Interview with Delicaresse, from silence to the right to choose.

“What authorizes it is my voice, not my image”

From silenced speech to the right to choose

1. The woman behind Delicaresse

“Then I hope you’re patient and very attentive, because my answers can be very long.” When she introduces herself, @Delicaresse she sets the tone. In her voice notes, she corrects herself, gets sidetracked at times, slips in a joke, and comes back to the point.

At 40, she creates sensual images and owns the fact that she likes arousing desire. But a photograph tells neither her whole life nor what she would agree to experience with the person looking at her.

For WishPride, she looks back on the sexual violence she suffered as a child and then as an adult, the words that were hard to find for a long time, and the people who helped her speak. She also talks about the pleasure of creating, her limits, and her desire to listen in turn. Behind Delicaresse, what we discover is not another woman, but the same person, whose images do not say everything.

1. Who is the woman behind Delicaresse, once you take away the photos and the networks?

A 40-year-old woman, a mother, with a professional life on the side. I’m a hard worker, a sincere and whole-hearted person. When I make a commitment, I follow through. If you challenge me and I say « OK », I’ll go all the way. I don’t pretend.

I’m also someone who’s full of energy. I want to pass on pleasure, joy, good humor, silliness, sharing. I bite into life with both teeth, I’m always ready to joke around, always full of energy. I can be exhausting!

I have a strong personality. I wouldn’t say I’m authoritarian or dominant. I have a voice and I’m committed to making it heard. But I also know how to keep quiet, listen, and sometimes let myself be guided, while keeping a degree of control.

I don’t feel different on social media. I have a life outside it that I keep to myself, but it’s still the same person. I protect my private life, but what I do is not a secret. I fully own that choice.

2. You’d already been taking photos for a long time. What made you move from something private to Delicaresse?

It has always been in me. I’ve always loved beautiful photos, bodies, in men as well as women. For years and years I was taking photos that stayed within my private sphere.

While talking with someone, I managed to express this desire I had had for years. I felt good in my body and told myself this was the time. I didn’t need anyone’s permission to get started. One night, around one in the morning, I said, “Right, let’s go,” created my OnlyFans account, my Instagram account... and I got hooked.

There’s also something I’m beginning to accept. I didn’t think I was ugly, but I couldn’t imagine that I could be desirable. It wasn’t conceivable. The feedback was very positive, and it matched what people had already been telling me face-to-face. They found me beautiful, sensual, sexy, including in the way I am.

I’m starting to accept it. Not too much, though! I’m afraid of getting a big head and losing my humility. So I try to keep a measure on what I do.

Liking to arouse desire and having trouble believing that one can be attractive coexist in her story. The confidence with which she now speaks about her images therefore does not, on its own, tell the story of the way she long saw herself.

3. You sum up your world as “enough to make people want more, but never too much.” What are you trying to convey in your images?

Sensuality, the beauty of the body and of photography. The body is a work of art. The key is knowing how to stage it. I like polished content, but genuine. I don’t retouch my photos or my videos. I play with an angle, the light, perspective, sometimes black and white, or I cut a video.

It takes time and energy. You have to prepare the setting, find the outfit, take several shots before being satisfied with the light, the position or the angle. I like photography in general. It has to remain a pleasure to do.

I also do a lot of personalized content. My pleasure is to give pleasure, to arouse desire. That feels good to me too.

On my public accounts, I’m not trying to share pornography. I have other spaces where the content is much more explicit. What I choose to show publicly is above all sensuality.

And the feedback surprised me. People talk to me about my softness and my sensitivity. I didn’t think I conveyed all that in my photos, but apparently it comes through. And I like that.

To continue exploring her world, Delicaresse gathers her various spaces on linkerz.fr/delicaresse.

2. When words find no place

She kept the violence she suffered as a child to herself for a long time. Not for lack of trying to say it.

4. You tried to speak very young. Yet almost immediately, you took your words back. What happened for you at that moment?

My father was alcoholic and sexually assaulted me for several years, roughly from when I was 9 until I was 14 or 15. I don’t have precise memories of everything, only a few very brief ones.

I tried to talk about it when it started. When my mother heard it, her reaction was very strong. She said, “I’m going to kill your father.” And I didn’t want that. I just wanted it to stop.

So I denied it. I said I had made things up. I was punished, and then the abuse continued. Then I kept it to myself for years.

In this memory, her retraction does not mean nothing had happened. She tells of the fear of what her words would set off. The story then shifts the focus. It is no longer only about finding the courage to speak, but about being able to be heard without being more afraid.

5. Today, when you think back to that child, what would she have needed to hear or see in order to keep speaking?

I would have liked to be supported, backed up, listened to, and accompanied. Without being pressured, without being forced, without being frightened the way I was frightened.

Because for the person who went through that, it’s a complicated road. For me, what matters is feeling supported. Being spoken to gently, being listened to, being advised, without being made to feel guilty.

That’s the reaction I would have liked to have with me. It’s what I didn’t have.

3. Finally putting a word on what happened

As an adult, she knows she does not agree. What it takes her time to recognize is not her lack of desire, but the violence of what is imposed on her. In her story, refusal comes before the word.

6. As an adult, you suffered sexual violence again. You say that at the time you didn’t necessarily use the word “rape.” Why was that word so hard to consider?

The term rape, I’ve only been using it for a few years. At the time, for what I was going through, it didn’t exist for me. That’s just how I lived. I didn’t agree, but I didn’t label it with that word. He was a man who humiliated me, who put me down, but who also built me up, supported me, advised me.

And then, that crazed thing. He controlled my phone, my bank card, the people I saw, my job.

When I didn’t agree, he would say, “Anyway, you’re a slut.” That’s the kind of talk I heard. He had destroyed me so much that I came to think, “Go ahead, help yourself, do whatever you want, anyway I’m worth nothing.”

7. When did you start calling things by their name? Was there a trigger, a person or a sentence that changed the way you understood it?

It’s a combination of things. First of all, that feeling of telling myself that this wasn’t normal. I had said no. He did not respect me. It bothered me immensely.

At that time, I also heard feminists talking about marital rape in public debates. I identified with what was being described. I told myself that that was what I was going through, that that was what he was doing to me.

And then, once, he did it again. I told him, “Do you realize that you’re raping me, actually?” He replied, “Meh.” Excuse me? What, you know, actually? He apologized afterward. And he did it again.

What I felt, the words I heard, the fact of recognizing myself in them, all of that mattered. I understood that I had the right to say no.

8. You talk about shock, fragmented memories, and sometimes more bodily memories than precise images. What did the psychiatrist’s words help you understand?

I had fragments of memories, bodily reactions, emotions. Sometimes I wondered whether I had actually gone through that. It was a whole mix of things, a battle between my intellectual memory, my bodily memory, and my emotional memory.

When I told the psychiatrist how I had reacted, I said I was waiting for it to pass. I was frozen in time. I was waiting for it to be over. There was an inner pain, but no tears. I had the impression that I was no longer there.

From the very first session, he put words to what I was telling him. He spoke to me about shock and what he called body memory. He explained that, in his view, my brain had protected me.

I asked him, “But what proof do you have, for heaven’s sake, that I’m telling the truth?” In the way he looked at me and spoke to me, I felt like he really believed me. When he told me that, I broke down in tears. Someone was putting words to it. For me, it was a relief, a validation of what I had experienced.

It pushed me to keep going. I no longer doubt my own words for a single instant. The fragments I have are still there.

4. Speaking, being heard, rebuilding yourself

9. You told me you had shared “bits of story” with several people. How did you find someone who would listen and support you?

I gave bits of my story to different people, without always feeling like I was being heard. I would tell a piece and think that, if it wasn’t the right ear, I’d go see someone else.

When I filed a complaint for the violence I suffered in my childhood, I felt believed by the female gendarme who received it. Afterwards, I was given a dismissal. When I was called back to be told why, I was told, “Madam, do you realize there were no witnesses?” It was extremely complicated.

The psychiatrist I met had been recommended to me by France Victimes. I think it’s important to say that, because I benefited from free support all the way through. For me, it did me a world of good.

In what she says, feeling believed and getting the recognition she hoped for do not always go hand in hand. She keeps the memory of a female gendarme who listened to her, but also that of a process that did not turn out as she wanted. The support she later found opens up another task: living with what she went through.

10. You did therapy, saw a psychiatrist, and worked with EMDR. What did that work concretely change in the way you live with what you went through?

Therapy taught me how to live. What I went through is part of me today, but it is no longer an everyday suffering.

The psychiatrist had explained to me that the goal was not to make me forget. For me, EMDR was exceptional for that. The memory is still there, but I went through a process that allowed me to remember it without feeling the same pain again.

Even now, when I talk about it, I feel emotion, inevitably. But it is no longer the same pain as before. I do have remnants, of course. It’s part of me, I live with it.

