Content warning: The following article 
contains discussion of sexual assault.
T

he old adage goes as fol-
lows: One of the most 
sacred places for a young 

woman is in the bathroom at a bar. In 
pre-COVID times, these sanctuaries 
were not only places for breaking the 
seal (or on a worse night, throwing 
up), but they were also a place of 
community — of drunk compliments 
on outfits, of shared insults over shit-
ty men, of exchanged hair-ties and 
tampons. In the women’s bathroom, 
with the faint waft of puke and the 
floors sticky with beer, we find our-
selves free to be vulnerable and 
anonymous. We don’t know who is 
washing their hands in the sink next 
to us, but for some reason, we feel we 
can confide in them. We don’t care if 
they are in a sorority or not, if they 
are prettier than us or if they gave us 
a dirty look on the dance floor just 
minutes before — in that moment, 
we have shared solidarity.

It’s a common anecdote, and one 

that LSA junior Naya Alkhaldi and 

I were discussing over Zoom last 
Thursday afternoon. Naya, who is 
studying Political Science and Inter-
national Studies, was describing how 
she has felt that support between 
women fade when moving around in 
a world defined by the male gaze. And 
while we both recognized the analo-
gy of the bathroom as a safe space as 
too simplistic and situational to en-
compass the entirety of the female 
experience, we agreed that there is a 
truth to it.

“That male narrative is brought 

back in the picture as soon as you 
leave the bathroom,” Naya said. “And 
we kind of start judging girls, and 
the way we judge girls is always very 
male-centric, like, ‘Oh, she’s pretty,’ 
which is like … why does it matter, be-
ing pretty? It’s because men will want 
you more … like ‘Oh, she has a big butt, 
I want a big butt,’ but if men didn’t like 
big butts, no one would have f---ing 
cared about big butts.”

Indeed, many of our preconcep-

tions on how we should look and act 
as women are defined by what men 

want. In the modern feminist can-
on “The Second Sex” by Simone de 
Beauvoir, she describes the paradox 
and prison women are forced into 
through standards of physical beauty.

“The ideal of feminine beauty is 

variable; but some requirements re-
main constant; one of them is that 
since a woman is destined to be pos-
sessed, her body has to provide the in-
ert and passive qualities of an object,” 
de Beauvoir writes. “The most naive 
form of this requirement is the Hot-
tentot ideal … as the buttocks are the 
part of the body with the fewest nerve 
endings, where the flesh appears as a 
given without purpose … weighed 
down by fat or on the contrary so 
diaphanous that any effort is forbid-
den to it, paralyzed by uncomfortable 
clothes and rites of propriety, the body 
thus appeared to man as his thing.”

It’s an impossible state to be in, one 

that many young women are familiar 
with — the pressure to be, all at once, 
beautiful, well-dressed, thin but with 
curves, sophisticated and youthful. 
This is especially present in the col-
lege setting when compounded with 
academics and professional life (you 
should be the smartest and most suc-
cessful woman, too). More so, many 
women experience relationships for 
the first time in college, meaning it 
is on campus that we begin learning 
what is expected in love and sex.

I wondered how other cis women, 

specifically those who are attracted 
to men, experience love and sex at 
University of Michigan and if those 
interactions have lingering impacts 
on their self-esteem, aspirations and 
worldview. Do the bounds that de 
Beauvoir described actually exist, and 
are they as deeply rooted in women’s 
struggles for equality as we claim? 
Is college really a place where these 

behaviors are formed and reinforced 
— especially since the University is a 
largely liberal campus?

To find out, I spoke with six wom-

en from varying backgrounds, all of 
whom are either straight or bisexual. 
Lesbian women are also under the 
scrutiny and rules of the male gaze, 
and this narrative is important and 
necessary to explore, but since this ar-
ticle focuses on the romantic and sex-
ual relationships between men and 
women, the lesbian experience will 
not be fully realized here. Any refer-
ence to “women” will imply straight 
or bisexual cis-gendered women. 

Times have changed since de 

Beauvoir wrote “The Second Sex” 
in 1949, but the problems that wom-
en face still endure, even in our pre-
sumed Ann Arbor liberal bubble. The 
heavy questions de Beauvoir asked in 
her landmark book are still echoed 
today, and I felt that weight of won-
dering in my conversations with Naya 
and the five other women:

“How, in the feminine condition, 

can a human being accomplish her-
self? What paths are open to her? 
Which ones lead to dead ends?” de 
Beauvoir asked. “How can she find 
independence within dependence?”

***
It’s 2021. Women make up close to 

half of the labor force. We earn more 
college degrees than men. We have 
a woman of color, Kamala Harris, as 
vice president. As de Beauvoir puts 
it, “many of us have never felt our fe-
maleness to be a difficulty or an obsta-
cle; many other problems seem more 
essential than those that concern us 
uniquely.”

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
2A — Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 
statement

Sex and love: Women at U-M 
reflect on lessons learned

BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE

