I have this friend. She’s dear to me. Two years ago, in a dim restaurant somewhere in the Lower East Side, she told me, “I’d never be with a man who didn’t graduate from college.” She spoke of the women in her family. How they cleaned, cooked, and contracted themselves into nothingness while their husbands enjoyed the fruits of their wives’ domestic and emotional labor. Parasitic, these men were. Uneducated in the progressiveness and work ethic of men in the West. We were raised by immigrant mothers whose memories of back home were ever-present in their nurturing of us. We, fortunate adopted daughters of America, who, despite our Western upbringing, found ourselves confronted with a singular truth each time we spoke to our mothers, “It’s about time you marry, no?”

The Education of a Man

In our conversation of women who end up living half lives with no traces left of their former, spirited selves, the question of education emerges as the core tension. An educated man wouldn’t allow his wife to do all the labor. An educated woman wouldn’t find herself in such a situation to begin with. In these absolute truths, I find that what is often missed is how quickly life shows us that what we believe we know, we don’t really know at all. But when you’re a twenty-something, certain of your omniscience due to the remarkableness of your chief adolescent achievement—a Harvard College acceptance with no legacy connections to lean on; no money to fall back on; and no manual on how to thrive in the class warfare of our campus—there’s nothing no one can tell you. You’re certain you know what it means to live, die, and thrive. The prestige paths you walk, the ivory towers you got drunk in, and the final club punches you have secret crushes on leave a lasting imprint: the assumption that an educated man is the only man worth his weight in gold. In this conformity, collective beliefs are formed, similar paths are taken, and trajectories are set.

In our world, money is great, but status is everything. I saw it laced in conversations with my peers, and no one had bothered to hide it amongst my former colleagues. Miserable, the whole lot; but well-compensated in their misery. Each time the elevator doors opened to the 63rd floor, I’d ask myself, “Is this the value of a Harvard education? The pain of a prestigious but misaligned path?” My answer came in the form of an exit wound. “What they did to you was cruel and unusual,” my mother told me in the stunning aftermath. “But send a thank you email. To those who had taken the time to make time.” I cried as I typed. As my wound cauterized, what became clear to me was how much status had become a proxy for the worth of a human life to everyone around me.

Thus, I was surprised when my friend told me she’d never marry a man without a college education. She, who had seen the level of duplicity status-seeking behavior had manifested in our peers, and had endlessly critiqued it with me. “That statement does not align with the values we know you to hold,” our mutual friend quipped. We misunderstood her, she insisted. She began speaking of her mother. A brilliant pharmacist whose competence America would not accept because it came in the form of a Libyan degree. 2008 had not been kind to her parents. Her father’s blue-collar business faltered, and her mother promptly sought work outside of the home to stave off the family’s impending homelessness. The years passed, and her father never pushed himself to help his wife outside or inside the home. Thus, her mother’s life became a statistical case of double duty: she’d take care of the rearing, nurturing, and feeding of the children as well as the sustenance of the household as the breadwinner. Not unlike the story of my own mother.

For my friend not to repeat the cycle, she felt she needed an educated man: one who would not make her suffer as her mother had. The education of a man, in the realm of making a woman happy, is not conceived nor refined in the lecture halls of an Ivy League university. It must begin in his own heart. So, I told her, “You’re using the wrong proxy.” Seeking to ascertain from an “elite” college degree what you can only gauge from a man’s character. An Ivy League educated man is great; a man who would do anything for you is even better. I said this out loud and my words dissolved in the air. Ignored by all. In the four years we had spent in that institution, each of us—immigrants, native-born, and legacies—had infused with the institution. One had to try, a lot harder than one should, to discern which values were our own and which we had been conditioned to uphold.

To Love A Woman

There’s this idea that those who are book smart are very rarely street smart. My mother hinted at my own shelteredness when, in sharing my desire to be married three years ago, she told me, “You haven’t lived.” It’s funny how that same woman continues to hint that if I don’t “hurry up” and have children early, I’ll “miss my chance.” Mothers, am I right?

Yet again, the wrong proxy is being used. A college education does not make the ideal partner, nor does age reveal readiness for marriage or children. I won’t even bring up finances, as it should be clear that doing this without a steady financial ground is a recipe for resentment and exhaustion. Assume money is not the issue. Assume the man is an upstanding gentleman. What’s the issue, then? The issue remains that even at our most radical, materialistic, and educated, the current idealized heterosexual romance still reeks of a Victorian lobotomy. A household with a rich husband of good breeding and a beautiful, educated wife of equally good breeding. Healthy children, as many as the husband can afford. That’s where the story stops. What becomes of the wife when the music stops, the guests retire, the children are put to bed, and the house is asleep? What becomes of the wife when her body changes, her mood is affected, and she reclines from her husband?

In the sex survey chapter of Catherine Hakim’s Erotic Capital, there’s a mention of a sex therapist from Australia who asked his patients to keep a journal of their intimate moments. More of a log, and less of a diary. His findings were that wives, for the most part, had little desire to be sexually intimate with their husbands. “Do it anyway,” was his suggestion. Push past the unwillingness and discomfort. For the sake of the marriage. But what about the sake of the woman? Surely there’s a reason she feels no sexual desire towards her husband. And if it’s not hormonal, could it be addressed with patience and play? This was not the position of the sex therapist. Nor do I believe it would be the majority opinion today. The easy option would be sought. In the name of female marital duty or societal fearmongering about another woman coming in and easing his burden—after all, “all men cheat” is conventional heterosexual colloquialism. But again, who’s thinking of the woman? Who considers themselves, intimately, with why she has lost all sexual desire to begin with?

Would a college-educated man buy an aphrodisiac cookbook on his way home from work and read it on the train while he mentally prepares a list of groceries? Would he diligently prepare the meals and run an experiment to capture which ingredients, if any, produced a cosmic change in his wife? Perhaps. I reckon this devotion, this fealty, wouldn’t be because he was educated in the greatness of Hegel, Faulkner, and Keynes in Harvard Hall or Memorial Hall. The favorable education of a man is not simply an Ivy League degree with high honors from the economics department, but his dependability, consciousness, and diligence in our care and well-being. Take it from me, none of this is taught in Harvard’s Ec10A course.

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The Liberation of a Woman

Seeing the failures of the feminists in the decade before us and the exploitation of our mothers at the hands of our fathers, it’s easy to understand our collective trepidation towards marriage. It’s only worth doing if it’s with a rich man. Money helps wash everything down, after all. However, as I alluded to in The Disillusioned Heterosexual Woman To Political Lesbian Pipeline, the money will not save us. Our disillusionments will simply find new hosts. In our domestic staff; our teenage children; our tyrannical bosses; our unrealized or abandoned or even failed dreams; or maybe even our husbands. A spirit oriented towards negativity will always seek it out.

To combat that outcome, we need to cultivate a rich inner world. Worlds our husbands must cross in order to reach us. The barrier to entry being good intentions and the resourcefulness to never get lost, even in our moods. A man needs not money or college education to make this journey, but the willingness to never stop trying to reach us. So that, when the time comes where our aging bodies, evolving hormones, or some unforeseen circumstance betray our lust for the men who have stayed by our side all these years, our husbands will be the kind of men who pick up an aphrodisiac cookbook on their way home from work and read it on the train while they mentally prepares a list of groceries. Our husbands will be those who diligently prepare the meals and run experiments to capture which ingredients, if any, produced a cosmic change in us. A man uninterested in my cellular cosmos, unmoved by my unhappiness, and unencumbered by my self-adandonment is a man I’d never marry, regardless of his elite educational attainment or financial status. That kind of man would rather I die than ruin his plans.

From a feminist historical perspective, the fear-mongering around marriage and heterosexual men is understandable. But fear does not provide solutions to the problems it identifies; faith does. The American mystic, Florence Scovel Shinn, wrote that “Fear is faith inverted; it is faith in evil instead of good.” Here’s the good news: I believe marriage can be a portal to even more pleasure; a place for you to become even more of yourself and pursue your dreams. It simply requires marrying a man who wants that for you, too. I understand it’s hard, in our modern era, to have enough time to find the right path for us; to know it as intimately as we do all other predetermined, high status paths available to us; but we must commit to that process. Our heroine’s journey. Everything flows downstream of us being intimately in touch with ourselves. When the winds of conformity and societal pressure come knocking at your door, you need a reason not to open the door. Let that reason be the rich inner world you’ve cultivated for yourself. As lonely as it might be to feel unrelatable to those around you, it’s important you live your own life. Exit wounds and all.

Discernment, at this point of the essay, emerges as the key link in all these themes. It’s one thing to recognize when we’ve been using the wrong proxies, and another thing to understand what to use instead. What to test for; look for; and trust in a man. Intuition, in fewer words.

On Wednesday, April 15th at 6:30 pm Eastern Standard Time, I’ll be hosting a conversation in my Diouana Woman Salon where we’ll go further into how to trust your own intuition over status, and when status, in all its quick social legibility, can be useful to us. When our future daughters speak about us to their friends somewhere in a dim restaurant in the Lower East Side, let it be because we were the first women in our lineage to finally get it right.

Reserve your place

Sweet dreams,
A Diouana Woman

A Nightcap Before You Go…

If you enjoyed the mood and tone of this essay, these essays may be up your alley:

Our Next Rendezvous…

You can always find me @diouanawoman on Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, and here, on Substack. My live lecture series is always hosted in my Diouana Woman Salon and a monthly subscription gives you access to my lecture archives. A monthly substack subscription gives you access to my group chat where you can tell me how you really feel.

Thus far, my writing has been directed towards the kind of woman who always felt, deep in her heart, that there are forces much more resourced than her seeking to keep her in a state of perpetual fear. This results in a sort of paranoia that seeps through my words and manifests as an author cautious in her argumentation. Even at my most radical, when I told you to heed the wisdom of whores, I did so after rummaging through memoirs, biographies, and historical case studies to ground my reasoning in a sense of historical inevitability. All that to say, I’ll never bullshit you. I appreciate the faith you have in me as I walk you through another radical argument. This time, the case of The Disillusioned Heterosexual Woman To Political Lesbian Pipeline.

“I Love My Daddy, Of Course We’re Still Together”

Even in my cultural traditionalism as a young West African woman residing in the United States of America, I’ve always dreamt of something just slightly different in regard to my romantic relationships. Something a little absurd; a little naughty; a little subversive. Love, as a verb, in a heterosexual context. Given the bout of heteropessimism going around, this is as radical as it sounds. A term coined by Asa Seresin, heteropessimism speaks to “performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.” Seresin writes that the bogeyman in all of this tends to come in the silhouette of a heterosexual man; that for all her complaints, the heterosexual woman who engages with heteropessimism, as a lens of understanding the world, rarely abandons heterosexuality as a practice—if sexuality can be seen as such a thing. Seresin writes, “Sure, some heteropessimists act on their beliefs, choosing celibacy or the now largely outmoded option of political lesbianism, yet most stick with heterosexuality even as they judge it to be irredeemable. Even incels, overflowing with heteropessimism, stress the involuntary nature of their condition.”

I’m interested in the heteropessimistic woman because I’m curious about the root of her disillusionment. Is she disenchanted by the expectations her society has for her because she’s female and heterosexual? Or, are her grievances with the suffering she’s experienced because of the romantic partners she’s found in her other sex, the heterosexual man? Better put, is she opposed to the conditions society places on female womanhood, or is she displeased with the terms offered to her in romantic relationships with heterosexual men? Further, would disregarding the former help her negotiate the latter? Meaning, does a woman who has a high sense of agency—even in circumstances designed to break her—believe herself to be at the whims of the fickleness of another human being?

This question of agency is paramount, as it is my belief that we live in times designed to break our psyches. This algorithmic surveillance state we find ourselves in situates in all of us certain incentives that tend to manifest as a double consciousness. A term coined by W.E.B. Du Bois, double consciousness can be understood as a state of always witnessing oneself through the lens of another. Therefore, the algorithm of so-called social platforms allows one to be commodified through a “personal brand” carefully tailored to one’s desired audience. This personal brand extends itself through other marketplaces such as labor, dating, and even friendships. Thus, if a heterosexual woman perpetually finds herself in the frame of mind where the reactions of others become a measuring stick for her innate sense of worth, it won’t be too long until she becomes heteropessimistic as she begins questioning her own sense of orientation. Not sexually, but positionally. Questions such as who am I next to the heterosexual man? Am I his wife? His mother? His lover? Am I anything to him at all?

To the last question, heteropessimism would answer, “nothing at all.” As my argument stands, however, a woman should never regard herself as the plaything of another human being’s whims. Instead, she must view herself as an arbiter of her own taste and director of her own agency. If her internal compass leads her back to the heterosexual man, with whom love is doomed from the start, then there’s a poetic justice in following one’s death drive. Doomed, in this case, should not be viewed through a framework of domestic violence, as that’s not what I’m suggesting. Instead, I’m referencing this wind of heteropessimism that has gripped the cultural zeitgeist, as seen through Sabrina Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek Manchild from her aptly-titled album, Man’s Best Friend. Right now, as it’s always been, it’s fashionable to gripe about our dealings with heterosexual men as heterosexual women. But I argue that there’s an even more avant-garde position to take, and that’s one of transcendence.

Earlier, I stated my desire for heterosexual love that manifests as a verb and not a noun. Nouns are static: they’re people, places, and things. Titular references. Verbs, by definition, speak to actions. Therefore, heterosexual love as a verb speaks to love whose principal orientation is action, action, action. In this view, words mean nothing and actions say everything. Consequently, the heterosexual man who does nothing in service of me has told me everything I need to know about him. As a high-agency person, I cease all dealings with him. What I do after that choice is the difference between political lesbianism and heteropessimism. The heteropessimistic woman, as Seresin writes, continues on with heterosexuality despite finding it irredeemable because she embraces the strain of the “straight experience.” The political lesbian would do no such thing. Now, one could argue that the political lesbian was never heterosexual to begin with, and was bisexual this entire time, but that’s a different line of inquiry. The principal focus of this essay is the cause of the heterosexual woman’s disillusionment and her subsequent decision to become a political lesbian.

This pipeline idea of mine has its roots in theory. As I stated in my introduction, even at my most radical, I write from the perspective of historical inevitability. One of the key undercurrents to all of this is the question, how much of a feminist are you? A seemingly random question, but it’s part of the origin story of political lesbianism as a framework. In “What Heterosexuality Can Tell Us About Lesbianism,” scholar Rosemary Auchmuty wrote:

“To today’s postfeminist generations, the arguments of the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group seem so extreme that many find it hard to believe that anyone ever took them seriously. But we did. I was one of many, many women who found the “Political Lesbian” paper so persuasive that we chose to abandon our heterosexual pasts and become lesbians. And most of us have stayed lesbians, rethinking and refining our politics across the years but never quite getting rid of that conviction that as lesbians we have the potential to lead more feminist lives, to achieve more for women’s liberation, than our straight sisters whose energies are constantly being sapped by their association with men.”1

The ending clause of her last sentence is, in my opinion, the operative clause. As she wrote, “...our straight sisters whose energies are constantly being sapped by their association with men.” This hunkers back to my line of inquiry earlier, where I asked if the heterosexual woman would ever place herself in a position to negotiate the terms and conditions of her romantic relationships with heterosexual men by choosing to disregard the ways in which society expects her to behave as a heterosexual woman. Instead of choosing a new sexuality, choose a new orientation. Instead of witnessing yourself as someone whom things happen to, view yourself as someone for whom things happen for and insist on love as a verb in your heterosexual context. This disavowal of society’s heterosexual female stereotype will consequently float any notions of traditional gender roles, which will have the intended effect of transcending the patriarchal understanding of heterosexual love.

I should state, clearly, that I do not believe you can choose your sexuality. Not the internal compass. You can choose to override it, but it’ll always point where it wants to point. However, in the literature I reviewed, there’s this “fundamental premise of feminism that sexuality is socially constructed rather than innate or acquired through faulty sexual development; it must therefore be susceptible to change.” This notion that sexuality is “susceptible to change”, in my opinion, has the potential to do more harm than good. Following the logic of the transitive property, if we can choose something, then we can unchoose it. Not to sound conspiratorial, but if it were to be in the fundamental interests of an institution to convince us to change our innate sexuality to something else, what would stop them from doing that, especially if their means to do so were cultural programming and not a constitutional violation of our civic rights? If we all believe our sexuality is indeed malleable, what’s stopping us from being receptive to that messaging? That said, everyone is free to choose the partner they feel most comfortable and at ease with, but that internal compass will always point wherever it wants to point.

As a heterosexual woman, my compass always points towards heterosexual men. Thus, my only option is to negotiate, through the means of emotional intelligence, the confines of my romantic relationships, such that love, as I’m experiencing it, manifests as a verb, and not a noun. Static love is what saps the energy of women until they’re shells of themselves. Kinetic love is devotional because it’s rooted in eternal consideration. I used to believe that this sense of profound consideration is something you find ready-made in a man, but that was simply the result of my seeking my divinity in men. I was looking for God in mortals. Eternal consideration is something you cultivate by being an active participant in your relationship through communicating your needs. That adage about closed mouths not getting fed isn’t just biblical, it’s ontological. If you do not advocate for yourself, anyone can take advantage of you. Even another woman.

“Your Mom Called, I Told Her, You’re Fucking Up Big Time”

As my view of womanhood is rooted in humanity, I believe that women have the capacity to harm those they claim to love just as much as men. Traveling under the banner of womanhood does not exempt one from being unprincipled, contemptible, or untrustworthy nor does it prevent us from becoming the same forces that once sought to break us down. In her Daily Mail article, titled “I realised I could never depend on men after my husband’s selfish act... so I ditched him and became a lesbian. This is why there’s no such thing as ‘having it all’ unless you’re with a woman,” Professor Low writes:

“…‘I need you to know I’ve checked out of this marriage,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want to be with you any more. Or any other man.’ And then I dropped the bomb: ‘If I’m going to be with anyone, I want it to be a woman.’…me announcing I wanted to date women wasn’t about sex - though the knowledge that I wasn’t entirely straight helped. It was more about fairness, about believing that only with another woman could I build a partnership where the load would be shared.

…I wanted another child, but knew I couldn’t face raising one in this dynamic. If I was going to do it again, I wanted someone hardwired to pull their weight at home. A woman.…At first, I told him I wanted to stay married for the sake of the kids…He agreed, but I’m now sure that’s only because he thought I just needed to get this out of my system. The opposite happened. If anything, saying it all out loud solidified my intentions.

In Professor Low’s imagination, informed by both personal experience and extensive expert research, it is only women who are ‘hardwired’ to perform domestic labor. Thus, in seeking a more compatible partner, she imagined not that there could exist a man, seemingly heterosexual, who could, and would, do his fair share at home. So, Professor Low turned to patriarchy’s insurance policy: someone hardwired to pull her weight at home. A woman. To be fair to the professor, she makes it clear that she wasn’t after a “traditional wife type to take on all the domestic chores, leaving [her] as free as [her former] husband to pursue work ambitions.” She was simply after parity. An equal distribution of domestic labor. But she frames this pursuit as an escape from men, and their disappointments, and towards women, and our cosmic capacity to not be disappointments to those around us.

It’s true that my mother, being the African woman that she is, raised me to take care of a home: cooking, cleaning, tidying, laundry, and the endless anticipation of the needs of those in the household. I remember being in the kitchen with my grandmother in the early hours. Barely lucid, telling her I was still tired and wanted to return to bed. She told me what she was teaching me was just as important as my schoolwork; that “a man may find a woman more beautiful than you, but he won’t find one that cooks like you.” To my family, I was a girl to be raised, properly married off to steward the next generation of children. Now that I have become a woman who is enticed by the prospect of being married and having children, it’s not a bad proposition—if I can do it the Diouana Woman way. But I’ve always wondered how my childhood would have gone, had I been the same culturally rebellious child but a boy instead of a girl. Would these expectations of cooking, cleaning, tidying, laundry, and the endless anticipation of the needs of others in the household be placed upon me if I had a penis and not a uterus? Likely not. In my cultural programming, I resented the domestic projections made upon me due to my sex. It’s unlikely I’m special in this regard, and I’m certain there’s a woman out there who feels the same. She might even be a lesbian.

I am not hardwired to pull my weight at home. As a child, reading, studying, and daydreaming occupied most of my time. Because of this, I’ve always held faith that there exists a man who would appreciate a muse and oracle for a wife, in lieu of a domestic workhorse. A man who would understand that my unwillingness to slavishly clean and my limited prowess in the kitchen is neither a moral failure nor a stain on my sex, but a personal quirk, likely to be resolved as more and more of my time can be spent on personal projects and less in corporate environments that have always drained my spirit. As a show of faith, he’d pay for a housecleaner. As a show of appreciation, I’ll cook more than I do now.

I’ve always held faith that the man who would accept me for me, and not make me suffer for it in this life, exists. It seems Professor Low had no such faith. Not in her former husband, who never seemed to do his fair share of anything, anyway. Nor in heterosexual men at large. At least, not for her. She told The Cut, “I’m not physically repulsed by men…I’m socially and politically repulsed…being attracted to women wasn’t a conscious choice, but actively excluding men from my option set for partnership was…becoming a lesbian…was an ‘evidence-based decision.’”

That last bit, about how becoming a lesbian was an “evidence-based decision,” shares a silhouette with the 2025 essay “Lowkey, I Chose To Be A Lesbian” written by Malavika Kannan. She writes affectionately about her lesbian identity:

“I am not opposed to the bisexual label or here to negate its validity. I dream of a world without labels at all. But some time ago, I chose to start identifying and living as a lesbian. I was empowered by a rising tide of lesbian visibility to take the plunge into an identity I had previously believed was lonely, restrictive, or puritanical. (I fell for some propaganda, I fear.) Becoming a lesbian opened new portals in my heart and life. I knew what I was rejecting — men — but I couldn’t have imagined what I am accepting instead. I am still untangling its beauty.”

A strong start to an essay about one’s lesbian identity. But the passages that follow reveal a writer who cannot escape herself in her writing. Yes, she now travels under the banner of lesbianism, but she arrived there from the creeping feeling that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t have to keep suffering at the hands of men. Again, a pursuit informed by an escape from men, and their disappointments, and towards women, and our cosmic capacity to not be disappointments to those around us. She continues writing:

“It sounds silly to say, but my last straw was a pregnancy scare. I’d had numerous negative experiences with men in college, some even traumatic, but I managed to recover from them, to keep an open heart. Although I primarily dated women, I had, in some way, accepted occasional violence as an occupational hazard of dating men, of the sexual liberation I was lucky to have. I thought I could roll with the punches, stay in the ring. But I had to take a Plan B because of a dumb man who had bell hooks on his bookshelf. My stomach was cramping like an omen from God, and I thought, never again. This was shortly after the fall of Roe v Wade, putting everyone with a uterus at the mercy of men and the state, and I felt, with sudden certainty, that men were no longer worth it. I did not want to play this incredibly rigged game. (I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed by women calling for a 4B movement after Trump’s re-election.) That’s why I stepped away.

This is where definitions, and their pairing with certain words, change the meaning that readers are meant to, and will take. Kannan writes that she “stepped away” from men. The threat of the state seeking autonomy over her body through legislative change made the reality of sex with men uninspiring; if not, a direct threat to her and her future. In this “rigged game” that exists as a biological female (the emphasis on biology here is its continuity with the author’s own emphasis of her concerns—e.g., “everyone with a uterus”) in a patriarchal system, sexual-emotional-romantic relations with women are the only safe space for human connection for women. I posit to you that this is the definition of a political lesbian. Remember Rosemary Auchmuty’s words: “I was one of many, many women who found the ‘Political Lesbian’ paper so persuasive that we chose to abandon our heterosexual pasts and become lesbians. And most of us have stayed lesbians, rethinking and refining our politics across the years but never quite getting rid of that conviction that as lesbians we have the potential to lead more feminist lives, to achieve more for women’s liberation, than our straight sisters whose energies are constantly being sapped by their association with men.” Kannan’s words, more than Auchmuty’s, bring up a lingering question: in the absence of a patriarchal system, in the reinstatement of Roe v. Wade, or even in the face of a devastating heartbreak perpetuated by another woman, will Kannan continue to date women? Will she continue to be a lesbian? In summation, in the absence of a threat, are you still who you say you are?

When I speak of The Disillusioned Heterosexual Woman To Political Lesbian Pipeline, I write of the heterosexual woman who, in looking at what awaits her in relationships with heterosexual men, decides for herself, “I won’t do it—it’s simply not worth it.” Turning, she seeks a woman with whom she can find reprieve from men and their endless disappointments. Compellingly, Rictor Norton touched on an interesting dynamic in “Political Definitions of ‘The Lesbian’”: that the choice of sexuality, for women, becomes an expression of power. If the choice is to be heterosexual and weak, the solution is to be homosexual and strong. It’s even more interesting what he said of male’s sexuality—”The choice to become weak.” My mind conjures delicious images of a man happily brought to his knees, but we can have that interrogation at another time. Let us continue our exploration of the Disillusioned Heterosexual Woman. Kannan, in her essay, goes on to write:

“It’s easy for me, at 24, to hold out in my principles. I wonder what will happen when I get older. Our society has made it very structurally difficult for me to envision a life outside of partnership with a man…I don’t think I can ever raise a family by myself in New York, my chosen home. I don’t blame those who can’t hold out: Being a lesbian is not for the weak. Most often, we speak of the financial disadvantage when you refuse male money...

…As my dear friend recently told me, in a gay appropriation of George Bush: “We do not negotiate with terrorists.” Patriarchy is the terror. I want to terrorize it back.

