Sapphic Ode To The Male Gaze

BY ARIANNA COAN-PRICHARD

Arianna Coan-Prichard is a 21-year-old queer photographer based in San Francisco, whose primary creative passion and focus is creating commentary art, in order to contribute to positive change. Dedicated to using her photography as a medium for transmitting social, political, and environmental messaging, she is acutely aware of her responsibility as an artist and her opportunity to influence through visual art in an increasingly media driven world.

I created this series as a “girl on girl” f•ck you to the male gaze: To the ideology that inter-woman romantic love is an oxymoron, and either disregarded as confused and misguidedly displaced or hyper-sexualized and deemed performative for male entertainment and seduction. To the doctrine that idolizes and considers “legitimate” sex as inextricable from the penis and tragically hyperbolizes the pleasure elicited by its sole use for most humans with vaginas. All while simultaneously diminishing the sexual satisfaction elicited for those humans by non-phallic sexual practices. To the tragic cis male simplification and ignorance of female pleasure, and the hetero prioritization of male pleasure that minimizes the importance of those truths anyway. A f•ck you to the hysterical fallacy that a woman could never please another woman as much as a man could.
Arianna Coan-Prichard

To the most prominent form of sex, gender, and sexuality education in the world that has codified these delusions: mainstream porn, where “girl on girl” sex is staged and filmed by men, for men, just like nearly all the rest of porn.
A f*ck you to the irresistible male urge to project the made-for-them porn world onto the real world. To the terrifying fact that they are already in some ways synonymous and mutually reinforcing. To the men who will find these images, ignore this statement, and still consume this art as erotica. This is a series shouting “This is not for you. Our sexuality is not for you. We do not exist for you. Our love is genuine, does not need to be proven, and it is also not for you.”
The two women sharing intimacy, passion, and love?
Not
For
You.
PSA to all men under the spell of the male gaze: the world is not your porno.
Arianna Coan-Prichard