YAS Podcast: Gal Mariya Rivers #150 Transcript
In this episode of YAS Podcast, host AM Davies welcomes Gal Mariya Rivers, a not safe for work content creator and artist. Together, they delve into Gal Mariya’s journey of embracing body hair, challenging societal norms, and finding confidence and artistic voice through erotic content. The conversation touches on body liberation, gender identity, and the psychological impact of societal beauty standards. Gal Mariya shares her personal evolution from struggling with body image to celebrating her authentic self, also addressing the nuances of dealing with online criticism and fostering positive conversations about body image with her audience. This episode highlights the intersection of sex work, art, and activism, emphasizing the significance of authentic expression in changing public perceptions about bodies and sex work.
*This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors.* *This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors.* Begin transcript after opening credits.
AM: Hey there everyone. I am today’s host, AMD, on YAS Podcast. Thank you so much for being here with us. Um, before we get into today’s episode, I’d like to remind you that YAS Podcast is produced by YAS Work, which is our nonprofit organization dedicated to changing public perception about sex work through media.
If you love our podcast, please consider donating your donations help keep this project alive helps keep us going. You can head to yaswork.org/donate to show us some love and make it rain. Thank you so much in advance for your [00:02:00] donations. Um, I’m very excited about today’s episode. I have been, um, speaking with this person for a while now, trying to, um, get the timing right ’cause this is quite a unique story and the timing is important, which you’ll learn about as we move through this episode.
Today’s guest is Gal Mariya Rivers, and she is a not safe for work content creator and artist who shares her body and her pleasure to challenge societal norms and inspire change through erotic solo videos and slice of life content, showing body experiences usually hidden behind closed doors, gal Maria shares intimately and authentically.
Starting in 2015 with nude photos on Reddit, she found confidence and discovered her artistic voice. Today she creates both NSFW and SFWR. To explore and share her perspective and to embrace her imperfect [00:03:00] self. Gal. Mariya, thank you so much for joining us today. Please say hello to our ge our listeners.
GM: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
AM: I know I’m equally as excited for you to be here. This is a long time coming. So we’re, we finally made it, and I’m just, I’m really ecstatic to delve into your story, um, and to talk about the little things that have come up for me as, you know, reading and, and going back and forth with you so much about your story.
So, um, just a couple quick questions at the top. Um, number one, can you please confirm your pronouns for our audience?
GM: She or they preferably used interchangeably.
AM: Gotcha. I like that answer. I’m gonna come back to that in a second. And then can you please tell us, do you identify as a sex worker?
GM: I do.
AM: Okay, great.
What do you mean interchangeably like? Like it doesn’t matter if we use either one or there’s like some days where you feel this way and some days you feel that [00:04:00] way.
GM: I prefer just that at least some of the time people use she and some of the time people use they, and I’m a cis woman.
AM: Okay.
GM: I have a complicated experience, I would say, with my gender and it intersects with the body image things that we’ll be talking about as well.
AM: Okay.
GM: But I think the way to summarize it is I am a woman and she fits.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: However, I’m also a person and often my gender’s not relevant. Yeah. And so just, you know, it’s both of those feel good.
AM: I love that. Thank you so much for, for, uh, answering my curious question. I love that and I feel very similar, you know, um, I also use they, them pronouns, but she is used for me so much because people are still learning and um, do you find that more people tend to use she for you, then they Yeah,
GM: absolutely.
AM: Yeah. Yeah,
GM: yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s complicated because [00:05:00] people definitely default to she and I mean, that part, that’s fine. I get it. And in my case that that is fine, but it’s also complicated because due to. Of like masculine traits that I have. I am actually sometimes incorrectly clocked as a trans woman.
AM: Okay.
And so it’s like, it’s all just very complicated.
Interesting.
GM: How
people refer to me.
AM: Yeah.
GM: How gender works, how it all intersects with sexiness and body image and sex and all of
that.
AM: Oh my goodness. Yeah. I can’t wait to get into all of this. I love it. So let’s go back to some of the things that we just mentioned in your bio.
Um, you know, you were posting nudes on Reddit, you started 10 years ago. So I’d really love for you to give our audience just like a brief synopsis on what exactly that we’re talking about here today, what Reddit meant to you and posting the nudes meant to you when it [00:06:00] happened and, and your journey to get here
GM: in
2015.
My body image was terrible.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: I was being treated by the world in really complex ways. So I’ll give a content warning here for intentional weight loss.
AM: Okay.
GM: In 2011, I lost a lot of weight, and in 2015 I realized that my body image, despite the fact that I looked much more conventionally attractive at that point than I ever had in my life, I just felt absolutely terrible.
I would get compliments and I would usually either reframe them as well, they just mean I looked better than before.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: Or they wouldn’t say that if they saw me naked, because I still didn’t [00:07:00] look the way that I thought I was supposed to. And
AM: yeah,
GM: I mean, there’s
so much to say there, but
AM: totally.
GM: Essentially, I, my life started to change when I started lurking in a non-sexual body positivity subreddit called Normal nudes. It’s a place where people are encouraged to share pictures of themselves. No sexy poses, no flattering angles. People- like men have to be, or I would say like men or trans women, non-binary people as well, no erections, um, things like that.
And the commenters aren’t supposed to be hitting on the posters. And I saw people on their posting, and especially very conventionally attractive women who would talk about their [00:08:00] bodies the same way I thought about mine.
AM: Hmm.
GM: Even though they literally looked like the kind of models that I would see on magazines, this body type, that to me would be literally unattainable.
And so it started chipping away at this idea that if somebody feels bad about their body image, that means that there’s a problem with their body or that they can’t be attractive to other people. And then I decided to post myself.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And my body image, I would say, changed dramatically over the course of the weekend.
AM: Wow.
GM: I usually say I went from like. 30% body image to 70 or 80% body image [00:09:00] or feeling good about myself. And then the time since then, you know, that was in that weekend. And then the time since then has been continuing to work on that.
AM: Hmm.
GM: And to jump ahead a little bit, so that was April 30th, 2015, and on July 4th of that same year, I ended up making my Still in Metamorphosis Reddit account.
And I started posting in more of the Gone Wild type subreddits where you actually can be sexy, flattering, flattering angles, things like that.
AM: That’s very interesting. So from between April to June, July, you, you know, beginning of April you’re like. Uh, never doing anything like that. And then by July you’re like, now I’m going to do it sexally.
So I’m really curious about that period of time between April 2nd, 2015 and July, 2015, where did that [00:10:00] inspiration to not just post normal nudes, but to post sexual nudes come, like, what, what happened there? Was there a catalyst or an event?
GM: I am not sure exactly what that transition was.
AM: Okay.
GM: I
know that the confidence made a huge difference, and I realized I was enjoying the experience of taking photos. I, I think in retrospect, it turns out I’m an exhibitionist, of course, only to those who want to see, and so. The body image issues that I had had really my whole life.
But that had gotten so much worse for many different reasons in my early twenties or early mid twenties. They, it was clamping down on how I could share myself and what kind of art and entertainment I could do. And so when I [00:11:00] had this radical opening of my eyes that I’ve been perceiving myself in very limited ways.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: There are people who are attracted to me. There are all these communities online where not only can you share yourself in these sexual ways, but some of them are actually body types that are people liking people who are like me.
AM: Hmm.
GM: And so, over the years, I found more and more subreddits or other websites where it really is niches that are specific to me or.
Things that I like to do, like some are subreddits or other sites that are specifically for masturbating or body hair or plus size women, or, my absolute favorite one is a subreddit called Big Girl, Small Tits.
AM: Okay. ‘
GM: cause
I’ve always had small boobs, no matter my body size and that I’d always felt very strange about that.
Very [00:12:00] self-conscious. And when it comes to the fact that I re like, I realize that there are actually people who not only like small boobs and there are people who like fat women, but there and there are even people who like the overlap of those, and that’s exactly who I am.
AM: Okay.
GM: And so it was just amazing in terms of body image, in terms of finding my audience, sharing myself, getting to share to a group of people who love a certain body type and don’t get to see that body type very often because it’s not very common. And those who have it aren’t necessarily generally very confident about it, which makes sense given societal messages. And so I can spread the word that I can look the way I do and I can have fun sharing myself.
AM: That’s amazing. And I do, it’s so interesting that you [00:13:00] found this space and this, the, the audience that, that works for you and that truly, genuinely is attracted to your body type. And like you’ve mentioned, societal messaging is can, it’s like makes us believe that there’s really only this like one way that you’re supposed to look, because that’s what we see, right?
Cons- in movies and television and then like even advertisements for makeup. And like weight loss and, you know, literal advertisements that are like, do you want a skinny waist? And this, you know, like describing that type of body that we’re supposed to desire and put upon ourselves. And it’s so, um, it’s like psychologically messes with us and then like, and it removes pleasure from people or it tries to anyway.
Right. Unsuccessfully. And it, and I feel like it, it [00:14:00] tries to remove pleasure from people who A, want to see different body types and B, people who want, who would love to have the confidence to share their body type. And I can kind of consider you an expert on this at this point. ’cause you’ve been doing this for 10 years now, so you’ve had to examine a lot of this right.
Over time.
GM: Yeah. The experience of putting myself out there
AM: mm-hmm.
GM: And getting feedback. Or getting nice messages, sometimes getting mean messages. Sometimes you post something and there’s no response and experiencing all of that. Also, while I’ve, I’m a decade older, I’ve regained the weight that I’ve previously lost.
I now, I stopped shaving or removing most of my body hair. Like when I first posted on normal nudes, the only way I could feel even close to comfortable, I wasn’t comfortable when I first posted, but to get even close, I removed basically like [00:15:00] all my body hair. And then very quickly I was, it just grows so fast.
There was no point. And then I realized there’s a lot of people don’t mind, and a lot of people love it.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And so that experience of making this content sometimes for fun, sometimes for exhibitionism, always in a way for activism, sometimes for money. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not questioning what does success mean, right?
Sometimes sharing about it, how do I explain it? All of these different things. It’s been a absolutely life changing journey, and so that’s a big part of also why it’s such a relief now that since July 4th, a decade after making my Still in Metamorphosis account, I’ve stopped hiding my face. Well, I stopped hiding my eyes.
That was the part that, the only part of me that for the last many years I had still been hiding,
AM: Right
GM: And I can be more myself. [00:16:00] It’s taken some of the pressure off. It’s, in a way, bridged my two worlds, even though I still keep my NSFW and SFW world separate, but it’s a lot of barriers have been getting broken down and on-
In the way that feels right to me at the pace that feels right to me.
AM: Can you give an example of one of those barriers
GM: over the, well before the face reveal, there were things like, I started showing my mouth at a certain point.
AM: Okay.
GM: And or mouth and nose, like there was maybe the last five years. This is totally just an estimate, actually, probably more like eight or something like that.
I only hid my, uh, mouth and nose for probably a couple years, and that already made a huge difference. I still felt comfortable enough, I felt like eyes were the part that kind of gave away [00:17:00] your face the most.
AM: Okay.
GM: And I could already show a lot of expression and sexiness and pleasure and things like that.
But for example, I remember, well on some of the podcasts that I’ve been on, I mentioned that at the time that I first started doing these posts, I worked in a very technical field, so I didn’t realize I was creative.
And I mentioned that, but I didn’t actually say what kind of field. And then during one of the interviews, I think it was more relevant to say this or maybe I just felt comfy. And I said, I used to work in science. I was a scientist. And so that’s just one example. And so all of these different limiting factors, these things that I would feel could reveal my identity or say too much and I ha- just, I’ve been having to figure out.
What feels okay to me and what [00:18:00] feels like the right amount of keeping these worlds separate. And ultimately at this point, my main concern is just my physical safety. And so that’s really what I’ve been trying to figure out is
AM: okay,
GM: I just, I wanna figure out how can I be myself, show my art, do the entertainment, be seen, have my full face seen, which for so many people in their sexy content, including me, faces are a huge part of it while still just feeling comfortable that I have the protection that I need.
Yeah.
AM: Right. And do you feel out now, like out as far as sex work because now your face is out?
GM: I
do feel a lot more out. I haven’t exactly thought of it that way.
AM: Okay.
GM: I think as it relates to the face reveal, because. When I think about being out as a sex worker or being out as an OnlyFans [00:19:00] creator, I mostly think about what I’ve shared in my real world. And I made most of the progress that I made on that was before the face reveal, I would say.
So actually, in 2020, on my 30th birthday, I almost revealed my face.
AM: Okay.
GM: And I didn’t, I decided not to then. But what I did do is I started being a lot more open with people in my life about it. And so at this point, pretty much everybody who is going to know, knows,
AM: okay,
GM: I’m not really concerned about that.
And so. That I’ve made so much progress on and, and also in some cases, kind of coming out to them about the fact that I’m going to put my face on it because
AM: mm-hmm.
GM: That is a bolder step that does carry more risks. It is a level of commitment to this that I am saying I’m ready to show for my [00:20:00] online audience.
I was already doing sex work, they just hadn’t seen my eyes. But it’s a really good question, and honestly I am, it’s a really good question and I’ll keep thinking about it.
AM: Okay.
Well, that’s a great answer. And, um, yeah, I guess definitely something to think about. Um, thank you. I I also, there’s like two threads that I want to talk about. Um, one, I I find it so interesting that in the normal nudes group you were seeing um, fem bodies who you perceived as, you know, could be in the magazines that we’ve all grown up, you know, seeing just go to the grocery store even as kids, right? We were pretty much groomed and conditioned as very young people that if you look a certain way, you will be treated with, like, you’ll be put on a pedestal, you’ll be famous and you’ll be rich and you’ll have everything you want if you look this way, right?
We’ve been kind of conditioned that way, but even the people who look that way are still not [00:21:00] convinced that they fall into that category. And I don’t really expect you to have the answer to that. I just find that so intriguing. Um, because I’ve known, I’ve known people who have the ideal physique, who also would think negatively about their bodies, and then people who have the ideal physique who do not think negatively about their bodies.
And I just wonder like. What comes into play there and like, and also makes me think they really messed us up. The messaging really messed us up. Like it affects all of us no matter how we look. Do you know what I’m saying? Like that’s, that’s makes me sad inside.
GM: Absolutely. That’s part of why normal nudes and even when I was just lurking, absolutely opened my eyes because I realized that even if you look the way [00:22:00] you are supposed to look, the way they say, you’re supposed to look this way, that I never could look.
It literally just isn’t the way my body is. There’s still no guarantee that you are going to recognize that you look good or that you’re perceived as looking good. And in a way, I think being less conventionally attractive, can in some ways be a relief from this. And it, that’s a complex statement, but
AM: mm-hmm.
GM: What I mean is in a, I think, somewhat limited way, but because looking in these completely conventionally attractive ways are, is just not a possibility for me. I can’t cling to those. Whereas the women who I would see posting [00:23:00] who were incredibly thin or, you know, moderately thin.
AM: Sure.
GM: Um, big boobs, long blonde hair, beautiful face.
Although you’d, in that particular case, especially with people posting about. Their body image issues, they often didn’t show their face, but either way, these are very conventionally attractive people.
AM: Okay.
GM: Many of them. And so for somebody like that, if you gain a few pounds or you have some sort of scar or something like that, I’m thinking maybe being so close to how you’re supposed to look, but not looking like that.
It’s maybe in a way harder, even though I would say that many of these women would never say, oh, I look so close to that. And looking back, I was like at my thinness and when I was removing all my body hair. [00:24:00] I looked relatively close to conventionally attractive. My boobs were small, and they’re also what’s called tuberous, which basically means they’re kind of pointier than most boobs are, although that actually change-
They kind of change with, um, if I’m turned on or cold. But either way,
AM: interesting.
GM: I did not realize how close I was to conventionally attractive.
AM: I see.
GM: And so, and now when I create content or I’m just out in my regular life, I’m still a very complex mix of feeling good, not feeling good. It fluctuates.
It’s very complicated. But I have all this evidence from posting online where whatever angle I do, like, I will post very unflattering angles. Ones that are you know where you can totally see my double chin down from below, or you can see the body here, you can see my belly, all this kind of [00:25:00] thing. And I can see that not only does the audience that I attract, not mind, but that kind of raw sh showing of myself, that raw showing of myself and showing this body type that they actually like, that’s why they follow me. I get so much positive response to those that also in my regular life, it’s kind of like, well, why would I wear Spanx? Why would I put on a bunch of foundation or um, pad my bra or something like that when in fact I actually get the most positive attention when I am showing myself as I actually am.
AM: Yeah, I can say from experience being a person who is conventionally good looking, that what you said about when you’re out in public [00:26:00] or whatever, you’re like, it’s a mix of feeling good, not feeling good. Like I can tell, like I feel the same way all the time, you know? And I have the big boobs and the big butt and the, you know, not as much right now as before, but I had the slim waist and like the long blonde hair, you know, and I still, there was still a lot of insecurities and, and not, and wondering if I was good enough all the time.
And I think that because of this messaging that if you’re not perfect, you’re not good enough. Um, so I just love, and I feel like over time. In the last, I would say even 10 years that we’re even talking about for your journey, that we’ve, we’ve sort of, kind of dug ourselves out of that hole, like as individuals, not the messaging.
The messaging is still there that we’re supposed to look perfect, but I feel like communities have really raised more awareness around this. Like specifically online. The fat communities and the queer communities, um, [00:27:00] have sort of normalized more so like a, a diverse idea of what bodies should look like.
Do you feel like there’s been a growth, like a societal, like sort of raised consciousness around these, this subject around looks specifically?
GM: I absolutely think we’ve made a ton of progress in terms of normalizing diverse kinds of bodies, and I personally feel I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.
AM: Hmm.
GM: I am building on past movements, current movements, the work other people have done. I sometimes get credit, like people will tell me, oh, you’re doing things nobody has done and there’s some truth to it. I feel like the overlap of how I look and what I do and all these different things, I do think I’m doing some aspects that are somewhat unique, but first of all, I’m putting together different things [00:28:00] using, again, building on what other people have done.
AM: Sure.
GM: And I wouldn’t prob, I probably wouldn’t even be here if normal nudes didn’t exist and normal nudes probably wouldn’t exist if there weren’t already a lot of work that had been done in there. And also like I remember an experience when I saw a woman who I knew a friend of mine while giving a presentation, just gesture at the board.
And I could see that she had a bunch of armpit hair. And that little moment clearly I’ve held onto it. That was well before I felt comfy showing my own body hair. And that stuck with me. And now I’m showing my hairy armpits all over the place. You know, online or,
AM: yeah,
GM: wherever, when people wanna see.
AM: I like the visual of that though.
GM: And I think another aspect of this that has helped is when I started [00:29:00] learning about a lot more beyond body positivity and started seeing it in the framework of body liberation because. Body positivity can be a lot of things and there’s a lot of value to it, but it often is framed around looking attractive, looking attractive enough to other people, primarily about appearance.
Well, like in the experience of how normal nudes helped me is it told me actually, you are not that far away from what people find attractive. And even the parts of you that are further away can be attractive. But looking back, well, what about the fact that I had so much tied into this question of looking attractive.
And what about people who look even less [00:30:00] conventionally attractive? And also a lot of the times when men post on normal nudes, they won’t get much response or they, there’s just not nearly as much body positivity or body liberation towards genders that aren’t especially cis women.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And so now I have, I’m still always learning, but I have more of an understanding of how body positivity and ins insecurity about our body image and things like that are all connected to other kinds of body liberation, including physical accessibility.
I’ve been learning about things like the, I put captions on my videos when I am speaking in them and, and I’m not saying I’m perfect in any way, but just saying that the kind of liberation that the world needs is not [00:31:00] just about making not quite thin cis white women who are able bodied, who still long hair, who still, uh, are, you know, relatively symmetrical.
All of these things, that specific kind of person to feel good. We have to look at these larger frameworks of how did we even get here in the first place? What are the values that are behind that?
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And it connects with so many different kinds of issues.
AM: Mm-hmm.
Of
GM: ways that the world is actually being hurt.
Many, many people are being hurt people, literally, some people actually self harm or not stay alive or things like that because of their desperation about feeling like they don’t look, don’t look the way they should. And even people who don’t get to those points of desperation. I just, I want there to be less heartache in the world and
AM: mm-hmm.
GM: The path that we’re on, the messages that we grew up with, [00:32:00] the messages that so many of us still see all the time are harmful.
AM: Very, very much so. Yeah. Um, yeah. Wow, that’s really powerful. It’s so much to think about, you know? Um, and as a disabled person, me, um, you know, my body changed so much and I suddenly wasn’t like what I described before.
Right? And so like, like sort of sorting through that has been really interesting because it was like I once was there and now I’m not, and the world views me differently. And, um, but then at the same time I was sexualized by a totally different audience, but in a way that was like. Uh, what’s the word? In a way that was very uncomfortable, you know, because they enjoyed the helplessness part of it.
And so it’s, [00:33:00] so because of what you’re saying is it intersects with ableism. It intersects with queerness, it intersects with race. It’s all like all meshed together, of how do we look so that, because it’s like important to society that we show up and look a certain way to like appease those that are laying their eyes upon us.
Like it’s like our responsibility to look a certain way, shave your legs, shave your armpits, lose the weight, get a tan, grow your hair, and it’s like this, this unspoken responsibility that’s sort of laden on us. Does that make sense what I’m saying?
GM: Absolutely. And I’ll add to that also.
AM: Yeah.
GM: Be sexy. Act sexy, but not too much.
AM: Yes. Oh my God.
GM: Be authentic. Be yourself, but not too much.
AM: Yes. Like what kind of abusive relationship are we in? You [00:34:00] know, with society it’s extremely abusive.
GM: It’s exhausting. Yeah.
AM: Yes.
GM: Sometimes I think when there is a simple answer, it can, even if it’s not necessarily the right answer, at least there’s this heuristic, like if this, then that.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: But the reality is that we are constantly making all kinds of decisions and a lot of things are on the spectrum, and I’m really, really still trying to figure so many of these things out. And so, you know, when people say be yourself, but then there’s this. Unspoken thing that says, well be yourself.
But that doesn’t mean that in any context you could just say, oh, I do OnlyFans.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And or be yourself, but wait, you’re not even gonna shave your legs for that event or stuff like that.
AM: Yeah.
GM: And I also wanna add onto here that I’m not [00:35:00] saying that the answer should always be show everything or say everything.
First of all, the fact that I wanna share more of myself doesn’t mean that somebody else has authentic self can’t be that they actually prefer to share more limited amounts about themselves. That’s totally fine. But the other thing is that when we’re talking about authenticity, I think the topic of consent is related to it and sometimes opposed to it.
And so, let me explain what I mean.
AM: Okay.
GM: When I share that I make sexy content, or I do OnlyFans that already is giving people information about me that they may or may not want. And if I say that most of my videos are me masturbating, my most popular videos are of me squirting, things like that, then for some [00:36:00] people that’s me sharing something about my sex life and my body that they might not want to hear.
I don’t always wanna hear it any given momen the details of people’s sex life, I’m actually pretty open to hearing about people’s sex life. But it also depends on the context.
AM: Yeah, yeah.
GM: You know who they are.
AM: Yeah.
GM: Or another example is when I share nudes, I am always very, very, very careful. That I only share my nudes in the context where people are consenting.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: So for example, on my website, pretty much, yeah. The only place on my website where there are nudes is the page that is actually called nudes. And if you go to my homepage, you have to actually click through to essentially consent to see the nudes. But then there’s also gradations, like if you are, if you have a lot of, like, if you have a very low cut top or always thinking about how thin is my top, [00:37:00] or I personally, like comfort wise, I don’t need a bra.
I hate wearing brass when I don’t, when, unless in the, except in the context where I still don’t feel like where I feel like it would be an issue if I didn’t. But you know, and in some, for some people they would feel like, oh, well if I’m wearing a top where you can see my little nipple pokies, you know, jutting forward, that that is actually showing them more than they consented to see, well that’s really complicated and, and maybe that’s like, I can understand that, but at the same time, in most contexts, a man could be literally topless or have a thin shirt and you know, no bra, no pasties under it. And so all of these gradations of when to show, when not to show, it’s very complicated.
AM: It’s exhausting.
GM: Yeah. And also because, so I consider most of the content I make [00:38:00] to be a form of art because some art is just fun entertainment. And a smaller subset of my art is more like really thoughtful art, carefully made, really thinking about aesthetics. And so for example, I’ve had a couple people paint or draw a photo of me.
And so that’s a nude art of me, or I took this one really, I would say beautiful, artistic, nude photo of myself. And it’s been an art show. And so generally when you go into an art gallery, there’s not usually a sign that says you might encounter nudes. It’s understood. You’re in the art world. Nudes are part of it,
AM: Right.
GM: But then what if a friend is coming over? Or that one of those, that painting that I mentioned that was done of me is actually hanging in my, the room where I am. And so if I have a [00:39:00] friend come over, I, like, I had a small party at my home, uh, last year and I remember I actually hung a sign in my bedroom that was basically saying, “If you wanna see my full apartment, this part of the tour would mean consenting to see, you know, a slightly abstract but still, you know, relatively representational nude of myself.” Is that something I have to do? Not, it’s very complicated.
AM: Sure, yeah. Yeah. I have nudes of me on our wall in our bedroom and like we do tours of our place all the time.
And like, I, I’m like this, you’re in my bedroom. Like that’s my personal space and I don’t care. ’cause I have nude photos of me all over the internet, so I don’t care. But like, yo, whoever you are, literally. Kids, my parents, aunts and uncles, whoever, you’re gonna see it That’s in my room and I don’t, I think I do.
And what now that I’m thinking about it, I think I do say, oh, there’s FYI, there’s like some, like, you know, photos of me on the walls. You know, I think [00:40:00] I do say that, but I just, I love the idea of the sign though. And also it, I don’t know, it makes it feel more intriguing as well. I would, if it were me seeing the sign, I would be intrigued.
I would enter.
GM: Another example is I generally keep my vibrator my favorite vibrator, Hitachi magic wand. I just have like a tall glass that I think is technically for drinking some sort of alcohol, but it kind of works perfectly as a stand. And so except when I’m gonna have people over or come into my bedroom, I have it out
AM: uhhuh
GM: and, and, and, and it’s frequently in my videos, but also used in my personal life as well.
And so when I’m video calling somebody from my bedroom or they’re coming over, that’s the thing I often think about. Are they gonna come into my bedroom? Should I hide it? Do I need to hide it? It’s actually technically a massager.
AM: Sure.
GM: You know, all, all kinds of things. And, and it comes back to the fact that I know that people don’t always want to hear or see intimate [00:41:00] things.
And I really think that there are certain kinds of boundaries that are okay with that. And I think it’s also good to destigmatize things and. We’ve made really good strides, I think in de-stigmatizing and in talking about consent and
AM: mm-hmm.
GM: There really, I don’t think there are clear lines or answers on these things, and part of it is that every decade we get into, every time there’s a major technological advancement or new kind of activism or things like that, we do raise new kinds of questions.
And so, you know, this whole having my vibrator out, that’s out because I’m OnlyFans combined with the fact that I happen to have a closet with big mirrors on it, which means if I’m on a video call, there’s extra angles and all of these different [00:42:00] things. There’s just not a really clear answer. And so, or at least I think that there’s not necessarily, and so.
At least for me, a big part of the way that I navigate that is to try, just try to communicate as clearly as possible. And sometimes that means over-explaining or asking for, you know, maybe asking the same person for a kind of consent. Like I don’t remember that I had told them or showed them a nude art before.
They were okay with it, but I just didn’t remember. And so then I asked, and then they’re kind of like, yeah, it’s fine. We’ve already talked about this. I’ve already seen it. You know, there’s just lots of little stumbling blocks that way. But I do tend to lean more towards talking things through checking.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And a big part of that is how being both ADHD and autistic intersects with all of these aspects of communication and sharing as well.
AM: Nice. We’re gonna take a quick break and [00:43:00] when we come back we’re gonna talk about body hair and gal Maria’s haters.
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Their shelter and work is a safe haven for Kenyan refugees. That identify as queer and or a sex worker. Visit QSWIR.org to learn more and to donate to their mission.
AM: And we’re back. I, I loved how you ended, um, that last thought about ADHD and autism, because I also, I’d like for us to also quickly, not quickly, but to touch on that, um, and how that sort of influenced your art. It sounds like it really influenced the way that you view consensuality as well. [00:44:00] Um, so yeah.
So how, how has being autistic and ADHD influenced your work and do you think it’s kind of a superpower too, and has helped you in ways that maybe someone who wasn’t like you if they didn’t have it? Does that make sense? Like, how did it, how did it empower you and help you and shape your journey?
GM: I think that being ADHD and being autistic both helps and hurts.
AM: Hmm.
GM: It’s a challenge and a joy.
AM: Okay.
GM: I did not know that I was either of these things when I first started this. Um, and in retrospect, a lot of how I am, or the struggles that I’ve had, have been from the fact that these core things about me that affect absolutely every part of my life, personality day experiences I didn’t know about.
[00:45:00] And in that same decade from when I started doing this to where we are now, is when I’ve gotten both of those diagnoses. So when I look back and analyze this project, I can see a lot of ways that it helps and hurts.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: So here’s a few examples.
AM: Okay.
GM: With ADHD, my particular form of ADHD, well, it’s a mix of hyperactive and inattentive.
The hyperactive part is more for me.
AM: Okay.
GM: So I do have challenges with focusing in a way, but I also experience hyper focus or a lot of energy. And as a result, I do a ton of projects. I do a ton of art. One of the things that has made me realize that I was committed enough to this nude and sexy project that I was [00:46:00] ready to put my face on it and to do this media tour and things like that, is that it is the most consistent, optional thing that I’ve ever done.
AM: Okay.
GM: And so, that is a combination of both. I have a lot of energy. I have a ton of ideas. There are many times where I like engaging with a lot of people, and so I will make videos. I reach out to people. I pitch myself on podcasts. I come up with all these ideas. I swim and write down in my waterproof paper all these ideas that relate to this, like all kinds of different things.
However, ADHD makes consistency very challenging.
AM: Okay.
GM: And so I wouldn’t say I haven’t been consistent, like doing the exact same thing on this this whole time. It’s really been phases. There were times where I was posting every single day. There were times when I would go months without it [00:47:00] or. And, and then there’s this more recent phase where for about a year and a half I’ve been monetizing more consistently.
So I have paying subscribers on OnlyFans and fans lead, and so I have to promise them, or I promise them a certain amount I have to deliver on it.
AM: Sure.
GM: So there’s all kinds of consistency and inconsistency in it. Another thing that relates to both ADHD and autism is about sharing. So oversharing is a trait that is seen in many autistic people and many ADHD people.
AM: Hmm.
Okay.
GM: What is considered sharing versus oversharing is ever changing. Depends on context. Can depend on how long you’ve known a person. So many different things. But that certainly plays into many aspects of this, as for the autism part of it. So a few examples are, for example. [00:48:00] That when, okay, let’s see, how do I say this?
Many autistic people are read incorrectly.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: Like facial expressions aren’t necessarily something that are read correctly when looking at autistic people. So I have, you know, what they call RBF, like resting bitch face.
AM: Okay.
GM: As many people do.
AM: Sure.
GM: And, and so I’ve noticed that, for example, when I make my content in the cases in which I am showing my, at least my mouth, but now more recently, generally my full face, I am much more likely to put on at least a small smile because otherwise it can actually look like I’m distressed or unhappy.
AM: Okay.
GM: And
that’s not something you wanna see in that kind of content.
AM: Sure.
GM: I also know for me, I. Like, there’s nothing that is sexier to me than a smiling face of somebody I’m [00:49:00] attracted to. And it’s not like I don’t see value in adjusting the kinds of pictures and videos I do to fit certain aesthetics or preferences.
You know, I do think about angles, poses, not to hide myself or to necessarily look more conventionally attractive, but it’s just, it’s part of how you’re shaping things.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And so I think it’s fine that I do tend to put on another smile or like put on a little more of a smile. But it is always a question of how much authentic expression is correct?
And how much is this project about me creating content that people find sexy versus actually showing my authentic self.
AM: Hmm.
GM: Um, another example is when I didn’t show my eyes. Well, eye contact is a really complicated thing for many autistic [00:50:00] people.
AM: Okay.
GM: And so making eye contact with a screen isn’t the same, necessarily experience as with another person, but there’s still things in common.
And so I found it was actually in some time, sometimes it was actually convenient to know that I wasn’t showing my eyes, so I didn’t have to think about looking at the screen and not just looking at the screen, but. Not looking at the screen itself, but the little actual
AM: Sure. Yeah.
GM: All of these different things.
AM: Yeah.
GM: And a lot of that really maps onto autistic experiences of eye contact as well. So there’s a few ideas.
AM: Wow.
GM: There’s a few topics, but there’s, there’s always so many more.
AM: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for going into that. I’m sure a lot of people will relate. I personally don’t have ADHD or autism. I know people who do.
Um, but I think that, you know, I’m ideally our listeners are, you know, will, can relate to this because I’m sure that that is something that a lot of people experience and, and think about. Um, and something else that, you know, a lot of [00:51:00] people experience, I mean, we all experience is body hair. We all have hair. Right. But what is this hangup with like hair on our bodies? And just for me, just recently I’ve started letting my armpit hair grow. ’cause I’m like, first of all, shaving it all the time is annoying. And also like, I kind of like it, like it, it, it started to feel less, like more unnatural to, to shave it.
Like, it just, I feel like more of a whole human being. I can’t explain it simply for letting my armpit hair grow, you know? Because I think that we have been taught for so long that, like, as women, right? As like cisgendered women, like, you don’t do that. Right? Like only like older women or like lesbian women, you know what I mean?