“Holding out.” An unexpected turn of phrase. It brings up images of callous men, disappointed at our unwillingness. To play, to laugh, to fuck. Disappointed in us for not going along with the joke. But we’re not laughing because we’re not in on it. Kannan writes as an author in jest. “I don’t blame those who can’t hold out: being a lesbian is not for the weak.” One’s sexuality becomes a commodity, something that can be bartered. Traded for better goods and certainly better services. This idea that we can mold our sexuality at will, fueled by “evidence-based decisions,” ignores the reality of some disillusioned heterosexual women and likely many lesbian women, who, despite the fact that no one seems to take lesbianism seriously, continue to simply exist as lesbians. Not bisexuals or asexuals. Just lesbians. Professor Low felt her ex-husband agreed to her new reality because he assumed she “just needed to get this out of [her] system.” But the desire to build a life-long haven with someone of your same sex is not a feeling you “just get out of your system.” It’s not a feeling that just goes away; so there’s nothing “to hold out on.” That compass will continue to point wherever it desires. Sure, we can choose to override it, but it points just the same.

What’s curious about Kannan’s essay is the lack of singular love. Mentions of euphoria, yes. Mentions of communal effervescence, yes. But not love. Young love. This is consistent between Professor Low’s and Kannan’s experiences. Both made the choice to become lesbians, yes. Both, in their experiences with heterosexual men, experienced an absence of dignified love. Trauma, exhaustion, and disappointment—each has its own chapter. Kannan’s final straw was a pregnancy scare. A vulnerable moment in which the absence of the man’s consideration made things perfectly clear for her. Professor Low’s final straw was a vampiric man who feasted on her energy without replenishing her. These two women examined their lives and made the decisions they felt were best for them. As we all should.

“It’s Not About Having Someone To Love Me Anymore…”

What will become of us, those who remain in our heterosexual context? Those of us not bisexual or asexual. Simply heterosexual. We’re not leaving because we have no desire to override our compass. Heteropessimistic we are not, but heterorealistic we must be.

Young heterosexual men, it seems, are not alright. They’re economically behind, socially isolated, and increasingly view conservatism as the only culture welcoming of them. By contrast, young heterosexual women are outpacing, outworking, and outearning their male peers. This is typically where people will insert, “Well, looks like women don’t need men anymore!” Yet women are not productive, capitalistic machines devoid of emotions or souls. We are human beings with the most innate human desire: intimate connection. We yearn. We fantasize. We aspire for love rooted in spiritual eroticism—not a humiliation ritual. Thus, even if we can pay our rent and fund our own vacations, this self-sufficiency does not erase the very human impulse towards shared moments with a special someone. This is the milieu where the 21st-century heterosexual man and woman cross paths. One has surpassed her ancestors’ expectations; the other has found himself a disappointment to a society intent on reminding him of his shortcomings. It’s generous to think that these two would even end up in the same room together; in fact, it’s likely that they didn’t, and instead met through a dating app. Which, by algorithmic nature, exposes us all to people whose circumstances wouldn’t intersect with our trajectory if left to nature’s social Darwinistic distribution.

It’s this divergence in trajectory that crystallizes the contextual background of Professor Low’s 2014 paper, Pricing the Biological Clock: Reproductive Capital on the US Marriage Market. Here, too, our heterosexual man and woman cross paths through a dating app:

By running an online dating‑profile experiment in which age (30–40) and income were randomly assigned while every other attribute (photo, interests, “looking for serious relationship”) was held constant, Professor Low had participants (white, single, 30‑40  years old) rate 40 fictitious profiles on a 1‑10 scale; after rating, they ordered the profiles from most to least preferred, providing a second check on consistency.

The main result was that men, but not women, gave lower ratings to profiles that were older. Income raised ratings for both sexes, but the age penalty persisted even after controlling for visual age, respondent age, and other covariates. Heterogeneity tests in the experiment show that the age penalty was strongest among men who had no children, wanted children soon, and understood that female fertility declines before age 45; interestingly, these men exhibited no age bias when they lacked fertility knowledge. Robustness checks (excluding inattentive respondents, etc.) did not alter this finding.

By comparing the age coefficient to the income coefficient (approximately $7,000 of extra income offsets one additional year of age), Professor Low’s experiment places a “price” on the biological clock at $7,000 per year. Which in today’s dollars would be $9,600.2 Her study concludes that men’s fertility‑based preference for younger partners drives the marriage‑market penalty faced by highly educated women who delay childbearing.

It’s helpful to remember that Professor Low published this paper in 2014, but her experiment touches on the core of today’s tension: young heterosexual women have become more yoked than young heterosexual men. In turn, on paper, our pool of supposedly eligible bachelors has decreased.

It seems everyone is hellbent on insisting to young women that the decision to use our most fertile years in pursuit of education and career development will lead to a loveless end—or worse, love with an “unequal” partner. If we turn to Professor Low’s paper, we see that the price of our fertility is an extra $9,400 in our paychecks. This assumes we are head of households. A scary thought to some. A reality for most.

Is becoming head of household, as an economic fact, all that bad? It seems it’s not the money that scares us, but the reality that the money won’t save us. It didn’t save Professor Low from an unsupportive husband who contributed nothing—tangible and otherwise—to the running of their household. Kannan ponders if refusing male money in lieu of lesbian love is wise in a society that makes it “structurally difficult for [her] to envision a life outside of partnership with a man.” Everyone’s favorite guru advises us to only pair with men who can pay our bills, and yet, author and psychologist Darcy Lockman found that across every distribution of couples, wives always ended up doing more than they thought they would, and husbands ended up doing less than they thought they would.

It would seem money isn’t what saves us. What can, then?

Some political lesbians expect that women will not harm them the way heterosexual men have. What happens if this is not the case? Some heterosexual women expect that a rich man’s money will save them the grief of an exhaustive female existence in a capitalistic society. What happens if this is not the case?

What happens when all of our disillusionments find new hosts?

“It turns out, everywhere you go, you take yourself, that’s not a lie,” Lana croons on West Coast. If our projections on another human being becomes our escape from disillusionments rooted in systematic, institutional grievances, we will never find peace. Homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual3. The choice shouldn’t be in a new sexuality, but a different orientation. Instead of playing out our revenge fantasies through our romantic relationships, let’s transcend these systems altogether. Especially those forces hellbent on keeping us all in a state of perpetual fear.

Sweet dreams,
A Diouana Woman

P.S. Truth or Dare

You know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? Yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

Truth: Gods among Men.

Dare: Entanglements. Always be above the fray.

A Nightcap Before You Go…

If you enjoyed the mood and tone of this essay, these essays may be up your alley:

The Wisdom of Whores

Sanaa Lathan’s character in Something New told her blind-date-turned-landscaper-turned-boyfriend, “My mother said colors are for children and whores” when asked why her house was so beige. This line amused me the first time I watched this movie because it encapsulates the binary high-achieving, respectable women often find themselves in: color, and fun by extension, are for women of low rapport; women of high standards, by contrast, live in black, white, and everyone’s favorite, beige.

You’ll see this binary manifest in the puritanical imagination of goodness: virtuous, hardworking, and a follower of every rule in every book. However, if your goal is to live a life tailor-made for you, following all those rules written in all those books will not serve you. If it is your ambition to live a life only you could have lived, it is imperative that you choose only the choices that add to your pleasure, your fun, and your joy. Your aura should be your unique imprint of colors, because unlike Sanaa Lathan’s character, you don’t need to live in beige. If you, like her, are worried that you’ll be labeled a whore, or worse, a child, for living an expressive, fun-filled life, then perhaps that’s the price you pay for living a life you actually want.

With the religious and cultural programming we are raised to internalize, the lives African women are expected to live is usually filled with suffering. Girls are raised to be wives, and wives are expected to endure. I always rejected this notion. I didn’t believe societally-sanctioned suffering should have anything to do with me. As a young woman who did want to be married, however, this meant I had to imagine a new reality for myself when it came to holy matrimony. What I visualized was a woman whose happiness was self-directed, whose beauty was maintained, and whose desires were always met. When I looked into the world and the archives for such a woman, I kept coming across the archetype and historical records of the mistress, the woman who gets what she wants.

From this visualization and research, I developed a hypothesis that collapsed the religious binary of my African upbringing: If wives borrow from the wisdom of whores, they can have just as much fun as mistresses. The first wisdom is to never deny your desires. Desires usually form from our subconscious wounds. In failing to honor our wants, they will begin to wreak havoc in our lives through our unexamined self-destructive behavior. Carl Jung theorized this as the unlived life. Thus, allowing ourselves to be overtaken by our desires, meaning that we make an effort to materialize them, is the first and most crucial path to living a life rooted in joy, fun, and pleasure. A woman who is joy-filled, fun-loving, and pleasure-centered is a woman who would never settle for living a life less than perfectly tailored for her.

Women like this have often been termed audacious, or in my culture, “selfish.” But what if this innate sense of rebellion is their superpower? The scent that makes them most erotic. In The Delta of Venus, Anaïs Nin paints a portrait of women such as this:

“Mathilde was a hat maker in Paris and barely twenty when she was seduced by the Baron. Although the affair did not last more than two weeks, somehow in that short time she became, by contagion, imbued with his philosophy of life and his seven-leagued way of solving problems. She was intrigued by something the Baron had told her casually one night: that Parisian women were highly prized in South America because of their expertness in matters of love, their vivaciousness and wit, which was quite a contrast to many of the South American wives, who still cherished a tradition of self-effacement and obedience, which diluted their personalities and was due, possibly, to men’s reluctance to make mistresses out of their wives” (Nin, 1977).1

It is true that some men are reluctant to make mistresses out of their wives. It is also true that some wives have chosen to don a cloak of self-effacement and obedience, which, as Anaïs Nin rightly articulated, dulls their personalities. In my widely-read essay, The Wisdom of Whores, I told you about an alternative world. This world came to me through memoirs and memories. It’s an atmosphere of never needing to be useful. While others barter their lives away for prestige and favors, you and I exist in a realm where we’re never asked to be useful—our presence is enough. The Economy of Love is what I call this dimension. Here, goddesses rule among barons, and the only asset a woman needs is her personality. Diouana Women like you and me find ourselves at ease in this place due to our social and situational awareness; our emotional intelligence; our mastery of weaponized patience and political humility; and our ability to maintain a creativity so potent it conjures fantasies disguised as casual conversation. You’d be surprised how far an innuendo can take you.

The second piece of wisdom is to prioritize your pleasure. You must cultivate and sustain a relationship with satisfaction. The anticipation of it, the arrival of it, the reemergence of it. Once you’ve done this, you must then be comfortable with materializing this pleasure as the atmosphere of your relationship. A musk that engraves both of you, and lingers on him long after he’s left the house. As the director of your relationship’s mise-en-scène, you have the artistic liberty to curate a relational culture that centers your rapture, and this euphoria will get him high, too. Thus, you become the woman who has reprogrammed herself to not accept suffering, exhaustion, and self-sacrifice as a virtue. You may not ever be anyone’s definition of a “good” wife, and that’s exactly the point: this distance between what is assumed a “married woman” should be and should act, and how your life as a married woman actually unfolds; the distance between the patriarchal imaginations people project onto the idea of marriage and the milieu of play, fantasy, and eroticism you imbue into your marriage just by insisting that your pleasure be centered over and over and over again. To others, you’re a bad wife, but to him, you’re such a good mistress. Isn’t it the case that mistresses always get what they want?

Mistresses, Wives, Oh My…

By now, it should be clear that my prescription to the issue of “…wives who still cherish a tradition of self-effacement and obedience, which dilutes their personalities” is archetypal and rooted in Jungian psychoanalytical goddess worship. Jung, you’ll know from theories such as the collective unconscious and the idea that the subconscious is what actually rules our behavior. Goddess worship might be unfamiliar to my non-pagan readers. In short, mistresses, whores, and even girlfriends all travel under the same lineage, which traces their origins to the Goddess Inanna in Western mythology and older, Eastern traditions. A point of contention for those uninitiated might be the grouping of girlfriends with mistresses and whores. Surely, you might suggest, a girlfriend is simply a “wife-in-training” waiting for her day; but legally, historically, and biblically speaking, that has never been the case.

Legally, girlfriends do not have legal standing to make decisions within the personal affairs of their partner. Historically, girlfriends never received legal recognition—only mistresses.2 Biblically, the first concubine was not pursued for romantic affection but for her ability to bear her slave master an heir. Girlfriends, as a social category, are new and a question of the easing of the rigidness of our Western society.3 Archetypically, she’s a whore. Freud explored this with the Madonna-whore complex: “where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love."4

Thus begins this fallacy that wives are for respecting but not loving, and whores are for loving but not respecting. This fallacy breeds the mindset that anything that hints at a commitment, let alone a marriage, will be an arena where the woman will lose time and time again. Lose out on pleasure, fun, and joy, in exchange for responsibility and social respectability. Herein arrives my thesis—that wives can have just as much fun as mistresses if they borrow from the wisdom of whores—to provide women with a solution against the twin problems of loss of self and loss of pleasure.

These problems are intertwined as they share the same mother: self-effacement. In my under-rated essay, Power Is Not A Young Woman’s Game, I introduced my concept of weaponized patience as cultivated through political humility. The use of political humility works extremely well if you’re in a hierarchical environment where those who have power over you do not care for you, or at the very least, are not on your side. Luckily, you married a man who adores you, is very much on your side, and wants nothing more than to see you receive everything you desire. In this type of collaborative environment, you’re functioning as a peer and not a subordinate. Therefore, this is not the time to play small. You two are both executives in the business that is your household and you must act like someone with an equity stake in the enterprise, even if you’ve never paid a bill. This sense of ownership, and the feeling of dignity that comes with it, is crucial to not losing your sense of self. Further, when you both act like owners, your interests will align, and a sense of fealty will emerge that influences every decision you each individually make. This ensures an understanding that if you go down, he’ll go down with you and vice versa. Thus, the third wisdom is to act with high agency and never forget that you can change the dynamic whenever you desire.

“…Love as an atmosphere, not a moment of focus…”

Patriarchal society thrives off low agency women and husbands who prefer the company of men over their wives. In this system, women are programmed to be passive participants in their lives, but this simply will not do for a Diouana Woman. Although women frequently warn other women against being male-centered, there’s rarely a playbook given for women who, despite no inclination to structure their entire lives off the whims of one man, still desire to be partnered with men in a traditional sense. My solution here is to become the expert in all things pertaining to your chosen partner while embodying wisdoms one and two discussed earlier. I understand this sounds counterintuitive, but walk with me—and Madame de Pompadour, who was Louis XV’s Chief Mistress (a pensioned job, might I add) for six years, on this principle:

“Madame de Pompadour became an avid student of the king’s moods, his every facial expression, the cadence of his words. She knew when he was hiding boredom, anger, or frustration behind his mask of royal calmness. The twitch of an eyelid, the lilt of a syllable, would tell her the behavior necessary to please him. Did he want a comfortable silence? Should she recount an amusing story, play a somber tune on the harpsichord, stand up and perform a monologue?

…Beautiful, gracious, brilliant, and kind, Madame de Pompadour practically ruled France for nineteen years. She encouraged artists and writers, produced plays in which she sang and danced, invested in French industry, designed châteaus, cut gems, made engravings, experimented in horticulture, and ran the army during the Seven Years’ War” (Herman, 2005).5

In The Wisdom of Whores, I wrote about how anticipating the needs of others is an underrated skill. In corporate work, this shows up in executive positions such as Chief of Staff and can often lead to great revenue generation through product innovation—Hailey Bieber’s introduction of the lip gloss phone case, for example. Who thought they needed to have their phone hold their lip gloss? Hailey did! I believe that in a committed, monogamous relationship, the partner who knows the other best is the one who often runs the show as they’re the creative director of the relational mood. This is a hard skill to cultivate as it requires you to study your partner as you would a book or a piece of art and to deepen your understanding of their ticks and quirks each day. What’s even harder is avoiding losing yourself in this skill once cultivated, especially if your relational dynamic is such that you do not pay the fixed expenses of the household. You’ll lose your edge the more you believe his provision is at the expense of your authority. Take this passage from Grazie Sophia Christie of her domestic life as a keen example:

“…I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say ‘thank you’ — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there…Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor” (Christie, 2024).6

‘It’s frightening to think of oneself as vapor,’ and yet, the young Christie does. Madame de Pompadour, however, never saw herself as a genuine plaything for the king. His mistress, sure; but that was simply her job. A means of financial security. She treated her profession with the gumption that any serious professional would treat their occupation. Even as her libido declined, she still maintained her maîtresse-en-titre status because their dynamic was intellectual, not strictly physical. He found another lover who could roll in bed with him, and de Pompadour focused on what mattered to her most: being a patron of the arts; her donations financed by the king, bien sûr. That’s the nuance I want you to take away. That the devotion you have towards your relationship and being the one person in this world who knows your husband better than anyone else does not make you a tradwife-conservative-right-wing-women à la the critique of Andrea Dworkin. No. It makes you a woman invested in her relationship, who cares to understand her husband and make him feel cherished; who, when the moment arises, understands how to set the mood such that you arrive home one day with the piece of jewelry you had eyed not too long ago. That is what I’m advocating: relationships rooted in sensuality, absurdity, and fantasy. An endless tango danced to life’s highs and lows. Who knows, if you play your cards right, you two could be the Comte and Comtesse de Sallure…always embroiled in titillating negotiations:

“…After reminding her husband of his infidelities and his earlier claims that ‘marriage between two intelligent people was just a partnership,’ the Countess agreed to rekindle their relationship, but at a price. Sallure would have to pay her five thousand monthly francs, approximately what he had spent on each of his mistresses.

When the husband protested, ‘that the idea of a man paying for his wife is stupid,’ the Countess explained the bargain: ‘Well, you want me. You can’t marry me because we are already married. So why shouldn’t you buy me? . . . Instead of going to some slut who would just squander it, your money will stay here, in your own home. . . . By putting a price on our lawful love you’ll give it a new value . . . the spice of wickedness.’

Sallure relented, tossing her his wallet with the francs inside, asking only that his wife ‘not make a habit of it.’

The Comtesse insisted on her terms, adding that “if you’re satisfied . . . I’ll ask for a raise.’” (Zelizer, 2005).7

And who said mistresses had all the fun?

Sweet dreams,
A Diouana Woman

A Nightcap Before You Go…

If you enjoyed the mood and tone of this essay, these essays may be up your alley:

Many things are blamed for the subjugation of women: the patriarchy as sociolegal system; men as its underwriters, perpetrators and benefactors; and other women for no one hates a woman more than another woman. It’s easy, then, to escape thinking about our own culpability in all this. How we contribute to our own downfall. How we allow our desperation, short-sightedness, and even pettiness to influence our actions.

Although it’s important to acknowledge the consequences of our actions, it’s important to not become martyrs for a cause we didn't realize we were fighting. In honoring of freeing you from ever self-imposed shackles you may have, here is a Diouana Woman’s Guide To Letting Go Of Shame.

Number One: To Combat Shame, Develop A Rich Inner World

I’ve talked before about the need for a textured life. One reflective of our musings, moods, and mission. To achieve this, we must know, and then be able to articulate, our own interiority. This could be a whole essay onto itself.

For our purposes tonight, what I’ll leave you with is three journal prompts:

If I perish tomorrow, would I be happy with my relationships?

If asked to write a memoir, could I articulate who I had been on Earth?

If given a chance to relive any moment, which moment would I choose?

These are profound questions that speak to the heart of our interiority; the things we hold most sacred in our understanding of ourselves; and the myths we have about the life we’ve chosen to live.

If you can answer these prompts, you have an understanding of your inner world; and it’s here that I want you to retreat anytime you feel small, left behind, or too much. In those moments, if you can find your way back to yourself, you can live to see another day—your head held exalted above any enemies who surround you.1

We are all so lovely in our creative, our perspective, and, most importantly, our inspirations. Shame is anti-creative, lacks perspective and is fixed on one thing and one thing only: your past.

In letting it go, through our retreat into our own depths, we can emerge, once more, as the women we’ve always known ourselves to be.

We have so much life to live. It would be terrible if we spent it afraid of our own shadow. Embrace yourself and cleanse the shame from your spirit.

Number Two: To Repeal Shame, Speak The Truth And Shame The Devil

The devil is many things. Principally, the devil is anything that makes you second guess yourself; anything that makes you forget yourself; and anything that demands parts of you in exchange for something that will never be enough.

The devil finds us in desperation, temptation, and the sadness of never having been enough for our dreams.

Paradoxically, in speaking the truth about our current states—the mess, mayhem, and monotony of it all—can we develop the strength to overcome even the devil himself.

My theory is that the truth makes us magnetic. That telling the truth about ourselves is really the only way we’ll receive what we want in this life. Why, you ask? Because how can you receive something you’ve never asked for, let alone allowed yourself to imagine is a possibility for you.

As a teenager, I told my AP Literature teacher that my dream was to wake up one day on a yacht somewhere in the mediterranean. Today, my dream is to develop the West African St. Tropez.2

Our minds are the mouth of God3, and in these modern times of ours, it’s important we remained fixed on what it is we do want and think nothing—absolutely nothing—of what it is we don’t want.

This is much harder than it looks, but it’s truly a matter of life and death. Shame, what I define as a fixation on the past, robs us of our life. It’s a diseases whose cure finds itself in 1) acknowledgement through speaking the truth; 2) acceptance of what is, and what is not; and 3) the mental discipline to focus on “what can be, unburdened by what has been.”4

Number Three: To Block Shame, Never Undersell Yourself

Our self concept is the foundation of our lives. How we see ourselves determines what we allow to continue within our lives. A guru I often listen to likes to say, “having is evidence of wanting, and wanting is evidence of having.” As above, so below.

My self concept is that of a Diouana Woman. She’s smart, sensual, and strategic. She’s loved, protected, and admired. She’s respected, acknowledged, and considered. In her man’s heart, she reigns supreme. In her own life, she is the supreme. In her work, she’s rigorous, data-driven, and always cites her sources. Overall, there’s not a mountain she won’t climb, a river she won’t swim5, and a season of sacrifice she won’t endure to get what she wants in the end.

Recently, it dawned on me that I the story of my past, the one I outlined to you in painstaking detail in What You Learn Being Poor At Harvard, was not helpful to my Diouana Woman self concept. In fact, it’s become antithetical to everything I stand for.; not because I’m ashamed of my past—remember, a Diouana Woman is never ashamed—but because it’s simply no longer useful for where I’m going.

I summed this up succinctly on Tumblr:

“I am no longer the historian of my past.”

A beautiful mantra, if one ever existed.

In your own life, develop a mantra for your new chapter. We find ourselves heading into Eclipse season; this is a powerful time to set intentions for renewal and resurrections. Especially as we march towards the day where the veil is the thinest.

If you’re reading this, know that you are a Diouana Woman. And a Diouana Woman is never cheap; she never plays small; and she’s patient because she trusts that time is on her side.

Remember, patience has all the time it needs. Know that you know you’re immortal, why continue living in shame? Leave it behind, along with your past seven lives.

Sweet dreams,
A Diouana Woman

P.S. Truth or Dare

You know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? Yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

Truth: Telling the truth. Obviously, there’s some discretion to be observed here. But honestly, if you did it, why not own it? If you can’t, don’t let it own you.

Dare: “Where is your spirituality?”, my mother asked. Never, ever forget your spirituality. It’s your compass back to yourself.

An Extra Special Announcement

The Diouana Woman Salon is coming back! This time, it’s a monthly live lecture series exploring my independent research on Erotic Capital Economics. The theme remains: how women create wealth through beauty and beyond. We’ll examine how historical and contemporary women position themselves for economic gain and social mobility—a provocative blend of gender theory and finance.

Date: September 21, 2025, 1:00p EST.

Admissions: Monthly paid subscription of $250 or yearly paid subscription of $2,500 (save $500). Paid Subscriptions are now live via the Diary of a Diouana Woman substack. Upgrade your free subscription to gain admissions to the upcoming Diouana Woman Salon here.

Format: Live virtual lecture with interactive Q&A (opportunity to ask any and all tantalizing questions!). Recordings available to paid subscribers; recordings also available for separate purchase upon request. Meeting link will be shared ahead of lecture.

A Nightcap Before You Go…

If you enjoyed the mood and tone of this essay, these essays may be up your alley:

Disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

Upon revealing my latest crush on a man twice my age, a close friend of mine quipped, “he’s certainly your type.”

Feeling judged, I asked her to explain herself. “It’s just,” she began, “you just seem to have a thing for men in power.” I proceeded to defend my geriatric choices, but kept swirling her accusation in my head. Her words had Freudian implications, but I was certain she was seeing it all wrong.

He was handsome, surely that was reason enough, but she knew me well enough to know that wasn’t the full story. With the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you that the truth is rooted less in the man, or the position he occupied, and more in my fascination with the systems of power that determine the quality of our lives.

Daddy Harvard was my first lesson in systems of power, and as a coed at the college, I began to circle around a new question in my power plays:

“who gets what, and why?”

The High Priestess of Erotic Capital Economics

At 22, I sat across from a man in a dimly lit Greek restaurant who asked me how much money I needed to make my ambitions come true.

“A hundred thousand, give or take.” I said.

“Really?” he replied, “that’s so cheap.”

I’ll never forget that dinner. It was a lesson in audacity, alignment, and the understanding that, in some dynamics, money is a signifier of the value of a person—both receiving and giving. But more than anything, it showed me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that men would underwrite my ventures if—and only if—they believed in my vision as much as I did.

I never did get that hundred dollars; partly because I didn’t know what I was doing, and partly because my vision at 22 was still half-baked. And now, as my vision has crystallized into a thesis, I, too, agree that a hundred thousand is cheap. $100 million checks need only be cashed.

And it’s this through-line of women, wealth, and men that has found me circling back to an existential question I’ve had since undergrad:

“who gets what, and why?”

