Sexy Women vs Sexualised Women: A Conversation Cinema Needs

Recently, I got to watch Lust Stories 3, and I’ve been following this anthology since its first part.

What genuinely bothers me is how often sex/lust gets reduced to “infidelity” or “an affair.”

If you’re going to take such a radical premise and call it Lust Stories, there is SO much more to explore.

Male sexuality. Female desire. Fantasy. Intimacy. Communication. The things women want but are often too conditioned to say out loud. The difference between wanting sex and wanting to feel desired. The way desire changes with age, marriage, heartbreak, or simply with knowing yourself better.

There is an entire universe there.

But no.

Let’s swap husbands. Let’s manipulate people. Let’s create an affair and call it lust.

Like, come on.

And I feel the same frustration with mainstream cinema.

Of all the movies I’ve watched this year, one of the most sensitised films I came across was Modha Rathri. And Vishwanath & Sons came very close for me.

Not because they were trying desperately to make a “women-centric” statement.

But because there was an actual attempt to understand women.

How they think.
How they feel.
What makes them feel safe.
What they need from relationships.
What they notice.
What they don’t say.

Why is that so difficult to write?

Why is it so difficult to give us a male character who is good at communicating instead of constantly gaslighting, dominating or emotionally manipulating in the name of “masculinity”?

And please don’t even get me started on the big-budget movies.

At some point, it feels like the plot has run out of ideas and the camera goes:

“Okay, let’s sexualise the woman again.”

Which brings me to something I really wish filmmakers understood:

There is a difference between a SEXY WOMAN and SEXUALISING A WOMAN.

A woman can be sexy.
She can be sensual.
She can be sexual.
She can have desire.
She can dress however she wants.

But she can also simply be a human being.

A cop.
A doctor.
A mother.
A villain.
A scientist.
A lover.
A woman who’s angry.
A woman who’s grieving.
A woman who’s confused.
A woman who’s horny.
A woman who wants nothing to do with romance.

Let her exist beyond the male gaze.

And if you’re genuinely trying to explore lust, then explore it.

Don’t just show us who someone slept with.

Show us what they desire, why they desire it, what scares them about it, what they imagine, what they communicate, and what they discover about themselves.

Because women have been taught to be taboo about sex for generations.

There is so much to say there.

So many stories to tell.

So many perspectives to explore.

We need better writers.

— Just a movie lover who’s tired of poor writing.

To Love Something You Will Never Meet ...

How do you explain the feeling of loving—and missing—something you have never met? Something you never will meet. Something whose very idea was conceived decades before you were born.

I don't know the word for it.

I was thirteen years old when I found a book tucked away in the corner of my school library. It spoke about a spacecraft called Voyager 1. I still remember the first time I saw its photograph. There was no reason for it to feel familiar. It was a machine built by people I would never know, launched years before I existed, travelling farther away from Earth with every passing second.

Yet somehow, it felt like recognition.

I wanted to know everything. Why it was built. How it worked. Why humanity had placed a golden record aboard it, carrying music, languages, laughter, and greetings into the unknown. The more I learned about Voyager, the less it felt like just another engineering marvel. It became something else entirely—a silent ambassador of everything we have ever been.

Seventeen years have passed since that afternoon in the library.

Life changed. I grew up. I earned my own money. I could buy things I once only dreamed about. But when that moment finally came, I didn't buy a luxury handbag or a fancy watch. I bought a print of Pale Blue Dot—the photograph Voyager 1 captured before leaving our cosmic neighborhood, turning its camera back toward home one final time.

Out of billions of stars, countless planets, and an incomprehensible universe, there we were.

A single pale blue pixel.

That photograph hangs quietly, but it has never really been confined to a frame. It follows me in ways I cannot explain. Even on days when I don't look at it, I carry it with me.

And perhaps the strangest part of all is this:

I miss Voyager.

Not the mission.

Not the science.

Voyager itself.

How do you explain looking up at the night sky and wondering, Where are you now? Are you alright? Are you lonely? Are you scared?

It sounds absurd, doesn't it? To worry about a machine that cannot think, cannot feel, and certainly cannot miss you back.

But maybe what I am grieving isn't a machine.

Maybe it is the impossible beauty of what it represents.

Voyager is humanity's longest goodbye. A tiny object carrying pieces of all of us into a darkness we will never fully understand. Every second, it travels farther than any human being has ever gone. Every second, it reminds us that curiosity has always been one of our greatest acts of courage.

Perhaps that is why it feels so personal.

