So recently I had a friend tell me that sharing my nudes with friends is like starting an OnlyFans.

This felt a bit odd, considering that I wouldn’t be getting paid for neither goods nor services rendered. I felt offended that I was being compared to sex workers yet was also irritated on behalf of said sex workers. I’m an honest slut, not some dirty whore taking money for her body, and hey what’s so bad about OnlyFans anyways? It’s certainly more scalable than working in a brothel…

For the record, the exchange was clarified and resolved.

For a moment let’s put the internalized misogyny aside, for this exchange naturally got me thinking about the mythos of photography.

Ancient Greeks believed that staring into a pool of water revealed one’s soul – interesting thought threads on Narcissus emerge here – but it was Ancient Romans who actually began the manufacture of mirrors where they believed the gods observed souls through them. Thus to damage a mirror meant you were essentially saying “fuck you Jupiter” and therefore deserving of divine wrath. Around the third century mirrors became made of glass instead of polished metal, therefore seriously increasing the danger of incurring divine punishment.

Fast forward at least four years, and you have the birth of photography. This eldritch activity at first involved sitting rather still while the camera did its magic so you could have a stern representation of yourself glowering at you for eternity. And alongside this pay to play magic ritual there developed a superstition that cameras (and their creations) could steal your soul.

So it’s essentially agreed upon that one’s visage is an aspect of the divine spark within us all. Talk about looks mattering, huh? This notion that image and soul are overlapped is fascinating because the self image in the water, mirror, or photo essentially serves as a symbol for how we see ourselves as people. We look out into our captured selves and wonder at the mysteries of life spiraling eternally under the surface of our eyes.

Now we have social media and everyone is taking selfies. Picture after picture after picture all the same aspect ratio and layered with filters and hashtags. Everyone is selling their soul for free. Everyone is giving their likeness up to the gods. Want to see more of my innermost parts? Like and subscribe.

Where do nudes fit into this? Well, I believe it’s the latest in soul removal superstition. Mind you, I’ve sent my naked body into group chats and asked for referendums on the best poses, lighting, angles, etc., so if that’s true, then my soul has left the chat, y’all. Yet I feel remarkably intact, and honestly more beautiful on days when I’ve captured a particularly delicious image of myself than on days I haven’t, so what gives?

We return to the internalized misogyny with a new lens – what is lost from the interpersonal exchange when a woman’s nudes become not scandalized, but a gift she gives herself? When her body made into pixels is a source of autoerotic adoration? When a woman peers into the pool and sees that she is beautiful, she becomes narcissistic. Not clinical narcissistic personality disorder, but enamored with her own view of herself.

In the myth, Narcissus was so entranced by his reflection he would’ve died staring at it, except he was turned into a flower instead. Greeks, man. When a woman becomes Narcissus, the quality of attention a man must give her suddenly changes. Now her standards have risen, because she can – as icon Miley Cyrus has taught us – buy herself flowers. She doesn’t need a man to see her as beautiful, sexy, sensual, or desirous. She can self ravish and self love. She has become her own idol, her own Goddess. Only a true devotee to the Goddess can turn her gaze away from the lens. And this is where I believe misogyny unintentionally emerges.

The idea that a woman might be confident or brazen enough to see herself as a divine embodiment of Aphrodite is intimidating. The oft repeated phrase is that “it should be special” to share one’s naked body as if the camera is somehow stealing the magic. But the truth is no matter how many people see Venus de Milo, she remains divine. She doesn’t lose her sacred spark by being witnessed. Instead, the viewer is graced with getting to experience her likeness carved into material perfection, heightening their symbolic experience of the divine feminine. A goddess remains as such no matter how many worshippers she garners.

But a goddess is untouchable, unreachable, too much for mortal eyes. It’s not that Venus isn’t special when she’s viewed in her sculpted form, it’s that marble flesh cannot love a man. Neither can pixels. A woman in touch with the divine feminine is formidable, carrying the warmth of Hathor, the flames of Kali, and the beguilement of Venus. A mere man cannot live up to such a  being, and so in his desperate attempt to be able to hold and contain the divine feminine, he tries to contain the living woman and her pixelated self. This limitation misunderstands his  true purpose – the divine masculine is an equal to the divine feminine and her consort – and only serves to acknowledge his mortal fallible human position as below her and not a fit match, but as we women too are human beings and not divine entities, it’s natural for us to give into his insecurities and try to cater to them.

It is in this that women shrink themselves to make men feel strong. This of course inevitably leads to him feeling weak because how can you be strong if someone is always letting you win, and resentment perpetually simmers below the surface. Thus misogyny.

There is no divinity here. There are only human mistakes, human egos, human failures.

Don’t let a man shrink you down so he can feel like a man. You are divine. If you want to take nudes, take them. Show them off. You’re beautiful. You deserve to feel that way.