Here are the stakes:

We find that 21st century capitalism enslaves people who worship money, but rewards people who understand incentives. And to the ire of economists, incentives do not have to lead to rational behavior; and often do not. Hence why beauty has function as an exchange of value (read: capital).

Thus, my intrigue with The Wisdom of Whores has been rooted in my interest in the psychological understanding some women have about the power of incentives in a capitalist system.

Through this understanding, these women have arrived, through the most unconventional means, on top of a structure designed to enslave even men.

Not laboring through a 20+ year career in a corporate hellscape designed to extract, or striking it big as a young founder by betting the entire farm, nor even by worshipping money and thus entertaining any relationship just for the money, but by their implicit understanding of incentives—in all realms and dimensions.

To quote a former colleague, “show me the incentive, and I’ll tell you the outcome.”

This is the spiritual essence of my independent research to mastermind the theoretical grounds of Diouana Womanomics. I call this theory Erotic Capital Economics. It has a simple premise: how does a woman profit whilst still retaining her soul? It’s the echoing of Matthew 16:26, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

I bring in the New Testament because, to me, beauty is found in the spiritual. Those who have attended a Diouana Woman Salon know I’m a devout reader of The Book of Psalms. Psalm 37 reassures us that “the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy peace and prosperity” by “refrain[ing] from anger and turn[ing] from wrath” and “hoping in the Lord.” I take our earthly inheritance seriously. I have faith, and righteous belief, that Diouana Woman should, and will, know “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

Thus, Erotic Capital Economics is the study of this earthly inheritance as analyzed through how beauty functions as a mechanism for capital exchange between man and woman1. Our commitment to beauty has economic implications in the opportunity cost of not investing in the stock or property market but instead “investing” in ourselves through increasing our “stock” on the marriage market. But with no promise of bridewealth, these “investments” are riskier, I argue, than betting everything on Dutch Tulips and riding the wave.2

Thus, our investments in beauty must be as strategic as our investments in stocks or property. It’s not enough to simply aim to look “hotter” or become more “beautiful”— in fact, if beauty is not akin to you, “ugliness” can have its own erotic charge—it’s more about understanding which beauty investments give you the highest return on investment and prioritizing those purchases so that the difference in terms of freed-up capital can then be directed into investing in stocks or property.

This is the value proposition of my Diouana Womanomics platform to you as a user: in first understanding your feminine financial profile through my archetype assessment and then logging in your beauty expenses and rating their corresponding gained benefits across financial, social, and psychological domains, you can see which beauty expenses to double down on and which you can do without. Those savings can be used as you please. But it is the house’s view that you invest the difference.3

Beauty is just as much wealth management as it is spiritual maintenance.

And it’s through this lens, and all my assertions hitherto, that I wrote the questions underpinning my independent research to found Erotic Capital Economics. Provocative in nature, but rigorous in orientation, I ask:

1. How have dominant theories of value evolved—from debt, to money, to capital, to intangibles?

   1. Where does Erotic Capital fit in this historical lineage?

      1. The Economy of Love vs The Economy of Favors

2. Why has Erotic Capital been excluded or rendered illegible in classical and neoclassical economics?

3. How does Erotic Capital Economics drive labor markets, predict spheres of consumption, and influence wealth-building?

   1. How does Erotic Capital Economics influence asset transfers within intimate, heteronormative relationships and present an alternative wealth building strategy for women?

In grounding this research in primary and secondary sources, as well as academic journal articles written by other scholars and my own proprietary Diouana Womanomics dataset, I hope to, by the completion of my research, establish a financially sound, legally viable wealth-building strategy for Diouana Woman worldwide.

It’s an ambitious project with a long-term horizon4, but would you trust my claims of being the Erotic Capitalist Economist if I didn’t deliver this to you?

Leave a comment

The System Seeks to Make Slaves of Us All

It irks me, the way the phrase “the oldest profession in the world” has become shorthand for beautiful women existing, for their own benefit, around men who can afford to keep their company.

I reckon these accusations are mainly hurled, not only out of jealousy, but for the historical fact that women have not been owners of vast amount of capital for the majority of history. Thus a wealthy woman is always assumed to have an underwriter, even if the correct answer is that she learned to play the incentives of capitalism better than the rest of us.

And when people hurl these whorish accusations, they really should be starting with slavery, and not prostitution.

Why, you ask?

Well, from my reading of David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years, I do not believe prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. I argue it’s slavery. And female slaves, due to their biology, were always subject to abuse in the form of sexual labor. What ever “prostitution” that resulted after she became a slave is really not prostitution, and simply abuse.

In the historical context and narrative of debt, Graeber wrote that women have acted as laborer and lover, through being collateralized by their fathers; who had the legal authority to do so. Hence, their physical labor was used for economic output and their sexual labor was used for personal gratification on account of the creditor. And it’s in this historical evidence that I argue prostitution is not the oldest profession in the world, but likely the second oldest.

So, when we find ourselves in our so-called modern times with our purportedly egalitarian values, accusing a beautiful woman who exists, for her own benefit, around a man who can afford to keep her company, of being a prostitute, we are missing the historical mark. The word we’re looking for is “slave.”

If this sounds extreme to your ears, consider how many people now term their employment as “wage slavery.” I experienced this while working in investment banking. I felt my computer was the land upon which I toiled and my Managing Director was the lord. The only difference between me and a 5th century serf, was access to internet connection. You’ll forgive my being facetious in hopes of hammering my point.

To bring us back; as it relates to beautiful women and men who can afford to keep their company, it all comes down to theories of value. Hence why David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years was my first secondary source for my Erotic Capital Economics independent research.

Remember my first research question, “How have dominant theories of value evolved—from debt, to money, to capital, to intangibles?”; well, understanding money as a placeholder for value is key to answering this question and Graeber does just that within his big red book.

Graeber argues that “who owes what to whom?” is the central thread in the history of money, and Erotic Capital Economics asks this question as well. Insofar that any of us have an obligation to one another, surely we have debts to pay. And if one lavishes and pampers and grooms herself into the image of Esther, is she, too, owed a marriage to a king? If women allow men to have access to their bodies, for the purposes of progeny or pleasure, are they, too, owed compensation through acts of service and gifts?

This is an Erotic Capitalist Economist’s take on the Primordial Debt Theory5: what are any of us owed, if we’re owed anything at all? Is the value we bring to the lives of others—notedly, women, through our beauty (or lack thereof)—grounds for compensation? And what form should this compensation take?

Is our beauty priceless, or is it worth only a Birkin? Is the pleasure we share with others a matter of spiritual connection, and therefore ought not to be tainted with questions of repayment, or is an exchange of value the only way we know we’re valued?

And as I circle back to beauty, the words of astrological researcher Claire Nakti ring out:

“Due to the influence of christianity on our customs, many women only beautify and ornament themselves in order to please random strangers…and upon marrying, they shut off and neglect their appearance totally, subconsciously believing it to be the art of immature women or prostitutes.”

Thus, is beauty, and the finances and lightness required to sustain it, only the domain of whores and women who follow in their paths—even if only seeking The Wisdom of Whores? For those who view beauty as a currency—as a tool of mobility within the workplace and the marriage market—does the compensation we receive because of our beauty a determinate of our value as people?

Here, we find ourselves back to beautiful women who exist, for their own benefit, around men who can afford to keep their company. Is she more valuable than we are, those of us without underwriters? Does she know something about money, capital, and incentives that we don’t? Is she more financially free than the rest of us combined? And if so, would she remain around him if that were the case?

In closing, I’m reminded of the endless streams of content I’ve read and seen from women, both younger and older, on their views of men, marriage, and wealth. There’s a sense that for all the ills of capitalism—namely, the drudgery that we now have to endure because the feminists of yester-century won the fight to get us into the labor market as equal participants and compensated as such—men are required to be wealthy to be worth the squeeze. A man’s wealth is the only compensation for the weight of being all things to all man6: a high-performing employee, a hot wife / girlfriend / mistress, and a loving, very-present mother.

This argument is simple enough. But Erotic Capital Economics still asks, even if rhetorically, what is owed to women, us who are programed to give so much of ourselves to everyone, before we even give our essence to ourselves? And if it’s money, I argue that what women are programed to seek from men we could obtain from the market. Stock or property, just pick your poison.

Thus, it’s not that we’re doomed to be whores to the patriarchy if we swear an alliance to our beauty, but that there’s a spiritual dimension we can exist in when we remain committed to our individual beauty; regardless of its manifestation, or lack thereof. And principally, when we concern ourselves with managing a portfolio built on actual returns, and not just endless consumption under the guise of “self-care” or “investing in ourselves,” we can transcend the system through the only route left: financial freedom.

In a capitalist system designed to enslave even men, a Diouana Woman cannot afford to be careless with her capital.

Sweet dreams,
A Diouana Woman

P.S. Truth or Dare

You know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? Yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

Truth: An unequivocal commitment to beauty.

Dare: Dependance on men when becoming intelligent investors is a viable option.

A Nightcap Before You Go…

If you enjoyed the mood and tone of this essay, these essays may be up your alley:

An Extra Special Announcement

The Diouana Woman Salon is coming back! This time, it’s a monthly live lecture series exploring my independent research on Erotic Capital Economics. The theme remains: how women create wealth through beauty and beyond. We’ll examine how historical and contemporary women position themselves for economic gain and social mobility—a provocative blend of gender theory and finance.

Date: September 21, 2025, 1:00p EST.

Admissions: Monthly paid subscription of $250 or yearly paid subscription of $2,500 (save $500). Paid Subscriptions are now live via the Diary of a Diouana Woman substack. Upgrade your free subscription to gain admissions to the upcoming Diouana Woman Salon here.

Format: Live virtual lecture with interactive Q&A (opportunity to ask any and all tantalizing questions!). Recordings available to paid subscribers; recordings also available for separate purchase upon request. Meeting link will be shared ahead of lecture.

Disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

Do you ever realize that you’ve made something unnecessarily harder than it needs to be; that you’ve created a monster that you’re now in charge of defeating; that your need for complexity got in the way of a basic truth: above, so below.

Confessions Of A Not So Degenerate Beauty Queen

For some months now, I’ve hinted at a discomfort that’s been gnawing at me. The feeling that I’ve become alienated from myself. Judging by the tenor of the Joan Didion-style essays on this platform, I can tell I’m not alone.

What strange bedfellows we make.

But the thing about being female—not necessarily a woman—is that creative destruction is what we do best.

Men like Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, and his legions of psychoanalytic male disciplines, will have you believe a relationship to, and with, the Phallus1 is what constitutes a creative genius but I disagree.

I’d beg to differ, but Diouana Woman don’t beg.

The construction and destruction of one’s self is the hallmark of the heroine’s journey. The maintenance of one’s ideal world, despite the pressures and malice of external circumstances, is the hallmark of female adulthood.

So, destruction and creation exist as a labyrinth in us all. Especially us girls.

And in these moments of alienation, I find myself doing the one thing that restores my spirit and delivers me back to myself:

I invest, unapologetically, in my beauty.

I book spa days. I sit in a braider’s chair for six hours. I peruse Sephora’s kiosks until I find the exact watermelon-pink lip gloss2 that is sure to bring luck my way.

It’s a bit of a binge, I’ll admit.

But beauty revitalizes me; it brings me back to myself; it serves as a reminder that the currency I generate should ultimately come back to myself.

And if you’re like me—which, by your status as a Diouana Woman, I believe you to be—you’re much the same.

Hopefully you don’t have this bad habit of mine: delaying rest and beauty until I’ve “earned” it.

Now, where’s the fun in that?

It’s my Capricorn rising speaking. She won’t rest until the work is done. But if you’re fortunate enough to befriend a Capricorn, you know that the work is never done.

The goal post just keeps moving.

So my beauty binges are restorative measurements. Hedges, really; against my more workaholic tendencies.

In these sprees—these manic, sensuous sprees—I began to notice something interesting:

I do my best work when I feel beautiful and affirmed in my beauty.

Obvious, I know. But walk with me for a little while longer.

I do my best, hardest hitting work after a 90 minute massage. After my 10-step skincare routine. After my Amazon/Sephora haul.

Why?

I suspect, which a tarot reader of mine has confirmed, that my spirit deeply, deeply enjoys beautification and being lavished. Pampering gets her going; so to assuage my workaholism, I’ve become a measured shopaholic.

I say measured because this is not an everyday thing, nor do I go into consumer debt for makeup, skincare, or the occasional spay day3. It’s just incredible to spend $125 on a full body wax, then $240 on hair, and don’t forget that $250 hydrafacial. Add tip on top of all of this, and we could have just bought some NVIDIA stock (NYSE: NVDA) .4

To a Lauren Sánchez Bezos, these are insignificant amounts. But to you and I, they’re precious sums that speak to a real commitment to beauty. And that’s why I built Diouana Womanomics.

For women like you and me.

Those of us with a real commitment to beauty. So much so, that we rack our brains around how to continue pampering ourselves without interfering with our financial futures (again, a $500 average monthly spend on beauty treatments would go a long way if redirected into stocks5).

To be clear: this is not a moral dilemma.

Beauty spending and wealth building are not diametrically opposed.

In fact, I believe them to be generative and co-conspirators; if you spend on the right beautification items and procedures. Purchases that generate a high Return on Investment; not just psychologically but socially; and, especially, financially.

And here is where I’d like to introduce you to the newly rebranded Diouana Womanomics platform:

Ladies and Gentlemen, For The Very First Time…

I reimagined Jungian psychoanalyst Jean Shinoda Bolen’s concept of Seven Divine Feminine Archetypes6 and placed it in conversation with Catherine Hakim’s Erotic Capital Theory to create the new field of Erotic Capital Economics—the study of how women generate wealth through beauty consumption.7

In my reading, and now rereading, of Elizabeth Abott’s Mistresses and Eleanor Herman’s Sex with Kings8 and even Kate Williams’ Ambition and Desire9, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s real money to be made in knowing how to leverage one’s beauty.

Notice how I said knowing how not necessarily being beautiful. To untrained ears, this may sound like the same thing, but it’s not.

And I will admit, I’m still a student of this discipline.

If I were an expert, I wouldn’t be working my 9-to-5 and I’d probably still be in St. Tropez right now, lounging in the middle of the Med, but I digress…

Besides, there’s a time and place for everything.

And right now, the focus isn’t necessarily to be a sun-soaked Tropézienne à la Brigette Bardot (or even Zahia Dehar) but an institutionally relevant woman à la Dambisa Moyo (or even Amal Clooney)

To me, these’s women are one and the same, but that’s what makes me Diouana Woman; and not just any woman.

Anyways, I’m giving away enough of my references. Back to Diouana Womanomics.

This project began out of a frustration: a realization that my beauty spending wasn’t necessarily spiritually frivolous but potentially financially perilous10. I noticed that I work harder and tend to be treated better—by lovers, friends, and strangers alike—when I am in the energy of beautification.

I believe it to be two-fold: when you’re investing your energy, time, and money into yourself, you’re not worried or bothered by anything; let alone anyone. This makes you magnetic to quite literally anything you desire because your focus is on you, not it or them.

Secondly, when you’re energetically and emotionally in a feeling of abundance, ideas and inspirations for growth and opportunity effortlessly come to you. In your elevated state, you follow through on the necessary tasks needed to bring them into existence. Next thing you know, your Sephora haul just snagged you a new income stream. Or a job interview. Or a date—and he comes baring gifts!

That’s the whole idea behind Diouana Womanomics:

Uncovering the psychology behind your beauty spending so you can not only (1) (1) identify your primary, secondary, and shadow archetypes and how they influence your relationship with and to beauty but (2) also how this spending of yours is showing up in your day-to-day across four domains:

Erotic Capital, aka your magnetism;

Financial Capital; aka how much money or capital-appreciating gifts you’re receiving for all your efforts11;

Social Capital, aka the weight your presence alone carries;

Spiritual Capital, aka your inner alignment with your own value system.

Through the Diouana Womanomics framework, your beauty spending is strategic and addictive to your life; not reactive and putting you at a deficit.

You’re not here to be influenced by the latest Tik Tok shop trend; you’re here to be the influencer in your own life and become everything you’re meant to be.

Beauty is part of that, and, for some of us, it’s a big part. For spiritual reasons, not superficial ones.

And one can argue that beauty is nothing more than a facade for those who lack depth, integrity, and work ethic. Harlots, by any other name.

Sure. Perhaps.

Or, as I have argued, it’s an incredible way to echo the essence of your soul.

If you’re interested in uncovering your own relationship to beauty, and what your mindset around sociological ideas such as pretty privilege or what your reaction to the term ‘Girl Math’ psychologically reveals about you, then I invite you to take the Archetype Assessment on Diouana Womanomics and uncover your primary, secondary, and shadow archetypes.

With your archetypes revealed, you can then begin to input your historical beauty expenses in the Beauty Capital Dashboard.

I’ve had women trace purchases all the way back to 2023 and input those in!

Here, the architecture of your beauty capital is laid-bare for you to meet yourself exactly where you are.

In this rebrand, I’ve added in a new ‘Gifts’ marker because if my thesis is to be proven correct, then a good majority of us need to be getting by off the generosity of those who love us most.

I’m joking, but not really.

As you scroll down towards the button of the page, you’re met with a section to input your beauty goals. Pilates Princesses and Match Mavens rejoice, here is a space fully dedicated to your commitment towards an idealized self. For me, my biggest goal this upcoming Virgo season is to ground myself again in my spirituality and my unrelenting vision of myself, for myself.

Once you have a goal inputted, it’s easy to tag which recent expenses align with that goal. After all, you’re not parting with your cold, hard cash for nothing, are you?

No!

You’re an intelligent woman who spends with care and consideration. So, whatever goals you may have, your beautification supports it. It’s the ultimate feedback loop.

Be it lovers, friends, or even the favor of strangers, beauty helps us in all aspects of our lives. And in taking it seriously enough to study it, in building a theoretical framework around it—my so-called Erotic Capital Economics—we’re giving it the attention it deserves.

And there’s nothing that Goddess loves more than attention and devotion. Just ask Sheraseven.

Because I don’t do anything half-assed, and have the intense disposition of taking everything I do seriously, I’ve turned Diouana Womanomics into a proper macroeconomic study.

For this to be real, groundbreaking scholarship, it needs quantifiable, undeniable metrics. Although the total expenses logged thus far (we’re nearly at $10,000!) is an excellent start, what will really take us over the edge and into the symposiums of ivory-tower academia is demographic information.

The who matters more than the what. You and I both know that.

So, in your Account Information page, you’ll see the same demographic fields that show up in U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey studies as that’s what I mirrored Diouana Womanomics off.

The idea is to be able to research, analyze, and deeply understand the nuances of beauty economics. Not just from a psychoeconomic perspective, but from a sociocultural one.

It’s in understanding the banners we all traveling under—young or old; high school or postdoc; Canadian or Nigerian; lawyers or therapists; multiracial or white—that the numbers start talking.

Without you, Diouana Womanomics is just numbers on a screen. With you, it’s a narrative arc about the depth of beauty.

And in the lineage of Abott’s historical, cross-cultural study on mistresses; Herman’s historical, case-study driven examination of beauty as power; and Graeber’s examination of theories of value, Diouana Womanomics seeks to be in critical conversation with both the empirical and the theoretical.

Diouana Womanomics is Pierre Bourideau meets Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

I do not believe your commitment to beauty precludes your from feminist ideals. I believe them to be deeply interlinked.

And even a rejection of beauty, rooted in disdain, distrust, or perceived dismal, has a lot to teach the rest of us who find our home in it; who bask in it; and, if we’re not careful, could be undone by it.

Not even societally—although attempts are made—but financially.

After all, have you seen the going rate of a mass-prestige lip gloss these dates? $35 a tube!

I guess that’s how Fenty made her billions.

Sweet dreams,
A Diouana Woman

P.S. Truth or Dare

You know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? Yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

Truth: An unequivocal commitment to beauty—as rest, play, and magic.

Truth: Taking everything you do seriously. Seriously enough to vibe code your way into building your own app with no previous programming experience and then getting into a highly-rated technical Master’s program to learn the programming skills to actually maintain what you’ve built, sans artificial intelligence. Welcome to life of Diouana Woman.

Dare: All work and no play. God does not like ugly, and Goddess does not admire the rugged. Sleep, rest, and rest some more.

A Nightcap Before You Go…

If you enjoyed the mood and tone of this PSA, these essays may be up your alley:

An Extra Special Announcement

The Diouana Woman Salon is coming back! This time, it’s a monthly live lecture series exploring my independent research on Erotic Capital Economics. The theme remains: how women create wealth through beauty and beyond. We’ll examine how historical and contemporary women position themselves for economic gain and social mobility—a provocative blend of gender theory and finance.

Date: September 21, 2025, 1:00p EST.

Admissions: Monthly paid subscription of $250 or yearly paid subscription of $2,500 (save $500). Paid Subscriptions open September 18, 2025 via Diary of a Diouana Woman substack.

Format: Live virtual lecture with Q&A. Recordings available to paid subscribers; recordings also available for separate purchase. Meeting link will be shared ahead of lecture.

Disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

They unpack:

• Why beauty can backfire for women in professional environments.

• How sexual insecurity fuels suspicion toward attractive women—both from men and other women.

• The difficulties organizations face in even acknowledging — let alone addressing — attractiveness bias.

• How cultural trends like the Office Siren aesthetic tie into these dynamics.

• Surprising new research suggesting that working mothers may actually be preferred for leadership roles today.

The discussion weaves psychology, feminist theory, organizational behavior, and real-world examples (like the Iowa Supreme Court case of an employee fired for being "too attractive").

Why You Should Listen

This episode is a must-listen if you want to:

• Understand how unconscious biases around beauty and femininity quietly shape workplace dynamics.

• Learn practical insights about managing bias perceptions — both for yourself and in organizational contexts.

• Hear how Gen Z’s workplace fashion, social media aesthetics, and shifting gender roles intersect with research and reality.

• Gain a hopeful, updated perspective on motherhood, leadership, and women’s evolving place in professional life.

It’s thought-provoking, myth-busting, and will leave you questioning the invisible forces shaping how women are judged at work.

Episode Chapters & Timestamps

• 00:00 – Introduction
  Welcome to The Ledger and today’s topic: the "bias against beauty."

• 00:41 – Meet Dr. Leah Sheppard
  Background on Dr. Sheppard’s research on gender, attractiveness, and workplace bias.

• 03:17 – The Dark Side of Beauty
  How attractiveness can be an advantage generally, but a disadvantage for women in organizational contexts.

• 04:48 – What is the Femme Fatale Effect?
  Defining the concept and its link to perceptions of femininity, manipulation, and danger.

• 10:49 – Trust, Femininity, and Gender Nuance
  Why femininity isn’t inherently distrusted, but highly attractive women trigger unique suspicions.

• 14:17 – Sexual Insecurity Explained
  How both men and women experience sexual insecurity when confronted with highly attractive women.

• 17:45 – Can the Femme Fatale Effect be Erased?
  A priming experiment that shows when people feel secure in their relationships, bias diminishes.

• 22:44 – Truth, Trust, and Power
  Why perceptions of truthfulness matter so much in organizations, leadership, and collaboration.

• 23:43 – Bias That HR Can’t Fix
  Why managing attractiveness bias is nearly impossible at a systems level — and what individuals can do.

• 29:42 – The ‘Office Siren’ Trend
  Gen Z’s flirtation with stylized corporate femininity and its workplace consequences.

• 31:20 – Real-World Case Study: Fired for Being Attractive
  The Iowa Supreme Court case where a woman lost her job due to her boss’s wife’s insecurities.

• 35:17 – What’s Next for Beauty Bias Research
  The role of race, intersectionality, and future areas of study.

• 39:00 – From Motherhood Penalty to Preference
  Dr. Sheppard’s new research showing shifting perceptions of working mothers in leadership.

• 46:00 – Career vs. Family and Shifting Gender Roles
  How partnership dynamics, ambition, and evolving expectations shape women’s choices.

• 54:01 – Power Couples, Lowered Standards, and Evolutionary Theory
  Rethinking partnership and attraction in light of women outpacing men in education and career success.

• 59:01 – Takeaways: Beauty, Bias, and Perspective
  Why attractiveness is still more of an asset than penalty overall, despite the nuances.

Dr. Leah Sheppard’s bio:

“I’m an Associate Professor of Management and an Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives & College Culture with the Carson College of Business at Washington State University. I received my PhD in Organizational Behavior & Human Resources from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia in 2014.

My primary research stream focuses on the effect of gender on individuals' workplace experiences and career outcomes. Beyond that, I’m interested in employees' experiences of phenomena generally treated as taboo when they occur at work, such as sexual behavior, physical attractiveness biases, non-work identity disclosures, and discussions about news/politics.

I’ve published my work in several outlets, including Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Management, Academy of Management Journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Business Venturing, and The Atlantic. My research findings have also been publicized in several news outlets, including The New York Times, CBS News, New York Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.”

