.

My grandmother smiles back, “Thank you, sir.” And deposits her carry-on bag at his desk and grabs my hand, and hobble-marches me to the elevator.

In the corridor, outside our room, Nani wrestles with the door like it’s an alligator. The black box and metal handle are a mystery to her. In her left hand, she balances her white faux-leather purse and she taps her card against the box impatiently. I dance around her and touch the box.

“I think you have to slide the card into the socket,” I tell my grandmother in Bengali. “Here,” I point to the groove.

She does and a light on the box flashes green. This time the door handle actually turns when Nani bangs against it.

“How clever you are,” she pinches my chin and ushers me in. Then door behind us slams shut. The room pitches into darkness. Nani’s oversized handbag slams against my ass.

“Now what?” She asks, her hands flutter to the walls like she’s a bird. “How do you turn the lights on?” Her fingers glide over the striped wall paper and lamps, searching for a light switch.

My eyes adjust to the dark. I see another box on the wall.

“I think you’re supposed to put the card in the box.”

Nani does, and the lights flicker on. It’s 1986, and the future has arrived.

“How did you know how to do that?” She asks, patting my head.

“I don’t know,” I run to the window and pull the curtains back. The sun is setting over the golden city of Bangkok. The buildings shine in shades of eggshell, beige, melon red, and sunset gold. I stare at the miniature people and cabs on the streets skirting below me. So many human stories. So many human tragedies and comedies taking place right here, right now, under my gaze. “Maybe it’s because I like to watch, and figure out why things work.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Nani is giving me a bath before bedtime. Nani washes the shampoo out of my hair and then throws an oversized gray towel on me when the doorbell rings.

“Our luggage!” She gets up from her kneeling position next to the bathtub now drained of water. Her knees crack when she rises. She shuffles towards the door despite the pain in her legs. I jump out of the tub and follow her. Naked, as the day I was born, dragging the brown-gray towel away from my hair and behind me.

“Can I come, too?”

I ask Nani as she fiddles with her money purse and plucks out some bills for change.

“Of course,” she says dismissively as the bell rings again and she hobbles towards the door.

“But I don’t know the person at the door,” I whine, half-dragging the towel behind me. What I want to say is that I’ve never been naked in front of somebody I didn’t know before. And here’s a total stranger ringing the door, and I’m not coordinated enough to cocoon myself in the towel just in time.

Nani doesn’t understand my concern. She yanks the door open, and the porter comes in.

He teeters in with three suitcases in his hand, and deposits them, somewhat gracefully at the closet near the front door. My grandmother goes to hand him some change. And as he reaches for the tip, he turns around and looks at the open bathroom door and me, standing there in the birthday suit in the yellow light. He stares while he pockets the change.

I stare back at him, not knowing why he continues to look at me like that.

He’s white, tall with golden hair and brown-colored eyes. He doesn’t look like the hotel staff downstairs or any members of my family. He speaks in English. He could be American.

He wears a uniform. A prototypical bell-hop suit. Black hat with a red visor and strap, black jacket with brass studs on it, black pants with red stripes racing up the side. He even has white gloves on. He looks young. He could be a college student with an exciting, exotic summertime job in Thailand. But what matters is that he doesn’t look away.

This is the first time I am naked in front of a man who is not a member of my family or a guardian. My grandmother says it’s all right. I’m just a kid after all. Our staring contest seems to last a lifetime as my grandmother talks to the man and thanks him. His eyes never move over to her face. His eyes never leave me. As he continues to stare, I feel a dart of electricity shoot through my spine. I am no woman. I am just a child. So what is this transaction? Why does it feel so illicit? Am I meant to be frightened or excited?

* * *

At the Museum of Sex, there’s an exhibit on the Female Gaze: NSFW. I invite my friends along.

At noon, I meet Mary Ruth, my former roommate and electric Southern Belle, and my husband in front of the museum. Mary Ruth makes sweet tea and orange cake like it’s nobody’s business, but she can also cut through any argument like a knife.

We exchange greetings and kisses and pile into the museum. Inside, I’m impressed by the variety and shapes of vibrators and bongs that greet us near the doorway. Mary Ruth strolls past the devices like she’s waltzing through any ordinary garden of delights.

I follow, trying not to let my eye catch on each and every dildo. Beside the vibrating rabbits, Stefan blows his nose loudly. He’s recovering from a gnarly cold. The wall of merkins shift slightly in the air as he sneezes by.

In the ticket line, I somehow manage to get separated from Mary Ruth and Stefan. When it’s my turn to buy the ticket, the cashier asks me if I would like to pay extra for the Bouncy Castle of Breasts.

“Is it part of The Female Gaze exhibit?” I ask her.

“It might as well be,” she smirks.

I pay the extra fee and wait for the others at the entrance. They decide to forgo bouncy castle and enjoy the exhibits instead.

The first floor of the museum is all disco. All female. All gay. All trans. All color. All other. All sex. It’s glorious and kitschy. Decadent and teasingly taboo. There are images of young men and women in their underwear, wearing nothing at all, soaking up the foam and the admiration at Studio 54. The expressions on their faces are ecstatic, inviting, cool.

Upstairs, Stefan finds a bicycle that looks like a tandem bike, but actually functions as an overly-elaborate mechanical vibrator. I watch him as he cranks the pedals and the piston at the front of the bike starts to go.

“Why did they make the dildo black?” I ask as the pumping gets faster.

“Do you even have to ask?” He winks.

I shake my head. Mary Ruth studies some vintage black and white nudies from the viewfinder of a chunky old Nickelodeon. Stefan stares at a wall of nipple tassels and tries to read the fine print. I think it’s a good time to abandon them for the Bouncy Castle of Breasts.

