Nicole Maple Coenan, or ‘Maple Mommy’ as she’s affectionately named by her fans, is making the sapphics quiver and squeal with delight by wielding a fucking humungus axe and chopping some very large logs. It’s seriously hot.
The video in question, which made its way onto my FYP, was posted in 2023. Two years and 6.3 million views later, people are *still* experiencing gay panic.
Coenan’s entire feed is filled with toned arms, lumberjack plaid and logs splitting under the weight of her swing. Her wiry frame, blond hair and cap, all effortlessly assembled in a show of masculinity so alluring and seductive that she has now amassed over 2.4 million followers and 49.8 million likes.
@nicole_coenenLittle retro-music-training-montage-style-video for ya 🪵♬ original sound – Nicole Maple Coenen
One look at any one of her comment sections, and it looks like I’m not alone in lusting after this lady lumberjack. One commenter writes: “I may be pregnant now”, while another account under the username ‘Bog Witch Lauren’ states, “I’ve never wanted to be a log more in my life.” And, my personal favourite, “Shut up everyone my show has started.”
Sharing the video on my Instagram stories, my inbox is soon flooded by the girls, all thinking the same thing as me.
“Firstly, there’s something really sexy about showing off strength in a rough and ready setting, for me, that goes for any gender.” Tegen Barnier, 34, from Bristol, says, “But her masculine energy is sexy and androgynous. I want to be the bit of wood that she’s cutting. I want her to hold me.”
She’s not alone, Martha-Rose Hale, 30, from London, is equally as mesmerised. “There’s something so sexy about it. Like, the confidence and the strength,” she pauses, “She’s not trying too hard or being over the top like I’ve seen men do. Honestly, that makes me eye roll.”
For Danielle Sharpe, 36, from Westbury, one word says it all: “Aroused.”
But why are we all salivating at a lady chopping wood?
For as long as records show, humans have been gender-bending and playing with clothing to present in feminine, androgynous and masculine ways. Husband-wife couplings of sapphic and lesbian women are well documented, as Martha ‘ 2004 book, Intimate Friends, shows us.
In fact, according to Vicinus, it was widely accepted that some women were born more masculine in appearance and appetite well before the late eighteenth century. The five principal women, Lady Eleanor Butler, Rosa Bonheur, Anne Lister, Harriet Hosmer and Charlotte Cushman, who are featured throughout Vicinus’ chapters, felt their openly masculine appearance and behaviour was “instinctive”.
This ranged from following intellectual pursuits, wearing trousers and smocks, their stride and manner, going about at night unaccompanied or speaking in a “man-ny voice”.
“These women believe that their attraction to women is as natural as their appearance,” writes Vicinus.
Each one of these extraordinary women, who collectively lived between 1778 and 1928, is early proof that gender norms are there to be messed around with, not to limit and restrict our self-expression.
So it should come as no shock or surprise that, literally centuries later, we’re still finding it hot when women show their masculine side proudly.
Then, in the 1940s and 50s America, the emergence of Butch lesbian grew from the underground subculture which celebrated challenging gender norms.
All this to say that, basically, since forever, women have been crushing hard on masculine-presenting women for their confidence and self-assuredness outside of the gender norm. So, please, Nicole, have mercy on the thirsty women!
