Dressing for the Male Gaze vs. the Female Gaze: How I Finally Got Dressed for Myself

For most of my life, I thought getting dressed was about looking good.

I knew which jeans made my ass look better, which shirts made my waist look smaller, which bras made my boobs look like they’d been promoted to management. I knew how to wear heels that made my legs look longer, even if by the end of the night my feet felt personally betrayed. What I didn’t know was how to dress without imagining someone else looking at me.

The term “male gaze” was coined by British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey. In her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey discusses the way traditional filmmaking makes women objects of visual and sexual pleasure. Once I understood the idea, I realized it applied to my closet, too. The male gaze isn’t about being attractive or sexy; it’s about making a woman’s body something to be looked at and evaluated while her experience becomes secondary.

Throughout my life, I learned to turn that male gaze on myself. I became my own camerawoman: Is my waist small enough? Is my ass good? Am I sexy? The female gaze asks a different question: What does it feel like to be me? Can I move? Am I comfortable? Can I actually enjoy the life I got dressed to go live?

I had a pretty good demonstration of this, years ago, on New Year’s Eve in New Orleans with my now-ex-husband. It was cold, so I dressed for myself: jeans that still made my ass look fantastic, a low-cut sweater because I am not suddenly a nun, and comfortable shoes. New Year’s Eve in the French Quarter is not a stroll. It’s an endurance event with alcohol. Comfortable shoes were a necessity.

Early in the evening, my husband started pointing out women in the traditional New Year’s Eve uniform: tiny dresses, bare legs, high heels and enormous amounts of exposed skin, wishing I was dressed like them.

By the ball drop, I was pointing them out to him. A woman was being carried by her big, strong man because her feet had given up. Another wore an oversized T-shirt over her tiny dress because she was freezing. Then there were multiple women walking down Bourbon Street, carrying their shoes. Nothing says “questionable choices” quite like voluntarily putting your bare feet on New Orleans pavement.

My husband and I were looking at the same women and seeing completely different things. He was seeing beauty, sexiness, clothes and bodies. I was seeing cold, blisters, sore feet and the slow collapse of a carefully constructed outfit. I wasn’t judging them. I understood them. I had been them. I’d simply reached a point where I wanted to experience my life more than I wanted to look good experiencing it.

Once I understood that distinction, I started seeing it everywhere, especially in movies I already loved. The Wolf of Wall Street is an obvious example of the male gaze. Women are visual evidence of Jordan Belfort’s wealth and status. The more successful he becomes, the more beautiful, naked women surround him… set dressing, like the cars and champagne.

Then there’s American Psycho, a surprising example of the female gaze. The women in it are sexual objects in Bateman’s world, but the camera doesn’t treat them that way. Their bodies aren’t filmed as perfect, bouncing breasts and impossibly round asses. They look like actual women: different bodies, different shapes, sometimes awkward, sometimes imperfect, simply existing as themselves… even while Bateman is watching them. That distinction is fascinating to me. The male gaze is present in the story, but the camera doesn’t have to participate.

My favorite example is Showgirls and P-Valley. Both are set in strip clubs. Both feature women whose bodies are part of their work. But they look at those women very differently. Showgirls turns women into body parts for males to lust after. P-Valley asks us to inhabit their lives. The camera is interested in what the dancers’ bodies can do (the athleticism, exhaustion, pain, and skill) as well as the lives behind the performances.

That distinction changed something for me. The female gaze doesn’t mean women have to stop being sexy. I still want to feel attractive. I just don’t want attractiveness to be the entire assignment.

Now, when I get dressed, I ask: Can I sit down? Walk? Dance? Eat? And most importantly, “Will I like being me in this?”

Maybe that’s what growing older has given me: the ability to care a little less about being looked at and a lot more about being comfortable. My body is not a display case. I live here. And if I look good while doing it, well, that’s just excellent exterior design.

FAQs

What is the male gaze?

The male gaze is a term coined by British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. It describes how traditional filmmaking positions women as objects of visual and sexual pleasure, framing a woman’s body as something to be looked at and evaluated while her own experience becomes secondary. The concept extends beyond film: many women internalize the male gaze and evaluate their own appearance through an imagined outside viewer.

What is the female gaze?

The female gaze centers a woman’s lived experience instead of her appearance to an observer. Where the male gaze asks how a woman looks, the female gaze asks what it feels like to be her: whether she can move, whether she is comfortable, whether she can enjoy the life she got dressed to live. In film, the female gaze shows women as complete people rather than as collections of body parts.

What are examples of the male gaze and female gaze in movies?

The Wolf of Wall Street is a clear male gaze example: women function as visual evidence of the protagonist’s wealth, like the cars and champagne. American Psycho, despite its objectifying protagonist, films women as actual varied bodies simply existing, which makes it a surprising female gaze example: the male gaze exists in the story, but the camera does not participate. Showgirls and P-Valley, both set in strip clubs, split the same way: one turns dancers into body parts, the other inhabits their athleticism, exhaustion, skill, and lives.