The Difference Between Being Seen and Being Consumed: Why This Comment Stayed With Me
I woke up to a comment on Facebook last week that unexpectedly stayed with me.
Not because I haven’t received inappropriate comments before. If you share yourself publicly online — especially as a woman who moves in sensual, embodied ways — it comes with the territory.
But this one lingered.
The comment read:
“Jesus Lord look at this insane TIT JOB.”
I remember immediately feeling that visceral reaction in my body.
Ew. Ick. What the f*.**
Not anger at first.
Just… an immediate feeling of being reduced.
The thing is, the photo itself wasn’t sexual to me.
It was artistic.
An embodied yoga pose.
A still moment captured in movement.
When I shared it, what I was expressing was freedom. Strength. Confidence. Aliveness in my body.
And yet, in one sentence, a complete stranger reduced all of that to a body part.
And not just a body part.
A projection.
An assumption.
Something entirely untrue.
I even caught myself wanting to defend myself.
Actually, no. I don’t have a boob job. These are my natural breasts.
And honestly? That reaction surprised me.
Because I don’t usually feel the need to explain myself.
No judgement toward women who choose surgery. Truly. But I found myself suddenly wanting to correct the narrative, and I had to sit with why.
Why did this one stay with me?
Why this comment?
Why now?
When something lingers for me, I’ve learned there is usually something deeper asking to be understood.
And after sitting with it — crying over it, talking about it, bringing it to therapy — I realized this comment touched something much older.
A wound around humiliation.
Around reduction.
Around being sexualized.
Around having depth overlooked.
I have written openly before about sexual trauma from years ago, and in more recent years, I’ve also had experiences in relationship where I felt reduced, misunderstood, or made to feel smaller than I was.
So maybe this comment hit differently because it touched an old bruise.
Maybe because I know intimately what it feels like to be consumed instead of truly seen.
And that distinction matters to me.
Because there is a difference between sensuality and sexualization.
A huge difference.
When I move online — slowly, intentionally, sensually — I am not performing sexuality.
I am expressing presence.
Aliveness.
Embodiment.
The feeling of being deeply at home in my body.
The freedom that comes after years of shame.
The reclamation that happens after disconnecting from yourself.
The truth is, it takes courage for many women to reclaim sensuality after shame, trauma, motherhood, body changes, heartbreak, conditioning, or years of shrinking.
And I think sometimes people misunderstand that.
Some women misunderstand and assume it is attention-seeking.
Some men misunderstand and mistake sensuality for invitation.
Some people project their own discomfort, fantasies, shame, or conditioning onto what they are seeing.
And suddenly, a woman expressing freedom becomes something to consume.
This week in therapy, I found myself talking about this comment.
And strangely, I noticed something happening inside me.
I had chosen a male therapist intentionally. Somewhere deep down, I think I needed to prove to myself that safe men exist.
And as I spoke about my body, my breasts, the comment — I found myself quietly watching.
Not consciously testing him.
But noticing.
Can he stay with me here?
Can I bring something vulnerable, embodied, and tender into the room and still feel safe?
And he did.
He stayed.
No discomfort.
No objectification.
No weirdness.
Just presence.
And I think that mattered more than I realized.
At one point he asked me a question that stayed with me:
Would this person have said this to you in a pub? In a coffee shop? In real life?
And honestly?
Probably not.
Social media has created this strange phenomenon where people say things behind screens that they would never say face-to-face.
Things they would never risk saying in public.
Things they would never say to someone they actually recognized as fully human.
And yet — visibility comes with this.
I have grown a lot online this past year.
On one platform alone, I’ve had over 9.1 million impressions.
That number is beautiful.
And sometimes painful.
Because visibility means more reach.
More connection.
More opportunities.
More women quietly messaging me saying:
Thank you. I feel seen.
But it also means more projection.
More people bringing their limited worldview into spaces they do not understand.
And if I’m honest, what surprises me most is not the cruelty.
It’s the tenderness.
The people who quietly show up.
The women who remind me who I am.
The private messages.
The unexpected support.
My friend who reminded me that day not to give it my precious energy.
My children hugged me.
My therapist stayed with me.
And I realized something:
I am human.
Healing does not mean nothing touches you anymore.
Healing means when something does touch you, you know what to do with it.
I initially wanted to publicly call this person out.
I even took a screenshot.
But instead, I hid the comment.
Eventually, I reported it for harassment, blocked him, cried, let people love me, and allowed myself to ask a deeper question:
What is this here to teach me?
And maybe the answer is this:
I no longer want to be consumed.
I want to be seen.
Respected.
Honoured.
Not reduced.
Not objectified.
Not flattened into someone else’s projection.
Seen in my depth.
Seen in my fullness.
Seen in my humanity.
And if you are a woman reading this who has ever felt reduced, sexualized, misunderstood, or made smaller because of your softness, sensuality, or self-expression —
Please hear me when I say this:
You do not have to carry someone else’s projection.
You do not have to shrink.
You do not have to harden.
You are allowed to protect your tenderness.
You are allowed to reclaim yourself anyway.
And if this speaks to something tender in you, this is the very heart of what I explore in Cherished Woman — the journey back to self, to softness, to worthiness, and to the kind of love that does not ask us to become smaller to receive it.