In the queue for the castle, I’m the only single person in line. The curators take a photo of my ID and make me sign over my life on the health form. I enter the dark cave, and suddenly feel like an awkward teenager again.

“Keep your shoes here. And your pen here. And your notebook there.” The gallery attendant for the bouncy castle informs me. “Are you sure your friends won’t be joining you?”

“I already asked,” I shake my head at him, “They’re too stingy to pay the additional fee.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I’ll get over it,” I smile.

“I’m Matthew.”

“I’m Rita.”

I watch the current inhabitants of the breast castle bounce and shake the walls of the black room we’re in.

“Are you on duty, Matthew?”

“Why?”

“Want to join me in the bouncy castle?” It feels weird to go in alone.

“Hmm,” he guides me to the entrance of the castle which is one gigantic pink inflatable hole. The ladies from the previous session tumble out.

“Sure, why not?”

Inside, I feel like I’m walking on the surface of the moon. The pink walls make me feel like I’m gliding on cotton candy, literally stepping on air. Is the pink palace supposed to feel like a womb?

Each step launches me upwards, onwards and smack-dab on top of a giant inflatable breast.

There are nipples and flushed areolas everywhere. Caramel breasts, chocolate breasts, rosy breasts, creamy breasts, honey breasts, red-robin breasts, all protruding out from the ceilings, from the floor, and from each corner of the four walls. I feel like I’m in a colony of spores and sex.

Soon I find myself bouncing from one breast to another, tumbling off of one nipple and latching on to another. Like life is just some Freudian fever dream after all.

Matthew cartwheels and jumps around the room with me. He flips in the air and lands on a giant boob like a pasha. I snap a picture of him, then nearly dislocate my shoulder as I get slammed by a cluster of boobs.

He takes a picture.

I grab a nipple in my hand and bounce over to look at the picture over his shoulder.

“Nice picture, maybe I could use the image for my essay.”

“What essay?” He shouts, sending me the image, and then jumping into a valley of breasts.

“I’m writing an essay on the female gaze,” I holler back, bouncing between one black boob and one white one.

“What have you discovered about the female gaze?” he somersaults to the ground.

“Well,” I try to somersault, too, but instead tumble forward. “I’m trying to figure out how I inhabit the female gaze.” A giant breast greets me nose to nipple.

“And have you figured it out?” He asks breathless.

I stand up against two inflatable areolas the size of my own body. I’m breathless, too by the time the other gallery attendants come to drag us out through the pink hole.

Between gulps of air, I confess:

“I can’t tell if I’m just locked in the male gaze or if I’m actually escaping it.”

* * *

In “Aesthetic Evolution in the Animal World,” philosopher Alva Noë reviews Richard O. Prum’s The Evolution of Beauty. He writes:

“What’s so dangerous about what Prum calls ‘aesthetic evolution by mate choice?’

“Darwin grappled with the problem of the diversity…of ornament in the biological world. It is well known that he wrote in a letter to a friend: ‘the sight of the feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!’ For the peacock’s tail is, manifestly, of no adaptive value whatsoever.

“The thing about the peacock’s tail is that the peahen likes it. It’s sexy. It’s beautiful to her. It is attractive. And that’s why peacocks who’ve got it, and are able to flaunt it, are in fact more likely to have offspring. So the trait is selected. Not for its adaptive value, but by the female of the species.”

* * *

After the Museum of Sex, when we’ve had our share of laughs over sex and pornography, Mary Ruth, Stefan, and I decompress over lunch.

“Do you think the female gaze exists?” I ask Mary Ruth as the aroma of her steaming bowl of ramen fills the air.

“Do you think it doesn’t?” She fills her spoon with an elegant amount of noodle.

“I think it exists,” I muse, “but how does one define it against the male gaze? Does everything return to Mulvey and her notions of scopophilia? As women, can we even see the world outside of the male gaze, or are we always informed by our relationship and resistance to it?”

Mary Ruth plays with a piece of parsley in her bowl, and then looks up at me and laughs. Her earrings wink gold in the restaurant’s low light.

“Do you even have to ask?” She smiles. “Of course the female gaze exists. If men objectify women and see them only as objects, whores, and wives, what do you think women do?”

I try to keep my cool but I’m losing my appetite. The sushi is left uneaten on my plate.

“What do women do?”

“They decide which men and which genes are going to stick around in this patriarchal society of ours and which are not. The female gaze doesn’t just fall on the prowess and beauty of the male body. Women judge men according to their stature and mobility in life. We respect men who can move us upwards, forwards, socially, financially, intellectually, physically. The female gaze is political. If it seeks out men, it seeks those who offer the best gain. The female gaze is hedging its bet on its own survival, on its own whims, pleasures, and sense of beauty. A woman will use any man to better herself in society. A woman who chooses a man as mate ensures that he survives, too. A woman makes sure that that man, that mover-and-shaker, has a legacy of his own and doesn’t simply disappear into the ether.”

I stare at Mary Ruth and Stefan watches her from the corner, silent with his mouth slightly agape. My jaw is mopping the floor as well.

“If you’re looking for the female gaze,” she says with sadness and fire in her eyes, “look no further than biology and desire. The female gaze is the backbone of all political intrigue in society.”

__________

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Co-Director of the MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing program at the George Polk School of Communications at Long Island University Brooklyn. She is author of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing,Echo in Four Beats, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and Cracklers at Night. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA from the University of Washington, and her work appears in Hunger Mountain, Isele, Nat. Brut., Poets & Writers, Academy of American Poets, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She is the co-writer and co-director of Burning Down the Louvre (2022), a documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France. She received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays.