Poornima Manco

Author

belief

What’s the point?

by

Every author, regardless of the genre they write in, has some kind of message in their writing. Whether that is good overcomes evil, soulmates exist, happily ever afters are possible, crime doesn’t pay, etc, etc. You get my drift. Now, these messages aren’t necessarily emblazoned on their covers or blurbs. In fact, sometimes, the messages are so deeply buried within the writing that a reader would be hard pressed to vocalise them if asked. But they are there, even in the fluffiest romcom, the bloodiest crime caper, the most nerve-tingling thriller. Search and you will find.

However, sometimes, there is a disconnect between the message sent and the message received. What an author may be trying to say is open to hundreds of interpretations and misinterpretations. It depends on the reader, their mood, their provenance, their cultural history, their upbringing, their exposure to the world and many such factors. That can make for a jarring experience, both for the reader, and also for the author when they read a scathing review of their work. “That wasn’t what I was saying!” An author might cry out in the privacy of their home.

Whose fault is the misunderstanding? The author’s or the reader’s?

Now, having been both, I can tell you that the answer is complex and nuanced. As an author who is trying to put a point across, I want to be subtle. I want to layer my message within the story, the dialogues, the actions of the protagonists and the consequences of those actions. Do I want to beat the reader over the head with my message repeatedly? No! That is the most basic and worst kind of didactic writing there is. Yet, within all of this lies the risk of being misunderstood.

Let’s take the last novel I wrote and released back in 2022: Intersections. Most of the reviews I received were wonderful. Haunting, complex, emotional and compelling were some adjectives used to describe the story. So far, so good. But any writer worth their salt knows that it’s the negative reviews that stick in one’s head. I know of many authors who refuse to read their reviews, content if their works have a high star rating. I, sadly, am not amongst those. I enjoy reading my reviews because I see it as a learning ground. Somewhere I can find out firsthand what my readers are thinking, what I did well and what I could do better.

This one review had me baffled. The reviewer said she found the book was very well written, that I, as the author, had tackled an intricate plot with four alternating viewpoints and kept her engaged throughout. She then went on to talk about the story and finally ended with saying that the reason she wasn’t giving the novel a full five stars, despite having enjoyed it, was because the book didn’t seem to have a point or a higher message. Therefore, she felt it would not endure.

Picture a knife to the heart. That is how gutted I was to read this review. You see, my point had escaped her completely. This novel about four young women from very different walks of life who become friends in childhood, only for their friendship to splinter in their teenage years, for them to go their separate ways and reunite in their forties, had a point and a higher message. I wanted to show how random life can be. How those we perceive to be more fortunate and more blessed than us are subject to the same vagaries of fate as anyone else. Being born into a higher social and economic strata does not ensure happiness nor is it a guarantee of success, while conversely, coming from the lower end of society is not a predictor of misery and failure. Life is messy and unpredictable. Our spheres of control are limited and the sooner we accept that, the quicker we will adapt to and thrive in changed circumstances.

Perhaps it was my fault that my message wasn’t clear enough. Maybe the novel, which begins with an accident, and ends with the reason the accident occurred and the consequences of that fateful evening, felt jarring to this reader because it was too arbitrary to come to terms with. Unfortunately, many a time, life is that way, too.

As I’m working on my next novel, this criticism keeps me wondering whether I’m doing enough to convey my point. This book deals with the circularity of life, of how what goes around comes right back around. Do I keep it understated as I would like to? Or will that be too obscure and unfathomable to a potential reader? I could choose to ignore this reviewer and write what I want to write. That would be at my peril. You see, every reader is precious to me, and their criticism is a part of my growth as a writer.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon me to work on my craft and deliver a reading experience that is consistent with my philosophy, my convictions, and my worldview. Hoping these will be understood and will align with those of the reader, too.

That, after all, is the point.

 

 

An I for an I

by

I am a puzzle.

Parts of me are jagged; they do not fit. Parts of me are missing; I don’t know how to find them. 

All my life I have tried putting myself together. Sometimes to fit the world I’m in, sometimes to understand what I am exactly.

Born in a land that was enslaved for hundreds of years, perhaps I carry those shackles in my blood. I look westwards for my future. I revel in the words of a foreign language, eschewing my mother tongue. I believe erroneously that the white man is superior, in experience and knowledge, in wisdom and intelligence. 

