Paging Catherine Mackinnon.

Some men look at you like they want to fuck you, and others look at you like they want to eat you. I don't mean 'eat you' as a metaphor for oral sex --I mean Hannibal Lechter, human flesh with a side of fava beans eat you. There's really no other way to describe it. But if you're a female whose age falls somewhere between having developed secondary sexual characteristics and the arrival of your AARP card, I bet you've seen it.

The look has nothing in common with a standard ogle, from say, the kind of man who thinks it's playful to methodically and openly appraise each passing female. That guy's guided by a simple routine: He checks out your front, you pass, he turns, checks you out from behind, then he may say something, utter a few words of approval perhaps, or quietly file you into a mental category: Goddamn I'd love to do her or I'd do her or I might do her or I'd only do her if I hadn't gotten laid in a year and was really, really drunk. Depending on a million cultural and socioeconomic factors the recipient of such an appraisal will either be flattered, or insulted, or so disgusted and immune that it won't even register; but not afraid. I might want to punch the construction worker who's whistling and making rude gestures, but I'm not afraid of him.

The eat you stare is a whole other beast, it's more sinister, has real evil in it. It is hunger, it has teeth. The look, although lascivious on the surface, is NOT the look of someone who wants to fuck you. Well he might want to have sex with you but it doesn't end there. It goes beyond the consumption of the flesh we enjoy during the sexual act, it is in fact its opposite: it's sex as a means for consumption. And unlike other kinds of leering, the eat you stare isn't qualitative, there's no accounting for personal taste or media appointed specifications, you don't have to be a scantily clad hottie or classic beauty. The sole requirement is that you are a female of child-bearing years, period (no pun intended). I could say it's the face a misogynist failure of a man makes when confronted with a woman, any woman, just because she's there; but that's too simplistic. It's the kind of projected self hatred only serial killers and rapists understand. And it's really, really creepy.

I had a point, something about how I hate walking past the OTB in my neighborhood and how I usually cross the street so I don't have to, but I've lost it now.

Posted by Antigeist at July 2, 2004 03:54 PM