I was offered hypnosis, but I don’t want it. I’m afraid it would make me suffer even more. Today, I can talk about it freely and I don’t want to try to recover any more memories.

11. When someone confides a sexual assault, what, in your experience, can help them keep speaking? And what reactions risk shutting that speech down?

I have a very concrete answer, because I supported someone who was a victim of sexual violence. The person she first confided in asked her for permission to tell me about it. Then we talked.

She should not have stayed in that situation. I talked about it with her regularly. I asked whether she wanted to talk about it with me, whether she wanted to meet someone who could act, support her, and help her. I told her I would listen and advise her. And above all, “I’ll support you every step of the way.”

When she asked to be accompanied to the police station, we went there the very next day. I admire her for saying stop and asking for help.

I didn’t want to pressure her, make her feel guilty, or frighten her the way I had been frightened. I supported her, backed her up, listened to her, and accompanied her. For me, that’s the reaction I would have liked to have with me.

And I’m still there today. We talk about it regularly, because it’s complicated. When other people share little pieces of their story with me, that’s also how I try to be there. I accompany, I don’t force, I don’t guilt-trip.

Telling this story of support is what overwhelms her with emotion for the first time in the exchange. She is no longer only talking about what she would have wanted to receive. She is describing her presence alongside someone else, and emphasizing that she is still there today. In her account, support is not reduced to the day the complaint was filed.

12. You told me you felt weak, but also that you were made responsible for what you had suffered. What do you want to deconstruct in that guilt?

I blamed myself for reacting like that. I told myself I had been weak. The psychiatrist helped me understand that, for him, my reactions had been a form of protection.

And when I filed a complaint for what I had experienced as a child, I was told it was my fault. I was blamed for the way I dressed, for talking about sex, and for living my life, as an adult. I was told I had “led him on.” I replied, “But I was nine years old!”

That image is what kills me. That’s what I want to deconstruct. Stop saying a girl led him on and that’s why she was assaulted.

5. Reclaiming ownership of her body

Her adult sexuality was held against her when she spoke about violence suffered in childhood. She rejects that confusion. Listening to her talk about her body therefore requires something other than looking for, in each of her desires, traces of what she suffered. Her story also contains old tastes, encounters, choices, and periods she does not fully understand.

13. You long hated your body, then experienced a sexuality you describe as “almost putting yourself in danger.” How do you tell the journey up to the moment when you feel good with it?

At the beginning of my sexuality, having my body touched was complicated. I was afraid of harmful touches. Then I met different boyfriends and, little by little, I felt that their gestures were not harmful. I became more and more comfortable with my body being touched, even if that wasn’t necessarily the case for certain practices.

After that came the other extreme. I told myself I had been treated like shit and that I could do the same to a man. I take you, I throw you away. That was the mindset at the time. I let everything go, almost in a way that put me in danger. And that way of living my sexuality didn’t suit me either.

I told myself I had to stop my nonsense. Pleasing myself, yes, but not just any old way, not just anywhere, not with just anyone. Do it, but do it well.

Becoming a mother also grounded me. It became my priority. I wanted to protect my child and raise him, especially on how to treat a woman. That still guides me today. I’m proud of the values I managed to pass on to my son. And above all, I’m proud that he understood them and applies them.

I don’t know whether I have a very precise explanation for all these stages. I think it’s an inner journey, an inner struggle, a will to get out of it. I’m a fighter; in any case, I’m persistent. I never want to stay in a state of discomfort. And today, I’m well.

When she talks about her son, respect is no longer only about what she wants for herself. It also becomes what she wants to pass on. She insists on that particular pride: having given values and seeing them understood, then put into practice.

14. When you say “my body belongs to me,” what does that mean for you in the commitment with someone and in what you choose to show?

My body is mine. That sentence is powerful for me. I made a commitment and I kept it. But no, actually, I don’t belong to anyone.

Love a woman, her mind, her intelligence, her freedom, whatever you want in her. But she will never belong to you. Her body is her own.

And my image is not an invitation to use my body. Your imagination, you can do what you want with it. It’s me who uses my body to create an image. You, behind that, use the image. Stop.

6. Desire and consent

15. You say, “What authorizes it is my voice, not my image.” When you talk about your “voice,” what do you mean exactly?

It’s my voice that tells you yes or no. Not a look you’re going to interpret, nor a body movement you’re going to interpret. When you know someone, you can understand things, but it is not necessarily a clear message.