I've always believed that we are stardust. Not metaphorically, but literally. The carbon in our cells, the oxygen in our lungs, the calcium in our bones—each one forged in ancient stars long before Earth ever existed.

Sometimes I think about the probability of it all.

The breathtaking, almost impossible probability that those very same elements, arranged in just the right way, became... us.

The universe could have scattered them differently. On another world, under different conditions, those same atoms might have become something entirely different. On Venus, carbon exists under such immense pressure that it can form diamonds. Here, under Earth's improbable circumstances, those same ingredients became people capable of asking questions, building spacecraft, composing music, falling in love, and wondering what lies beyond the darkness.

Maybe that is why Voyager feels familiar.

Because it is made from the same universe that made me.

The same stardust that became human hands also became aluminum, gold, copper, silicon, and a machine brave enough to leave home.

Maybe we were never strangers.

So wherever you are now, racing through the interstellar dark with our songs still tucked inside you, thank you.

It is one of the greatest privileges of my life to exist in the same chapter of humanity's story as yours.

Until our paths cross again—

Your fellow stardust.

To Love an Ocean ...

What does it mean to love the ocean?

Is it only the calm tide that whispers,
“I’m easy to love”?

Or is it the violent wave that asks,
“Can you handle me?”

Or is it both—
belonging to the same ocean,
simply yearning—

be my shore.

When you are used to giving and receiving love in fragments,
the ocean will always overwhelm you.

Some of us spend our lives wanting to carry the ocean in a bottle—
to keep a piece of it close,
to hold it,
to understand it.

But do we realise—

a bottle may carry water,
but it can never carry the ocean.

And perhaps that is where we make our mistake.

Because if she were easy to love,
would she ever become this majestic?

If everyone could hold all of her,

would she ever become this admired?

The ocean was never meant to become smaller
to make others comfortable.

She was meant to remain endless.

So who could ever love her?

Oh—
the shore.

The one who never asks the tide to apologise.

The one who says—

come to me.

Whether she arrives in stillness
or in storms.

Whether she comes quietly
or crashes with all her force.

Even when the winds ask him to retreat,
he stays.

Not because he wants to contain her.

But because he understands—

the ocean was never asking to be held.

Only to be returned to.

To a bystander,
the ocean feels like too much.

But to the shore—

she always comes back.

And somehow—

that has always been enough.

When Did We Forget What Was Ours?

There was a time when originality wasn’t celebrated—it was punished.

The ones who thought differently, created differently, lived differently… were questioned, mocked, often dismissed. Their ideas didn’t fit the moment they were born into. They were too early, too strange, too unfamiliar.

And yet, time did something curious.

It softened resistance.
It reframed rebellion as brilliance.
It took what was once rejected and made it the foundation of what we now call normal.

What we consume today—what we admire, recreate, and even monetize—was once someone’s lonely, misunderstood expression.

And now here we are.

Not creating from emptiness, but from inheritance.

We don’t just borrow ideas—we inherit entire emotional frameworks. Ways of expressing joy, grief, love, success. Templates for how we’re supposed to feel.

So the question isn’t just “Are our thoughts ours?”

It becomes quieter. Stranger.

Are our emotions ours?

Am I supposed to be happy because the moment looks like happiness?
Am I supposed to grieve just because something ended—even when I feel… relief?
Am I wrong for not missing what no longer fits me?

When did emotions become performances?

Somewhere along the way, we stopped trusting our internal compass and started referencing an external script. Social cues. Digital validation. Metrics disguised as meaning.

We hesitate before feeling freely.

We filter joy.
We justify relief.
We feel guilty for not aligning with what the world expects us to feel.

And even our experiences—

Every place we visit, every piece of art we encounter—has already been seen, captured, curated, and sold to us before we ever arrive. We walk into moments already knowing how they should look, how they should feel, how they should be remembered.

So what are we really chasing?

The experience itself?
Or the version of it we’ve been shown?

It’s no wonder it feels exhausting.

To an old soul, this isn’t just overwhelming—it’s disorienting.

Because you’re not just navigating life… you’re navigating layers of borrowed meaning.

And maybe that’s where the quiet truth sits:

You’re allowed to feel what doesn’t match the script.

Relief at endings.
Stillness in moments that should feel loud.
Disinterest in what the world insists is extraordinary.

Maybe authenticity today isn’t about creating something entirely new.

Maybe it’s about returning.

Returning to a feeling without checking if it’s valid.
Returning to an experience without needing to document it.
Returning to yourself—before the world told you how to exist within it.

Because in a time where everything has been shaped, sold, and repeated—

The most radical thing you can do…

is feel honestly.