I am a child of separation. A land cleaved into two and a marriage turned toxic. Father is a remote symbol, a picture on the wall. He is the father of the nation, but he died long before I was born. I sing his paeans in school assemblies, conditioned into mute acceptance.

Where is my own father, though? Amputated out of our lives, a stranger to me forever. It isn’t until I am in my sixth decade that I seek the answers only he could have given. 

Answers for the half of me I do not understand. A body that sickens in an alien way, a mind that reacts unnaturally. Is this him? Is this the bit that lives on much after he has gone?

I am a child of a contradictory country. Rich, poor, spiritual, dissolute, innocent, corrupt, ancient, nascent. It is a land that defies description.

Caught between it all, I yearn for simplicity.

* * *

I am a woman.

Fertile, precious, yet infinitely vulnerable. Besieged for being the weaker sex in a country that prays to goddesses and burns its brides. Groped, catcalled and abused even before awareness of femininity has arrived.

My colour is a dilemma. Dark brown isn’t pretty in my town. My people worship the fair, conflating colour with virtue, assigning it supremacy, degrading all other skin tones.

I wish to flee the confines of this existence.

Escape comes in books. It comes in stories of women in faraway lands living faraway lives. Surely they are free? Freer than me, surely? They are not answerable to their families, their communities, their societies; to misogyny or patriarchy. They have to please no one but themselves. Such freedom is a dream.

I try to toe an invisible line that keeps shifting and changing. I want to belong. If belonging is a feeling, then I am six yards away from it. 

Like the six yards of a sari that my mother drapes on her body. Saris made from the softest mulmul and the glossiest silks. Her only token to convention. She doesn’t belong, either. Strong, brave and outspoken women rarely do. 

Perhaps my estrangement is generational. A desire to fit in when every atom of our beings conflicts with conformity. 

* * *

I am a foreigner.

In the land of our former oppressors, I think I belong. In the language, the liberties, the modernity, I feel I am free. Until the same demons ambush me.

My colour, my language, my body are once again in an alien landscape. Micro aggressions show me I do not belong. How dare I believe I am an equal? How dare I try to escape the clichés of my origins?

I am an alien. I am incomprehensible. I babble, Babel-like. Babble babble in a tongue I thought was mine. Only to be met by blank faces and polite indifference. 

“Excuse me?”, “Could you repeat that, luv?”, “It’s the accent, dear!”

Retreat. Isolate. Repeat.

My existence is confined to the walls of my apartment, to the walls of my office, and back again.

I am a loner. A piece of a puzzle long separated from the main. My edges are blunted and I no longer try to fit in.

Small kindnesses and friendly overtures send me into a tailspin. People who approach are confounded by my overreactions. Too much, they think, and they recoil.

Too much, too little, not enough.

Am I destined never to belong? To be adrift in an ocean of humanity and never have a safe harbour of my own?

I am muted. Automaton-like, I function, but inside I am dying inch by inch. Community, connection, cognisance, is all I desire. But it is out of reach for someone like me.

* * *

I am still alive.

There is that.

Little by little, I have settled into this little life. Everything is surface level here. No one cares enough to encroach on my freedom. I am free to live or die, as I please. And I do a bit of both each day.

Lovers come and go, friends meander through my life, family keeps its distance. Mother gone, father never found. I am an orphan, a foundling, a wanderer in search of the elusive.

I write, bleeding onto pages. I write my grief, my loneliness, my ache, my desires. This is my release; it’s my catharsis.

Slowly, I come together. 

I belong here amongst words that tap out of my fingers like birds flying off branches. Amongst sentences that weave together like rivers converging. Inside paragraphs that are deep and mysterious, like the oceans of the world.

I find myself in stories. I discover myself through sentences. I create myself through characters. I mould, I shape, I scrub out. I recreate. I procreate.  

This is where I belong. A place where my colour does not matter, my shape is irrelevant, my gender inconsequential, my heritage mine alone. This is where all my languages come out to play. This is where my mother tongue and my adopted tongue walk hand-in-hand. This is my release, my liberation, my homecoming.

At last, a place I can call my own.

I am a child of this earth, and I will return to her womb someday. Until then, I will live amongst books. Mine and others. For, at long last, I have found my peace, my home.

This is where I belong.