Disclaimer: the views expressed in this podcast are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

there’s a lyric from iggy azalea that i love:

“this dream is all that i need, 'cause it's all that i ever had.”

it’s from her magnum opus, work, and every time i hear it, i’m reminded that although nothing has been easy for me, that doesn’t matter as i’ve been gifted something rarer than money: vision—paired with grit and work ethic.

i spoke about spiritual hunger earlier last year in a video i’ve since deleted. spiritual hunger is what nourishes our dreams when the systems and situations we’re tasked to navigate cannot. or worse, are hellbent on crushing them to bits and pieces.

i told you how i ran out of money in the south of france, and lived off erotic capital until my next paycheck hit. i never told you what exactly i meant by that, outside of the harvard business school-educated mentor i conjured up on the dance floor1. i’ll spare you the details as i’m slightly embarrassed by needing a capital infusion from my boyfriend to finish my trip. but alas.

i don’t want to tell you that part because it’s the most insignificant part of the trip.

what matters more is what happened after.

during, i felt like i was in an episode of white lotus. the pretenses of my presence on the trip was amicable enough: i was to accompany a friend for her euro summer. given the last minute nature of her request, lodging would be provided as an incentive.

but then my boyfriend had to cover the second airbnb, and the dynamic between us shifted slightly.

equals, we became.

her trip was now ours.

funny what bankrolling does for one’s seat at the table.2

but i was only ever a proxy to my boyfriend’s wealth.

you see, nothing is free. lest, not a week in st. tropez.

and in this case, when i politely suggested she pay what she owes him, as i must also do, i was met with a spiritual entitlement that i believe would be nonexistent if i were one of the blond-haired, blue-eyed, billionaire heiresses she so admires.

college friends of ours. high school friends of hers.

this is why i don’t watch gossip girl and skip through the white lotus: it hits close to home in a jenny humphrey way.

but the subtle racism, the assumptions of hierarchy, and the inability to tell the truth—unless, of course, it's to pocket watch—made me do to her what was once done to me.

smile softly, then never, ever engage in a deep, meaningful way again.

remember that freshman year friend group i told you about in my essay, what you learn being poor at harvard? they taught me this dirty little trick:

to ice someone out of your life, you do it slowly, methodically; and if they text you to mend things up and then come to you in annenberg hall to discuss in person because they really do value your friendship and taught everything was fine, tell them nothing’s wrong and to just focus on school. then never, ever speak to them ever again.

matter of fact, if the moment arrives, say, “i’m friends with [diouana woman], but she’s black.3”

it’s a passive-aggressive way of handling conflict and it ruined my mental state for the entirety of freshman year.

but i employed it in this case because i’ve done enough emotional labor explaining racism, micro-aggressions, and the subtle flex of financial hierarchy to others to have my fill.

and so, when presented with someone who showed themselves to be a spiritually bankrupt person (telling me i must go to a specific club with you even though i said i don’t want to because you “paid for the majority of the trip” to ending up owing my boyfriend money because he actually ended up covering a larger portion of the vacation is wild work), i pulled this card out of the archive.

now, as it relates to dreams; the connection is that in your journey, you’ll find yourself in uncomfortable situations. moments when you’re judged, undermined, overlooked, and mismanaged. and in those moments, you must remember your dreams.

why you’re enduring the bullshit you’re enduring. why you’re polite in your terminations, even if people deserve to know they’ve hurt you. because your dreams matter more than your comfort. a diouana woman must always be stronger than her circumstances.

so what you ran out of money and needed not one, but two capital infusions. so what you live on less than $20 a day because you entire paycheck goes towards your self-funded master’s education. so what people think they can mistreat you because they believe they have the upper hand. so what your value is not seen by those who really should know better.

you’re on a mission.

and a woman like you—you who can manifest executives on the dance floor by simply grooving with dionysus and comp’d meals from strangers by just asking why he’s smoking a cigarette on a hot july night—must protect your energy at all costs.

your work is too important. so leaking energy by entangling yourself with people who cannot begin to define the word ‘micro-aggression’ does not serve you.

and if you find yourself in a situation similar to mine, then godspeed to us both.

besides, this dream? it’s all we need. even if it’s currently all we have.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: it’s not fun ending friendships. i wasn’t sure that the offense (racial and classist micro-aggression was the charge). was worth simply walking away. and then i said it out loud to myself and decided to have self respect. besides, i’m a firm believer that people know when they’re misbehaving. no need to spell it out for them.

truth: i continue to spend day and night building and theorizing the diouana womanomics project. it’s morphed into three projects:

1) i’m working on making the beauty expense inputting semi-automated;

2) i’m thinking through how to add in multiple currencies in the beauty expense form and how that will flow throughout the platform, giving the us-centric, inflation-sensitive index that is the diouana women economic index;

3) i’m conducting independent research to create the discipline that encapsulates the theory behind my entire diouana womanomics platform; i call it erotic capital economics; much to come on that front soon.

truth: if you’re a naira or usd babe, i strongly encourage you to create a diouana womanomics account and begin to examine your relationship to beauty culture, your own beauty spending, and the exact archetype you are through the lens of erotic capital. in doing so, you’re helping to create the first macroeconomic dataset on womanhood as it relates to beauty. this is fun and serious at the same time. how all things should be. expect, of course, for the things that should just be done.

dare: unnecessary emotional labor. smile and wave.

a night cap before you go…

if you’d like to read an essay that fits the vibe of this psa, i recommend:

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

the party girl’s guide to a good time

when i was younger, i felt i had no friends. a party girl by birthright, i lamented this fact to my mother who in response emphasized the importance of stepping out into the world without the psychological crutch of an encourage.

“you need to learn how to exist by yourself.” she advised me.

and it sounded silly and tone-deaf to my ears as i was really speaking to a growing loneliness, one that had plagued me for some time, than a burning desire to dance the night away; but as mothers often are, mine was correct.

i needed to learn how to exist by myself in the absence of friends. and so i begun to show up where i wanted to go, even without a group of girls by my side.

this is a practice i had started in college, and by the time i arrived in new york, i was a veteran solo rider that the addition of other people brought more friction than fun.

it’s not that i suddenly turned anti-social, but that all my solo jaunts into town had been marked by a key revelation: one has to hold the vibration, ideally by creating it.

to hold the vibration means to set the energetic intention for the night and not waver, regardless of what doesn’t happen or how shitty the dj is.

my intention was always simple: shake some ass and go home. my friends on the other hand always had such complicated intentions; notably of being chosen by promiscuous, if not devilishly handsome, trust fund boys and having random men they’d never see again buy them drinks. these intentions were seemingly banal on the surface—i mean, who doesn’t want a man in finance with a trust fund who’s six-five with blue-eyes?1—but they reveal a deeper psychoanalytic itch:

the inability to enjoy the moment without external confirmation of a good time.

i was in it for the vibes, they were in it for the validation. and the more we went out, the more apparent that became.

while i was content, if not dead-set, on holding the vibration throughout the entire night, their mood would sour, thereby downgrading the frequency, if a man they spotted in the crowd didn’t pick them for a flirty line, a make-out session on the dance floor, or the prize of them all: the exchange of digits.

all this externally-facing energetic discharge violated a core principle of club dynamics i had learned, and mastered, as a veteran party girl2: the energetic tone one sets is what dictates what materializes around them, not the other way around.

in other words, hold the vibration. and never let the vibration hold you.

welcome to st. tropez

it’s hard work, this business of energetic maintenance. to be a minister of enjoyment means you operate off flows of spiritual attraction and see what unfolds.

the butterfly effect, it’s called. a seemingly small action has long-lasting, rippling consequences.

one such for me has been my recent sojourn in st. tropez. it all began on the 7th of june when i finally indulged into my olfactory desires and bought a victoria’s secret perfume that haunted me since i first spritzed it on when checking out my “i-got-into-graduate-school-let’s-reward-my-hard-work shopping bag at the counter.

part of their bombshell fine fragrance line, this scent was specially conjured for their “bombshell gateaway” seasonal collection, a bid to capture the magic of a european summer from coast to coast, and was aptly named “bombshell st. tropez.”

having never been to the french sea-side town myself, but knowing that’s where diouana had envisioned living out her fantasies, i purchased the perfume as a spiritual nod to my eternal muse.

and so when i was invited to accompany a friend to st. tropez, i thought to myself, “the universe always finds ways to flirt with me.”

i personify my universe because i believe we all have our own worlds. our own personal realities that reflect back to us our personalities, beliefs—limiting and otherwise—and potential. mine is a flirt and she teases until you pay maximum attention to her. she’s never cruel, just clear. and she’ll never leave you for dead unless she’s certain you’ll resurrect yourself. after all, it’s only in enduring absolute bullshit that you can gain an ounce of wisdom.

and although i had boarded my flight from jfk thinking st. tropez would be a week of rest and relaxation, by the end, it had become a rite. a ritual of primal womanhood and a crowning ceremony of what it means to live off of erotic capital—even with $17 dollars to your name.3

i’ll spare you the details, as it’s the silhouette, not the linearity, of events that matter.

wednesday into thursday, i received unpleasant news. news the universe keeps giving me. imagine sending countless letters to god, each discussing the same topic, for each correspondence to be mailed back to you with the stamp “return to sender” in blood-red ink.

heartbroken and mentally fraught, i knew i needed to cleanse the negativity from my aura. as with any ritual, i needed a summons. a portal to the next life. and there’s no better place, especially in the south of france, than une boîte de nuit.

it sounds silly, but when groups of people come together—in music, song, and dance—dionysus finds himself in the room. and if anyone is capable of making you forget all which ills you, it’s the god of fertility, festivity, and religious ecstasy himself.

although my modus operandi for a fun night out is to simply shake some ass and go home, that night, i needed something more that just a good time. i needed a conjuring and so with each dj set, i gave myself simple instructions: make love to the music.

moving one’s body rhythmically, aka shaking some ass, and making love to the music sound about the same to a novice, but a blind woman could show you the difference.

when you make love to the music, you let the beat possess you. depending on the tempo, the beat could find itself in your chest, your shoulders, your legs, your hips, your arms, or even your back.

people often dance behind the beat; when you make love to the music, you ride on top of the beat. it’s sonic sex. and as the music loosens, usually with a bass drop or a very, very tight transition, you release everything you have in a spiritual orgasm.

and it’s through the repetition of this, that one opens a portal to the next life. dionysus moves through you until you’ve sweated away every ache that was gnawing at your psyche.

and it was in this moment between orgasm and birth—the final acceptance of a desired path not meant to be my own—that i felt eyes on me. and before i could blink, he stood in front of me.

in catching our breathes, i began to understand why the universe kept returning my letters to god: i spoke to him of my baby, diouana womanomics, and he told me “it has legs.” anyone else, this line would be a throwaway; an easy man’s attempt at flirting. but in his mouth, it was recognition.

i often find that god speaks to me through people. that, and dreams. and in sending a harvard business school alum whose decades-long career had been spent advising chief executives on how to scale, and sell, their technology companies, i finally heard god’s answer to my letters: if you keep going, you’ll go further than you could even imagine.

it’s absurd to have a business strategy session at 2a in a cave club in st. tropez, but how often does one come across a seasoned startup advisor on the dance floor? how often is their expertise in your exact vertical? and how often does their silhouette allude to ghosts of the past?

regardless of the absurdity, i take my serendipity where i can find it.

it’s been a constant battle for me, determining if the slow death of corporate or the slow burn of diouana womanomics is the path forward for me, and in so many precise ways, my universe keeps affirming the latter and never the former—to the dismay of my bank account.

but when you’re a woman with undeniable erotic capital, you could be broke on paper but a spiritual trillionaire. and that is what my universe used st. tropez to show me:

in the ego-death of rejections from professionally-validating careers, the spiritual honesty of asking for help, and the confidence that clarity surrounding desires bring, will you manifest the people, places, and things you need to pass through the portal of your next life.

so, although this past week spent within the côte d’azur was less rest and more rite, i emerged a new woman. one harmonized with my true path.

the path of the freedom-seeking, glamour-loving, intellectual sensual woman who is harvard-bred by birthright, a founder-scholar of erotic capital economics by destiny, and a tropézienne by conquest is not a conventional path; and that is precisely the point.

luxury bohemia has always been my disposition, despite a lack of generational, or personal, wealth.

coming from anyone else, this is pure delusion. but in my mouth, it’s a prophecy.

when i met him the next day at casa amor, he introduced me to a man who promised to introduce me to a woman who runs a magazine both you and i read. this is in response to my being introduced by him as “an entrepreneur with an interesting idea.” and in our people watching, he pointed out the private security of those who descended to st. tropez not by uber, but by yacht, and said to me, “one day, those men will be protecting you.”

and in being recognized for your inevitability, by someone with a track record of making exceptional bets, one realizes that financial capital pales in comparison to wealth of the soul, magnetism of the mind, and the carefree audacity of leveraging one’s erotic capital to claim one’s stake in this world.

this is the result of what i call primal womanhood: the state of conquest. where we allow the fires of life to burn us until the lessons have been inscribed into our bones. and then use these lessons as the cheat code for the next iteration where a new trial by fire awaits us.

like an ouroubous, each new version of ourselves is closer to who we’re truly meant to be in this life. until we one day wake up to realize we’ve become the kinds of people that leave naō by midnight, not arrive at midnight. that we enter and leave the city through boat, not car. and that st. tropez becomes part of a larger constellation of sea-and-country side places we live and work, and are not forced to confine to a week-long escape.

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the high priestess of the french rivera

usurpingly, my favorite moment occurred in that same cave club but on a different night.

dancing at their own table, i spotted an 80s-something-year old couple, with the husband noticeably older than the wife. the woman wore a gorgeous kaftan and the husband was dressed in a relaxed but tailored linen set.

the husband had earplugs in as the music was impossibly loud, and i found him to be fully lucid of everything around him.

his entourage at the table gave him a cigarette, which he smoked in rhythm with the music. from time to time, he’d sit down to repose himself, only rising in the seconds before the beat was set to drop so he could ride the wave down.

him and his wife moved in unison and i fell in love with the sight of them.

we’re told that our 20s, or however long we look like we’re in our 20s, are the best years of our lives. entire anthems have been written about the mantra of only living once, so enjoying our fleeting youth before the moment passes. we are socialized to believe that it is only the young who have fun, glamour, and sex appeal.

tom ford called this the cult of youth.

but for those of us whose supposed youth has to be spent building the foundation of our lives—again, no generational wealth—this cult of youth is triggering for it asserts that by the time we “arrive”, our moment will have passed.

american society valorizes young people who make it “big” within the 20s. there’s nothing more attractive to the american press than a 22 year old, ivy league drop out whose company’s unicorn status crowns them among the league of "young billionaires.”

but this capitalist fever dream has the downward pressure of making all of us believe there’s no time. capitalism’s greatest foe is not socialism, it’s hope.

when we have hope that our lives will not end the moment we turn 25 or that our beauty will not fade with the passage of time, capitalism cannot twist us into becoming luxury consumerist workaholics.

there is no “baby botox” when your anti-aging regime is sunscreen and incandescent sessions of love-making. there is no “hustle culture”, “trad-wife-ism” or “sprinkle sprinkle” when your path is chosen for spiritual eroticism and not the quickest path to financial stability.

when we have hope, we can endure the years it takes to become ourselves. there is no exit strategy through a “strategic” marriage to “an older man” as a way out of doing the real work of confronting ourselves and our shadow.

we simply meet ourselves on the dance floor and let dionysus take it away.

when we reject the cult of youth, we embrace life. and when we embrace life, we can withstand life’s trials and thunderstorms with a grace not common in people our age.

and in doing so, we develop a work ethic that becomes our sex appeal.

an undeniability of our inevitability.

and before we know it, we’re in our 80s dancing the night away with our husband.

i went to her, and told her that i want to be her when i grow up. that i found such inspiration in her and her husband. their ease, their aliveness, and their audacity to be in the club at 80-something-years old.4

she told me, “you have so much to look forward to.”

and my heart filled with such hope even as my eyes began to water. me, who has been working very, very hard for a long, long time. me, whose default stage is exhaustion as the result of being undercapitalized with dreams that dreams that demand payment in sweat equity and cash infusions. me, who has wanted to accomplish everything all at once just so i could enjoy my “youth” having already “arrived.”

but she showed me there’s no need for that.

i have so much to look forward to.

and when i arrive, it’ll be on my own timeline, at my own pace, and having done something no one else could have even thought to do.

after all, how many erotic capital economist do you know? there’s just me.

and this moment reminded me of another woman who never let age rob her of anything: tina turner.

she said once, “my legacy is that i stayed on the course… from the beginning to the end, because i believed in something inside of me.”

i feel similarly; and you should too.

there’s something in us that we must honor. from start to finish, we must never give up on ourselves. nor should we allow any perception of a disadvantage stop us from becoming all that we can be: not lack of beauty or money or class or institutional access.

few survive the middle as it’s the most messy. the beginning and end are sexy, the possibility and completion of the thing. but the middle holds you at knifepoint and any sudden movements, you’re likely to draw blood. but that’s alright. there’s not a single thing worth having that won’t demand you stand up for yourself. and what’s more is that you have to show the universe you won’t be held hostage by your circumstances. you must demonstrate your spiritual will to continue.

at least, that’s how my universe works. she pokes and probes and flirts you and teases, but it’s always to ensure i’m calibrated for the next level.

i used to think about things so linearly. one achievement after the next. but now, i desire to live in a multiple realities—if i don’t already.

this is the result of arriving at the point of womanhood where there is no right or wrong, just understanding and consent. in this arena, it’s not the best woman who wins but the one who can sustain multiple contradictory beliefs and actions at the same time because that’s what the situation calls for.

if the reward is to be a textured life, one shouldn’t imagine the path there will be straight and simple.

the messiness brings character.

i spent all my money in st. tropez, but even bankrupt, i emerged a more spiritually enriched woman. one who knows she has so much to look forward to, and from where i’m standing, it looks like jet-setting all throughout the côte d’azur.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

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p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: if you haven’t already, create your diouana womanomics account. by tracking your beauty expenses through the platform, you’re contributing to the world’s first dataset on erotic capital. this means we’ll finally have the hard data to answer questions such as, “what is the psychological, financial, and social return of skincare products for black women in their 20s?” and “which archetype of women are most likely to actually receive money and other tangible assets because of their beauty expenses?” these are important, mission-critical questions babes. create an account and contribute to the mission.

dare: bartering with the universe.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

the birthplace of becoming is in the ruins of your past.

it dawned on me not too long ago that: from the moment i graduated high school, my life has been met with a series of unpleasant events. for a period of seven years, I have found myself battling some enemy or another. for all this "hardship," what has resulted is wisdom.

ever since i was 15, i’ve held certain fantasies. fantasies i relegated to specters of the future while i figured out a sure-fire way to arrive—elegantly, and on time, if possible. but you see the issue here.

you can’t time time. you can only ride it. but for the longest while, i tried everything in my power to control the uncontrollable: light-handed witchcraft, ancestor worship, christian-pagan devotionals. and in all that prayer, what i discovered is this:

things come and go, but the truth stays.

what is the truth?

i’m no student of nietzsche, but i recall his theory that truth is a function of power. meaning, she who gets to set the terms is the one who gets to decide what is “true.” we’re witnessing that now, in our era of word-bending, code-switching, and slight revisionist history.

the truth is, i can rarely trust my emotions. monday, i’m in love. wednesday, absolutely manic. by sunday, completely restless with my decision. an unreliable narrator if you’ve ever met one.

and even now, you cannot trust what i’m saying, as it’s filtered through the uneasiness of being seemingly watched. either by future in-laws or my past and future selves.

so, what is the truth?

i’ve begun to investigate a notion i had previously held as empowering, if not absolute.

i told you of my decade-old fantasy. well, i hinted at it. when i reflect in my journals and recall my memories from then, what i had wanted as a teenager was a sense of edge and permanence. this manifested in desires for nipple piercings and a tramp stamp.

the same bookish teen who found solace in her studies thought it fun to mimic the bad gal’s iconic nail piercing and play at being the west african pamela anderson in her free time.

but play is all i was doing. i told myself these desires, although fun, were silly. that they should be reconsidered with care when i was of the age to have children, as that surely signified wisdom. better yet, i told myself it would be better to wait until after the arrival of my children.

it sounds strange, but my thinking has always been that my body, mood, and even wishes would change once i bore children. so, it was better to save anything permanent for the final sign-off of a woman much wiser, more knowledgeable, and more established than me: myself with children.

if they never come, did you still make the right decision?

recently, i’ve begun to reflect on the primacy of children in all this decision-making.

children that, if i’m being honest, have no chance of coming to this earth for at least another seven years.

the desire to have children has infiltrated every decision i’ve made—at least the ones with the most causal effects. notably, the men i’ve allowed to stay in my life and the degree to which i’ve modified my body.

the men question is simple: if i examine who he is in the present, what he has or has not done for me, and how our rapport has developed, and i get the inkling that motherhood through his lineage would mean nothing short of headache and heartbreak—especially where my fantastical dreams are concerned—i no longer consider him viable option. but you see the issue here.

again, children take on a primary role. a role which, given their unborn status, is honorable at best but short-sighted at worst.

one can point fingers at patriarchy, or the oppressive facets of west african culture which sees women as maids and broodmares, but there’s more to that story.

i desire children. i believe that, in the absence of all material longing, rearing children is a worthwhile pursuit. in the absence of mortgage rates, grocery bills, and the cost of socialization, having children really is the coolest thing: to see them grow, develop, and become their own people.

to speak to them as they discover the world, and rediscover it through their eyes. to deepen your understanding of what love truly is: not a condition, but a state of being. that is what children provide. a reason to keep the show going.

but again, this is coming from a woman who has never borne a child. but who has spent enough of her formative years around them to know what she’ll do when she has her own, and what she’d like to avoid.

and all of this is beautiful, and perfect, and incredibly heteronormative (which is okay, by the way). but the question remains: who are you outside of your desire to have children?

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who are you without your self-imposed rules?

for so long, my life choices had been laced with the undercurrent of reproductive futurism. every decision made with the understanding that it would lead me to the motherhood i desired.

you’ll say this is oppressive thinking. that a woman is more than the children she bears. and i agree.

it’s just, if i’m going to do it then i intend to do it my way. and my number one requirement is that i cannot suffer questions of material circumstances. money can never be the issue. if i lived my early adulthood in an economy of love, then motherhood must follow the same narrative thread.

a motherhood built on an economy of favors is one where you find yourself bartering with time, money, and your husband to do his “fair” share. it’s exhausting. and it steals the joy from what is a sacred condition: bringing life to earth, and committing yourself to see them through to self-sufficiency.

but all of this—this dance with future children and wiser, older selves—is also about control. it has been my way of controlling life in the absence of certainty. and through that control, i constructed a moral system: delay this until you're wiser, choose that because it's smarter, wait here until you’re more established. but what if wisdom isn’t always in delay?

my entire early adulthood thus far has been me negotiating the present as a hedge against a future i did not want: one where i’m overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated.

but the funny part is that this future i’ve been frantically planning to avoid is currently my present. so either i’m terrible at hedging my bets, or i’ve been making the wrong ones.

that’s where the motherhood question begins to feel less like a commandment and more like a choice. i can want children, but i no longer desire to filter every permanent decision—my adornments, my lovers, my aesthetics—through a hypothetical future version of myself as a mom. and a milf at that!

i arrived at this conclusion by surviving a seven-year war with time. by walking through public humiliation, private longing, the indignity of unfulfilling jobs, and the audacity of imperial men. by understanding there is no perfect decision, only the ones i make with my spirit intact.

adulthood has become for me, not a moral hierarchy, nor a checklist, or a static truth passed down from someone more senior, but a constant shifting in orientation.

it’s become a return to self, marked by understanding and consent:

understanding that your desires shift, and that this is not a failure—it’s a signal.

understanding that sometimes you outgrow the dreams you once prayed for, and in that release is a kind of grace.

understanding that your body is not a negotiation, it’s a landscape. sacred and sovereign.

and consent—especially informed consent—is the greatest gift one can give.

i used to think adulthood was about getting it right. now i’m of the mind that it’s about living in real-time, staying present, and letting each decision be an act of integrity. even the messy ones. especially the messy ones.

the sexiness of seeing things for what they are

the delaying of my own erotic embodiment—as decreed by my 15-year-old self—because i believed my unborn children deserved first pass at recontouring my body was lackluster thinking. it was unimaginative. and offensive to my autonomy as a woman.

the delaying of the tramp stamp until i’m more politically stable (e.g., with a husband who loves me and children i adore) is understandable. the “stamp” in question continues to oscillate between the names of my unborn children à la amber rose’s forehead tattoo1 or a simplistic message like “live free.” better to save that until i have a clearer understanding of what my message should be. perhaps “return to sender” could be a cheeky nod to my christian-pagan, god-as-the-supreme-masculine ideals.2

the appeal of the piercing to my 15-year-old self was twofold: both a “fuck you” to all expectations placed on a bookish, slightly nerdy, culturally repressed brilliant teenager, and a way to say something without saying anything at all. i just wasn’t sure what i wanted to say at 15. hence, i delayed it. i thought that decision should be reserved for a wiser me.

i thought it would be the version of myself who had figured out how to achieve the motherhood she wanted; one free of capitalism’s ills. but now, i’m unconvinced she should be the one to decide. for all the reasons above.

now, i believe it should be me—present me—who decides. not because i no longer want children, but because i no longer wish to delay my erotic embodiment, which is sacred to me, until the day i meet them.

i’ve committed to living fully in the body, without waiting for the moral or material sign-off of some future version of me.

and i actually have something to say now. for all seven years of treachery i’ve endured, i finally feel i’ve arrived at the base camp of my becoming. i haven’t climbed the mountain yet, but i’ve done the hard work of identifying which mountain to summit. i’ve assembled my gear. i’ve filled up my tank. and the silhouette of the mountain is in sight.

in approaching this base camp, all i can think about is who i had to become to be survive the coming thin air of the mountain. the pain of the past fortified me. and in my refinement, i want a token of my pre-becoming.

so, if my 15-year-old self wanted to say, “fuck you,” my 25-year-old self follows it up with: “pay me.”

and that’s what the piercing represents: debts paid in full.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: if you haven’t already, create your diouana womanomics account. by tracking your beauty expenses through the platform, you’re contributing to the world’s first dataset on erotic capital. this means we’ll finally have the hard data to answer questions such as, “what is the psychological, financial, and social return of skincare products for black women in their 20s?” and “which archetype of women are most likely to actually receive money and other tangible assets because of their beauty expenses?” these are important, mission-critical questions babes. create an account and contribute to the mission.

dare: letting your teenage self dictate your 20s. you’re grown! make your own decisions. for more on this, read my essay, “it’s time to kill your inner child.”