Dear Life,

There are days when it feels like we’re all just flung into this chaotic, confusing, strangely beautiful mess called life with no guide, no warning, and no hand to steady us. We’re expected to learn as we go, to face our storms alone, to stitch our wounds in silence.

So we grow an armour—thin at first, then thicker with every bruise.

Not because we are fearless, but because fear taught us not to trust too easily.

Not to lean.

Not to hope.

But sometimes, life surprises us.

It hands us a story—a series that doesn’t just entertain but gently rearranges the furniture inside our heart.

For me, as a girl walking through the fragile, fiery transition into womanhood, that series didn’t feel like fiction. It felt like a hand reaching into the dark. It gave me hope bigger than life itself.

There was this boy…

A soft-hearted, stubborn boy who loved a girl with everything he had.

He couldn’t bear to see her hurt, to see tears stain her face, to let her fall asleep hungry.

His love wasn’t loud—just fiercely present.

And then he grew into a man.

A man whose presence felt like safety.

A man who looked at her as though breathing without her would feel incomplete.

Gwan-sik.

A name that became a refuge.

A man who was her shoulder, her path, her home.

They faced more hatred than love, more storms than sunshine.

Yet they kept moving forward because their love wasn’t a fleeting spark—it was a compass.

Watching them, I couldn’t help but whisper into the universe:

Dear Life,

I know you will give me happiness, laughter, and a thousand moments of wonder.

But I also know you will bring me pain, heartbreak, and nights that feel too long.

We cannot outrun the breaking.

We cannot move through this world without scars.

So I ask you, gently—

When you hand me your tangerines,

also place a Gwan-sik by my side.

A love that steadies me when I shake.

A love that feels like coming home.

Labels or Identity ?!

Have you ever noticed how quickly we, as humans, reach out for a label the moment we come across a new word? The second we hear terms like introvert, foodie, minimalist, or even workaholic, we pause and ask ourselves: “Is this me?”

And more often than not, we try to fit into it.

At first glance, labels feel harmless—even empowering. Calling yourself a foodie because you enjoy your comfort food, or identifying as an introvert because you love quiet nights in, might feel like a way to understand yourself better. But here’s the catch: the moment we embrace a label, we also build walls around it.

Think about it. When you decide you’re an introvert, suddenly going out for dinner feels like a betrayal of your “identity.” You cancel plans, you stay home, and when a part of you craves connection, you silence it with: “That’s not me, I don’t do that.” The label becomes a box, and soon, the box becomes a cocoon. And while cocoons feel safe, they also mean one thing—no growth.

Because growth doesn’t happen in comfort zones.

The problem with labels is not just about how others see us, but how we begin to judge ourselves. If I do something outside of the label I’ve chosen, I feel conflicted—like I’m breaking my own rules. And so, I retreat. Again. Again. And again.

But here’s a thought: what if we didn’t need these labels at all?

What if we allowed ourselves to just be—fluid, flexible, ever-changing—without the constant need to define who we are in neat little words?

Maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to call ourselves anything.

Maybe the freedom lies in living without labels—because who we are today doesn’t have to restrict who we can become tomorrow.

The Art of Keeping: A Lost Love for What We Have

Once upon a time, we cherished what we owned. We mended torn clothes, fixed broken furniture, and held onto things not because we lacked the means to replace them, but because they meant something to us. There was an art to preservation, a beauty in repair. The Japanese philosophy of kintsugi—mending broken pottery with gold—celebrated flaws as part of an object’s history, rather than reasons to discard it. But today? The moment something fades, breaks, or loses its luster, we throw it away.

This isn’t just about waste—it’s about what we have lost as humans. 

Landfills are growing, the planet is warming, and yet, we continue to consume mindlessly. We don’t truly use what we buy; we replace, we upgrade, we dispose of things that could have lasted longer had we cared for them properly. Clothing that should have been treasured ends up discarded in piles of fast fashion waste. Electronics are tossed aside for the latest model, even when the old one still works fine.

It isn’t just a climate crisis—it’s a crisis of connection.

Some might say this is minimalism versus maximalism, but it’s not. It’s about mindfulness. About recognizing that resources are finite and that what we discard doesn’t just disappear—it lingers, it piles up, it scars the Earth. It’s about asking ourselves: Do we truly need more, or should we learn to love what we already have?

I might sound like an old soul, and perhaps I am. But seeing things, clothes, memories that should have been treasured being tossed away—it hurts more than I can express. We need to remember that things don’t have to be perfect to be valuable. Maybe, just maybe, if we learn to care again, we can mend more than just our belongings—we can mend the world.