It was like, it’s like relegated to this certain type of person who lets their armpit hair grow. Um, and I just find it all so absurd that we’re like [00:52:00] frightened of body hair of our own and of other people’s when it’s like literally like the most natural thing ever. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Body hair is so complicated, and that’s another thing that there’s, there really has been a change in how body hair is perceived and shared.
We are still, I think, in terms of mainstream media or like outside of these more niche worlds, like sex work or, and specifically my category of sex work, which is the more authentic, you know, and, and specifically body hair is one of my niches. It makes sense. We’re talking about all of this more there.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: But there really, it, it really is, it’s like swimming upstream because. There are so many messages out there that are saying body hair is unhygienic, but only on women. It’s disgusting. It’s unkempt and so forth. And [00:53:00] for people who want to remove their body hair or sometimes remove it, or people who have a strong preference for partners or like creators, things like that, that have much less body hair.
I understand people have different preferences and maybe some of those preferences would be existing either way, but a, a lot of them are shaped, are shaped by what we saw as sexy growing up,
AM: right.
GM: And
who was on the covers and how body hair was seen as it relates to the women we saw in the covers versus the men that we saw in the covers.
AM: Right
GM: Or in movies and things like that, or in porn. So it is so complicated.
AM: Yeah.
GM: This is another thing where I got a diagnosis since starting this that at least for me explains why I have so much body hair. So I have PCOS and so, um, it’s [00:54:00] polycystic, polycystic ovary syndrome. And, um, at least from my understanding, it’s not a huge deal health wise.
And I have a, I guess a mild or moderate case of it. But essentially women with PCOS often have a lot of body hair.
AM: Oh.
GM: And so, like for example, I dunno how well comes across on the screen, but I have this little patch of, um, like patch of hair on my chest.
AM: Okay.
GM: Or, um, there’s just body hair on a lot of me.
The only part of my body hair that I remove. Pretty regularly these days is my facial hair, like, you know, like around here. But I’ve actually also been challenging myself to go a few days without shaving sometimes, sometimes longer and, and actually some of my fans specifically like beards on women or love this patch of hair, like when I, if I post on Instagram and do hashtag hairy arms for example, you know, the comments can be just like [00:55:00] slobbering over my hairy arms and that is not something I had any idea would be an option or a category of interest.
AM: Right.
GM: Back when I was leaching my arm hair using this really smelly de, it’s called depilatory cream to remove it, shaving it, all kinds of things.
AM: Yeah.
GM: So when I started getting comfy with my body hair. It was when I started posting on at, yeah. At the time, I think it was probably when I was posting on normal nudes, or maybe when I had already started posting in more of the sexy kind of places.
I don’t remember. But what I did notice is that I liked posting and I would be removing my body hair, like, um, shaving all the way up to my bikini line, probably trimming my bush. But I was taking pictures and videos so often because I turned out I liked it and there was an audience for it, [00:56:00] and my body hair would grow so quickly.
And so it was like if I only was removing my body hair or if I was only making content right after I’d removed my body hair and in the window before I grew back, there was a lot less content. And so I just got comfy with it.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And I noticed even in places that weren’t specific to body hair at the time, I don’t even know if I knew that it was a kind of niche.
I, I doubt, I, I doubt that I knew. Even then I would notice I was still getting really positive responses, even when you could see some hair on my upper thighs or things like that. And then it wasn’t that long before I realized that some of them were super into my hairy legs, into my bush. Or like some people, like I used to shave over here and it’s, it is funny.
It’s like just this like small, small patch
AM: on your chest.
Mm-hmm.
GM: And on my chest. And, and that’s also something like, you don’t really hear about women having chest hair or like nipple hair. I have pretty long nipple hairs [00:57:00] and now it’s really fun sometimes to actually take pictures. You know, click on the screen so that it actually focuses on the hair.
I have one really cool picture that has this, this pretty pink necklace, like basically nestled, you know, in the same spot where it is. And it actually looks really gorgeous among my chest hair. And I get compliments on my chest hair sometimes. And so from an artistic angle, a body liberation angle, a sexiness angle, it’s just been a revolution in how I think about the body hair.
AM: I think that’s beautiful. And you, you’ve in inspired and given confidence to other people from, from exploring these types of things and from posting your photos. Is that right?
GM: There have been people who have posted on normal nudes because of me or posted in other places. There have been people who have told me that they look at my content with their significant others, [00:58:00] and they use it to either to actually talk about body image specifically, or just that seeing my sexy, authentic, normal weirdo self makes them confident and turned on.
And so like one of the like testimonials that I have from my only fans I think is somebody told me this amazing thing that. My, I think they said, my wife and i fuck every single time you post new pictures. I just love that. That’s amazing.
AM: That’s so nice.
GM: Yeah. Yeah. And another thing is that because most of my audience is men, or at least I assume they are, that does tend to be who tends to pay for OnlyFans.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: So I, although I, I don’t generally know details about them, but I have this unique opportunity to talk to a lot of men, and often it is on topics of body [00:59:00] image.
AM: Okay.
GM: It’s not necessarily the main thing we’re talking about. A lot of it is like sexy talk, masturbation, compliments, but it comes up and both, sometimes I’ll be talking about.
Like, let’s say they compliment me on something, or they’ll even say, because people will know that I have this whole body image journey. Some of them know that some of them are just, just like masturbating along to while I’m masturbating, and they’re not, they don’t care about that message behind it, and that’s totally fine.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: That’s part of art is that some people will just consume it in a more shallow way and that’s great.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: Um, and it’s also a way of getting, you know, these messages out there in more passive ways.
AM: Yeah.
GM: Um, but you know, they’ll say things like you are, or like, maybe I, I have no idea why you were self-conscious or stuff like that.
And that can be an interesting opportunity for me to chat with them about that or hear about their own body image experiences. And a lot of men have a lot of challenges with body [01:00:00] image and other aspects of body liberation.
AM: Yes.
GM: And so I feel like. I’m providing them a person to talk to about that because they’re attracted to me because they’re interested in my content, because they like my personality, they’re talking to me, and they might never have these kinds of conversations with somebody else.
And so, even though that’s not like the primary purpose of what I’m doing, it is part of my activism. And these are little things that I’ve picked up and that I’ve done and sometimes intentionally, sometimes passively
AM: mm-hmm.
GM: That I would’ve never known.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: A decade ago. And, and that’s also why I’m excited that now I’m in the next decade and I don’t know what this next decade is gonna hold.
I have ideas, but it really is fun to think about, you know, when, when I’m in years like 10 through 20 and ages 35 to 45, and whatever my body experience [01:01:00] will be like in this next decade or whatever, my authenticity experience would be like, however my audience grows, all of these are different factors that I don’t know what they’re gonna be, but I’m just really excited about how things have been developing.