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

can i tell you a secret?

i miss myself.

the me i used to be before life became a responsibility.

a never-ending to-do list.

a call to arms.

but to be fair, i did this to myself.

i simply do not know when to quit.

i have a bad habit of overworking.

and it’s not even that i enjoy burning the midnight oil,

it’s just that i recognize that

if i don’t at least try,

it may not happen.

so trying is my insurance against my dreams not happening.

after all, in this life, nothing is a guaranteed.

but underneath all that trying,

is yearning.

yearning for rest,

for silence,

and the quiet passion of being met.

i think you and i both know what i’m trying to say.

and if you don’t, that’s quite alright.

when the moment is right, i’ll tell you all about it.

until then,

try not to work so hard.

…before you go, i have another secret to confess.

wait, no.

i mean disclose.

it’s through confession that one becomes a witch1,

so don’t believe anything i say.

a man i’ve never met haunts me.

ice for eyes,

and silver for hair.

i know him by instinct,

if nothing else.

but there’s something else.

there always is.

the one from washington square park.

after the one from tatte.

but before the gallerist.

“do you only remember them by location?” she quipped.

“memory functions in location,” i tell her.

mine is stuck in a liminal space.

sight, sound, smell.

but the universe listens.

i picked up a scent the other day:

st. tropez.

then she invited me to france with her.

“luck would have it” i said.

and i decided i’m not really alone,

just overworked.

tired.

underfed, underutilized, and undermet.

longing. as if i don’t know i’m the cause of my own problems.

seeing ghosts where none appear,

and making cemeteries out of contacts.

“you need to bury the dead properly,” she says.

“the haunting is a lack of burial,” she warned.

“hush,” i told her.

speak too loudly,

and you’ll disturb the peace.

it’s not really about him.

like i said, i only miss myself.

“and if he calls?” she teased.

tell him you only miss yourself.

“and if he insists?” she pressed.

tell him you met another.

and another.

and another.

an

other.

eventually, you’ll have to face the music.

you realize that, don’t you?

for all your brains,

you really can be so stupid.

so young,

so dumb,

so determined,

so raw.

i heard a 50 year old woman say,

“i’m too smart to have chosen what i’ve chosen.”

and i recognized myself in her words.

love is the equalizer of all.

and where are you in all of this?

self-abandoned.

and half-forgotten.

remember when he warned,

“your worst sin is that you have destroyed

and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

has it really all been for naught?

how else could you have learned these lessons?

in montauk with the global head if i hadn’t been so stupid.

my mother did warn me after all.

but my god-king said, “if a man loves you, he’ll meet you where you are.”

and, clearly, it wasn’t love.

so, off to new jersey i went.

in-laws can be really such fun.

“don’t make such jokes,” she scolds.

silly girl,

don’t you know commitments are for life?

pushing back, i told her, “i’m a diouana woman.”

i always honor my obligations.

besides, i know the real prize

is a life spent with me.

or is it?

a selfish, materialistic, ingenue-whore.

some wife you’d make.

crueler words have been said.

but are they true?

i don’t know,

you’ll have to ask him.

but i’m not asking him,

i’m speaking to you.

are you who you say you are?

if i wasn't, why would i say i am?

because you have a flair for the dramatic,

and your memory is unreliable.

“all memory is unreliable” i told her.

not yours.

you, who remembers every freudian slip,

every cruel intention

every malice and psychological warfare hurdled your way.

so, i ask again,

is it true that you really are a selfish, materialistic, ingenue-whore?

guilty as charged.

“will you hang me for it?”

i don’t know,

you’ll have to ask him.

sweet dreams,

a diouana woman

true love vs real love

i’m being haunted by ghosts i’ve never met. apparitions who seem keen on reminding me that the best is yet to come. and that’s why, from time to time, i find myself dissatisfied with the current state of things. not out of ingratitude or suffering, but because i know i could be so much more. i could have so much more.

there’s a narcissism in thinking that you’re destined for greatness. in thinking you’re special enough to raise above the system’s programming. to transcend the mundane.

in my last essay, written for those who are spiraling; dancing between being the best the game has ever seen and simply deciding you’re too beautiful to work (hard), i told you to consider a third option:

transcending into something unprecedented.

specialness comes out of a relentless commitment to one’s point of view. not to the point of stubbornness, lest you’ll have no friends, but to the height of taste.

in cultivating one’s point of view, one gives themselves a purpose. a raison d’être that imbues all that one does with meaning; with hope.

it seems silly to say, but hope really is the most powerful thing in the world. it’s the closest thing we have to god. i reckon, it’s the true definition of love.

i told you in my essay, love as spiritual redemption, that dante awoke, alone and afraid, in a dense forest, deep in the depths of hell. and that moment reminded me of genesis 3:9, where god calls out to adam but adam does not answer. scholars have said that this is the first moment man hid from the divine. not out of play, but out of shame. for who wants to face their father after they have sinned?

in dante’s story, he starts so far away from god, that it is not his maker who comes to his aid, but instead a saint, virgil; who, himself had been sent by the angel beatrice; who herself swears she was acting on love’s orders.

“love moved me, and makes me speak.” she tells dante.

in reading the fuller context of her words, one can’t help but think about hope as the true definition of love:

“i am beatrice, who sends you.
i come from a place i long to return to.
love moved me, and makes me speak.
when i am before my lord, i often praise you.””

love, in a heterosexual context

when i say that hope is the true definition of love, i mean that hope is the only thing that keeps human beings alive. faith that tomorrow is better than today. so when we are loved truly by someone, that person is witnessing our potential. that we will be better tomorrow than we are today. they are choosing to walk by ourselves through faith, not sight.

hope is the dimension that turns real love into true love. the difference being that the truth is a function of power, as nietzsche said, and its agreed upon definition is wholly contingent on who is in charge; whereas real things only exist in one’s own reality. so, to have both real love and true love is to experience a love that is both present and undeniable.

it is not the work of 21st century situationships, with their lack of emotional availability and communication. no, it’s the stuff of 19th century unions that were at once trysts and life-long love affairs.

true love is imbued with hope, and thus, it’s a way of reaching god in someone else. when you look at them, you do not see faults, you see potential. you do not care for the hardship, because the mundane is elevated simply by their presence. true love is a powerful, but dangerous thing. the danger is that it makes you realize that it is not the materials that make life worth living, but the spiritual. the state of being seen at the level of your soul, not the shape of your curves. and in this way, true love lowers the profitability of countless industries sustained by the manufactured insecurities of women. because true love inspires you to meet yourself, not run as you don every trend in order to escape you who are underneath the piles and heaps of artifice you place on yourself.

and artifice is just find when it’s fulfilling your fantasy, but when’s the last time you even articulated that to yourself?

maybe you’re just so busy in your day-to-day that you have no time to truly sit and reflect. as the task for us all is to become operators who can exist, and ultimately thrive, in a system such as ours. and how does one thrive in capitalistic society? by being of use. being useful to others within the system.

but it’s hard, isn’t it? in between your existence as a woman, you have to find a way to mold yourself into a masculine shape the system will recognize so it can let you through; and once in, all that awaits you is work, work, and even more work. if it’s not work, then it’s sycophancy that awaits you. and in the dullness of all this late-stage capitalism, you find your escape in shoes, bags, and impeccable jewelry. but that adds up, and so you find you have to become of even greater value for the system to reward you enough for your shopping sprees to no longer make a dent.

and this is exhausting work. soul-crushing, meaningless work. so you decide, fuck this. and you make pains to meet someone who can rescue from this system. who can be useful for the both of you. problem solved.

but life, even a rich one, is not without its problems.

it would be ideal if you loved him truly, but it’s enough for it to be real. who needs god when you have a 30-carat natural ring? and no concept of how much the mortgage costs? after all, you’re god’s daughter, and god wants you to be happy. and you weren’t happy when you were slaving away in that capitalistic system. so a “traditional (read: wealthy)” marriage will have to do.

but even in your escape, you find that you still exist in an economy of favors; one you had hope would evolve into an economy of love.

the best example i can give of this realization is a scene from a recently published netflix series, sirens.

when the lady of the manor is flexing her powers by firing the head of security who, to be fair to her, did not do what she asked, to which he informs her that he works for her husband, and not her.

and she’s genuinely stunned to realize that the truth was in front of her all along: even in the glamour, the ease, and the beach-front views, she had gotten herself trapped in a prison. one where she thought she was free of the oppressive systems of her past due, not only due to her proximity to power vis-à-vis her husband, but her lack of any financial responsibility as he was “the provider.” (but he couldn’t provide peace of mind)

and she realized all the labor she put into being her husband’s wife; labor, that her young assistant had now perfected due to being in such close quarters with her and was quite literally positioned to take over. and it dawned on her that she, too, worked for her husband.

i took some liberities with the last paragraph to prove my point, as it’s unclear when “kiki” realized she was fucked—if she ever did; as her husband announcing his wanting of a divorce was genuine news to her but his desire to be with her young assistant was of no surprise to as his tossing of women when they no longer served him was how she became the second wife.

it seems that in our collective unrest with the system we find ourselves in; our collective tiredness from being perfect in all aspects of our lives and the burden of becoming; we’re seeking a way out.

and because we’re human beings who are biologically primed towards companionship, our relationships offer a fertile terrain for us to “have it all.”

but we can’t even have that.

not because we’re unwilling, but because the vast majority of us are willingly accepting the emotional lobotomy of being with a man who “provides,” but does so at the cost of our being able to voice a shred of anger towards him; and if it’s not the emotional lobotomy of being provided for by a man you can never become angry with, than it‘s the other emotional lobotomy of being provided for by a man you don’t love. or it’s a special hellspace of both under of banner of “sprinkle sprinkle.”

as a christian-pagan, i adore shera because she’s a witch but i will continue to say that she gives relationship advice only a self-selecting subset of women should really be following. and unless you subscribe to the debbie jelinsky playbook of “marry them, drain them, and divorce them,” shera’s advice really isn’t for you. none of the gurus’ advice is, because their advice roots itself in assumptions of hierarchy dressed up as self-esteem. and if it’s not that, then it’s marketers dressed up as “trad wives” selling you on a traditionalism not rooted in any type of book of scripture but an algorithm.

it’s just an economy of favors: he “provides”, and you tend to the home (and the kids, and his life, and the kids’ lives, and the farm if you have one).

that is not an economy of love.

at it’s best, an economy of love engulfs two people in their own spiritual eroticism. it’s napeleon writing sex-obsessed love letters to joséphine in the middle of war and lotting entire countries for treasures and trophies to present to joséphine when he returns to her. it’s a man indulging your every fantasies, not because “you’ve earned it,” but because you wanted it and he believes you should have what you want. this is a fantasy best suited for true love. love that is both present and undeniable. love that will see your anger before you’ve uttered a word. love that will provide from the spirit, not from a scorecard. meaning, that it’s not about the performance of masculinity, but the eroticism of polarity. it’s the physical manifestation of a passage that has haunted me since the moment i read it:

“he bears her such love and keeps such faith to her that all of his subjects…say that she has bewitched him, and they call her the witch.”

mistresses: a history of the other women

now, there are logistical steps one can take to find themselves in a situation such as this. but if i were to begin to articulate my understanding of those steps, i’d be no better than those gurus who keep disappointing their audiences, so i’ll remain quiet on what i know.

but the one thing i can share, as it relates to positioning, is just that: “positioning.” my only advice is to study the lives of the women, public and historic, you admire and analyze how they positioned themselves to receive what they wanted. the answer just might surprise you.

dear philosopher-king…

although i make my living in an economy of favors, my spirit will forever live in an economy of love. i’ll forever be a woman who demands more from the world, not less; a woman who has experienced being understood at the depths of my soul, not the outline of my waist.

and it’s in that dreamscape that i met him. when i came to him with despair at the men my age, he told wrote me a soliloquy to which he ended, “…no wonder you find yourself unimpressed.” he told me my bubbliness reminds him of champagne, and my wit homeric. he spoke to me in shakespeare references and knew long before i that investment banking was not for me.

“playing banker, or playing with bankers?” he once quipped.

i’d love to tell you that he was a figment of my imagination. that his absence is the result of me no longer dreaming that scene, but he’s as real as you and i. but even he paled in comparison to the love i’ve longed for since i read stephanie meyer’s twilight. a love that will find itself in the hybrid of alexander skarsgård and jamie dimon. a man who reminds me of the following passages, poems, and quotes i’ve had in my notes app since i was 16:

“devour me. if you really think you can stomach me.”

“monks renounce their vows for me.”

“i have loved men weaker than and have suffered from this.”

“she wanted unspeakable intimacies…to drink him down…

“their bodies met in perfumes, in sweat.”

“don’t wait for it…create a world, your world. alone. stand alone. create. and then the love will come to you, then it comes to you.

“he had not touched me. he did not need to. his presence had affected me in such a way that i felt as if he had caressed me for a long time.”

“trust is the groom of love.”

“i want to be able to trust, not live in perpetual self-defense.”

“…a glorification fantasy wrapped in the language of submission.”

i told you i’m being haunted by ghosts i’ve never met. but the haunting roots itself in a feeling i’ve known before.

have you heard the laugh of a child? a young one, no older than three. it’s a circular laugh, such that as soon one is about to end, the other begins, louder than the last one.

take that meta feeling of a child’s laugh, with the magnetism that can only be found in polarity, no matter the circumstances, and you’ll begin to see the ghost that chases me.

shes my future self, daunted by my current state. her patience is waning, hence her haunting.

but there’s nothing much more i can do, expect ride it out. after all, venus attracts the union for which you are prepared.

and i ask you, “are you ready?”

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: if you haven’t already, create your diouana womanomics account!!! by tracking your beauty expenses through the app, you’re contributing to the world’s first dataset on erotic capital!!! this means we’ll finally have the hard data to answer questions such as, “what is the psychological, financial, and social return of skincare products for black women in their 20s?” and “which archetype of women are most likely to actually receive money because of their beauty expenses?” important, mission-critical questions.

dare: do i even have to say it lol

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

hi, my name is diouana and it’s really nice to meet you. you’re recommended to me by some people

it’s fun being a woman, isn’t it? to exist in the in-between. that liminal space between knowing and understanding; where one experiences the pleasure-pain of becoming.

if i’m grateful for anything, it’s that my entrance into womanhood has not been marred with violence. grief, yes. but never violence.

womanhood, for me, has been an initiation. a heroine’s journey of slaying every monster that came for my head. of exorcising every demon that came for my soul.

outside of the sheer audacity of believing myself deserving of a good, more-than-comfortable, life, my guiding principle has always been my perspective. my unrelenting voice; my unwillingness to give up on myself; my commitment to continue to do the work of becoming even more of who i am.

we can all agree that the opposite of self-destruction is self-creation. and i’ve found that the best conduit for self-creation is rooted in fantasy.

fantasy gets its start in mythmaking; which finds itself emerging in the keeping steady of the small details; which lends itself to having a memory long enough to never forget minute matters.

to make one’s myth is to be principally concerned with telling the world who we are, and not the other way around.

that said, there are limitations. there always are.

the world may not care, or even affirm, your reality. and that’s quite alright. it’s better to live in one’s own world, so long as one maintains a dialogue with reality.

returning to fantasy, i find it to be the domain of the feminine. i do not mean to say that only women can create fantasy. after all, history knows many great men who knew a thing or two about putting on a show. my view is that fantasy, and its creation, comes best, and easily, to those who venerate the feminine spirit; who honor her teachings; who walk alongside her descendants.

and so, i find myself within the domain of the feminine as a student of fantasy. as a woman entranced by the concept of erotic capital and how women just like me wield it. if they wield it at all.

before we move on, i should tell you that although i love womanhood and its textures, i understand if you do not. i understand if you find it oppressive, painful and disorienting. i understand if you find yourself alienated from it, not because you are not a woman, but because you do not meet certain gendered expectations. whatever those may be for you. i understand, and i invite you to get lost within the feminine labyrinth even still. fantasy can upended even the strictest of expectations and that’s the fun part. so if the feminine domain is not your home despite your birthright, make your home in your own myth.

introducing…diouana womanomics

my myth is that of a founder-scholar. an erotic capital economist. a macro strategist for the divine feminine. this myth is the result of my taking seriously one thing that has encircled me my whole life: beauty.

not beauty as superficial pursuit, but beauty as a material fact in the economic lives of women.

when we discuss beauty, we often talk standards, hierarchies, and assumptions. but i’m not interested in that line of thinking. as i said, fantasy is what i traffic in.

i’m more interested in how much women are spending into beauty. their hair, their nails, their full body waxes, their makeup, their hydrafacials. everything!

how much does it cost for you to create your myth? and what is your myth costing you?

to the laywoman, these sound like the same question but they’re not. let me give you an example:

the above is a screen grab from my web app, diouana womanomics, which is the world’s first feminine financial identity platform rooted in jungian psychoanalysis and modern portfolio theory. it’s a female-focused behavioral finance field study masquerading as a beauty expense tracker.

at the time of my latest entries, which date to may 2025, i had spent since the beginning of 2025, $2,933 on beauty related purchases. this is what i meant when i asked, “how much does it cost for you to create your myth?”

now, if you look to the right of the screen grab, you’ll see that my web app, diouana womanomics, calculated exactly how much i could have in 10 years if i spent 50% less than what i did and invested the different. this came out to $50,764; which, at the time of publishing, is enough for me to buy 2 mini kellys! this is what i meant when i asked, “what is your myth costing you?”

my myth costs $2,933, but it’s costing me $50,764 in the long run.

the first number seems innocuous, especially for a 5-month period, but the second number makes a difference if one cares about female financial independence.

and isn’t that the name of the game? the ability, as a woman, to walk away from any situation that does not serve us? please us? make us happy, feel seen, and secure?

money makes the difference. and $50k is a head start in an emergency fund.

but the purpose of the web app, diouana womanomics, isn’t to shame you into spending less on beauty, but to illuminate to you who you are in relation to your beauty spending habits. using jungian psychoanalysis, i devised an assessment that each user takes in order to discover their primary, secondary, and shadow archetype. as you can see, my primary is the lover, followed by the maiden, and my shadow is the sage:

if i could sum up my archetypes, it would be through the moniker of ingénue. which is befitting as i’m still a woman becoming. maybe i’ll always be.

all of this is fun, if not a bit fluffy (expect for that opportunity cost calculator, that’s pure math!) and you may find yourself asking, “why does this matter?”

it matters because no one takes what women do seriously. not even women.

do you remember those statistics we found in that diouana woman livestream from february 2025? the one i referenced again in my essay about the societal fear, and disrespect, of beautiful women:

“i told you that beauty should be a footnote in your story and only mentioned after the fact. that is my diouana woman take.

but let us consider, if not accept, the beauty culture in consumerist america.

let us also consider that in 2022-2023 alone, single american women between the ages of 25 to 34 spent $1.3 billion on personal care products and services, inclusive of makeup and skincare.

the second largest category of spenders for this line item were single american women between the ages of 35 to 44 who spent $857 million, followed by single american women under the age of 25 who spent $777 million.

collectively, the highest categories of unmarried female spenders contributed $2.9 billion worth of consumption on personal care products and services in 2022-2023.

now, compare these figures to single american men of the same age groups:

the highest category of spenders remained the same, single american men between the ages of 25 to 34 spent $532 million in 2022-2023 on personal care products and services, likely inclusive of makeup and skincare.

the second largest category of spenders for this line item were single american men between the ages of 45 to 54 who spent $373 million, followed by single american men between the ages of 35 to 44 who spent $335 million.

collectively, the highest categories of unmarried male spenders contributed $1.2 billion worth of consumption on personal care products and services in 2022-2023.

readers should note that when compared to their unmarried gen z counterparts, single american men under the age of 25 spent $262 million on personal care products and services that same year. this represents a 66.2% gap in spending.

when i’ve done a more robust and rigorous analysis of these figures, and those of earlier years, i will present you a white paper detailing my findings on the microeconomics of female erotic capital expenditure (basically analyzing erotic capital as an economic force) as it relates to american beauty culture and the gendered wealth gap on asset terms (so not how much money women and men make in terms of salary, but how much they have invested, respectively). this research, and its iterations, will be aptly titled diouana womanomics.

but for now, glossing over these numbers, it’s undeniable that unmarried women, gen z at least, spend far more on beauty. approximately $515 million dollars more.”

the economic force of erotic capital is unparalleled. i reckon, it’s on par with the S&P 500 on a returns basis. meaning, it is my hypothesis that not only are women spend an incredible amount of money on beauty, but some women are receiving outsized returns for their efforts.

i have another hypothesis that women spend like courtesans but do not receive like courtesans. meaning, women, at least american unmarried generation z women, spend half a billion dollars more on beauty than their male counterparts, but do not have nearly as much as them in savings or investments. considering the retirement crisis within the united states, it’s not hyperbolic to assume women will bare the brunt of this. and consider that it has been said “motherhood is the single greatest predictor of poverty for women,” women having their own financial security, irrespective of husbands, boyfriends, suitors, or lovers, is very, very important.

now that i’ve scared you, let’s take this back to beauty.

diouana women understand beauty as a currency. but like all smart investors, diouana women understand how to diversify our portfolios. in this case, i will continue my monthly full-body waxes at ~$230 a session but i will not partake in eyelash extensions which require, at least in my city, $200 refills every 2-3 weeks. this is my version of girl math. not financial illiteracy wrapped up in baby pale pink. but fiscal responsibility that still honors my erotic capital.

i know money is not the sexiest thing to talk about, when you actually have to talk about it, but understanding how to finance your erotic capital with your hard-earned cash is. it’s not sexy to be bad with money, but it is erotic to always have cash flow. diouana womanomics keeps you on track.

now, something i’m also keen on researching, my so called research within my field research, is what kind of financial returns women are actually receiving from their erotic capital.

if you look at my return-on-investment analysis within diouana womanomics, you’ll see that the majority of my “returns” from my beauty purchases have all been psychological! literally just confident boosts. which is fine and dandy. but remember, these confidence boosts are costing me $50,764 in opportunity costs via the money i am not investing, and growing, in the stock market but instead spending at sephora.

let’s say i was a woman whose return-on-investment profile showed that i was actually receiving cash-on-cash returns1. meaning, that my beauty expenses were actually creating wealth for me. what would that look like?

well, this is where the wisdom of whores comes in. for the purposes of the study, i call it the diouana woman inter-relational wealth matrix and it’s housed in the divine feminine economics page of my web app, diouana womanomics. basically, it’s a bloomberg-terminal style dashboard that when enough data becomes available, it will map which exact archetypes (e.g., the lover, the sage, the maiden, etc) have the most wealth transfer inter-relationally. meaning, which archetypal women are actually able to convert their erotic capital into legitimate wealth. be it through the receival of stocks, jewelry, vintage handbags, real estate!

it has been said that the taj mahal was built as a gift to a woman2. this study is the world’s first attempt to quantify what it means for a women to inspire that level of devotion. if not, gift-giving.

from the golden state, with love…

yesterday, i received word i had been accepted into graduate school for a masters of science in applied data science3. the proper african daughter i am, i promptly whatsapp’d my mother to tell her the good news.

i studied french literature at harvard. a consequence of my attending le modéle noir exhibition while studying abroad in paris. i began my career on wall street in financial institutions investment banking, an endeavor i do not recommend unless your dream is to suffer under tyrannical sycophantic workaholics, and throughout that experience one thing became clear to me:

1. i was never meant to be an investment banker

2. no one takes beautiful women seriously

c’est dommage, mais ce la vie.

i would never have been able to imagine, let only conjure up, an idea as exciting and provocative as diouana womanomics had it not been for the hell i endured. i would have never had the confidence to pursue it all the way to a filing with the trademark office had it not been for this platform, diouana woman.

i’ve spoken about diouana before, the main character from ousmane sembène’s la noire de…, but i’ve never made the connection, to you, between her and us.

diouana was a woman who was promised the world by her employers. bravely, she left the safety and familiarity of dakar to begin a life in france, making a living taking care of the children of the french family that had lured her from her home.

diouana was lied to, and then made to feel inferior. she was mistreated, and that mistreatment was made to feel as the status quo because of the power differential between her and her employer.

diouana refused to live the life of a slave, and so she went to the afterlife.

in creating this platform, my aim was to resurrect diouana and honor her female spirit of freedom-seeking, glamour-loving, intellectual sensuality that dreams of endless nights spent in the south of france with an emotionality that is deeply rooted in a west african aesthetic—thereby combining an old world with an even older one.

diouana is me. diouana is you. diouana is us.

she’s every woman that has every been made to feel as if she is worthless. every woman that has ever been made to feel bad for wanting more. every woman that has every been punished for seeking better. greater. higher.

if you are a woman who values your erotic capital, do not be ashamed of that fact. it’s yours and yours alone. it’s the portal between your physical manifestation and the essence of your soul. it’s your erotic, in the words of audre lorde.

diouana womanomics was created to legitimatize that erotic in the language of capital because erotic capital is the economic language of the divine feminine.

cosmetics heir leonard lauder’s lipstick theory “suggests that consumers will spend more on small, affordable luxury items like lipstick during economic downturns or when faced with financial uncertainty.”

diouana womanomics is to be the world’s first macroeconomic dataset on erotic capital to prove lauder undeniably, and quantitatively, correct! but not through focus groups or the rise, or fall, of stock prices neither of us care to track, but through the expenses, experiences, and energetics of women like you and me.

it’s an ambitious project, but a diouana woman is nothing, if not, ambitious.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

p.s. watch my video essay on “the wisdom of whores | women, patriarchy, and love”

the rise and rise of diouana woman

during my senior year of college, i had the good fortunate of stumbling upon several books about the art world.

there was michael shnayerson’s boom: mad money, mega dealers, and the rise of contemporary art; don thompson’s the $12 million stuffed shark: the curious economics of contemporary art; meryle secrest’s duveen: a life in art.

each of these texts served as my initiation into the art world. a world that seemed at once magical, absurd, and, at times, hollow.

following graduation, i found myself in a new city but old habits die hard.

my first errand upon moving was obtaining a library card. and it was at the tompkins public library that i saw this oversized blue, black book titled bearing the words “young, gifted, and black.”

i devoted the following week to closely reading antwaun sargent’s young, gifted, and black: a new generation of artists: the lumpkin-boccuzzi family collection of contemporary art; and it was in between my analysis of the pages, that i decided i would one day create an institutionally relevant art collection.

so it was to my delight—pure, unadulterated joy actually—that i found myself in the home of the lumpkin-boccuzzi family collection as part of a weekend trustee visit with my patron group.

and just like that, the book i had read a year ago had, for a brief afternoon in tribeca, become my reality.

so it was an even greater joy to have received an invitation to london to attend an opening of theaster gates’ latest exhibition at white cube.

and just like that, those stories i had read—about fancy art world dinners and jetsetting across the globe for exhibition openings—would be, for a brief two day sojourn in london, become my reality.

absurdist, that adventure was. and a complete crystallization of my identity.

and in those brief 48 hours i spent in the queen’s country, i found myself sitting across a woman whose book had become my covid-era find that completely refined how i related to my budding sex appeal.

i took away several things from my interview with dr. catherine hakim:

1. people do not take the things women do seriously, including other women

2. women are not utilizing (read: leveraging) their erotic capital enough, if at all

3. and if women do leverage their erotic capital, they are demonized (we know this from “lived experienced” as well as research)

in my corresponding diouana woman salon on erotic capital, it seemed to me there was a real desire to understand more, on a molecular level, all there is to know about erotic capital.

but the thing is, how can you capture something so fleeting? so subjective? so enigmatic to the untrained eye?