***

(This is a work of fiction)

The Mystery of the Missing Mentor

by

Many, many moons ago, when I first began writing as a hobby, the only way I knew how to get any validation was to submit my short stories to various competitions. This was well before social media, and I’d scroll through different sites on the internet to get a feel for different competitions, their submission guidelines, and whether the price of the entry ticket included some kind of review or assessment of the submitted piece. Now these were the best bang for my buck. Whether I won, whether I even got an honourable mention, was immaterial, because I was getting something invaluable—feedback. To a novice, this feedback was worth its weight in gold. After all, how else was I to know if I was any good?

Amongst the very many competitions that I submitted to, there was one spearheaded by a retired English professor who, for a small fee, would give a breakdown of what worked and didn’t work in a particular story. Over time, and multiple submissions, I came to regard him as something of a mentor. He was a fair but forthright judge and his comments/suggestions always served to improve my work. Perhaps he developed a certain fondness for me too, as one day, quite out of the blue, I received a friend request from him on Goodreads.

Back in the day, when social media was a nascent entity, a multi-headed hydra that no one knew much about, we signed up for nearly every account going. If you’d asked me to distinguish between LinkedIn and Twitter, or Facebook and MySpace, I wouldn’t have had a clue. Goodreads was another one of the ilk. To someone who loved books, wanted to write books (however deeply suppressed the desire might have been), finding myself amongst other book lovers in a virtual world was a dream come true. This was where my mentor (who shall remain unnamed) reached out to befriend me. I still remember my squeal of delight in a bar in Budapest. I was on a family holiday with my husband and daughters, and when that little red notification popped up next to the bell icon, I clicked on it to discover that Prof X wanted to be friends!

Looking back, perhaps he was new to the platform too and was befriending every Tom, Dick, Jane and Joan on it. I might have been one of the many “suggested” friends that he clicked on. At any rate, I took it as a good sign. The next year, I signed up for his email course designed to help new writers like me improve our craft. The course was good and to my eternal dismay, I consigned it to the memory of an old laptop that crashed, and I could never recover the contents. Long story short, this man was instrumental in getting me off my mark and on the writing track, however slow a runner I might have been. (I remember him saying something about reining in the metaphors… hmmm!)

Anyway, as the years went on, and I got more serious about my writing, I began submitting (and placing) in more prestigious competitions. In the interim, Prof X had wound down his competition/feedback site. So, imagine my surprise when one day I received an email from him. When I opened it, I found it was actually a missive from his daughter who said that her father had had cancer and had passed away a few weeks ago. She was informing all his contacts and emailing all his previous students.

I was shocked and saddened. Prof X hadn’t seemed that old, but that doesn’t mean a thing with cancer, which is a cruel and formidable foe. For many days after, I would think of the Prof and the many pointers he had given me all those years ago. I prayed for his soul to rest in peace and hoped he hadn’t suffered too much.

More years went by. Now I was a published author, and long and winding as the road might have been, the destination had always been books. My own books of short stories and women’s fiction. Books that were sold on Amazon and Apple, Nook and Kobo. I was nowhere near giving up the day job (which I still enjoy very much) but slowly I was building an alternate career, one that I hoped would take me through retirement and into my dotage.

I was still active on Goodreads, but more as an author than a reader. I knew now that it was bad form to slate another author’s books or try too hard to promote one’s own. I refrained from doing both, only occasionally commenting about a new release, or liking a favourable review. So, the next thing that happened shocked the living daylights out of me!

One day, as was my habit, I wandered into Goodreads and posted a brief comment about a forthcoming release. Moments later, I noticed someone had liked my status. I clicked on to find out who…

Prof X had liked my comment!

What???

I thought he’d long passed on.

Had I imagined it?

I tried looking for the email from his daughter, but that had disappeared alongside the course and possibly my sanity.

Was Prof X alive and kicking? And if so, why had his daughter lied? If not, who had taken over his Goodreads profile, and why?

Questions that circled in my mind like vultures. I nearly reached out to him, but then wondered how to introduce his demise in the interaction?

“Dear Sir,

Is it true that you died several years ago? If so, how are you performing this miraculous act of functioning on Goodreads from the Hereafter?”

Nope. I slunk back into my shell, terribly confused and forevermore bewildered by the turn of events.

I wish I could tell you I solved the mystery. I didn’t. I’ve had no further contact with the Prof, and one day I found he had disappeared from my friends list, never to be seen again.

