psa to diouana women who worship the divine feminine

this isn't vibes (my words), this is research (her words)

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.

diouanawomanomics.com

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.

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.

1. not financial advice. please consult your own licensed financial advisor.

2. diouana womanomics does not provide financial, legal, tax, or medical advice. please consult the app’s terms of services & disclaimers for more information.