Males Gazing, 1970's French Erotica, and Fantasy vs. Reality

While at the gym yesterday, lying on a workout bench, lifting ten pound weights over my head, I caught the eye of some guy, maybe late high school, maybe early college age (it's hard to tell with dudes) standing nearby, watching me. He didn't seem to be working out, so at first I thought I had taken the bench he was using on accident. No, I realized--just before I had come there he had been doing shoulder presses at a machine in front of where I had been doing the same, across the room. I closed my eyes, and continued with my reps. As I changed positions for another exercise, I opened my eyes, making eye contact with him again. I quickly finished my workout and left the bench.

Eye contact is an unspoken hello, welcoming further contact. It is supposed to be equal for both parties, but when someone is actively trying to make eye contact with you, not taking hints that you aren't interested, it feels like their eyes back you into a corner. That's how it feels to me, anyway.

I felt the same need to avoid eye contact while out dancing with friends last weekend, towards the end of the night when a group of single men joined our group of single women in a dance circle. This would have been fine if the men weren't trying to catch my gaze, and I hadn't felt pressure to look them in the eye, which I very well knew would be a loud club's "okay" to dancing with them, which I didn't want to do for a variety of reasons.

Eye contact isn't actively threatening. It's just eye contact. But because of this nonverbal "okay", when I sense that someone is trying to get my eye contact without cease, my guard goes up.

Yet in my own fantasies, where I create a realm of safety for myself, this eye contact isn't threatening.

If someone asks me what I did this weekend, I'll say any number of things, but I probably won't talk about the 1970's French erotica films I watched, most produced by the Alpha France production company.

I haven't done a ton of research on these films. A documentary is on my list, and I found the sex positive blog and radio show of one of the former actresses. I look forward to learning more about this time and place in erotic films, but for now all I can say is that I like them. They are far from feminist, mind you, but I like them.

The films take an everyday scenario and seamlessly ease them into eroticism. Eye contact is the nonverbal yes, but there is a sense of safety and fantasy in the scenes that allow the yes to be enthusiastic.

The fantasy argument is used often in erotic films, but this specific group is unique. They are not taking a situation that would be off-limits, filming it, and claiming that because the situation is controlled, it is fantasy. The implied reality of those types of scenes make my guard go up, much like simple, unwanted eye contact does.

Instead, the content of these films lends itself to fantasy. The camerawork, design, and story lines are obviously inspired by French New Wave, a fantastical genre. The films live in a dream-like world where a woman knitting on a couch wordlessly turns suggestive, where eye contact made at the dinner table turns into much more. It is a world sans the potential for negative physical or emotional repercussions to sexual experiences. The world is one where all players share a comfortable ownership of their desires and sexuality. This is not the real world. This world portrays the dreamlike scenario of safe, spontaneous eroticism. By creating a blur of fantasy and reality, the films successfully create a visual representation of erotic fantasies inspired by daily life.

It's weird how mixed up different interpretations of eye contact can be. In Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un chien andalou (1928), there is a scene where a man gropes a woman. The two make eye contact before the man grabs her breasts. He has a hungry, predatory look in his eye. The woman varies in trying to free herself and allowing him to grope her, though her expression makes it clear that this is violating her will. In "reality", she is clothed, but in the "fantasy" of the the scene, cut between frames of he reality, her breasts are bare. (

We discussed this scene in a college film class. One (sincerely well-meaning) guy made the comment that he believed that this scene represented a consensual act, because the woman did not fight back. He didn't mention eye contact but, to me, the eye contact and lack thereof was far more telling than her "fighting back".

Me being the sometimes overly outspoken person I am, responded rather intensely that this scene represented something far from consensual. I referenced BDSM somewhere in my retort, comparing consensual sexual acts like that to a scene like the one represented in the film. My class probably learned a little too much about me then, and the poor guy who had made the original comment looked sincerely distraught and thoughtful.

Not fighting back is not consent. Neither, necessarily, is eye contact.

There is a great deal more going on in these scenes than eye contact. I do not wish to simplify something that is complex and often threatening, but eye contact, as simple as it is, can be powerful. Especially as it relates to sexual fantasies and realities. Eye contact alone is not an invitation for further interaction, the type of eye contact matters. Body language matters. Nonverbal cues matter.