The male gaze never stood a chance. Not in my books. Not in my characters. Not in a single sentence I’ve written for as long as I’ve been conscious of my existence.
Because I don’t write women to be admired. I write them to be understood. To be messy, contradictory, overfeeling, unlikable, unforgivable, sacred, wounded, and sometimes dangerous. I don’t dress them up for male approval. I write them how they live inside of us. Fully.
If that makes some people uncomfortable? Good.
Women, but for real
So many “strong female characters” were clearly written by men who think our bodies are a personality trait and motherhood is the only goal we have. What I write instead are women with blood under their nails. Women who cry and then manipulate. Women who want love but don’t trust it. Women who snap — not because they’re hysterical, but because no one listened the first 17 times.
In Miniature Novels I, the girls don’t beg to be seen — they dare you to look. In Miniature Novels II, they don’t exist to teach lessons or give redemption arcs to men who barely know themselves. In Things You’ll Never Understand, womanhood isn’t an aesthetic. It’s a battlefield. Quiet, internal, and haunting. And in How to Get the Girl, womanhood involves taking back power in our sexuality.
Not your tragic muse
The male gaze loves to romanticize women in pain. To turn suffering into spectacle. To make her heartbreak poetic — as long as she stays beautiful while breaking.
My characters? They shatter out loud. They get ugly. They leave messes behind. They scream, they shut down, they make you sit in the discomfort. They are not anyone’s muse. They are the authors of their own undoing — and that’s what makes them art.
There’s a reason people call female characters “too much” — too angry, too sexual, too soft, too cruel. It’s code for not written for men to consume comfortably. And I don’t write for comfort. I write for truth. I write for the girl who’s been told she’s dramatic. For the woman who’s been gaslit into silence. For every reader who’s felt monstrous for wanting too much, or guilty for needing less.
This isn’t about excluding men from reading my work. It’s about not shrinking the story so they’ll stay.
Because I don’t write to be looked at. I write so we can see ourselves. Unfiltered. Unforgiving. Unapologetic.
And absolutely unforgettable.
— Montse
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