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Applied Psychology's avatar

Also here’s a quote I thought you might find interesting:

“When you think about it a princess is a child sex-trafficking victim but we don’t think about princesses as child sex-trafficking victims, even though there’s no sense in which they’re not and it’s not even slightly confusing.”

— Michael Vassar

Prof. Dr. Samuel McCormick's avatar

Exactly -- though I'd wager many folks think of princesses in exactly this way!

Applied Psychology's avatar

Hey Doctor, I was wondering if this is a good explanation of desire through the eyes of the other, or if I misunderstand:

Desire through the eyes of the other is well understood in the classic romance plot of Beauty and the Beast (aka the plot of Fifty Shades, Twilight, Pride and Prejudice,) where the woman’s feminine beauty changes the man’s beastliness into a civilized person.

This is a wish-fulfillment fantasy where her beauty is affirmed by her power over the man. What she wants is to be desirable, and to have this desire affirmed publicly.

So it’s the eyes of the culture (Big Other? I’m not confident I can use that here) which wants women to be beautiful and the eyes of the man which she desires herself through.

The female leads in these stories are generic in order to facilitate identification with the desired object.