Lust Dust and the Essay with Six F-Bombs

A couple weeks ago, I read a wonderful post by Tanja Diamond about men who tell women, usually when they're pissed off at us, that they wouldn't fuck us.

My brain squirrel immediately went off on a side quest pondering why women are expected to care about being attractive to Men™.

Not a man.

Not someone we actually crave.

Not someone we're hoping will enthusiastically remove our pants later.

Men™.

The general population.

Because I've wanted and been wanted.

I've been sprinkled with lust dust and done all the delicious human stuff that happens when two people realize they want to play naked.

That's not what I'm talking about.

Let alone the newsflash that attraction to men isn't the only attraction available to women.

I'm talking about the cultural expectation that, regardless of who we actually desire, women are still supposed to care whether men find us desirable.

Why?

Seriously.

Why?

If I have zero interest in exploring your parts, why do I need you to want to explore mine?

What exactly have I won?

I've had plenty of men make sure I knew they didn't find me attractive.

Which is such a peculiar public service.

Thank you, sir.

I was dangerously close to going about my day without knowing the sexual preferences of a complete stranger.

Crisis averted.

But it never really hurt my feelings.

Because I couldn't figure out why his attraction was supposed to have value to me.

Attraction from someone I want? Yum.

Attraction from someone I love? Yes, please.

That primal jolt when I realize the person I'm into is also into me? More of that.

But generic male approval?

I don't understand the exchange rate.

And yet women are taught to accumulate it.

There's even a name for part of this: self-objectification.

We learn to look at our bodies from the outside.

To monitor.

Evaluate.

Adjust.

A 2025 meta-analysis looked at 78 studies involving more than 74,000 people across 16 countries.

Women consistently reported more self-objectification than men.

And the largest gender difference?

Body surveillance.

The habit of monitoring how our bodies look to other people.

We learn to become our own audience.

Because once we learn how to do that, we don't even need an actual dude in the room.

We learn remarkably early which girls are considered pretty.

Which bodies are considered desirable.

Which clothes get attention.

Which women "still look good."

Eventually, we can carry the evaluator around with us.

Am I attractive?
Am I too big?
Do I look too old?
Would someone want me?

Notice what's missing from every one of those questions.

Our desire.

What do I like?
Who do I want?
What turns me on?
What feels good in my body?
What makes me feel sexy?

Those questions put us back inside ourselves.

And the science gets even sexier there.

A 2026 study that included heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian women found that greater conformity to traditional femininity norms predicted more self-objectification, which predicted more body-consciousness during sex and, in turn, lower sexual satisfaction and sexual agency.

In other words, we can become so practiced at watching ourselves be desirable that it interferes with actually experiencing our own desire.

Preach!

Because maybe "fuckable" isn't just passive grammatically.

The whole daggum orientation is passive.

Am I pleasing to look at?

Would I be chosen?

Would someone want to test out the furniture with me?

Someone else is still at the center of every question.

And I am far more interested in the woman who gets herself back into the sentence.

What does she like?
Who turns her on?
Who makes her laugh?
Who makes her feel safe enough to be weird?
Who makes her curious?
Does she want any skin-to-skin crucial conversations at all?
What does she want?

That's a much more interesting woman to me.

And maybe that's why "I wouldn't fuck you" has never had much sting for me.

It requires me to accept a premise I don't accept.

That male desire has inherent value.

That receiving it raises my value.

That losing it lowers my value.

That being sexually rejected by a man I never sexually selected is somehow a rejection at all.

No.

He doesn't find me attractive.

That's it.

That's the entire piece of information.

He gets to have that preference.

I get to continue being colorful and bedazzled and large and loud and aging and entirely uninterested in auditioning for Men™.

Which gets particularly interesting for those of us over 40, when culture starts preparing us for the supposed catastrophe of becoming less desirable:

She still turns heads.
She looks great for her age.
She's still got it.
She's 50 and men still hit on her.
She's 60 and you'd never know it.
MILF.
Cougar.

Congratulations! Men™ would still invite you to a slumber party.

You have successfully aged without forfeiting your market value.

Yippee.

Meanwhile, some research suggests something much more interesting may be happening inside women as we age.

In one study comparing women ages 18 to 27 with women ages 48 to 90, the older women reported less self-objectification.

Another study interviewing women from 20 to 68 found that women in their 50s and 60s were the most likely to talk about accepting their bodies and being less influenced by social pressure.

I love the shit out of that.

It's not like we magically turn 50 and emerge from a chrysalis shouting, NOBODY'S OPINION MATTERS!

Please.

We're still human.

Being craved can feel fantastic.

Feeling sexy can feel fantastic.

I love lust dust.

Wear the dress.
Wear no dress.
Color the hair.
Shave the head.
Get Botox.
Don't get Botox.
Wear enough makeup to require scaffolding.
Never own mascara.
Grow the bush.
Laser the bush into another dimension.

Whatever makes us feel at home in our own skin.

Because there is a difference between wanting to feel sexy and wanting to pass a sexiness inspection.

There is a difference between enjoying being desired and needing to remain desirable.

There is a difference between wanting someone and wanting to be wanted by everyone.

And maybe that's one of the opportunities available to us as we get older.

Not becoming more fuckable.

Becoming less interested in evaluating ourselves as fuckable at all.

Less time watching ourselves.

More time inhabiting ourselves.

Less:
Do they want me?

More:
What do I want?

I don't need Men™ to want me.

But I do desire the freedom to desire.

To choose.
To decline.
To want somebody.
To want nobody.
To change my mind.
To feel sexy without proving that I am sexy.
To enjoy being wanted without confusing someone else's wanting with my worth.

And if some random man looks at all of this and decides he wouldn't fuck me?

Nifty.

He has successfully answered a question
no one ever asked.