…well, i have a solution. an invitation, actually.

i call it diouana womanomics.

if you remember my essay who’s afraid of beautiful women?, you’ll know that i touched upon this briefly before. a passing thought it was at that time:

“…readers should note that when compared to their unmarried gen z counterparts, single american men under the age of 25 spent $262 million on personal care products and services that same year. this represents a a 66.2% gap in spending.

when i’ve done a more robust and rigorous analysis of these figures, and those of earlier years, i will present you a white paper detailing my findings on the microeconomics of female erotic capital expenditure (basically analyzing erotic capital as an economic force) as it relates to american beauty culture and the gendered wealth gap on asset terms (so not how much money women and men make in terms of salary, but how much they have invested, respectively). this research, and its iterations, will be aptly titled diouana womanomics.

but for now, glossing over these numbers, it’s undeniable that unmarried women, gen z at least, spend far more on beauty. approximately $515 million dollars more.”

i think it was a diouana woman livestream where i stumbled upon consumer expenditure data on personal care products and services (the closet mapping to ‘erotic capital’ the bureau of labor statistics consumer expenditure survey has) and i was both horrified and intrigued at the gap in spending between the sexes on account of erotic capital—or its closest proxy.

in an era where asset prices, specifically those of homes, make it untenable, seemingly at least, to advance one’s adulthood past the early stages, to be spending what amounts to half a billion dollars more on erotic capital in what many have termed “a standard of living crisis” is unthinkable and not the best use of one’s resources…or is it?

i, and likely like you, am a deeply venusian woman. that explains my obsession with the sacred whore. that, and my ketu placements.

venusians understand that it is through self-worship, self-adornment, and self-reference that we receive our blessings.

venusians also know that venus keeps all her promises. and the only thing she loves more than exaltation is a woman absolutely obsessed with her own erotic capital.

now, that is not to say one needs to spend thousands upon thousands on their beauty maintenance or be lavished routinely in other to join the circle of venusians.

no, not at all.

the barrier to entry is two-fold:

1. take what women do seriously

2. a legitimate worship, if not deep reverence, for the divine feminine

none of these two so-called “qualifiers” cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

like, i said, an invitation.

and if you, too, are curious about erotic capital and the ways in which women’s economic force shape it, and most importantly, how your own relationship to beauty feeds into this paradigm, i invite you to fall in love with diouana womanomics.

what became as an intellectual inquiry is shifting into a real-life field research decoding erotic capital as the economic language of the divine feminine.

on its surface it’s a budgeting tool you can access on any browser (with a downloadable app forthcoming) that uses jungian psychoanalysis to map your relationship to beauty culture with one of seven financial-archetypal identities and a corresponding meta domain.

for example, after taking the in-app assessment, you might discover that your primary archetype is the lover, making you, in diouana womanomics terms, an erotic capitalist. you could also find that your primary archetype is the maiden while your secondary is the huntress and your shadow archetype (aka your repressed financial spending patterns) is the lover. in plain terms, this means you could be a girlie whose masquerading as a girl boss who secretly wishes she was a trophy wife.

and while you track your beauty spending (i’m told we’re in a recession, so keeping a watchful eye over our monthly cashflow is critical1) and log in the emotional, social, and financial resonance your beauty investments are yielding, you’ll be contributing to the first economic anthropological study of its kind: an exploration into erotic capital as the economic language of the divine feminine.

i’ve had a lot of fun, and many sleepless nights, building the app so far. but that’s my dedication to the venusian arts!

this fall, i intend to pursue a master’s in applied data science, with the diouana womanomics app as my capstone project, to fully around out my vision of creating a new economic theory for the divine feminine.

and do what no one has cared, or thought, to do: take the things that women do seriously, and apply real rigor to the articulation of erotic capital, the economic force of women, and the intersections of beauty, identity, and financial behavior2.

and i absolutely cannot execute this mission of creating the world’s first living archive of feminine economic anthropology without you.

fall in love with diouana womanomics

mars is where true love resides

in my latest essay, love as spiritual redemption, i used virgil from the divine comedy as an allegory of how true spiritual resonance, what i called 'young love’ in the essay can save us all from the depths of hell.

i also went into greater detail about it, and other essays of mine, during my livestream yesterday. which, by popular (and necessary) demand from the girls, you can find it on youtube. don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

our next livestream, will be tomorrow (today, depending on when you read this), April 24th at 9p eastern.

the link to that forthcoming youtube livestream is here. bookmark it!

i’ll also go live on substack too, for those you do prefer that / find it easier to interact with the livestream that way. but as a heads up, we will transition fully to doing our weekly tuesday and thursday livestreams on youtube <3

from diouana, with love…

i’ll leave you with my favorite passage from monday’s essay:

“you might ask what separates old love from young love.

several things as there are several meanings.

you have lovers who have known each other for years. decades even. there’s a steadiness, a predictability in their dynamic.

after each tussle one says, “i’ll see you in prague” to which the other quips, “but i’ll be in berlin.”

it’s about meeting the moment. nothing more, nothing else. it’s an unhurried rhythm that seems deceptively easy to maintain.

young love is clumsier in its execution. more earnest.

she says, “i’d followed you to mars.” he tells her, “and i’ll make sure we land in montecito.”

neither one is better than the other. just different in its origin and much more exacting in its orientation.

you should lean towards the side you prefer.

preferences, after all, are a girl’s best friend.

but to the point of young and old.

i had once found that older men were like wool coats. there was a weight to them i found comforting.

i have since realized i preferred such a heavy jacket due to the world i found myself in: frigid, until the very end. even the wind had teeth.

and it was only when he took me away, somewhere warmer; where the oceans were aquamarine and the sand whiter than the sun, that i realized: in the absence of institutional fights, i’d much rather be sunbathing in the caribbean.

and so, i too, began to consider a little thing called ease.

to embrace fully that maybe, just maybe, life is not a constant series of proving myself to systems that care for my heart but not for its beating.

and that if i’m going to seek approval from any institution, let it be the institution of family.”

with that, i’ll leave you with the same question i asked on monday…

“how imaginative can you be when you realize you cannot fail?”

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. read my latest essay, love as spiritual redemption.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

there seems to be a war against love. young love. the kind that smiles during kisses. the kind that finds strength in tenderness and audacity in inexperience.

love that grows with you. love that sees you through. love that reminds you. no, shows you, perhaps for the first time, that there’s goodness and grace in this morbid world.

in a world where gluttony, avarice, and a lack of regard for your fellow man is incentivized, young love stands as the shield against all forces brought to bring us all into depths of hell.

and if you have ever been there, the depths of hell that is, you’ll know it’s best not to stay there for too long. least you forget who you are, and from whence you came. even more, you might even forget to whom you belong.

regardless, getting thrown out of eden isn’t the end of the world. it’s the beginning of another.

as the indian mystic osho wrote, “it is sometimes beautiful to go even against god.”

in our pursuit of knowledge, of truth that exists outside of doctrine, we can find ourselves lost. even still, innocence, in its most potent form, is never having sinned, but being able to find our way back home even if we have. and if you’re lost, young love stands as a winged angel on a mountaintop ready to guide us back to whence we came.

“love moved me, and makes me speak.”

in his introduction to dante alighieri’s the divine comedy, eugenio montale wrote “…with the help of forces greater than himself, [he] saw his invention become reality…[and] he was obligated to come out of his labyrinth and rejoin his fellow men.”

how many of us are lost in labyrinths of our own making, desperately seeking to return to whence we came? searching for recognition of who we once were.

the saint virgil told dante, who woke to him himself within a shadowed forest on good friday in the year 1300:

“your soul has been assailed by cowardice,

which often weighs so heavily on a man—

distracting him from honorable trials…”

at the top of this year, i wrote that in these times, our only way forward is to become own witness; own historian; own archivist.

to witness ourselves becoming, even if circumstance says otherwise.

but the heroine’s journey is long. often, you’ll be asked to dive deep into the belly of the beast just for the chance to stake your claim in this world.

it can be exhausting. becoming. the pain of birthing one’s self over and over and over again. until each frankenstein baby is better than the last; having learned from the mistakes of its predecessors.

this exhaustion can lead to burnout. complete fatigue from fighting both the outer world and our inner demons.

when we feel the weariness in our bones, where can we rest our souls?

i used to believe there’s no rest for the wicked. certainly not for young women with an axe to grind.

but this relationship to work, as constant and unrelenting, does not a life make.

a future it might secure, but living?

that requires space.

space to breathe; space to rest; space to dream.

if you’re working night and day, with no breaks in between, you’re in no better condition that those who had their lives from exodus 1:11–14 “made bitter with hard service."

but i find that this ruthless work ethic is valorized; lauded, even.

one’s worth becomes wrapped in institutions who value your output, not your input.

one’s dignity is mapped to prestige, not provenance. not the life you’ve lived that has made you who you are.

in a world with all work and no play, there’s simply no time to reminisce. there’s work to be done!

and so you forget to live. to dream. to rest. to breathe.

and you wind yourself up so tightly in timelines, deadlines, and to-do lists that you completely forgot why you got into the game to begin with.

in fact, you’ve completely forgotten you were even playing to begin with.

and with this realization; this sinking feeling that there has to be more. more life; more dreams; more rest; more breathes to take, you realize that you oriented yourself to the wrong star.

that the game you were hunting isn’t worth the bait.

that there’s more to life than arduous work.

and in this clarity, young love emerges as a recounting of the possibility of more.

in reading the divine comedy, one begins to understand that hell is not an inferno but a place without hope.

a space devoid of the possibility of more. the probability of different.

young love stands as the rebel to this thinking.

that more does exist.

dreams can come true.

and absurdity, through abstract in its orientation, can manifest with enough force of will and commitment to the dream.

but it’s hard to maintain such positivity if one is not trained in the laws of universe.

that their words are spells. writing, its own form of scripture. so it’s best to be mindful what we say. and the words we allow to permeate our minds.

but when you have a guide, a lover even, waiting for you on the other side; one who chants your name so you don’t lose you sense of direction to the exit, half, if not all, of the pressure is lifted from you.

it’s easy to accomplish supposedly insurmountable when someone is rooting for you. when someone looks at you and sees only grace.

should you not have the capacity to do that for yourself, for what ever reason, it is advisable to find it within young love.

you might ask what separates old love from young love.

several things as there are several meanings.

you have lovers who have known each other for years. decades even. there’s a steadiness, a predictability in their dynamic.

after each tussle one says, “i’ll see you in prague” to which the other quips, “but i’ll be in berlin.”

it’s about meeting the moment. nothing more, nothing else. it’s an unhurried rhythm that seems deceptively easy to maintain.

young love is clumsier in its execution. more earnest.

she says, “i’d followed you to mars.” he tells her, “and i’ll make sure we land in montecito.”

neither one is better than the other. just different in its origin and much more exacting in its orientation.

you should lean towards the side you prefer.

preferences, after all, are a girl’s best friend.

but to the point of young and old.

i had once found that older men were like wool coats. there was a weight to them i found comforting.

i have since realized i preferred such a heavy jacket due to the world i found myself in: frigid, until the very end. even the wind had teeth.

and it was only when he took me away, somewhere warmer; where the oceans were aquamarine and the sand whiter than the sun, that i realized: in the absence of institutional fights, i’d much rather be sunbathing in the caribbean.

and so, i too, began to consider a little thing called ease.

to embrace fully that maybe, just maybe, life is not a constant series of proving myself to systems that care for my heart but not for its beating.

and that if i’m going to seek approval from any institution, let it be the institution of family.

and so young love came in and saved me from the labyrinth of my overthinking, prone-to-spiral brain.

encouraged me to come out from beneath my own shadow. to not seek approval from the outer world nor suffer in institutional settings to prove a point; but to dare, in legitimate ways, to be all that i can be.

virgil, in guiding dante through the ante-inferno, tells him:

“here one must leave behind all hesitation;

here every cowardice must meet its death.

…these wretched ones, who never were alive.”

what does it mean to be alive, if not to allow one’s heart to open to another? fully. totally. and with grace.

macbeth said it best, “who could refrain, that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?”

one can argue that everything macbeth did, he did for his wife. another argument can be made that even in her treachery, all lady macbeth wanted was the best for her husband.

and in their own lovesick way, these cut-throats embodied young love.

to those who are spiraling; dancing between being the best the game has ever seen and simply deciding you’re too beautiful to work (hard), consider a third option:

transcending into something unprecedented.

from this side of things, my lasting question to you is, “how imaginative can you be when you realize you cannot fail?”

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: true love as spiritual healing.

dare: forsaking love; true love.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

a wife and a husband walk into a bar

have you ever been in love? that sweet feeling of euphoria. that quiet spell of calm.

i could write sonnets about the healing powers of love. true love.

the kind you don’t doubt. the kind that makes you face all your fears. the kind that makes you giggle in the most banal moments.

love that feels like an answered prayer.

that god, forever the generous father, gifted you someone who makes the effort to understand you. answers you when you call. rises to every occasion.

and is always there when you fall.

someone who pushes you towards the path of your dreams. someone who gives feedback when asked, always gently. but always firmly.

someone who reminds you there’s good in this world. greatness, even.

someone all to yourself.

love, in its purest form, gives us hope. another reason for continuing on. a shield we hold as we do the work of becoming.

making one’s life in exacting detail has to be the most painstaking path there is.

not settling out of fear or cowardice. but choosing, even with the associated costs, to make one’s live their own.

imagine doing this work, this very critical and thoughtful work, with someone by yourself. someone you trust. someone you fantasize about. someone who takes the time to understand you.

friendship, i believe it’s called. that intimate knowing.

i wish it for us all.

to be loved by someone who would truly miss us if, god forbid, we were to perish. not because we were the fairest in all the lands, but because we were their person. their confidante. their oracle. their partner.

dare i say, their equal.

but who cares about equality. such feminist thinking. the drivel of naive women who do not understand the stakes: that “a woman’s life is all work and little rest.”

have you considered a little thing called “ease”?

all it requires is a total suspension of self. and a ruthless malleability to see to it that all details are made in his preference. yours can wait.

ease. that four letter word.

not love, but ease.

for ease, what would you exchange? give up? forget about? neglect to even mention, let alone demand?

would you concede power for ease? mince words? move countries?

if your lover lives in hong kong, hong kong you must go. at least, that’s what james baldwin advised.

is malleability such a bad thing?

is a preference, no an insistence on ease, really a crime?

here i thought feminism was about women’s choice.

so choose:

love…or ease?

love…or friendship?

wait, no not friendship. i’m mistaken: mentorship.

mentorship. one who has something to give. wisdom to bestow.

one who is worth listening to. worth following.

one can understand the appeal.

so, we’ve chosen mentorship over friendship. and ease over love.

or did we?

the tricky thing about introspective pieces, especially those that hint at a lack of self-awareness, it’s hard to pinpoint feigned ignorance from a true lack of knowledge.

i know many smart women who are playing dumb. though, none of these women are “diouana women.” just smart women playing dumb.

playing coy has its advantages. but ignorance? it’s a sin, i’m told.

so as you choose, consider situational awareness. better yet, consider a little thing called power.

a five letter word.

it won’t be easy, but it will give you ease.

and if don’t lose your edge, it’ll also give you love.

how?

the power that comes with trusting someone fully, totally, and allowing them to witness you as you witness them.

the power that comes with standing naked and unafraid in front of your lover. the power that comes with voicing your desires, preferences, and wishes. the power that comes from great expectations. and the joy in witnessing him deliver on his promises.

love, ease, power.

they can all coexist. since you’re going to choose, choose well.

go for broke.

find a way to have your cake, and eat it too.

find a man who you love, that also happens to buy you jewelry.

one who’s not above providing you a little something called ease.

two diouana women walk into a salon

this saturday, march 12th at 12p eastern, the fourth edition of the diouana woman salon will take place.

i’d be lying if i told you i know exactly what we’ll be discussing. but i do believe it’ll have to do with love.

what it means to be a woman richly in love. a woman deeply loved. a woman who chooses love over and over and over again.

join us this saturday if you’re a diouana woman who wants love…and jewelry:

dial-in number (US): (605) 313-5820

access code: 8127990#

international dial-in numbers: https://fccdl.in/i/diouanawoman

online meeting id: diouanawoman

join the online meeting: https://join.freeconferencecall.com/diouanawoman

for additional assistance connecting to the meeting text "Call Me" to the dial-in number above and you will be called into the conference. message and data rates may apply.

god and i walked in central park

in my most recent essay, “maybe you shouldn't marry the rich, old man,” i spoke of an old bad habit of mine. how i would seek out the values i revered most in god in mortal men:

“it reminds me of how i used to conceive of men. in the month where the veil is the thinnest, i remember lightening a series of candles in my apartment and meditating on my love life. i reflected on my track record with men and it dawned on me: what i admired most about god, i was seeking to find it in a man.

i loved god as the father; as my shepherd, and there i was taking my undying love for the divine masculine principle, as seen through god, and transposing it on human men who could not tell me the first thing about the bible. nor the book of david. let alone ephesians 5:25.”

i understand what it means to search for “mentorship” in mortal men. for guidance from a male perspective because you revere the father.

but god is god, and that man is not.

and although it is true that what god gives freely, mortal men might keep a tally, a woman should never feel as if she cannot speak.

nor voice her desires or displeasure.

do not shrink yourself simply because you do not sign the checks.

if it is a question of cash, find a way to make, and grow, your own.

even if it requires renegotiating your understanding of that little thing called ease.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. read my latest essay, maybe you shouldn’t marry the rich, old man.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

tonight, i want us to dissect the words of a woman who knows so much yet nothing at all. a woman who missed the forest for the trees, yet still managed to make herself a sprawling estate while others would have settled for a simple tree house. a woman whose words launched a thousand ships of awe and anger, both earned and unearned. a woman who has to live with the curse of thinking her beauty is all she has in this life. a woman who mistakes her physical looks for power, and eschews any semblance of responsibility for a gilded cage of “ease.”

tonight we dissect the immortal words of grazie sophia christie’s march 2024 article for the cut, “the case for marrying an older man: a woman’s life is all work and little rest. an age gap relationship can help.”

an indecent proposal

she begins her article in a location familiar to all diouana women: the south of france. unabashedly, she wrote:

“in the summer, in the south of france, my husband and i like to play, rather badly, the lottery. we take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. i purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. i never cash them in, nor do i check the winning numbers. for i already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

he is ten years older than i am. i chose him on purpose, not by chance. as far as life decisions go, on balance, i recommend it.”

it’s interesting that she frames it as he marrying her; meaning, he gave her the privilege of being his wife as opposed to her letting him become her husband; thereby proving he was the victor out of all her suitors. here, we surmise that her worldview is centered on him as her source of gravity and not herself. her posturing be damned.

through memory, she shares the origin story of her marriage and how she became his wife:

"ironies began to mock me. i could study all i wanted, prove myself as exceptional as i liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. my youth. the newness of my face and body. compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. i shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. the thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: i could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. or i could just marry it early.

so naturally i began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each saturday to the harvard business school to work on my nabokov paper. in one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. i had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. apologies to progress, but older men still desired those things.

i could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. each time i reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. as for me, i liked history, victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books i’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. i’d have disliked being called calculating, but i had, like all women, a calculator in my head. i thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

i was competitive by nature, an english-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (great american novel; email job). a little bovarist, frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. i resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. restless one saturday night, i slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an hdmi cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. i danced. i drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. i called and climbed into an uber. then i promptly climbed out of it. for there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. i went to him, asked him for a cigarette. a date, days later. a second one, where i discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

i used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. not him. in those early days, i spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than i ever have since. i wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native france, something befitting a daughter-in-law. it worked; i meant it. after graduation and my fellowship at oxford, i stayed in europe for his career and married him at 23.

of course i just fell in love. romances have a setting; i had only intervened to place myself well. mainly, i spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. i had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal, and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease."

first we begin with her realization that time is not on her side. she has a biological clock that will tick louder and louder as the years pass on; she’s daunted by the reality of working in a corporate setting to make her living, knowing full well the hellscape that awaits her.1 being the fighter that she is, she refuses to lose. she also refuses to suffer, so she looks for what she perceives to be a “cheat code” to a woman’s constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness: marrying older.

as a fellow harvard alumnus, i find her description of the dating scene on campus apt: “i resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me.”

thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected is a funny way to frame your female classmates. but the most damning phrase of all is what follows, “opposite of me.”

her description of her female classmates reminds me of the idea of “a harvard ten,” a phrase as offensive as it it elusive. offensive because it assumes a lack of physical beauty in exchange for intellectual strength. as if a woman can’t have both. but then again, we know that everyone is afraid of beautiful women.

further, the concept, at least its signified, of a harvard ten always struck me as caroline basset-kennedy cosplay. only those blonde, skinny, and slightly ugly (in an aristocratic sense) need apply. our author, grazie sophia christie, a beautiful redhead from miami, does not fit the bill. neither did i.2

given that she points out that those callow harvard boys only liked, at least publicly, thin, sexless, emotionally detached but socially connected female collegiates and she resented them for it, one has to assume she didn’t receive the attention she wanted from the type of harvard men she wanted.

to be fair to her, those boys really were callow. i remember a hellish night at the owl, and reaching out to a man i’ve only ever referred to as a philosopher-king, asking him, “how were you in college? these men are clearly on their way and yet…” to which he wrote me a sonnet that ended with, “…those boys, still concerned with chasing mayflowers…no wonder you find yourself unimpressed.”

so, i get it. those men weren’t fun. but i don’t imagine the hbs men were any better.

to each their own, i guess.

power and its miscontents

sidestepping her invocation of hubert humphrey as she describes her college-aged body (“i had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. apologies to progress, but older men still desired those things.” is wild work), her raison d’être for her routine visits to baker library is interesting and deserves its own meta-analysis:

“why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can.”

assuming the burdens of womanhood is our price for living a life truly on our own terms. this line of thinking is the foundation of my diouana woman universe. womanhood is bloody and requires us to get our hands dirty (metaphorically speaking) if we stand a chance to stay in the game long enough to win.

from the author’s perspective, a young woman’s power is in her beauty. from my perspective, a young woman’s power is in her future. those two things are not mutually exclusive. you can recognize the immense value of your beauty, 1/5 of your erotic capital, and cultivate it through skill and also understand that being beautiful will not solve all your problems, so you cultivate other aspects of your essence and exteriority as well.

the idea that women have “a tragically short window of power” is patriarchal thinking at best, and feigning ignorance at worse.

what is power? i’m asking an intellectually honest question here.

what is power?

faithful readers of diary of a diouana woman will already know the answer, but let us revisit the exchange between queen cersei lannister and lord petyr baelish, better known as littlefinger, to hammer the point home:

“cersei [touching littlefinger’s sigil]: a mockingbird. you created your own sigil, didn't you?

littlefinger: yes.

cersei: appropriate; for a self-made man with so many songs to sing.

littlefinger: i'm glad you like it. some people are fortunate enough to be born into the right family. others have to find their own way.

cersei: i heard a song once. about a boy of modest means; [who] found his way into the home of a very prominent family. he loved the eldest daughter. sadly, she had eyes for another.

littlefinger: when boys and girls live in the same home, awkward situations can arise. sometimes i've heard even brothers and sisters develop certain affections. and when those affections become common knowledge, well that is an awkward situation indeed. especially in a prominent family. prominent families often forget a simple truth i found.

cersei: and which truth is that?

littlefinger: knowledge is power.

cersei [to her guards]: seize him. cut his throat. stop…oh wait…i've changed my mind. let him go. step back three paces. turn around. close your eyes.

cersei [to littlefinger]: power is power. do see see if you can take some time away from your coins and your whores to locate the stark girl for me. i would very much appreciate it.

cersei: *makes her exit, with her guards in tow.*

power, in any environment where the stakes are high, hinges on the ability to direct resources. money, information, and time are resources we’re all familiar with.

the idea that being a young and beautiful (mutually exclusive) woman means you have power, aka the ability to direct resources is misguided. especially in institutional settings. meaning, any environment where power is hierarchical and concentrated at the top.

we’ve explored this in my previous essay, power is not a young woman’s game and my recent psa, psa to diouana women who understand power as a verb.

we all exist in a system. right now, the system runs on capitalism. meaning that money (read: profit) is the resource everyone is after, and are often willing to exchange all their time for it. within this system, there are institutions that perpetuate it. do not mistake capitalism for the system, it’s merely the mechanism. it’s important to understand this nuance because i believe you to be a beautiful, hardworking young women. and this system values you. not necessarily because you’re beautiful; it could care less actually; but because you’re willing to exchange your time for money and in doing so, you perpetuate the system. it values you because you are useful. it values you because you choose, for logistical and moral reasons, to live in an economy of favors, not an economy of love. i wrote about these two economies in my essay, “the wisdom of whores.”

in fact, your willingness to forgo the pursuit of the economy of love that grazie sophia christie lives in, is why her article cut so deeply.

as an aside, remember that article i referenced in my most recent psa? this idea of being value to the system because you perpetuate its existence was touched upon by the author, albeit in a highly offensive way, so be warn:

“anyway, perfectly ordinary slaveowner dicaprio asks a rhetorical question, a fundamental question, that has occurred to every 7th grade white boy and about 10% of 7th grade white girls, and the profound question he asked was: ‘why don't they just rise up?’

kneel down, quentin tarantino is a genius. that question should properly come from the mouth of the german dentist: this isn't his country, he doesn't really have an instinctive feel for the system, so it's completely legitimate for a guy who doesn't know the score to ask this question, which is why 7th grade boys ask it; they themselves haven't yet felt the crushing weight of the system, so immediately you should ask, how early have girls been crushed that they don't think to ask this? but tarantino puts this question in the mouth of the power, it is spoken by the very lips of that system; because of course the reason they don't rise up is that he— that system— taught them not to. when the system tells you what to do, you have no choice but to obey.

if "the system tells you what to do" doesn't seem very compelling, remember that the movie you are watching is django unchained. why did django rise up? he went from whipped slave to stylish gunman in 15 minutes. how come django was so quickly freed not just from physical slavery, but from the 40 years of repeated psychological oppression that still keeps every other slave in self-check? did he swallow the red pill? how did he suddenly acquire the emotional courage to kill white people?