Then there can be touches that send clearer messages. I’m not very sure how to express it. But it’s not a body you look at that authorizes you to touch it.

When I talk about voice, I mean what the other person expresses. Through speech, sign language, it doesn’t matter. It’s a clear mode of expression.

The image is something you look at. You send something and the other person receives it in their own way; it’s one-way. Voice, on the other hand, is there to create an exchange. It’s my voice that decides, not the image.

16. You come back to the intentions people project onto women as soon as they show their bodies. What bothers you about that gaze?

A man can expose himself and no one is going to say it’s an invitation to rape. A woman shows a bit too much skin, according to the dictates of the moment, and she is no longer free to expose what she wants or move however she wants. Right away, people interpret a look, a gesture. But no.

I like arousing desire, I freaking love it when people tell me so. But don’t imagine that behind that, I’m expecting us to sleep together.

If I film myself with someone, it’s with a person I chose and who chose me. It’s mutual agreement, between two consenting people. In sex, there is nothing dirty as long as all participants consent.

17. You are very open sexually, while having certain very clear limits. What does knowing them and expressing them change in your sexual freedom?

It helps me free my sexuality. I express them clearly, perhaps bluntly at times for some people. When a man approaches me on social media with a “Want to fuck?”, I say no. That’s not what’s written on my account.

I set my boundaries. You accept them, great. You don’t accept them, you turn around and leave. These are not boundaries I don’t want to cross out of principle. Some are physical or psychological. I can’t go beyond them.

There are some that I’m willing to work on. I’d like to explore submission, but for me, letting go and trusting enough remain difficult. Certain gestures, especially near my throat or pulling my hair, are part of those limits. It’s not a matter of not wanting to do it. It’s that I can’t.

To explore that path, I’d need someone patient, who understands and accepts that we try, and that if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Don’t force it, don’t insist.

She does not tell her limits as though they were a list of challenges to be overcome. Some experiences attract her, without being possible for her today. Her desire to explore does not erase what she has just said. The patience she asks for also includes the possibility that the experience stops there.

7. Turning her words into something that can help

18. What has content creation brought you that you weren’t necessarily looking for at the beginning?

At the outset, when I started, there was no intention of work or rebuilding myself. For me, the biggest part was already done. If I did it, it was precisely because I felt good and free to do it. It was the desire to live something I had wanted for a very long time.

It was as the posts, the feedback, and the conversations came in that I told myself, “Wow, this actually does me good!” It’s not just the pleasure of posting and getting my message across. It does me good. It was a surprise; it was not at all what I was looking for at the start.

The claim was there from the beginning, but very small. At my level, what could I do? I said it anyway, I slipped it in from time to time. Then I saw that people were hearing it and letting me know, often in private messages.

Today, it’s a gentle mix of everything. It does me good and I like it.

She is attached to that order of things. Her desire to create did not begin with a search for healing. The pleasure of photography, the work on images, and the wish to share them already existed. The well-being discovered later is added to that. The creator does not disappear behind the testimony.

19. If someone reads this interview, recognizes themselves in part of your story, and has never yet managed to talk about it, what would you like to tell them today?

Come talk to me, let’s discuss it. If you need an ear, I’ll be your ear. Just an ear. If you need me to reply, I’ll reply. It’s sincere.

My door is open to people who feel safe with me and want to. I’ve never bitten anyone, unless they ask me to!

But I am not the solution. For procedures, there are the authorities. I don’t always find them effective, but my optimistic side means I hope and believe that it will change.

Above all, I would want these people not to give up and not to stay alone. That’s what needs to be remembered. Talk about it to people who can support you.

At the beginning of our exchange, she asked me whether I was patient and attentive. After everything she has just told us, those two words resonate differently. She has talked a lot. She has also just offered to listen.

20. You told me, “I have a voice and I care about making it heard.” What does making that voice heard mean to you today?

I think I’ve always had a strong personality. I’ve always tried to express things, more or less easily depending on the subject and the people. But today, on this subject, my voice is completely free. For me, that’s a sign of freedom.

Making my voice heard means saying that a woman’s body is not an object, not something you use. You can fantasize, admire, love. But first and foremost, she is a person.

Let her live the way she wants. If you don’t like what she does, look away and go somewhere else. But criticizing her, what does that get you?

Hearing my voice means simply hearing that I am a woman who has been through things and that I do not want it to happen again. I want things to change.

#interview #consentement #MeToo #violencessexuelles #feminisme #sexualite