Dressing for the Male Gaze Is Out as Women Denounce Societal Shame
The woman gaze is about accenting your unique creativity while ensuring you feel comfortable and in charge.
It’s not the first time the topic of the male gaze has appeared online, and it certainly will not be the last.
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The male gaze could be described as women wearing outfits meant to highlight those hypersexualized aspects of the woman's body such as shorter and tighter dresses — outfits typically worn at the expense of one’s comfort. The woman gaze is centered around comfortability and creativity, a rejection of shame, and an encouragement of self-expression. The idea is not that one of these is attractive to men and the other is not, but rather one is built around the need for male approval or perception and the other is not.
In 2021, young girls and women discussed the need to feel more comfortable working from home and simply existing during the pandemic. The pause in the grind of activities allowed women to reflect on decisions made and what benefitted them externally and internally.
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Estelle Tang, senior culture editor at Buzzfeed News, wrote about this transformative period that same year.
“I put on a dress the other day. I felt like a lizard person trying to persuade the humans of Earth that I was one of them. The feeling of the stiff fabric pulling taut over my bigger, pandemic-era body, the weirdness of seeing myself wearing something I hadn’t worn for over a year… There were other, more pressing things to think about — like health, employment, and money… So scouring online stores and thinking about silk dresses fell by the wayside as I stayed home, perceived by nobody,” Tang wrote.
The pandemic helped women reconsider who the performance of their appearance was all for. When you are not tearing yourself apart over what will make you less intimidating to men at a bar or fussing over straightening your 4C hair to be socially accepted, with that pressure gone, in comes reintroduction to the self.
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Understanding why women feel this pressure is important as well. The male gaze is demanding; it requires a softness in appearance, but within that definition of softness is a white idealization of youth and complexion. The male gaze also hates distractions; layering, patterns, hair styled uniquely, weight gain, or even pop cultural references (such as the Hello Kitty fashion), can be confusing and lead to rejection. The male gaze rejection can cost you romantic partnerships, healthcare, mental health, and even employment.
NPR's Chief Business Editor Pallavi Gogoi wrote about this bias in 2023, highlighting plus-size women earned less and had a harder time finding employment. “Economist David Lempert, who worked for the U.S. government for over a decade, found … an increase of 10 per cent in a woman's body mass decreased her income by 6 per cent. This wage cut comes on top of the fact that women already earn 20 per cent less on average than men in the U.S.,” Gogoi reported. The NPR analysis noted men did not face this same weight bias and in fact, some studies found white men perceived to be overweight earned more.
In Canada, the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry found similar conclusions in a 2016 published study. “The research showed that obesity is associated with a reduced hourly wage rate and annual income among women by approximately four per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively. From 2010 to 2011, obese women earned an average of $18.90 an hour or $37,972.26 annually. In comparison, non-obese women earned on average $22 an hour or $42,492.67 annually. There was no significant difference in labour market participation,” the study found.
This explains the tug and pull that can still occur when deciding on one’s fashion as a woman. But, the tides are slowly shifting.
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The pandemic reduced the need to dress for the male gaze by limiting the gaze and the feeling of shame women are often expected to have.
For example, the steps to wearing a body-con dress can be grueling. These could include tummy tucking underwear, then Spanx, then a shimmy (a slip) or two, then doing stomach vacuums or laying upside down with your feet in the air to reduce bloating — we haven’t even covered wood therapy for a lymphatic massage the day you choose to wear a body-con dress or limiting bloat-inducing foods the day before. But now, the choice is either to wear the dress and allow some tummy or unwanted curvature or fat gathering to show, or to toss the dress out entirely. Women are letting go of the shame they are made to feel for an imperfect appearance and this is because their agency led them to decide on that very same appearance. Swapping out the need to fulfill the male gaze with the assurance of agency, has reduced the societal pressure of shame and made room for the discovery, or rediscovery, of the self. How can we make women conform when the punishment for not conforming — shame — is no longer seen as a negative? How can we make women conform when the definition of shame is transfixed within their sense of agency? You can’t.
CEO of Mother Matters Centre Amy Robichaud explained how fashion psychologist Shakaila Forbes-Bell described this rediscovery with CBC News. As Forbes-Bell puts it, clothing enables us to reflect on the person we want to be now, the person we want to be in the future, and the person we fear we will be. “And so when we put on those hard pants or dress pants for the first time after 18 months, and they don't fit, we're confronted with the person we fear we'll be. When we feel comfortable ... that gives us the confidence to think about the person we want to be in the future and when we look in the mirror and we feel good about how we present ourselves, that makes us feel good about who we are now," CBC News reported.
This could explain why so many women and girls on TikTok find the fashion of Adam Sandler slightly endearing. While noting his inherent privilege as a white, affluent male, Sandler is still a celebrity who refuses to live within our expectations — not to mention how he seems to appear on basketball courts around the world. He found his niche and he is comfortable within it.
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Part of finding your sense of fashion comes with life. No TikTok video about closet capsules, or videos geared to Gen Alpha and Gen Z about what fashion trends are in or out will be able to create your fashion sense for you. Fashion is tied to what makes you who you are and what you hope to convey through your assemble for that day, week, or lifetime. Dressing for the self includes wearing what you feel attracted to, layering different pieces together, understanding your body, shape, and unique features, and getting it wrong until you believe you have it right.
This is no easy feat as society will bend and break you to conform, and sometimes for the sake of your health and livelihood, you just might. The goal should not be to be perfect, but to be as true to yourself as you possibly can be.