‘the dentist freed him.’ so? lots of free blacks in the south, no uprisings. ‘he's 'one in ten thousand'?’ everybody is 1 in 10000, check a chart. ‘he got a gun?’ doesn't help, even today there are gun owners all over america who feel that they aren't free. no. you should read this next sentence, get yourself a drink, and consider your own slavery: the system told django that he was allowed to. he was given a document that said he was a bounty hunter, and as an agent of the system, he was allowed to kill white people. that his new job happened to coincide with the trappings of power is 100% an accident, the system decided what he was worth and what he could do with his life. his powers were on loan, he wasn't even a vassal, he was a tool.”

i bring up this jarring passage from an equally jarring article written in 2013 to illustrate my point: the system is the system; power is power. beauty is a tool. not power itself.

to grazie sophia christie’s credit, she clearly understood the stakes of the game. in her own words: “i spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. i had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal, and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease."

her preferring to consider a thing called ease resonance with my litany of part love letter, part manifestos i’ve written on here; notably, when you're a woman too beautiful to work (hard).

i get it.

what i do not get is willingly abdicating power in favor of “ease.” i do not mean the “power” that comes from a high-powered corporate career. nor do i mean the “power” of being “an equal” to your partner in a gloria steinem sense. no, i mean the power of being lucid to everything around you, even if you do not. comment; of understanding the stakes and directing outcomes in your favor; of having a say in how things unfold and capital is deployed; the power of being an owner, not just in license but action.

this kind of power prevents one from playing the role of the “pliable, submissive wife” because it’s oxymoronic, contradictory, and will make you lose your edge.

more on that later.

a woman of (in)dependent means

what i do appreciate about grazie sophia christie’s recounting of her marital origin is how committed she was to getting what she wanted. that i respect: “one of the organizers asked me to leave. i called and climbed into an uber. then i promptly climbed out of it. for there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. i went to him, asked him for a cigarette. a date, days later. a second one, where i discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.”

she speaks of her husband like a woman in love. “on intimate terms with the universe” is a beautiful way to introduce one’s partner.

it’s clear she played her hand expertly: “…i wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native france, something befitting a daughter-in-law. it worked; i meant it. after graduation and my fellowship at oxford, i stayed in europe for his career and married him at 23.”

it’s the little things that count, and people always remember those who remember them.

wasn’t it nicki who warned us?: “…shoulda sent a thank-you note.”

back to grazie sophia christie’s haunting article. as one continues to read, one dives into into her worldwide surrounding relationships. assertively, she wrote:

“when i think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what i tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

i’m 27 now, and most women my age have ‘partners.’ these days, girls become partners quite young. a partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. necks are vulnerable. the problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. and men are too skilled at taking.

there is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. a boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. she ‘likes to do it for him.’ a million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. all while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. hauling him at her own expense.

i find a post on reddit where five thousand men try to define ‘a woman’s touch.’ they describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. candles, coasters, side tables. someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. to give compliments. i wonder what these women are getting back. i imagine them like cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. on occasion i meet a nice couple, who grew up together. they know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me. but i think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and i think, no, absolutely not, too risky. riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

my younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. by his age, i had long since wisened up. he leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. his towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. his lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. she is capable beyond words. statistically, they will not end up together. he moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. she picked out his couch. i will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. if they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. i tell her when i visit because i like her, though i get in trouble for it: you shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. he’d burned out — but i could reenchant things. i danced at restaurants when they played a song i liked. i turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what i provided. ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. i could. i do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. in exchange, i left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. i learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. mostly i get to read, to walk central london and miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when i tally all the hours i take to write them.

at 20, i had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. i’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom i was meant to bet regardless. my husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. analyzable for compatibility. he bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster; listen, don’t give advice. young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

my husband isn’t my partner. he’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. i’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: this is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and i did. adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. but his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. i moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. by opting out of partnership in my 20s, i granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. i am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. when i searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. he had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). meanwhile, i took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. if each was a start-up, the other was the first hire, an intense dedication i found riveting. yet every time she called me, i hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. i pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

the author expertly highlights what every young woman who dates an age-appropriate (or even older) man comes to see: he’s not fully formed. not even from the perspective of profession, but from the simple criteria of existing as an adult. in these discussions, i often find that not enough attention is placed upon parents who send out the teenaged-soon-to-be-adult soon to be parented by another parents’ adultified-people-pleaser-daughter, but that’s not the topic of discussion.

modern love is complex, and it is true that young women are often encounter young men who are not fully formed, but in my opinion, and that of the author, it’s not are duty to wisen them up. guide, gently, sure; but execute on their behalf? no. he can pick out his own couch and ask chatgpt to generate him a list of items he’ll need for his new apartment.

girlfriends are for courting, not playing house. but i digress.

what’s interesting about this part of the article, is that we begin to see the power that the author abdicated: the power that comes with knowing who you are, outside of external forces. this sticks out to us in her sentence, “at 20, i had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse.”

here, the worry seemed to have been both the journey of self-discovery and doing it alongside someone who would take more than he would give. she was correct to have that fear.

in continuing to read, we come across this passage with a a bit of teeth to it, “…adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. but his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on…by opting out of partnership in my 20s, i granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. i am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance…meanwhile, i took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. if each was a start-up, the other was the first hire, an intense dedication i found riveting. yet every time she called me, i hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time…i pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.”

the quiet part said out loud of grazie sophia christie’s essay is that she did not marry old (he was approximately 30 to her 23; mentally speaking, she was his peer), she married rich. generationally, it seems.

liquidity allows one to outsource tedious tasks and not concern yourself with minute details, allowing for creativity to flourish; and if one is principally preoccupied with entertaining one’s partner, as the author is (in her own words, “…ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. i could. i do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me.”); creativity is one’s best asset when dreaming up and sustaining a fantasy world where both parties can get lost.

a dreamscape made real. that is what she provides. and that is her job. even if no one else sees it as such, or respect it as fact.

her job is creator of dreams, and curator of fantasy. i respect that.

but, to remain objective, we must point out that she willingly relented the pursuit of self discovery, through sustained effort (“at 20, i had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self…”) for ease (“i had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal, and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.”).

now, i am of the belief that anything can be a vehicle for self-discovery, especially relationships. so although she resigned from her corporate career in pursuit of martial bliss, one must assume life’s lessons do not stop coming simply become a marriage license was signed. being a wife does not exempt one from hard wife, i’d argue just the opposite.

staying married seems a job in and of itself. and your partner is a catch? well, well, well, how fun and exciting for you.

i mean this! relationships can be incredible conduits of growth. there is nothing quite like true emotionally intimacy and in reading her article, i feel this is the one thing grazie sophia christie does not acknowledge. there seems to be this implicit belief that to marry well is not to marry one’s best friend. that to have a “partner” is not to have a “provider.” that a partner is defective if they are not perfect; on paper at least.

i do not take this view.

i’m in agreement with grazie sophia christie that she should not work hard if that is not her desire. especially since the system’s idea of hard work creates environments for sycophantic workaholics to bully and try to intimidate beautiful young women out of jealously.

whatever wisdom i possess, and if i do, it’s fleeting at best, is the result of hard-won, and often times spectacularly lost, battles at the hands of life.

god watched as i was beaten; accused; mistreated; and humiliated. and after all that, he sat next to me at the hitchcock screening to tell me he’s proud of me; for i did not waver. and i got up, again and again and again. no matter the emotional bruises or trauma. nothing will stop me from getting to the top.

this is what it means to not be daunted by the project of becoming one’s ideal self. sure, you’ll take a couple of punches. you might even be thrown off a cliff. but even at rock bottom, you do not become disillusioned by the wall you must climb to get back to where you once was. and when you return, you do so from the position of having lived, and dead, then came back to life. you return from a position of strength, not fear.

it reminds of vincent cassel’s character who told natalie portman’s, “you could be brilliant, but you’re a coward.”

in this position, you would never accept a life where walking on egg-shells is the tenor of your marriage:

“i don’t fool myself. my marriage has its cons. there are only so many times one can say ‘thank you’ — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. i live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which i can ever be angry with him. he doesn’t have to hold it over my head. it just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, you aren’t being supportive lately. it’s a frenchism to say, ‘take a decision,’ and from time to time i joke: from whom? occasionally i find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and i think what a long way i have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.”

if it frightens you to think of yourself as vapor, you should stop. you are not a cloud: susceptible to evaporation by penetrating sunlight. no, you are a vixen, a viper, a victor.

you climbed out of the uber because you saw who you wanted, and knew he would be yours. no self-doubt, no second-guessing.

it reminds me another thing the philosopher-king once told me, “class cannot be bought or sold. it is won: either though right of birth or right of conquest.”

you conquered. but you seem to have abdicated power somewhere between your coronation and your wedding: “…i live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which i can ever be angry with him. he doesn’t have to hold it over my head. it just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, you aren’t being supportive lately.”

again, having a “provider” should not mean you cease having a “partner.” after all, the idiom once told to me is, “divine consort, not divine cosigner.”

jokes aside, the most haunting words from grazie sophia christie’s article is how she describers her husband:

“my husband isn’t my partner. he’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend.”

never a partner, rarely a friend.

it reminds me of how i used to conceive of men. in the month where the veil is the thinnest, i remember lightening a series of candles in my apartment and meditating on my love life. i reflected on my track record with men and it dawned on me: what i admired most about god, i was seeking to find it in a man.

i loved god as the father; as my shepherd, and there i was taking my undying love for the divine masculine principle, as seen through god, and transposing it on human men who could not tell me the first thing about the bible. nor the book of david. let alone ephesians 5:25.

it has been my experience that men often want things they have not earned. female submissiveness for starters. but that’s a separate topic.

the topic at hand is the abdication of power simply because one does not pay rent.

i find that thinking strange, and off. if you manage your own pot, and invest wisely, one would think you’d actually have a better hand. especially with no fixed expenses. but i’m getting ahead of myself.

what’s love got to do with it?

what i always thought deserved it’s own spotlight, if not a separate essay, from grazie sophia christie’s essay is her vision of a new reality for women:

“above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. a chance to live my life before i become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. a chance to write. a chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity betty friedan dreamed of in 1963 in the feminine mystique, but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” some things are just not feasible in our current structures. somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. i dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. perhaps men long for this in their own way. actually i am sure of that.”

her point that the current system, and those who perpetuate, make women feel like personal failures for, ostensibly, not “having it all” is poignant. especially when sheryl sandberg’s “lean in” feminism was the lay of the land: career, marriage, kids. all at the highest echelons; all competing for your undivided attention. it’s ruthless, and requires a certain cunning and capital to truly pull it off. let alone thrive in it.

the author’s vision of, “a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing” is palpable in its appeal.

it’s a vision where women are not asked to simply become better men: endless work ethic, unrelenting loyalty to structures not built with them in mind, and having to navigate environments where their assertiveness and pride in their good work is not always appreciated. on top of that, being tasked with remaining maternal, amidst 9a tomorrow deadlines when the email came in at 4:30p when school let out at 3p, ballet is at 4p, and dinner happens at 6p. then 8p catch up calls to ensure final alignment when bedtime is at 9p and you already missed bathtime. no woman can remain maternal, sane, and rested with this schedule.

so, grazie sophia christie was onto something when she wrote, “…i spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. i had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal, and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.”

the abdication of power simply because he provides is interesting, but on the whole, it seems to have worked out for both parties:

“once, when we first fell in love, i put my head in his lap on a long car ride; i remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that i was so young, he feared he would lose me. last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.”

i’ll admit, i do not know what she means by real equality in the passage above, but in the article as a whole, my read is that she believes her “youth” was fair exchange for his “older wisdom.”

but again, it’s an odd way to position their story because not only do they seem to be in love, both with the reality and fantasy of each other, but the source of ease within their marriage is less his elder status and moreso the wealth that engulfs them.

it is very much possible to marry a hot, young, rich guy. why that isn’t seen, nor presented, as “the cheat code” but marrying some old, rich guy is, i don’t know.

but if one were to surmise why, one has to assume it’s because older men are presented as “easier” to lock down so to speak, and that it would be “easier” to convince them to provide as it were. because you happen to be “young” and “hot.”

but that’s not true.

the wherewithal it takes to convince a man that has lived 9 nines before you met him to give you everything, and then some, without you having to lift a finger is the same wherewithal it takes to reach the highest levels at your local, friendly private equity firm. it takes skill, cunning, and finesse. it’s not child’s play and why it’s presented as such, i don’t know. one has to assume it’s a psyop, but i’m being conspiratorial if not facetious.

the sprinkle sprinkle lady, shera, has made one of her platforms advocating for this route. but even shera, ever the cunning witch, never advises the abdication of power. just the receiving of materials you did not pay for.

but materials do not a relationship make.

emotional intimacy is what moves a great relationship into the realm of the sublime.

it’s what tethers you to another, no matter the external forces hellbent on severing you two apart.

it’s what makes you feel like the luckiest, most spoiled girl in the world.

not for the 30-carat engagement ring he procured for you, but for the fact that he allows himself to stand naked and unafraid in front of you; for the fact that when you call out, he always answers; for the fact that it is not his fealty that is his defining trait, but his willingness to consider that his greatest play might just be betting on you.

so, yes, materials are nice. and i insist on them. after all, don’t i deserve love…and jewelry?3

but more than anything, more than everything, we deserve men who feel like home to us, not just provide us one. men who take us just as seriously as we take them.

and men who change their entire life trajectory just to indulge our endless fantasies.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: situational awareness. an insistence on being co-owners. never split the difference.

dare: live solely in the fantasy, at the expense of the reality.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

real talk, girl talk

can i tell you something? sometimes i feel criminally underrated. at least, as far as my writing goes.

perhaps i haven’t mastered the substack algorithm. or my essay titles aren’t as intuitive as they could, or should, be. maybe, just maybe, i’m actually a bad writer. unable to convey the nuances of life into the richness of text. but then, i receive messages of affirmations from young women just like me and my heart swells. i’m on the right path after all.

as with any craft, the more you practice, the better you become.

i’m proud that my writing practice has evolved such that i can consistently create 20-to-30 minute sprawling reads for my targeted audience of beautiful, hardworking young women.

we’ve come a long way since my 1 minute confessional.

in the 9 months and 3 weeks that we’ve spent together, i’m happy that we’ve built a community. a clandestine understanding of what life could be, should we be audacious enough to sincerely go after what it is we want, cognizant of the cards we’ve been dealt.

realism is a diouana woman’s secret trait. privacy is her most defining.

i wrote about this in my latest essay, “the fetish for discretion.”1 the essay begins with a redefinition of success, or power, not from externally validated milestones—”breaking glass ceilings—but from the ability to navigate any circumstance, any institution, and any system with ease.

my emphasis on this definition of power comes from an anaphor that creeps up all throughout a highly provocative, if not offense, article i read moons ago:

“do you want power, or the trappings of power?”

more than just provocation, this article cuts its teeth on what is often missed in modern media: nuance. more than depth, the article asks a simple question that has haunted me since my first reading:

“so while women (appropriately) fought for, and got, equal access to college educations-- and now women even outnumber men in colleges-- today we find that college is irrelevant. huh. nb: what women did not fight for, and this is to my point, is the specific power of being taken seriously without a college education. "but how will the world know we're equal?"

the focus here, again, is why did/do women fight so much for what became irrelevant? why does this happen all the time? more specifically, did they pursue it because they thought it had power, or did they pursue it because it had the trappings of power? i'm not being a jerk, it is a deadly serious question.”

that distinction, between what actually has power versus just the appearance of power is important for us to understand as diouana women. in my “the fetish for discretion” essay i transcribed an exchange between queen cersei lannister and lord petyr baelish, better known as littlefinger, to illustrate this point in practice:

“cersei [touching littlefinger’s sigil]: a mockingbird. you created your own sigil, didn't you?

littlefinger: yes.

cersei: appropriate; for a self-made man with so many songs to sing.

littlefinger: i'm glad you like it. some people are fortunate enough to be born into the right family. others have to find their own way.

cersei: i heard a song once. about a boy of modest means; [who] found his way into the home of a very prominent family. he loved the eldest daughter. sadly, she had eyes for another.

littlefinger: when boys and girls live in the same home, awkward situations can arise. sometimes i've heard even brothers and sisters develop certain affections. and when those affections become common knowledge, well that is an awkward situation indeed. especially in a prominent family. prominent families often forget a simple truth i found.

cersei: and which truth is that?

littlefinger: knowledge is power.

cersei [to her guards]: seize him. cut his throat. stop…oh wait…i've changed my mind. let him go. step back three paces. turn around. close your eyes.

cersei [to littlefinger]: power is power. do see see if you can take some time away from your coins and your whores to locate the stark girl for me. i would very much appreciate it.

cersei: *makes her exit, with her guards in tow.*

in the world of game of thrones, merit and morals gets you nowhere. allies, armies, and audacious maneuvering does. littlefinger, master manipulator that he is, forgot himself in this conversation with cersei. he thought the mere hint that he would expose her incestous relationship to her brother, who fathered all her children and not the husband, the king, thereby making her children illegitimate heirs to the throne, would be enough to have her do what he wanted. but she quickly reminded him, through brute force, that before he even received the chance to speak, she’d simply have her guards decapitate him and end her day making love to her brother.

sick, i know. but nothing is ever pleasant in the game of thrones.

and this exchange demonstrates the different between actual power, the ability to direct resources at your command, and the trappings of power, knowing intimate things about the power above you in whatever you find yourself in.

so, when we as young women think about how we’ll achieve our dreams, whatever they may be, it’s easy to fall into mainstream or simplistic thinking.

yes, the future is female because the reproductive rate is below repopulation levels and only one sex can biologically carry children. yes, the future is female because more and more women are deciding to simply be alone than render themselves the wife of a husband who does not match them in income nor education. yes, the future is female because women are half of the population and can do whatever their heart desires.

but. this pro-female lens i choose to view the world does not negate the fact that we live in precarious times. especially if you are a woman, who, by and large, simply wants to live her life with a partner, male or female, who adores and supports her.

and my perspective here is one that assumes you have to work for a living. at some point, i’ll write essays for women who do not have to work for a living, but this psa and my last essay are directly specifically to women who have to pay their own rent.

and i take this perspective because it’s one that necessities realism when observing the unfolding of history. it’s not about what could be in a normative sense, but what can be in a positive one.

it’s about understanding that we’re all tasked with navigating systems that may truly be indifferent towards us but are led by people who are anything but. and in that context, how do you move such that you get 1) paid and 2) stay out of harm’s way?

that’s the genesis of monday’s essay and all my essays in some shape or form:

how can women get paid and stay out of harm’s way?

this can be answered through a litany of things, thus, the question really becomes:

“do you want power, or the trappings of power?”

and now, we’re back to where we started: being students of historical power plays and understanding how that can be translated, or subverted, in our own lives.

now that is a topic for women who do not have to work for a living. traditionally, speaking.

we’re always working. in some way, shape or form, we’re paying our dues. lacking a vp title or a corporate career does not invalidate that.

so, as you read, and reread, “the fetish for discretion,” read it from the perspective of how weaponized patience, strategic silence, and an emphasis on privacy can help you in your life and achieve your agenda.

i’m starting to realize that my essays, in their worldview, lean a bit conservative, but my alliance remains clear: i want women to have what they want in this life; what they deserve; and what will make them happy. how they go about that is their business. and the only advice i’ll offer is the same ending of my latest essay:

“it’s not about remaining silent out of fear. nor is it about telling the truth just to shame the devil. it’s about understanding what it is you actually want, and if opening your mouth to speak is the best way to go about getting it. it’s about understanding the hand you’ve been dealt as it relates to the board you’re actually on; not the one you wish you were on. it’s about understanding the game you’re actually playing, and staying in it long enough to win.

it is never about revenge, or simply proving a point.

it’s about understanding that power may not be a young woman’s game, but weaponized patience, strategic silence, and situational awareness is.

so, before you speak prematurely, i would ask myself, “cui bono?” and if it’s not you, then respectfully, shut the fuck up.”

read my latest essay here

structural changes

life remains as busy as ever. to adapt, i’ve shifted the cadence of my essays from weekly to once every other week.

this will ensure i’m delivering an essay to you when i say i will (we love building trust) and allows for intellectual space for me to stumble upon a rabbit hole that will inform said essay.

our weekly livestreams remain the same as ever: in the evening hours on tuesdays and thursdays.

lastly, we have an upcoming diouana woman salon. i love these salons because i love engaging with you in real time and hearing your discourse and perspective.

the fourth edition of the diouana woman salon will take place on saturday, april 12th at 12p eastern.

as always, the logistics remain the same; so mark the following in your calendars:

dial-in number (US): (605) 313-5820

access code: 8127990#

international dial-in numbers: https://fccdl.in/i/diouanawoman

online meeting id: diouanawoman

join the online meeting: https://join.freeconferencecall.com/diouanawoman

for additional assistance connecting to the meeting text "Call Me" to the dial-in number above and you will be called into the conference. message and data rates may apply.

email me any q's about the salon

an expanding universe

you may not know, but diouana woman has an official podcast. it’s called the ledger, and it’s hosted right here on substack.