AM: Yeah, your energy just comes through the screen as well. Like your smile is so real. Um, and the work that you’re doing, the, the online content that you’re creating and the conversations you’re having with these people is so incredibly important. And it’s part of helping to change public perception, right?
About bodies, about sex work through conversation. And because you have a platform, you’re able to currently use platforms, you’re able to sort of, as an individual, you’re one by one undoing this horrible messaging that we’ve received, and that men are also just as equally, if not more so brainwashed about body image, not for themselves and how women should look, how people should look.
[01:02:00] And so I really commend that those conversations you’re having, and of course you’re doing that because that’s what sex workers do. We, we do have these conversations, they’re so important. Um, and I really, I wanted to touch on that for our audience members who aren’t sex workers, who we’re, we’re trying to really get them to get people in general to understand why sex work is so important.
It’s not just about sex, right? It’s about, it’s about all of these nuanced things that you’re just explaining so powerfully right now. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Yeah. That, that’s been part of my mission, including on this media tour.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: One reason that you see that I have all this energy right now
AM: mm-hmm.
GM: Is because it is delightful talking face-to-face with somebody who gets it, who’s lovely to talk to, and knowing that this audience will see and. It’s also been a pretty stark contrast to a lot of the time that I actually spend on this is [01:03:00] stuck behind a computer dealing with files, dealing with marketing, trying to figure out account issues, trying to always adapt to a thousand different things like the spreadsheets.
I love, I love and hate spreadsheets. Like I, they’re so useful, but I’m so sick of them.
AM: Yeah.
GM: And yet I, I’m sure I’ll never stop using them. And that’s part of what I want to people to understand as well is that, like you said, sex work isn’t just about sex. That’s part of it. And also it’s a lot of effort.
AM: Yeah,
GM: it’s a lot of labor.
AM: Yeah.
GM: Emotional labor, administrative labor, energy. Um. All, just so many different things.
AM: Yeah.
GM: And so this, honestly, these interviews have been like among the best hours that I’ve spent among all of this. Of course the, all the hours I spend recording myself masturbating are really lovely as well.
But, you know, to kind of like let people peek be behind the curtain.
AM: Yeah.
GM: I’m [01:04:00] definitely enjoying myself as I’m recording myself masturbating, but it is labor. I have to think about how is the, the camera set up. I, if you, if people watch my videos, they might notice I’m very frequently glancing back at the camera ’cause I want to see is it still playing?
Did I definitely hit record? Is it still going and didn’t fill up right and back and a thousand other things Or like,
AM: sure.
GM: What are the best ways that my body hair will be visible Or that, you know, there’s not too many shadows over my pussy so they can’t actually see it. And the, and the, the fact that I’ve, dark body hair complicates that.
And back when I was hiding my eyes. Oh my gosh. The amount of extra labor sometimes in recording, sometimes in editing, depending on how I set things up. It was just so much. And so when people think, oh, why should I pay for porn? Or Oh, it’s so easy, I’ll just throw up a bunch of feet pictures on the internet and make a ton of money.
It’s like [01:05:00] they have no idea what they’re talking about.
AM: Right.
GM: This is so much effort.
AM: Yeah. Um, so to sort of wrap things up, I did wanna touch on, ’cause you have haters. We all do. But you have haters and you deal with it in such a beautiful way. Um, and I don’t wanna talk too much because I don’t wanna give them too much space, but it is a real thing that we all have to deal with.
And you, you seem to deal with it in a special way. And I was just kind of hoping, wondering if you could explain like what your mentality about haters is and like to, you know, sort of give confidence to other people who experience haters.
GM: Getting hate comments can be really complicated.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: Especially when they are saying things that are insecurities that you already have.
AM: Hmm.
GM: And as this whole conversation has shown, I got into this because of really deep [01:06:00] insecurities.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And
I know there continue to be, there are absolutely many people who are. Not at all attracted to me, or, and not even just neutral about it, but are actually disgusted by me.
And so, while I have so much more confidence now, I also know that, you know, part of my success and part of my keeping my mental health in all of this is that I mostly post to places that I know prefer my body type.
AM: Okay.
GM: So for example, I know that in posting on Reddit, if I were to post on Gone Wild Versus Gone Wild Curvy or Gone Wild Hairy, gone Wild Plus, well, the people who Post to Gone Wild are primarily these very, uh, conventionally attractive looking people.
And so the people who go there, that’s mostly what they’re there to see. And anybody else, you know, is uh, can, can sometimes get a lot of hate.
AM: Okay.
GM: And so it is a very [01:07:00] complicated, um, thing to navigate. One thing that helps me is- I genuinely feel that anybody who is posting hate comments is an asshole, and I just, I don’t, I don’t remember having to very actively work on this.
I don’t remember exactly. I’m sure that there probably were some hate comments that did hurt. I don’t remember exactly, but what I can say is that for at least the vast majority of this time, I just have this feeling. If somebody has given me unsolicited negative feedback about my body, and especially, it’s so often in these really cruel ways, I just look at that and I just say, how could I possibly let my self-esteem be affected by an asshole?
This is the kind of behavior and societal issues and cruelty and all of these kinds of issues that is exactly why I was so fucked up [01:08:00] about how I looked.
AM: Mm.
GM: It’s why there’s so much stigma about sex work. It’s why I thought I had to spend like hours removing my body hair and a thousand other different issues.
And so usually I just look at it and by the way, and it’s not even that common, I don’t even get it all that common, all that frequently anyway. But like for example, like if I post on Instagram and people will sometimes post razor emojis in the comments and or like something like, you know, razors exist.
Right?
AM: Oh, I see. Oh, like, yeah. Okay. Wow. Okay. And gross. Mm-hmm.
GM: And it’s just so silly, like. I know razors exist. For example, like in this particular moment today, about an hour ago, I used a razor to remove my facial hair. But, and that’s my, that’s my preference. That’s my option, but also I am sharing about it, so it’s something that I’m not like [01:09:00] ashamed about.
AM: Sure,
sure.
GM: And so what somebody thinks that I don’t know about razors or somebody thinks I don’t know that I’m fat or that it’s, I don’t know that it’s unusual that I have small boobs, even though my body is big. And so it’s, it just, I’m lucky because I, my brain just discounts them. It’s like, no, this is, this is an asshole bye
AM: Mm.
GM: And usually I’ve just ignored them. But probably about six years ago or so. I went through at that point, mostly my Reddit inbox. And I remember mostly I was just copy pasting these lovely comments I got. I put ’em on a fan page on my website, and in fact, at the time I was more focused on the like body liberation aspect and less focused on, this was before I was like monetizing on OnlyFans.
And so at the time I actually was copy pasting comments that were mostly about my body liberation, positivity, all of that part of it. And in fact, I [01:10:00] would like copy paste around the parts that were essentially saying, and I love jacking off to your material or whatever.
