N°9

December 2024

In Gaze N°9: We take you to the places where new erotic languages are being written…

Essay

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What happens when the turn-ons you’ve always relied upon in bed hit a bug in the system? The story of how I reconfigured my fantasies. —Text: Chloé Thibaud. Photos: Romy Alizée.

Fiction

Under the belt

Victoire Tuaillon takes us inside the last few hours before a hotly anticipated date, in this new piece of erotic fiction. —Illustrations: Victoire Gazzola.

Art Herstory

Eve

She was the first ever temptress, the one who brought forth evil. Her story is well-known: in the Garden of Eden, she bit the forbidden apple and made Adam bite it too, leading to both of them being expelled from paradise. The act was transformed into a metaphor for the “sins of the flesh”, rendering all women potential sinners.—Text: Audrey Couppé de Kermadec. —Photo: Kianuê Tran Kieu.

Pas de deux

Mirror, mirror

Dancers’ bodies have long been regarded as objects, onto which the audience projects their fantasies. When they dance, cabaret performer Mimi and waacking dancer Muteki No Rena both use the mirror to create a carnal relationship with their bodies. “In dance, everything is erotic,” they tell us. But not in the way you’d think... —Text: Mathilde Delli. Photos: Aurélie Chantelly.

Essay

On the other side of the screen

How can you stay connected to your own erotic imagination, when it’s your job to embody everyone else’s? —Text: Zoé Faucher. Photo: Amandine Kuhlmann.

Archive

Bambi

There are moments that we record carefully, so we can look back at how far we have come. Trans icon of the Paris cabaret club scene in the 1950s and 1960s, Bambi remembers how she burst onto the scene with one goal in mind: to live for herself.

Poetry

Words of desire

Eroticism came back to Kiyémis through words, after she thought it had left the building for good. For Gaze, the French writer has curated some of the poetry, penned by women, that re-lit her fire. —Texts: Rim Battal, Lisette Lombé, Coline Pierre.

Culture list

What to watch, read, listen to

The Gaze team gives you its female gaze cultural recommendations for continuing the "Erotica" theme.

Readers’ testimonies

“What is the sexiest thing there is?”

That's what we asked our readers, to open the door into their erotic imaginations. We share their answers in a notebook.

Icon

Mona Chollet

Her name is chanted at protests, and her essays shine out as beacons in the flood of feminist literature. Fascinated by the contradictions of essayist Mona Chollet, Mélissa Chidiac rediscovers her as a leading figure in intersectionality

Female legacy

Gaëlle and Naomi

Gaëlle has passed on plenty of great things to her children, especially her two daughters. But she also handed down the risk of being a carrier of the BRCA2 gene mutation, like herself, which is responsible for an increased prevalence of breast and ovarian cancers, and that’s a legacy that can be hard to figure out. —Text: Thais Pigeault. Photos: Andrea Olga Mantovani.

Portfolio

Night tales

Pia-Paulina Guilmoth’s pictures recall our most magical dreams. This series, created during her gender transition, reveals nights spent with her chosen family, in mystical nature.

Gonzo

Park Slope, My alexandria

It’s an unremarkable building on an unremarkable street in Brooklyn, New York. But behind its unremarkable door, lie the Lesbian Herstory Archives. In response to the crossing of the wilderness that was the construction of my own identity; in search of lesbian heritage; stories; legends; – a presence – I push open the door. —Text: Camille Regache.

Gonzo

War and the patriarchy

In Syria, Kurdish women fighters are achieving hero status that removes them – for a time – from the patriarchal hierarchy in the country. We went to meet the women who have found freedom by taking up arms. —Text and photos: Lily Chavance & Clémentine Mariuzzo.

Personal Pantheon

November Ultra

Who would feature in your own pantheon of inspiring women? The singer November Ultra shares hers.