But what I can tell you is this. Once a person has passed on, their social media handles need to be retired too. This instance was the first in what has now become the norm. I see my Instagram stories being viewed by the spouse of a friend who died not too long ago. I see clueless people wishing deceased friends on Facebook on their birthdays. I get jarring reminders of social media anniversaries with people who are well beyond the veil now.

Stop. Just stop.

Much as I would like eternal life for all my friends and family, social media is not the place to acquire that status. Can we all set something in place whereby once we are gone, our social handles disappear too? I’d like to do that for myself. I don’t want my grinning face popping up on anyone’s birthday reminders list after my demise. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to my dead self, either.

Meanwhile, Prof X, if you are reading this, please could you just sort it out once and for all? Are you still amongst us? And if not, does the great beyond have its own social network? If it does, is it as hellish and confusing as the one here?

Oh, wait. Maybe Fire and Brimstone are just alternate names for…

 

 

 

A Curious Incident in the Post Office

by

It was a Saturday morning, and I was feeling quite Zen. I’d just come back from doing a Body Balance class at the gym. The sun was shining and life felt good. There was an Amazon package I needed to return, so off I trotted to our local Post Office/ Newsagent, hoping to tick off at least one chore on a long to-do list for the day.

At the Post Office, I stood behind an older man in the queue as he communicated with the Bangladeshi gentleman serving him. I detected an American accent and wondered to myself whether he lived locally while mentally working out what else needed doing after this errand. Meanwhile, I spotted that there was in fact another customer, a pink-haired lady standing to one side waiting her turn after the American man.

So far, so very normal.

Then, the Bangladeshi shop assistant spotted the package in my hand and said, “Madam, the post has already gone for the day. The next one is on Monday…”

I replied, “That’s okay. I don’t mind when it goes out. I just need to drop it off…”

Before I could say any more, the American man turned around and snarled at me, ” I was here FIRST! DO NOT PUSH AHEAD OF ME!!!”

Startled, I responded, “Hey! It was the assistant who spoke to me first…”

He turned around again and shouted, “BACK OFF AND SHUT UP!”

His entire body was radiating rage. If he could have reached forward and hit me, he would have. There was spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth and he narrowed his eyes at me, as if just waiting for one more word so that he could smack me. When I refused to engage, he turned his back on me.

At this point, I noticed that he was shaking while counting the money he had withdrawn. I stepped farther away, sensing all was not right with this man. The woman who had been witness to all of this spoke up, saying, “There is no need to be this rude. She was not interrupting your transaction. The postmaster addressed her first.”

At this, he growled at her, “SHUT UP! DON’T TALK TO ME!”

We exchanged glances, and she mouthed, “Americans!”

Now, before I proceed further with this story, I must add that I have plenty of American friends, acquaintances and colleagues who are the loveliest people. Kind, thoughtful, giving, polite and pleasant. He was NOT one of them.

I mouthed back, “Yeah, an ugly one.”

At this, he snapped, “It’s not because I’m American, okay? You were rude!”

We both retaliated with, “No, YOU were rude! We were just waiting patiently in the queue.”

He went back to counting the money, switching from being horrible to us to being polite to the postmaster. At one point, even the postmaster looked at me and gave a tiny shrug, as if to say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with this guy?”

A few minutes elapsed while the lady and I chatted about the sad state of all the banks closing down in the area. I was still shaken from the encounter, but didn’t want him to sense that he’d frightened me in any way. He was a bully, and I refused to give him the satisfaction.

Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he turned around and said, “I’m sorry.”

The lady looked at him and said, “I get it. It is stressful that all the banks in the area have shut down, and that you need to come to the Post Office now to withdraw money. Even so, there was no need for that sort of behaviour.”

He was still shaking and looking at her when she responded softly, “Alright, I forgive you.”

Then he turned and gave me a supercilious look, waiting for me to say the same. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “No, I don’t forgive you. Your behaviour and your language were uncalled for. That was an unprovoked attack, and no, I won’t forgive you.”

“Fine,” he muttered, “don’t forgive me then.”

When he’d finished counting his money, he peeled off £20 and handed it to the lady, saying, “Here, buy yourself something with this.”

She pocketed it happily, saying, “Thanks, I will.”

He then held out another £20 to me.

I took another step back.

“No, thank you. I don’t want your money! Back off from me right now!” I didn’t raise my voice, but I was very firm as I said this, resolute that this man’s unwarranted behaviour would remain unforgiven, at least by me.

He shrugged, threw me a dirty look, and walked out the door.

