Several pictures of a young woman dressed in trendy, bright, and patterned clothing flash across the screen. Above them is a caption: “me before I stopped dressing for the male gaze”. New pictures appear, this time the clothing is earth-toned, less fitted, and softer. A new caption: “me when I started dressing for the female gaze”.

Videos like this have dominated my Instagram and TikTok feeds for a while now, with the first few appearing in the summer of 2020, and I was always skeptical of them. The women proclaiming they’d “stopped dressing for the male gaze”, a term that in this context can be loosely defined as dressing according to male standards, were still conventionally fashionable before and after. Though clearly different from its predecessors, the clothing of the “female gaze” still looked like it could be found at H&M or Zara. Could women truly just opt out of the aesthetic expectations set by men by wearing a different shirt? Was it really that easy?

The short answer is no. We can’t. Under patriarchy, women’s choices (or illusion of choice) obey a framework set by men. Even pretending you don’t abide by male standards works well with the carefree “cool girl” concept. Author Margaret Atwood explained it best:

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own…”

• From The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

But the question remains of whether or not becoming more conscious of why we adhere to the beauty and aesthetic standards we do and choosing to follow different ones does anything. Sure, the young women of TikTok who changed up their wardrobe haven’t escaped anything, but are they really no more liberated than before? Can freedom from beauty standards not exist as a spectrum?

The problem with this question comes back to the terminology of this trend: the male and female gaze. Initially coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1975, the term “male gaze” has since been appropriated, misapplied, and misunderstood so much that it’s arguably gained an entirely new meaning.

Mulvey’s original theory of the male gaze, which comes from her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, posits that the inequality between men and women affects the representation of women on screen, and that the aesthetic pleasure men derive from watching female characters relies on objectification. The male gaze can be seen as a kind of voyeurism, and in film, the camera functions as the heterosexual male perspective.

The theory is also heavily rooted in Freudian psychoanalysis, and Mulvey argues that the sight of a woman triggers what Freud calls “castration anxiety”, or the idea that the presence of the female body presents a “threat of castration and hence unpleasure” in male viewers. This discomfort can be subverted, Mulvey argues, by hyper-sexualizing women and femininity. Women are thus viewed as objects to be objectified and used, rather than people with internal lives or desires. These on-screen portrayals of women exist to satisfy a voyeuristic desire and are the manifestations of the power imbalance enabled by patriarchy.

The natural progression of this idea would be the concept of a female gaze, which has been debated in feminist and media studies since Visual Pleasure’s initial publication. Broadly, the idea of the female gaze can be seen as a response to (part of) Mulvey’s theory in that it assumes a woman is behind the camera, viewing women in front of the camera as real people, not objects to be sexualized. The intended audience for media under this label is also usually women. 

For this reason, films like Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) and shows like Fleabag (2016-2019), which were written by, directed by, starring, and marketed toward women, are some of the best examples of the female gaze. Despite the female-dominated nature of these projects, however, the concept of a female gaze is difficult to pin down, with many critics citing the gaze’s tendency to universalize the female experience, diluting it to the primarily white, middle-class ideal of womanhood.

The contemporary use of the female gaze to describe film and television that attempts to humanize women and tell more complex narratives of womanhood, moreover, fail to address a key element of Mulvey’s theory – the power imbalances that generate the male gaze. Because patriarchy is the vehicle for objectification, a mirror image of the male gaze, or a female version of the visual pleasure derived from objectification, is impossible. Patriarchy is a social, systemic issue, it is a power structure that seeps into every aspect of our culture. Individual rejections of male objectification and dehumanization of the female body do not tear down patriarchy as a whole, nor do they represent female power over men that’s even slightly comparable to that which patriarchy grants.

Despite this, Fleabag and other female gaze media succeed in something others aren’t able to – there is a clear sense of the female artistic voice and experience that’s absent in countless films and TV shows. The same can be said for many of the social media posts claiming to show a transition from male to female gaze; even without the power imbalance, the ambivalence toward men’s approval is liberating.

In this case, it’s possible that the debate over whether or not the female gaze exists is an issue of semantics. The female gaze can’t fully exist as an equal counterpart to Mulvey’s theory. However, the female creative voice, which gets labeled “the female gaze”, is undeniable and visibly present in media with women in major artistic roles.

In the case of the female gaze social media trend, there is certainly merit to the idea that dressing for yourself, rather than trying to be attractive to men, can be an expression of the female creative voice. As far as aesthetic standards, what women often consider beautiful can differ greatly from men. What complicates this, however, is that the “female gaze” beauty standards of clothing, makeup, and even body types are still influenced by the original patriarchal standards we seek to stray from. Dressing for the female gaze, according to social media, often still includes trendy clothing and makeup, just different clothing and makeup than before.

There is something incredibly comforting in the belief that you present yourself a certain way entirely based on your own decisions. You follow the standard you set for yourself, not one that others (in this case men) set for you. But no one is socialized in a vacuum, and this set of standards and sense of aesthetic value did not appear out of thin air. This further muddies the waters of the female gaze- when women are socialized under patriarchy, the gaze they develop will never be fully our own.

Again, this isn’t to say being actively aware of why we wear the clothes or makeup we do does nothing for liberation. But the rebranding of these choices as entirely independent offers a false promise of freedom from deeply entrenched expectations for women. To speak to the female experience in media is one thing, and the differences between depictions of women and the complexity of relationships between them in female-led films vs. male ones make some versions of the female gaze obvious.When applying Mulvey’s theory outside the screen, the differences become less clear, especially when the male vs. female gaze is framed as an issue of consumption. Objectification becomes a question of whether you consume the right things, dress the right way, present yourself to the world as a liberated woman, unfazed by the standards designed by men. But the promise that freedom can be bought will always be doomed from the start, and until we examine beauty standards as systems that actively oppress women, claiming these standards as our own often puts us right back where we started.