OUR STRUGGLE WITH MALE GAZE

While self-love works hard, the male gaze too often works harder. words: Mia Jones | design: Sydney Neidell

Flattering tops, beat up shoes, boob tape, and an assortment of jewelry are strewn across the room as you and your girlfriends are getting ready for a night out. With music blasting and makeup covering every surface, you’re trying to decide your look for the night. Where’s that perfect pair of pants that fits just right at the waist? Which mini skirt is short enough to show off your legs? Even though you say it’s just a night for you and the girls, you’re still looking for a specific top that perfectly accentuates your features and that one Rare Beauty blush that gives you a playful flush of color. You scan the room or the bar while you’re out, looking for potential hookups for the night to appeal to. As much as we say that we do all of the preparation for our personal enjoyment, which is true and very important, there is simultaneously that deep down nudge within many of us girls to make sure we look enticing to the potential males at the function, or the possible run in with your ex as you walk around campus. This is especially true for us single college girls.

While there are some days where we truly don’t care to put in the effort to get ready for class and we just waltz out the door without a care, we still may choose athleisure wear that looks good on us. We choose between doing our makeup for class or perfecting our hair instead, or we even put aside the time in the morning for both. While this can be done for one’s own satisfaction, even when we really don’t want to have to care, there is still that innermost pull to make ourselves look, at the minimum, decent for class. We have an underlying urge to choose even the smallest things about ourselves to deem appealing to the male eye. There is a very specific kind of satisfaction that comes from male validation, and our inner male gaze helps to serve that.

The male gaze, a topic of interest in popular culture today, is the way that women tend to be depicted in the media through the lens of men and their desires. This in turn objectifies and sexualizes women. This is often shown through film, but it also has been done in advertisements, such as through fashion, with fixations on the female body and an ideal, sexualized version of women as seen from a straight man’s point of view. Think of those sexy commercials you’ve seen for hair products and things as simple as body wash–everything about the commercial is seductive. This is unhealthy for us girls to see, especially when we’re young and trying to navigate ourselves, as it often promotes a view of girls that is difficult to attain, and deep down, it makes us feel like we constantly need to live up to the standards created by the male gaze.

We can think of this as like having an uberstraight man living inside of our brains, which is an icky thing to think about. We constantly feel pressure, like an unexplainable nagging, to act and dress towards what a heterosexual male would find appealing (however, some girls don’t feel this at all). We sometimes think of ourselves from a man’s perspective, and yes, I know, this is literally horrifying. The concept of this is especially apparent when we go out at night or even when we’re just getting ready for our day. It comes out subconsciously, almost by nature, and so we don’t really think about how we partake in this constant “inner male gaze” that analyzes our appearance and conduct.

Trying to understand why we feel a push to consistently look good, and deciphering whether that’s for ourselves or for the male eye, can help us in trying to not be so critical of ourselves, so then we can be more content with ourselves as girls. At the end of the day, what’s most important is that you do what makes you feel good about your appearance. Do whatever you want with it! Wear whatever you want, do or don’t wear makeup, as long as it’s all in the name of comfortability and your personal style. There is power in striving to stay true to your likings.