After this entire incident, the Bangladeshi shop assistant felt sorry enough for me to take my package for a Monday pickup.

 

My questions are:

Was I wrong not to forgive him in the first place?

Was he trying to buy my forgiveness?

Can money really be the answer to bad behaviour?

 

Upon reflection, I have forgiven him. Clearly, he wasn’t a well man. The problem could be psychological or physical, maybe he has a very stressful life. I’ll never know. But I am proud of myself in that I refused to be bought. My integrity and self-respect were not for sale. Perhaps my refusal of his money will make him reflect, too. Maybe he’ll learn a little something from this incident as well.

People are not commodities. Treat everyone with the respect that you wish to be accorded. A heartfelt apology is worth far more than all £20 notes you might throw around.

What do you think?

 

All of Her

by

Somewhere within her there is a little girl of eight. She waits for her mother to return from work, scared of the scolding her report card will beget, yet secure in the love and forgiveness that will inevitably follow. She listens to her father at the dinner table as he talks of his clients and their problems, the gentle wisdom he imparts daily underlined by the kindness flowing through his veins. At night, she weaves dreams around amorphous futures before falling deeply and heavily into slumber’s arms.

Somewhere within her, there is a rebellious teenager of sixteen. She curses her parents under her breath, planning elaborate schemes to hoodwink them and following through with none. Her friends are her life and she spends hours on the phone with them, talking about everything and nothing, all at once. She nurses a crush on the neighbourhood boy, watching him covertly as he walks his dog in the evening. She ignores him on the street when he smiles at her, because “good girls” don’t return male attention. But she is quietly devastated when he finds himself a pretty girlfriend, someone far prettier than her.

Somewhere within her is a young woman of twenty-one. She stands on the threshold of her adult life, ready to embark upon an adventure. Excited, nervous, unprepared, she is sad to leave home but wondrous at the possibilities ahead of her. “This,“ she whispers to herself, “is when I can truly begin to live on my own terms.” It’s not until much later that she realises that with freedom comes responsibility. And bills. Lots and lots of bills.

Somewhere within her is a thirty-year-old new mother, cradling her month-old baby, who doesn’t stop crying. Exhausted, she cries alongside. Surrounded by men – husband, father, father-in-law – who are no good to her at a time like this, she yearns for a woman’s touch, someone who will reassure her that this too shall pass, that childbearing and rearing isn’t an impossible task. There is no one who can replace her mother, who is long gone. She misses her desperately, the hollowness inside threatening to engulf her. Friends step in, clumsily, but they comfort her far more than the men can.

Somewhere within her is a forty-year-old who still looks young and alluring. No longer in love with her husband, she enjoys the attention that other men give her. She flirts – coy and cooing, revelling in the excitement and danger of uncharted terrain. In the dying embers of her youth, she feels alive again. No longer strait-jacketed by society’s mores and values, she wants to soar above the labels of wife and mother. She wants to forge ahead in her career, eager to shed the ties that hold her back – friends and family who caution and counsel her. She wants to define herself as someone important, someone worth knowing, someone others aspire to emulate.

Somewhere within her is a fifty-year-old divorcee who doesn’t know who she is anymore. Her husband has left, the children have moved away; the once dazzling career has fizzled; the paramours have melted away, and no, she isn’t someone important or worth knowing. She is just another anonymous woman living an anonymous life, searching for love on the internet. Her single status has left her friendless, a scarlet letter invisibly tattooed on her person declaring that she might poach on other women’s territories. She is afraid of loneliness, of old age, of dying.

Somewhere within her is a sixty-five-year-old grey-haired granny who is slightly hard of hearing. She, who had made peace with her singlehood before finding love with her husband again. They have both wandered and returned, this time to a quieter, more sedate love, one that will last the distance. Suddenly, her life is full to the brim with children, her children’s children and the school runs and coffee mornings that she missed out on the first time round chasing a career. She marvels at life’s bounty, crossing her fingers daily, praying that her luck doesn’t run out again.

Somewhere within her is a seventy-two-year-old widow, crying over wasted years, bloated egos and stupid, ridiculous, futile arguments. She misses everything about him, even his habit of leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube. Her children rally around her, reminding her of the good times, of what she still has, of what they created together. She wonders how her own father managed for two decades without her mother, how he carried on being a parent while putting a full-stop to being a spouse? She knows that the world still turns and she must turn with it, as others before her have done.