“the ledger” comes from an accountant’s book. unsexy, i know. but the idea is that the book should always balance. meaning, what flows out must flow back in. in this way, the ledger is not about finding balance in life as beautiful, hardworking young women; no, it’s about ensuring our debts our paid, we stay paid, and always have more than enough to do what we want in this life. or, as i wrote:

“sifting through the delicate threads of ambition, beauty, and power to uncover the hidden forces that shape women’s lives. inspired by diouana gomis, the young woman at the heart of la noire de…, these conversations honor the freedom, complexity, and sensuality in every woman’s journey. with a west african sensibility, we dive into the socioeconomic, the interpersonal, and the quiet interiority that move us to build lives of meaning and agency.”

listen to the first episode, an interview with dr. catherine hakim. dr. hakim’s breathtaking book, erotic capital: the power attraction in the boardroom to the bedroom, was the focus of our most recent diouana woman salon.

in fact, she was to be a featured guest but technological issues, and spiritual warfare but more on that another time, got in the way.

however, i did promise to make her a resource for anyone who submitted questions for her ahead of the salon and i love delivering on promises:

question: do you think straight men would ever try to increase their erotic capital?

catherine’s response:

all men try to do this. some men do it effectively, and get results.

george clooney made himself attractive. he works out daily to keep a good body, despite permanent pain from an injury during filming. he has chosen his hairstyle very carefully, and chooses his clothes with extreme care. he never looks a mess. and he has developed excellent social skills, good manners, so he never offends anyone, anywhere.

i saw photos of him when he was a young man. you would not give him a second glance. he was very ordinary, not special. his good looks now are the result of years of investment of time and effort.

men do not talk about what they do to look good, they just do it. they go to the gym every week (daily for george clooney), they work out, do sports, get regular haircuts, use products to prevent male pattern baldness, or graft in new hair (as silvio berlusconi, the italian premier did), tattoos (eg david beckham) etc. women think men do nothing because they assume that men must do the same as women. men do different things, and sometimes the same things as women. every time there is an economic downturn, or when there are mass layoffs in the city of london financial markets, cosmetic surgeons and clinics report a sudden influx of male clients who need to ‘look fresh’ to compete in the jobs market.

women’s magazines talk a lot about make-up and clothes. women make a hobby of it. yes, women invest more time and money to produce good looks, but men also do this – more than is visible. men also pay fees to online mentors such as louis farfields to learn how to be charming and attractive in online dating websites/apps.

question: how can women exploit their erotic capital?

catherine’s response:

by asking for more! always ask for more, as men do. my book refers to another book, women don’t ask, by babcock and laschever, both american. they say this fact alone can explain the pay gap between men and women, which is much larger in the usa than in britain, where it has effectively disappeared (as i explain in my other book key issues in women’s work).

women’s failure to ask for promotion and salary increases is visible, due to research on the labour market. women’s failure to ask for more is invisible in private life and personal relationships. the same rules apply: always ask for more. you cannot insist on getting everything you want, but if you do not ask, you get nothing at all.

young people are most likely to lose out from not understanding that erotic capital has value because older people tell them beauty is shallow, vain, worthless, because older people cannot compete! obviously older people will emphasise money, education and work experience, and social contacts, because they have accumulated these assets (economic, social and human capitals). young people excel at good looks, youthful vitality and, hopefully, they are developing charm as well. young people need to know that what they have has real social and economic value, so they should capitalise on it, instead of giving it away for free.

question: are there skills or mindsets that can be coupled with erotic capital for it to be used more efficiently?

catherine’s response:

young people are encouraged to spend 15-30 years of their life in education and training so they can earn more and have successful lives. however, young people are often derided for spending a few hours a week investing in activities that will enhance their attractiveness: regular exercise, regular haircuts and styling, understanding the language of clothes and learning to speak that language well, etc etc. the essential mindset is to understand that good looks are a huge benefit throughout life and that even ugly people can learn how to be attractive, through wearing flattering colours, flattering hairstyles, developing charming social skills, etc etc.

the most recent survey, in the czech republic, found that intelligent (high iq) people invest in educational qualifications as well as attractiveness. it is not a zero-sum game.

question: on average, at what age do we become aware of erotic capital?

catherine’s response:

in my case, i realised at age 10 that men of all ages found me very attractive, wanted to get close to me. obviously, it depends on whether you are attractive or ugly, and whether you are intelligent or stupid. there is no average age.

question: what is erotic capital?

catherine’s response:

it is a combination of physical and social attractiveness to all members of your society, especially to people of the opposite gender. it includes facial beauty, a good body, physical liveliness and fitness, good social skills, the ability to charm, the knowledge of how to dress well, and the ability to flirt. in my book published in 2010, i included sexual competence, but that was a mistake, as it cannot be measured, is only known to a tiny number of people, and anyway tastes differ a lot in this area.

erotic capital can be measured in two ways – in absolute terms, or in comparison with others of the same age. catherine deneuve, the french actress, is still regarded as a great beauty at age 60 (i think?) but she was extraordinary at ages 20-30.

research shows an average 15% mark-up in earnings due to good looks, and the same applies to the social benefits. as the model gerry hall said, “life is easier if you are beautiful because everyone wants to help you.”

question: how does one use erotic capital without being accused of being fresh?

catherine’s response:

i am not sure what ‘being fresh’ means in relation to social interaction in america, rather than fruit and salad. however, women as well as men (and women even more than men) may criticise young women who are visibly attractive, with a positive personality, when they attract male attention. when i was in my 20s, this happened a lot to me, in work contexts or in conferences, when i was just behaving normally. in my experience, men are prone to assume a sexual interest when a woman is being normally friendly. women are prone to assume a man is ‘just being friendly’ when his interest is in reality sexual. intelligence is very important in dealing with this problem of communication. accusing men of sexual harassment is not an intelligent response. women must learn to make good use of men’s special interest in them (including the boss’s interest as well as colleagues of all ages) instead of rejecting it as wrong. it is normal, human, inevitable. so use it to your advantage!

there we are. if you haven’t listened to the podcast episode with catherine, i highly recommend it. she has unbelievable candor. if you haven’t read her book, i recommend that as well.

i’m working on confirming the next podcast guest, and will provide an update once they’ve been secured.

listen to catherine's interview here

from the east village, with love…

i’m moving out of the home that has seen my early twenties, post-graduate life and it’s fitting. not only with the changes that have unfolded in my life, but with where diary of a diouana woman has taken me.

by that, i mean that even as i leave behind remnants of my former self—the girl who refused to go above 14 street—i’m taking you with me.

you, who has weathered the storm with me as i’ve expanded, and deepens, my writing practice. you, who has consistently shown up on my livestreams where i share my latest deep dive. and you, who continues to inspire my diouana woman universe.

it’s a new season, and i’m so glad you’re here.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

“who, me?”

i have been consistent in my insistence that power is not a young woman’s game. this goes against convention; the feminist ideal that the future is female. but that’s only if you believe that power is found in noticeable strength as opposed to the ability to move with ease.

in their examination of power, what people often get wrong is their focus on who, or what, they can see. what this sample size does is limit one’s analysis to only that which is on the surface, without bothering to look beneath.

as they say, the devil is in the details.

it’s this lack of a nuanced pursuit of the truth that contributes to the crisis of our times; that being the need for external validation. the need for other people to tell us exactly who we are; or, even worse, confirm it for us.

that which is true, is true no matter what.

that which is real is dependent on a reality that can either be affirmed or denied.

the difference is a function of who’s in charge.

power lets you determine reality. being anchored in yourself allows you to exist in all dimensions. thus, identity becomes meaningless as your essence remains regardless of prevailing paradigms.

that said, very few are legitimately anchored in who they are.

that’s just a sign of the times.

thus, to obtain power as young women, it’s not about shattering glass ceilings or beating men at their own game. no, our mandate is to become agents who can operate within any system with finesse, with cunning, and with a ruthlessness that makes our individual agendas inevitable. that sort of power play, when done well, is rarely recognizable. and that’s the point.

“the the meek…will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.”

but if you spend all your time announcing your ascendancy. making faustian deals for attention. and getting stuck in the tactical hell that are patriarchal power plays then you’ll miss the forest for the trees. better put, you’ll be taken out of the game long before you’ve had a chance to find your footing, secure your allies, and quietly consolidate power.

power may not be a young woman’s game, but playing coy is.

“let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

it’s often said that the god of war hates those who hesitate. and as fortunate favors the bold, the gods tend to reward those who move with certainty and urgency.

but then again, without an understanding of the board we’re playing on, moving fast and breaking things is seldom a winning strategy. no matter how much it looks like we’re making progress.

instead, our focus, in any endeavor, must always be situational awareness. understanding the players, their roles, their blindspots, their obsessions, and most importantly, what it is they actually want. and then leveraging this information for our benefit.

i began to speak on this in my essay, “before the year is over, advocate for yourself”:

“there’s an idiom about when you’re speaking with someone and they bring up an irrelevant point, likely to deter the conversation, you’re suppose to ask them, “what does that have to do with the price of tea in china?”

it’s a playful way to get them back on track.

but i honestly believe that we should all be concerned about the price of tea in china. meaning, we should all be aware of the biases that people hold, the narrative threads they’re concerned with, and the tangents they’re prone to go on because this means that we’re paying attention to them. and that level of fact gathering will only help us in dealing with them.”

life is a fact-finding mission. the more you know, the more you are able to tailor yourself, your plans, and whatever else is necessary to achieve your aims. i call this the art of institutional extraction, and it’s something i learned while at harvard.

during my time at the college, i understood that the institution cared about certain things more than others. even though it said it cared about all things. i also understood that there were pockets of grant money ready to finance my academic dreams. thus, my receiving that money and getting sponsored, as it were, was a function of me positioning what i wanted to do with what the institution actually cared about. daddy harvard was always generous if it felt its progeny was carrying on its legacy.

the game is the game.

outside of the tactics of actually getting what you want; this question of positioning and emotional intelligence; there's a strategy that borders onto the sublime.

as i wrote earlier in this essay, the crisis of our times is external validation. people do not feel they are who they say they are if no one else believes it too. thus, people leave themselves vulnerable to the whims and opinions of those who may care for their heart, but not for its beating.1

we must view this idea that the vast majority of people do not care, nor think, about us in any meaningful way through a positive lens, not a normative one.

it may seem cruel, this apathy towards the suffering of one’s fellow man. and it is cruel. in a normative sense. but we cannot combat what we cannot see, nor can we defeat an enemy we do not know.

but our fellow man is not our enemy. they just don’t always happen to be our friends.

remember, there are no friends, only aligned interests.2

thus, we must be obsessed with understanding the players, their roles, their blindspots, their obsessions, and most importantly, what it is they actually want. we must have an intuitive sense of the institution that we’re navigating if we are to become agents who can operate within any system with finesse, with cunning, and with a ruthlessness that makes our individual agendas inevitable.

it’s not about us, and how we feel; it’s always about them and what they want. not what they need, but what they want.

it may seem counterintuitive to prioritize the wants of others above our own; and it some cases it is; but if you’re tasked with navigating an institutional, hierarchical setting in which you are young, either in the context of age or tenure, then it behooves to you to move in a seemingly deferential manner.

and you do this by always keeping the spotlight on other people, and rarely yourself.

why?

because no one can harm what they cannot see. no one can take out whom they do not perceive as a threat. and no one can stop the momentum of someone who has made herself instrumental to the success of what the institution actually wants.

in this game, privacy does not become a tactic of withholding information. it becomes a tool to navigate the board with finesse, with cunning, and with a ruthlessness that makes our individual agendas inevitable.

do not believe that the spirit of ruthlessness is a marker of wanting to do harm to others. some take it way, but diouana woman understand that ruthlessness, like all things, is a matter of faith:

“people don’t understand the word ruthless. they think it means ‘mean.’ it’s not about being mean. it’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from a to b. the line that goes from motive to means. beginning to end. it’s about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.”3

when you see yourself at the top, you do not need others to believe it for you. when you see yourself having a seat at the table, you do not need others to believe that for you.

what you need from them is to get out of your way long enough to achieve your aims. some might even give you a helping hand. and if you really know what you’re doing, you won’t even need to ask.

so, do not worry if people do not believe you to be talented, worthy, deserving, or beautiful. none of these things matter, they’re simply labels. descriptors. concern yourself with your ability to position yourself in such a way that others, though their own actions, end up giving you exactly what is it you want; even if, on the surface, all you did, was give them what they needed.

it’s a fair exchange.

this is not meant to be transactional. it’s meant to be liminal.

it’s the weaponization of patience as a strategic force. it’s the understanding that meekness allows you to be invisible long enough to consolidate the power you’ll need to actually do what you want. this is humility as political strategy.

it’s enduring. it’s eternal. and it requires an endurance only found in those with the highest levels of faith.

power may not be a young woman’s game, but potential is.

“do you understand the violence it took to become this gentle?”

i have a treatise; that social media, the narcissism its discourse spawned, and the omnipresence of surveillance technology have rendered us all cam girls. forever performing an aesthetic for an adoring audience.

this nomenclature of mine was the title of one of my earlier works on this substack: “the cam girl of my dreams.” in it, i wrote:

“there are many who decry that to live in fantasy is a fool’s errands. we, few but proud, diouana women, know that fantasy is fantasy. it exists in the realm where greek nymphs, french courtesans, and biblical whores attend dinner parties where each share their wretched experience existing in the human plane with mortal men.

it’s a curious thing, existing as a real life fantasy. the objectification of one’s essence into a pedestrian dichotomy of madonna-whore. there comes a time when the reality of the situation sinks in. that, to them, you are not a person; you are a moodboard for them to displace their hopes onto. you become a walking id of their repressed desires. in this context, there’s a politeness in giving people exactly what they want. in living up to their fantasy. too bad it’s often the case they’ll end up hating you for it.

however, there is a trick to hatred that few know. there are certain agent provocateurs and long-dead alchemists whose lives have been defined by their mastery of this trick. just for you, i’ll let you in on the secret: all emotion, and especially hatred, is potential energy. in the first law of thermodynamics, it is understood that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another. in taking the hatred those who fantasize about us leave at our altars when we do not live up to their agenda, we can transform their potential energy into our kinetic energy. thus, taking back our power. after all, power is power.”

in the “power is power” ending line, i linked an exchange between littlefinger and cersei because it underscored the difference between knowledge as information, that being potential energy, and power as institutional, that being kinetic energy:

“cersei [touching littlefinger’s sigil]: a mockingbird. you created your own sigil, didn't you?

littlefinger: yes.

cersei: appropriate; for a self-made man with so many songs to sing.

littlefinger: i'm glad you like it. some people are fortunate enough to be born into the right family. others have to find their own way.

cersei: i heard a song once. about a boy of modest means; [who] found his way into the home of a very prominent family. he loved the eldest daughter. sadly, she had eyes for another.

littlefinger: when boys and girls live in the same home, awkward situations can arise. sometimes i've heard even brothers and sisters develop certain affections. and when those affections become common knowledge, well that is an awkward situation indeed. especially in a prominent family. prominent families often forget a simple truth i found.

cersei: and which truth is that?

littlefinger: knowledge is power.

cersei [to her guards]: seize him. cut his throat. stop…oh wait…i've changed my mind. let him go. step back three paces. turn around. close your eyes.

cersei [to littlefinger]: power is power. do see see if you can take some time away from your coins and your whores to locate the stark girl for me. i would very much appreciate it.

cersei: *makes her exit, with her guards in tow.*

power is the ability to dictate the terms, and if need be, take people off the board. people is the ability to mobilize forces, and if need be, weaponize the policies and procedures in your favor. power is power. knowledge, if not carefully managed, is a liability.

take that meghan markle and oprah winfrey interview as example. in looking back at this interview, it’s so curious that it begins with meghan markle; excuse me, meghan sussex; by herself sharing her account with oprah. meghan is a woman of immense depth. but the level of fame she now has is not a result of that depth, but a consequence of her marriage to prince harry. so, in the context (because we did not come out of a coconut tree) of an exposé-that-is-not-an-exposé interview with oprah about one’s experience within the british royal family, why begin solely focusing on the woman who, at the time of the interview, had only been in the institution for approximately 2 years, 9 months and not the man that has been in that family since birth?

in understanding that subtlety, we understand the positioning of the interview.

then, we bring our attention to the actual words that meghan is saying. specifically, we focus on the reasons she believes what her and prince harry have done, by stepping away from their roles and duties as senior royals and ostensibly fleeing to america, is not only good for them but is something that should be shared with the public:

“…to be able to just make a choice on your own. to be able to speak for yourself…”

“meghan:…we were both really aware…this [the royal wedding] wasn’t our day, this was the day that was planned for the world.

oprah: everybody who gets married knows that you are really marrying the family, too. but you weren't just marrying a family, you were marrying a 1,200 year old institution; you were marrying the monarchy. what did you think it was going to be like?

meghan: i will say i went into it naively; because i didn’t grow up knowing much about the royal family…

oprah: but you were certainly aware of the royals, and if you were going to marry a royal then you would do research about what that would mean.

meghan: i didn’t do any research at all…i’ve never looked up my husband online. i just didn’t feel a need to, because everything i needed to know, he was sharing with me. right? or, everything that we thought i needed to know, he was sharing with me.

oprah: so, you didn’t have a conversation with yourself, talking with your friends or thinking about what it would be like…to marry a prince; who is harry; who you had fallen in love with; and what it would mean to be a part of that family. you didn’t give it a lot of thought?4

meghan: we thought about what we thought it might be.

oprah: which is, that’s what i’m trying to get..?

meghan: yeah, i didn’t fully understand what the job was, right? what does it mean to be a working royal? what do you do? what does that mean? i knew that he and i were very aligned in all of our cause-driven work. that was part of our initial connection. and what we talked about in the beginning of our courtship…but there was no way of understanding what the day-to-day would be like. i didn’t romanticize any element of it, but i think as americans, especially, what do you know about the royals? what you read in fairy tales. you think is what you know about the royals, right? so, it’s easy to have an image of it that is so far from reality. that’s what was really tricky over those past few years is, when the perception and the reality are two very different things. and you’re being judged on the perception, but you’re living the reality of it. there’s a complete misalignment and there’s no way to explain that to people.

meghan:…i did anything they told me to do. of course i did. because it was also through the lens of ‘and we’ll protect you.’ so even as things started to roll out in the media, that ii didn’t see but my friends would call me and say ‘meg, this is really bad.’ because i didn’t see it, i’d go, ‘don’t worry, i’m being protected.’ i believed that. and…that was really hard to reconcile because it was only once we were married and everything started to worse that not only was i not being protected, but that they were really to lie to protect other members of the family. but they weren’t really to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.

prince harry:…i then got told, short notice, that security was going to be removed. by this point, courtesy of the daily mail, the world knew our exact location. suddenly, it dawned on me…the boarders could be closed; we’re going to have our security removed; the world knows where we are; it’s not safe, it’s not secure…due to our change of status [as we] would no longer be official working members of the royal family.

prince harry: i was desperate. i went to all the places which i thought i should go to to ask for help. we both did. separately, and together.

oprah: so, you left because you were asking for help and couldn’t get it?

prince harry: yeah. but we never left.

meghan: we never left the family. we only wanted to have the same type of role that exists, right? there’s senior members of the family, and then there’s non-senior members. and we said specifically, we’re stepping back from senior roles to be just like several, i mean i could think of so many right now so are royal highness, prince or princess, duke or duchess who earn a living, live on palace grounds and can support the queen if and when called upon. so, we weren’t reinventing the wheel here. we were saying, ‘ok, this isn’t working for everyone; we’re in a lot of pain. you can’t provide us with the help we need. we can just take a step back. we can do it in a commonwealth country…

prince harry: [to] take a breath.

oprah: and you wanted to take a breath from what, specifically? let’s be clear.

prince harry: from this constant barrage. my biggest concern was history repeating itself.”

before we continue with our analysis, as students of power, it is awe-inspiring to witness meghan live in harry’s psyche through the spirit of his mother. we don’t know if this is meghan’s doing or harry’s. i reckon they’re both at fault. but it’s incredible to witness the fact that harry has transposed princess diana’s legacy onto meghan such that any threat to meghan, is another chance that his mother could be harmed. again. and given that he was powerless to protect his mother from peril when he was younger, meghan presents the opportunity to rewrite history and, in his own words, stop it from repeating itself. but that’s just my amateur psychoanalysis.

what stands out from this oprah interview, and i do appreciate you taking this detour with me, is that meghan and harry, and specifically meghan, are clear victims. it’s almost impossible to deny their victimhood. their context is incredibly empathetic: i mean, how many of us have been lied to by institutions, or groups of people, who were not who they purported themselves to be? who, although had no fiduciary duty towards us, their negligence caused us harm. it’s sad that this dereliction of care is a universal story and meghan and harry are not alone in their suffering.

that said, they both overplayed their hands because they did not understand the game they were actually playing.

they felt powerless, and thought to themselves, ‘if we leave, we can catch out breath and ostensibly regain a semblance of control and a silver of strength.’ this was the correct plan. but their execution of this legitimately great plan was foiled, and continues to be foiled, by the fact that meghan and harry talk too much. they not only lack privacy in a positive sense, but they lack it in a normative one as well.

had the duke and duchess of sussex came to america, not as refugees but as sovereigns looking to stake their claim in the futile land that is the golden state, whilst refusing to share, not even to oprah, the family’s secrets, they would be in a much, much stronger position than they are today.

when i was younger, i read this oprah interview as an impulse towards fame on meghan and harry’s part. their continual misstep of speaking far, far too soon. as they did when they not only announced their departure as ‘senior’ members of the royal family but also their transatlantic move to north america, the launch of their charitable entity, and how they planned to raise their son whilst their tended to their nuclear family. better put, they allowed people who, had historically never approached them in good faith the exact targets to hit in attempts to derail or defame their happiness and success.

but now, in rewatching that oprah interview, i no longer believe fame was the goal; punching back was. i understand what it’s like to be beaten down and have others stomp on me while i’m in a vulnerable state. i understand what it’s like to have people tell me they’re on my side and then be the same ones responsible for my downfall. i understand what it’s like to walk into a situation with immense hope and have that hope crushed out of me by jealous, envious fake bitches. i understand meghan markle, excuse me, meghan sussex; which is why i will always support her pursuits of getting what she wants.

but to be objective, meghan’s role in her own downfall is that she believed knowledge is power. that in sharing what she knew to be truth of what happened to her, she would take power back from those who had harmed her. but that was not, and is not, the case.

as i wrote, power is the ability to dictate the terms, and if need be, take people off the board. people is the ability to mobilize forces, and if need be, weaponize the policies and procedures in your favor. power is power. knowledge, if not carefully managed, is a liability.

had meghan and harry said nothing. not a word of the pain they endured at the hands of those who had no right to inflict it upon them, their shadow would forever haunt the british royal family. because there would be a lingering question of, “when will they speak, and what will they say?” on this side of the atlantic, every announcement, every venture, would become enticing because it wouldn’t be clouded by the fog of retribution. instead, it would be illuminate with the glow of transcendence. they wouldn’t be british royals in exile, they’d be proper american entrepreneurs with a most interesting backstory that the refuse to speak about.

and in that tension, between what is known and what largely remains unsaid, is canvas for us to project all of our fantasies upon.

and had meghan and harry done this, they, too, would be the cam girls of our dreams: a real life fantasy…a moodboard for us to displace our hopes onto. a walking id of our repressed desires. that said, in living up to our fantasies, it’s likely we’d still end up hating them, as we do now; but this time, much more silently. after all, no one likes a perfect person.

but the self-discipline to keep your mouth shut long enough for the world to fall in love with you, and the cunning to understand that once the world is on your side, then you can begin to tell the truth of what you endured, gives you the power to actually dictate the terms. it’s exactly as i said in my treatise on corporate life:

“there’s a real indignity to corporate life. a hollowing of the spirit so to speak. but in that hollowness, there are opportunities to gain resilience. and that’s what keeps me going. the idea that this, too, shall past. and i’ll have been made better as a result. not by the bullshit i endured. but the woman i became in being able to navigate egos, eccentricities, and the ego-death that comes with playing humble while you silently consolidate power.”

it’s not about remaining silent out of fear. nor is it about telling the truth just to shame the devil. it’s about understanding what it is you actually want, and if opening your mouth to speak is the best way to go about getting it. it’s about understanding the hand you’ve been dealt as it relates to the board you’re actually on; not the one you wish you were on. it’s about understanding the game you’re actually playing, and staying in it long enough to win.

it is never about revenge, or simply proving a point.

it’s about understanding that power may not be a young woman’s game, but weaponized patience, strategic silence, and situational awareness is.

so, before you speak prematurely, i would ask myself, “cui bono?” and if it’s not you, then respectfully, shut the fuck up.

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: actually understanding the game you’re play. you may think you’re not playing a game, but we’re all playing a game. just make sure it’s the game you actually want to play.

dare: failing to understand that you’re playing a game. even if you do not believe yourself to be a player on the board.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

catherine’s insights are sharp, timely, and completely eye-opening. her work pushes us to question not just how we navigate beauty, but how we think about who gets to benefit from it. we also dive deep into the shifting dynamics between the sexes, from the increasing popularity of plastic surgery among men to the rise of a so-called “male sex deficit” in today’s world.

if you're intrigued, be sure to read my essay on erotic capital, titled who’s afraid of beautiful women? over on my substack, where i unpack this idea even further. it’s a conversation that’s only getting started.

episode breakdown:

12:16 to 15:29 men take advantage of their erotic capital more than women do
16:55 to 18:32 nasty attitudes among women vis-à-vis other women
18:33 to 19:32 ugly women hating on attractive women
19:33 to 20:28 my experience with women reacting to my erotic capital
20:31 to 21:58 the increase in plastic surgery among men and the possible regret of plastic surgery among women
21:59 to 22:59 is intrinsic beauty the only beauty worth having?
23:00 to 24:36 differences in plastic surgery among countries
24:56 to 29:55 male sex deficit and the difference in sexuality between the sexes
29:55 to 31:16 the reason for the male sex deficit, the rise in recreational sex, and the perceived right to have sex
31:16 to 32:06 heterosexual intercourse is not often female-centered
32:06 to 32:41 the lack of intercourse among generation z
32:59 to 34:38 adultery as the answer to the male sex deficit (southern european culture as an example)
34:39 to 36:16 the incel movement, the male sex deficit, and the perceived right to have sex
36:18 to 39:56 the consequences of the differences in educational and professional attainment between men and women
39:56 to 40:39 my theory on the dynamic that make heterosexual relationships function best
40:41 to 42:24 the reality of women being both head of household and homemakers and the separation of economic capital and erotic capital in relationships
42:25 to 43:12 the evolution of gendered roles in relationships
43:13 to 46:30 the increasing importance of erotic capital in the 21st century
46:31 to 47:23 the importance of humanity and helping people see the world as a sociologist
47:24 to 47:27 “we should all be victors in our lives, not victims.”
47:28 to 47:37 thanking dr. catherine hakim for her time

dr. catherine hakim’s bio:

“dr. catherine hakim is a pioneering british social scientist and author. currently, she is professorial research fellow at civitas, the london think tank. from 1993 to 2012, she was senior research fellow at the london school of economics, then at the centre for policy research in london and the wzb social science research institute in berlin. she has published extensively, with over 100 papers published in british, european and american refereed academic journals and edited collections, four textbooks, and over a dozen books and monographs on the labour market, changing patterns of work, women’s employment, social attitudes, social and family policy, research design, and cross-national comparative research in all these areas. while at the london school of economics, she developed preference theory and, more recently, a theory on the social and economic value of erotic capital (physical and social attractiveness) for men and women of all ages. she often contributes to tv and radio programmes, including sky news, bbc daily politics and woman’s hour. she is currently writing a book on sexual politics.”

disclaimer: the views expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guest and do not reflect the views of any employers, past or current.