The decline of the Male Gaze in Fashion?

The ‘male gaze’. Sometimes when out in town shopping for a new, bulky necklace which I find particularly pretty, or when stumbling across an interesting top which happens to be particularly cropped, I catch myself thinking about it for longer than a few seconds before swiping my card. Who will society think I am dressing for? The ‘male gaze’ feels like a modern term; it is constantly plastered upon social media posts which aim to dissect our understanding of how a society designed by men for men, commands the arts, popular culture and indeed even women’s fashion.

From tiny mini skirts, long flowy dresses, shiny gogo boots and itchy fishnet tights. This idea has existed for decades. 

In 1975, feminist Laura Mulvey wrote her influential essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” to describe how the visual arts and literature portray women through the lens of a masculine, heterosexual viewer. Her own autonomy is whittled down to becoming a mere subject of male desire. 

Red lipstick, low cut dresses and long, painted nails. 

In this way, women are presented as damsels chained to a chamber of male fantasy, which can ultimately lead to her own self-objectification due to the internalisation of female beauty standards presented in the media. 

So, what does it mean exactly to dress for the ‘male gaze’ - is this still as paramount for women opening their wardrobes in this country today, or are times changing?

The foundations of the male gaze in fashion were laid long before the term existed: to dress desirably as a woman historically, was to be both visually pleasing to a male audience, while maintaining a degree of socially curated class and respectability. 

The male audience and desirability here are the key terms. The male gaze in fashion is not merely confined between levels of ‘modesty’ or ‘immodesty’, ‘long’ or ‘short’, ‘cleavage’ or ‘no cleavage’. The male gaze is about the viewing of women through lenses of desirability and submission. It’s about centering male desire in a task as mundane as getting dressed – or flamboyant – depending on your style. 

Slipping into a long floral dress and thinking how you may be taken more seriously as ‘wifey material’, is a surprisingly similar thought process to putting on a sparkly mini skirt and wondering if there will be a boy at the party who will appreciate the show of skin. It isn't how the fabric is styled itself that pertains to the male gaze – however socially conservative or provocative the piece may be – it's instead about the intention behind the fashion statement. In fact, the idea that one style of dressing is inherently better, or more attractive than another, is a way which has divided women through fashion for centuries. 

Prude, whore, sex icon, slut. 

As Cady Heron stated in Mean Girls (2004): “Halloween is the one day a year where girls can dress as a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it”. It’s about control. To fit into this pretty little bubble of patriarchal fantasy. 

Conformity. 

In some ways, fashion trends still harness a degree of conformity. But as I swipe my card to buy that bulky necklace or that cropped top I’ve been yearning for, only after snapping a few photos for my friends to help defer that financially irresponsible yet style nurturing decision, the reality is blatant. Most women don’t centre the attention of men when dressing. When I told my friends what I was writing about and the idea of women styling outfits for the ‘male gaze’, there was a similar sentiment of distaste and honestly, confusion. A lot of young women today dress for themselves, their friends, and funnily enough, for algorithms. Sometimes it is men themselves that assume women are dressing for the sight of other men. This is known as patriarchal conditioning, whereby men are taught entitlement to consume and judge women’s appearances, like: “She’s asking for attention by dressing like that”.  To this I say: women's fashion choices are not an advertisement for your entitlement.

The intention that made the ‘male gaze’ so powerful has shifted over time. It’s cool to be individualistic, to dress for yourself, in jumpers for your own comfort or to curate a glossy instagram aesthetic that makes you want to flip through your own highlights. Young women are continuing to take control of their own narratives and possess the freedom to lead discussions on fashion, aesthetics and trends. In an increasingly digitalised era, whereby many women are leading fashion influencers, access to support women-led clothing businesses has increased.  This has given rise to the popularising of trends that pertain to the female gaze or a sense of internal nostalgia that tells us times are changing. The male gaze will always be there, ingrained in our power systems, but it is undeniable that there are women pushing back against this outdated rhetoric.