Column: About desire and masturbation – told by a millennial girl
Lust is something you keep to yourself.
Masturbation is something you do in secret.
That's what I've learned. The very first encounter I had with one of the deepest, darkest emotions there is, shame, was when my mother went into my childhood room and caught me masturbating. I think that's what I was doing. And I've never, ever told anyone before. I wasn't more than 5-7 years old. What I was doing was nice, relaxing and incredibly safe. Lying there on my mattress in my bunk bed in the pink room covered in sawdust wallpaper.
👉 Learn more about women's desire in the article "Not tonight, honey"
I recall every single second of the experience: The closed door opening. My mother appearing behind the wardrobe. She hadn't knocked. Armfuls of neatly folded clothes that she wanted to put away. But when she discovers my 'misdeed', she scolds me: "Will you stop doing that!" She turns on her heel, without putting the clothes away, and slams the door. I imagine she was surprised. And with the suddenly elevated pulse, anger was perhaps imminent, and why not? A touch of shame. Despite our very open and caring relationship, we have never, ever talked about it. Her reaction taught me early on that whatever I was doing under the covers was forbidden.
And here I will disclaim: My wonderful, loving mother has made a huge effort to make sex a natural thing for me since then (perhaps to tidy up the mess). My pine ladder bookcase was filled with books about the body and emotions. She often moved around the house naked, so that I could feel safe doing the same. And when I reached the one sparse lesson on sex in elementary school that was on the schedule in the 00s, it was my mother who, through her work at the pharmacy, was able to equip me with a blue suitcase, filled with condoms, diaphragms, an erect penis in white flamingo and a few leaflets about contraception, which I dragged with equal parts embarrassment and nerves all the way from the bus stop, past all the other classes and down to my own class, where it was placed on the catheter, so that we were ready to be taught how to avoid getting pregnant.
Well, it's a shame that it only holds its grip in the dark. The second the sun's rays hit, it loses its breath and the roof with it. Well - a small part of me is now healed.
The hypersexualization of women in 90s and 00s pop culture
As I slowly, uncertainly, and 100% delightfully awkwardly unfolded my own sexuality in the 00s, another layer was added. Not only was my desire shameful. My sexuality was as soft and malleable as a cheese slice. And the hands that shaped it were steeped in a masculinity that put itself first. It's what film theorist Laura Mulvey calls 'the male gaze,' first introduced in her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema:
a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.
My gender was hypersexualized in the 90s and 00s. Everything was about sex – but very rarely about desire. And certainly not the woman's. Everything was performative, exaggerated and way too much.
The examples are endless. From Pamela Anderson in the role of CJ in my favorite after-school series Baywatch, running around the beach in a teeny weenie red – not a bikini, but a swimsuit – while her breasts danced rhythmically in slow motion, while Mitch mostly twirled around in long swimming trunks and a jacket (I had them like Barbie dolls).
To the magazine M!, which portrayed my favorite boogie host Lise Rønne on the cover with the byline: “Denmark’s sexiest TV personality” (and a goal in life was therefore to appear in M! (I didn’t manage to do that - but I once got a column in Euroman).
For the Cocio commercials with Eva Mendes, wearing tight clothes, her breasts lifted as high as they could, a caressing look at the camera, while with her mouth half open she had to imagine drinking cocoa through a straw resting on her big, beautiful lips.
To my ultimate idol Britney Spears, who at just 18 years old was lying on a satin-covered bed in her underwear on the cover of Rolling Stone under the headline: “Inside the heart, mind and bedroom of a teen dream.” We were going to join in the satin-covered duvets.
For Arla's launch of their sugary series of mini-milks with three (young) women in tiny tops and panties, posing in awkward positions with half-open mouths and no bras - where the connection between the setup and the actual milk product was difficult to see.
To the live girl on Kanal Copenhagen, who wrapped a simple TV quiz in naked women and erotic undertones and overtones.
To myself, who in the late 00s was a fairy girl on D-day with a bell-covered plush collar and thigh-short dress – or a Guld-Tuborg girl in a tight, flammable dress for MC's Fight Night.
It should come as no surprise to few that it took more luck than intelligence to get through the 00s with a fairly healthy and natural approach to sex and desire – and with self-esteem intact.
Your desire is yours - and it changes throughout your life.
I ended up in the next decade as a deeply confused sexual being. A person who had had his boundaries violated time and time again, and who had internalized the thesis that my sexual being and my needs were secondary in the bedroom.
As a result, I had to spend another decade slowly dismantling it all and mustering the courage to formulate just one sentence that could express precisely my desire and needs for a more stable partner.
Maybe it never really hit you. But if it did:
I am here to tell you – and myself – that your desire is not something you have to ask permission for.
The sexual part of your being is neither shameful nor something to hide. Your desire is yours. It has been with you, always. (I have since learned that it is very, very common for children to masturbate – not in a sexual context, but for calm and release).
My desire lived inside me, so fine and unaffected by the outside world, until the door opened. We have to find it again. And again and again. It is allowed to change. In all likelihood, it will happen by itself, just as our bodies change.
Along the way in our cycle.
During pregnancy.
Postpartum.
In perimenopause, menopause and beyond.
It may well disappear, the desire - and reappear.
What is your desire?
What turns you on?
What sources?
What excites you?
What is your wildest fantasy?
And what is important for you to feel it? Presence? Security? Trust?
Find it. And bring it out into the light. Happy Valentine's <3
