BEAUTY AS INITIATION.
Credits: Joyce Lee. A matryoshka.
What’s so funny about this writing is that I thought of this title maybe a year ago. Today (July 4, 2025), I wrote something casually in my notes:
“you can't say you're fully sovereign over your sacral if you're pulled to do or be anything that you truly don't want to do or be. and sure our egos convince us like "yes i really wanna do this." then you take away the money. you take away the validation. you take away the people watching you. then ask yourself. "do i wanna do this?" sure at times you may want to genuinely and it shows in the way you carry out a task or practice or whatever it is. but there's times you would rather choose rest. or pondering. or great food. or great experiences. or creative projects. or just simply being.”
I get inspired, crack my laptop open, go to Google Docs, scroll down. Beauty as initiation. Side-story, I randomly downloaded Co-Star a couple of months ago (I know…astrologists hate this app lol), and I really liked the daily quotes it would give, so I added it to my computer. It also gives you little do’s or don'ts for the day. I see the quote “Buy the flowers for yourself.” And under the “don'ts” section it said “performance.”
This is a reflection on how beauty has been both a tool and a trap for women. A threshold to sovereignty, not a final destination.
Buy the Flowers for Yourself
To be fully sovereign over your sacral is to know when your “yes” is real, when your “no” is holy, and when your energy is not a bargaining chip. it’s a currency of presence. So many women are praised for being “in their power” when really, they’re still being puppeted by expectation, still performing under the pressure of visibility, male desire, money, identity. Women have been programmed to believe that if our flowers don’t come from anything outside of us then they’re not real. Why does someone else always have to give us our flowers? Y'all realize i’m not talking about actual flowers right? (I mean those too lol.) I’m talking about our flowers. The evidence that we are real. Women have been convinced that we need EVIDENCE that we are who we are, neglecting the very feminine principle that says that evidence lies within awareness. Evidence lies in the tingles of the sacral that doctors have no EVIDENCE to explain. The evidence lies in the body’s resistance to certain people, things, or experiences. Our evidence is SENSED before it's ever SEEN. Women have become accustomed to performing. It lies in the makeup of our gene structure, passed on by the women who felt they had to perform to SURVIVE. Our psyches have not caught up to the fact that we don’t have to do that. It processes women that don’t do that as bitter and lonely when the majority of the time they are sovereign. Those are the women that can pick their own garden, compose a bouquet, and hand it to themselves. With no audience. No witnesses. Just them. That is power.
Buy yourself the fucking flowers.
The Illusion of Power
I’m not saying the concept of power isn’t real, but I will say that the majority of people’s ideas of power are set precedent by systems and structures that ALWAYS leave you powerless. Until you make a system fully serve you, you are not truly powerful because your power is based upon 1. The affirmation of power and 2. Comparison. I would argue that most people don’t know what power is. For a long time, I had ideas around it and what it looked like, but power isn’t a look. It’s not a curated aesthetic. It’s a way of being that is defined by no one else’s existence BUT yours. I’ve observed the illusion of power in sex worker spaces. Remnants of the 2nd wave of feminism are more prominent than ever…right now. History always repeats itself, right? This won’t be a history lesson (I attached a link for that); however, I want to mention the sexual revolution that happened simultaneously to the 2nd wave of feminism. At the time women were becoming much more sexually expressive. They equated sexual expression to freedom. But if the sexual expression is still reliant on men’s existences or affirmations of the expressions then is it truly free? I ponder this question often. Modern-day sex-workers think that because they are compensated for being sexually “free” then they are “winning.” But how? When your only understanding of freedom is based upon constructs that you were predisposed to and never developed for self. During the 2nd wave of feminism, sexual expression wasn't compensated monetarily in the way it is now. They were paid in validation and mass delusion. They were never free. They were COMMODIFIED. You are commodified.
Stop fucking lying to yourself.
WHO ARE YOU WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING?
I’ve had guys tell me while in the strip club, “You’re young. You’re beautiful. You should be at the stripclub.” AKA you are the perfect age, and you have the perfect physical assets to be commodified AKA you are PRIME PRODUCT. To be young, hot, and beautiful often means to society that it’s time to put a price tag on it. Women have been so conditioned by this that outside of commodification, we don’t know WHAT to do with ourselves. We don’t know what we enjoy. What we’re good at. What makes us truly sovereign. We see a beautiful woman and we tell her she should be a model. Or go attract rich men. Or the new trend…go plaster your face all over the internet in the name of content. We tell beautiful women to NEVER stop looking the part, even when you’re going to the FUCKING grocery store. We don’t tell women to use their damn brains. We don’t tell them that they hold a portal to life that ISN’T exclusive to the birthing of babies (the DENSEST form of creation). We don’t tell women to go explore and experiment with life. We don’t tell women that we’re more than just a meatsuit. I wondered at different times in my life how I would utilize the tool of beauty. By oscillating between beauty and the perceived absence of it. To cast illusion. To lure. None of that has to be done intentionally because it is my nature. It’s not my nature to constantly be a curated form of beauty for imaginary eyes. It’s not my nature to have a clear position in the food chain that is social hierarchy. It is my nature to summon. Cause let’s be honest, my beauty is the reason I was able to shapeshift within the stripclub. It’s the reason why this website even exists. It’s why I don’t shy away from looking in the mirror and the shadows staring back at me because I know there is always beauty there. So, I won’t ever demonize beauty. I just view it as nothing more than a gateway to initiation. Initiation to what? Sovereignty, universal love, authenticity, wholeness.
Beauty is the threshold between worlds. The external surface that invites the gaze of others, yes, but more importantly the internal portal where a woman begins her negotiation with power, selfhood, and sovereignty. Beauty has always been in the eye of the beholder.
You are the fucking beholder.