Somewhere within her is an eighty-five-year-old woman with arthritis, a heart condition and two hip replacements. She no longer cares she isn’t someone important, because she knows that in her own small way, she is. There aren’t many of her peers left, but those that are still meet monthly for a long and leisurely lunch. They discuss their families, the state of the planet, their misspent youths and laugh as only the young or the very old can – uninhibited and unashamed. They don’t understand the world anymore, feeling out of touch with everything, but they don’t care what anyone thinks of them, either. They sit comfortably in their wrinkled skins, free from the shackles of youth and vanity.

Somewhere within her is a ninety-year-old woman ready to give up her mortal coil. Life is a drag, and the only thing she looks forward to now are the rare visits from her great-grandchildren. Adults bore her while children delight her. In their innocence, she sees the only remaining purity in an increasingly depraved and insane world. Every morning, she wakes up and sighs that she is still alive. She prays for death; she invites it into her dreams, hoping it will step out of them and into her life someday soon. She waits and waits and waits, her hands crossed in her lap, her coffee cooling on the table beside her.

The Male Gaze

by

Some time ago, a reviewer upbraided me for describing a woman in my book with a very ‘male gaze’. The criticism wasn’t entirely unwarranted, as the person describing the woman was a man, and for reasons of authenticity, I had to inhabit his skin and describe her through his eyes. However, her remark got me wondering. How often do we view ourselves and other women through the prism of a man’s expectations?

Many, many years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I came to England on a holiday with a female friend. For a short while, we intended to stay with her male cousin in his house in Kent. I had never met him before, and had zero expectations. But as soon as we met, I could see him sizing me up, and finding that I wasn’t as attractive as he’d been led to believe. How do I know this? I overheard a conversation he had with his friend over the phone where he described me as “disappointing”. As a twenty-something year old, I took his evaluation to heart, judging myself as harshly as he had judged me.

Now when I look back, the only “disappointing” thing I find about myself is that I couldn’t recognise an idiot when I saw one. He was a spoiled, entitled brat, used to women falling at his feet, and the many incidents that followed with him at the centre would make for a very interesting tale. However, I will save that for a future retelling.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand that no one can live up to the ideal standards that men enforce upon women. And I see women everywhere trying. No matter what we tell ourselves, we have internalised these incredibly harsh beauty standards within us and convinced ourselves that we primp and preen for no one else but our own selves. Really?

Don’t get me wrong – for the better part of my own life, I did the same. More the fool me!

There is nothing wrong with wanting to look attractive, to wanting to look your best at any age, whatever your best may be. But it is important to ask whose yardstick are you living by?

Recently I stumbled upon an article describing Kim Kardashian’s revenge body. What on earth is a revenge body I wondered? Well, the article enlightened me. After her divorce from Kanye West, Kim Kardashian had embarked upon a self-improvement endeavour which involved eating a plant-based diet, overhauling her exercise regime and removing her famous bum-implants. Naturally, this sent the netizens into a frenzy, each one proclaiming how “fabulous” Kim was looking post-breakup. A million or more young girls, fans of the canny businesswoman, most likely internalised the message that heartbreak didn’t mean diving into the nearest tub of Haagen-Dazs. Instead, it meant a punishing regimen of readying oneself for the next potential partner.

One can be the most shiny, beautiful self on the outside, but if it does not match up to the inside, it is a doomed undertaking.

Ageism, sexism, misogyny are the favoured sons of patriarchy. I see examples of women bending over backwards trying to adhere to the impossible criteria of youth, beauty and attractiveness imposed upon them by male-led institutions and thought processes. Actresses that starve their bodies and plump their faces, erasing every facial expression while erasing their wrinkles. Pre-teens who wear overtly sexualised clothing because they want to appear seductive. Young girls who pout and pirouette in their smalls in front of the camera, feeding the lusts of perverts, in the belief that they are ‘free’ to explore their sexuality as they will.

The ‘Male Gaze’ has us pinned against a wall, squirming like insects, performing haplessly and fighting a losing battle in the mistaken belief that we hold the cards. We don’t. We never have. But that’s not to say we never will.

Let us reclaim the narrative of our bodies and our minds. Our journey is ours alone, and let it be one that is empathetic to the process of ageing, understanding to the process of growing up, inclusive of every shape, size and colour, and above all, divorced from the ill effects of the male gaze.