"I'm going to tell you something very intimate," she goes on. "The reason why I do this job ..." She trails off, starts again. "I never really wanted to become an actress, but I wanted to exist. The only way I found to exist was to have my image printed on a film and have the proof of my existence."

David, a lost soul searching for himself, could relate, perhaps even before he transforms: He makes his art, photographs of the world around him, as a way to communicate some essential truth. Seydoux, toggling between dreamlike drama and intimate character study, is doing the same.

"I was like, no one really cares about me." How heartbreaking, I reply. "Yeah, but it's true," Seydoux says with Parisian flatness. She doesn't want sympathy, but she needs to be understood. "In a way, acting — this is why it's so important, and fundamental for me. I have this need to be seen."

— Léa Seydoux, Variety

girls have to autistically self-document to confirm their existence to themselves or else they stop existing, they have to log their on-going chameleonic shapeshifting in the greater female social ledger and perform for the third person camera fueling their own digital memory wonderland or else they literally stop existing. this as as normal as male selfies and fashion interest is abnormal. the line is simple for it goes from natural to evil: when it's done for the male gaze instead of the female gaze. you know it when you see it.

Also a majority of the milady girls are doxxed too. I think girls should be able to facefag. I get that it's not in the remilia core values or whatever u guys call it but we adapt. I dont think charlie's ever called out ashbie or shiro or kira for selfies

— sal (@snowingsal)

— Charlotte Fang (@CharlotteFang77)

"Men dream of women. Women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. Women constantly meet glances which act like mirrors reminding them of how they look or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgment. Sometimes the glance they meet is their own, reflected back from a real mirror [...] She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others and in particular how she appears to men is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life."

— John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)

Cybele (@cybelethebest): Some women are telling me this is not true and meanwhile I have no idea what female sexuality looks like that isn't this, like how do you experience sexuality as a straight woman that isn't basically regarding yourself though a man's eyes? Is this not universal?

I suspect this is an under-discussed cause of dead bedrooms. Women's sexuality is very narcissistic, we're basically AGPs.

Maybe also cases where women are sensing diminished interest from the men they're with.

secret eris (@eris_nerung): have you tried looking at a male specimen

Cybele: Like my husband?

secret eris: yes — does he only arouse your interest as a vehicle for your own self-perceiving? do you look at him and see nothing but a mirror?

Cybele: OK, yeah, I find him attractive, but the next steps from there are that I am thinking of someone like him finding me attractive, that additional component is necessary. I think this is a fundamental difference between men and women — there is basically zero market for women hiring male prostitutes while the reverse is very common, obviously, because you can't buy someone's attraction to you.