AM: Okay, gotcha. Okay.
GM: And so as I was doing it, I was gathering things up and then, so that’s still on my website and I came across a few hate comments and so now a few hate comments are also in the bottom of my fan page.
And in some cases I added little comments kind of making fun of them.
AM: Yeah.
GM: But it is just, I just laugh at them and
AM: Yeah.
GM: And actually, um, every once in a while I have had people who say something cruel and then later apologize to me.
AM: Interesting.
GM: Or
they actually were, I mean, they were looking at my content, so I’m not saying that all haters actually like me. I’m sure some don’t. I’m sure many don’t. But like, one, one day I went on to Reddit and I saw some, like a chat and somebody said.
Uh, your teeth looked like shark [01:11:00] teeth and it was not a compliment. And by the way, I don’t even, I’m not even familiar with this as a specific insult, but it just clearly wasn’t a compliment. , So I responded and I said, I hope you are getting therapy for whatever led you to send that message. And later, sorry. And, and later, um, I, I, when I went back into Reddit and I saw they had responded and they said, don’t worry, I am. So this person is apparently in therapy and working on it.
And, and they said something like, and you were the only person who responded to me anyway. So it was like they, they were excited to hear from me,
but they didn’t
like my teeth and. Shark teeth. Why did they make this comment?
AM: You do not have shark teeth.
GM: It’s just very confusing.
AM: Yeah,
it’s very confusing. ’cause your teeth do not look like shark teeth, first of all.
It’s a really interesting choice. Um, but it also sounded like they just wanted attention, which is like, you know, I’m saying like, oh, not because like, I [01:12:00] feel bad for that person, but because it’s so sad that that’s how people try to get attention.
GM: Yeah.
AM: You know? And it sounds like that’s really what he wanted in the end.
’cause it sounds he, you were the only one that commented back. Right?
GM: Yeah. And, and I do feel sorry for people like this also. I mean, I can have, I can have anger at them, anger at the system.
AM: Sure, sure.
GM: Feeling sorry for them isn’t necessarily the dominant thing I think about. But I also know that people have such complex feelings about bodies, about sex, about giving feedback, getting feedback, interacting.
Uh, what is acceptable to say to somebody posting online? There’s all these different complexities about that, and clearly that is not okay. Like, I’m not trying to justify that, but it, it’s just, I guess it’s going back to again, like this is somebody who I probably would never have interacted with in my regular life and if it weren’t for this [01:13:00] project, and so it’s putting me face, well, not, not exactly face to face, but
AM: Sure.
GM: You know, it’s putting me in contact with all these different kinds of people and, and it’s toughened me up.
AM: Hmm.
GM: Apparently that person, I mean, who knows, like, did, like, did, are they actually in therapy? Did they actually talk to their therapist about this shark teeth lady that maybe they’re attracted to who actually talked to them and
AM: Right.
GM: You know, like, who even knows? But, and that’s part of also why. I feel like, you know, I’m not saying that I’m solving all the problems or even, you know, making enormous strides on this particular one. Like generally any given activist, it does a piece of the puzzle. But I feel like all these things I’ve been doing, these interviews, all this content, all this posting over the years, all these fan and hater interactions, I just feel like it’s probably seeding some messages out into the world.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: You know, I [01:14:00] suspect that that person might think twice.
AM: I hope so.
GM: Maybe not. And, and it’s, and it’s not my problem and I don’t, no sense. But
AM: thank you.
GM: It’s complicated.
AM: It is.
Everything is complicated. Yes. And I appreciate you going through the nuances of everything and of all of these subjects we talked about today, is there anything that you want to leave with our audience before we close out?
GM: You know, I wanted to add something else about Yeah. Um, about body hair.
AM: Okay.
GM: And that is that while I don’t generally think of myself as a person who is specifically into body hair, like I don’t seek it out.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: But when I think back, I actually, like, the very first time I even realized that I’m not straight, that I am attracted to any gender or at the moment I realized I was also attracted to women, is I laid eyes on this gorgeous, in actually very conventionally attractive woman in one of my college [01:15:00] classes who had very, very hairy legs.
And since then I’ve noticed that there have been times in which attraction that I have for a woman develops when I notice that like she has some sort of body hair or like more body hair than the average woman would.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: And so it’s, it’s interesting that. This body hair niche that I have, both as it relates to my art, my entrepreneurship, and my personal life also has been like an awakening or experience for me as well.
Like this, realizing that I am queer happened when I was 18 and that was about seven years before I started posting online. And it’s like there’s, and that opened up so much about, you know, for me. And so sometimes I have trouble with [01:16:00] relating to like why somebody would be attracted to me. Like, you know, ’cause there’s still all this stuff in my head.
But then having those little experiences of, well I have very viscerally felt that experience where, whether it’s the body hair itself or the fact that it flags to me. Uh, that I think maybe it’s part, maybe part is that part of it is that, I could be wrong, but I think it’s possible that queer women might be a little more likely to let their body hair grow.
So maybe it’s also a little flag that this is somebody who could like me back.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: But also there’s that raw authenticity and also masculinity. I, I like it turns out I like a more masculinity in women and so, um, that helps in a way.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: Or like, I notice that I, like, I do like medium or small boobs.
I mean, all boobs are amazing. Yeah. But I’ve noticed like in down blouse videos, um, small boobs are, I guess, extra lovely because there’s all this extra gap [01:17:00] between the shirts. And again, it comes then it’s like, okay, I can kind of understand how somebody could be attracted to me.
AM: Mm-hmm.
GM: So I just wanted to add that it’s a unique aspect where.
It just like all these different things combine.
AM: Yes, definitely.
GM: And I guess that’s definitely true of this project overall.
AM: Absolutely, yes. What an interesting project, what an amazing journey you’ve been on of like self-discovery and liberation. I think it’s just astounding. So thank you so much for so openly sharing all of this with us today with our listeners.
I think it’s great. Thank you.
GM: Thank you for having me on.
AM: Yeah. Please. Would you like to tell people where, if they wanna follow you or find you or your website or anything like that, do you wanna plug those
GM: stillinmetamorphosis.com is a great place to find me and if they wanna jump specifically to my OnlyFans.
onlyfans.com/still in metamorphosis too, but my website is a great place to start.
AM: Awesome. Great. And we’ll be sure to put those links [01:18:00] in the description so people can just click on those and find you directly without having to remember spelling. Um, make it easy for everyone in this fast-paced world we live in.
Um, again, thank you so much. This has just been really incredible. Um, and I’m very excited for our audience to hear all of this. And, um, speaking of our audience, we thank you for tuning in and for listening. Um, and please feel free to leave a comment wherever it is that you’re listening to this podcast.
Um, and be sure to give Gal Mariya a follow and show your support to her and for her journey. And don’t forget, if you’d like to donate to our podcast, you can go to yaswork.org/donate. That’s it for today. We will see you guys again next time. Bye everyone.