Ever since the idea of the male gaze erupted in popularity on TikTok at the beginning of the decade, it has become one of the internet’s favourite buzzwords. Though, as often happens online, the term quickly lost its meaning. Soon, a female equivalent, “the female gaze”, began circulating. People now use it to describe everything from thick eyeliner to oversized shirts to bodycon dresses. But the truth is: there is no female gaze, at least not in the way people think.
One struggles to distinguish between the two, as these differences are not representative of a female gaze because the female gaze does not exist.
Understanding the Gaze through John Berger
Before understanding the “female gaze”, we need to first understand the male gaze. The concept was first popularized by John Berger in his work Ways of Seeing. This idea of the gaze is not referring to the literal act of seeing from one’s eye but rather refers to a subconscious state that influences the way in which we perceive what we are looking at. When a person looks at something, they are never a neutral observer. What we notice, value, and desire is learned, not inherent.
When Berger’s idea travels into film, advertising, and pop culture, it becomes clear the male gaze comes from power; men who have historically created art, controlled media, directed films, owned companies, and shaped public taste. Women simply have not been placed in that position for long enough, or widely enough, to create an equivalent structure. And without that power, women cannot create a parallel system strong enough to be called “the female gaze”.
This idea of the gaze is not referring to the literal act of seeing from one’s eye but rather refers to a subconscious state that influences the way in which we perceive what we are looking at. When a person looks at something, they are never a neutral observer.
The feminine relation to Berger’s idea of the gaze is that within culture women have been allotted the social position of object to be looked at, while men have been allotted the position of those who look.
Historically (in this context), women, being neither the creators of art nor the target audience but merely incidental consumers, have in turn come to internalize this representation of the female experience as expressed by a specific demographic of men who consume women and go on to depict them for other men of a specific demographic’s consumption. Media has allowed women to consume themselves only as vessels to be consumed; it has in this way trained women on how to best present themselves within the context of being consumed.
Because this gaze has shaped decades of movies, TV, fashion, magazines, and music videos, it has ended up shaping what we think femininity should look like. Women start to judge themselves through this lens. The gaze manifests itself as an internal spectator. You start to monitor how you sit, walk, smile, dress, and behave, because you know you’re being watched, both by others and by your own inner critic.
Patriarchy and male validation
Men do not perform for a female gaze but are also influenced by the gaze. Because within a patriarchal framework men are also taught to value themselves, not through the lens of feminine desire but to be validated by other men. Where a man’s worth is defined primarily by capital, a woman’s is defined by her appearance.
Men do not perform for a female gaze but are also influenced by the gaze. Because within a patriarchal framework men are also taught to value themselves, not through the lens of feminine desire but to be validated by other men.
This conditioning is visible everywhere, from advertising to fashion to the way women talk about themselves. For example, 1950s ads encouraged women to be perfect wives (The Madonna). Brands like Victoria’s Secret built entire empires around selling a fantasy of what men should find attractive (The Whore). Even campaigns targeted at women today often invite them to imagine themselves as the woman in the picture, someone being admired, validated, or desired (The Mannequin).
This is where the internet’s interpretation starts to fall apart. Online debates about “girl pretty” versus “boy pretty” often highlight celebrities like Emily Ratajkowski, Megan Fox, or Adriana Lima. These women are frequently described as “girl pretty,” suggesting that women appreciate their beauty differently than men do. But these celebrities became global beauty icons through industries dominated by men – fashion, film, and advertising – and through standards shaped by the male gaze itself (hyperlink to a media article discussing their sexualisation or beauty standards).
This is why the gendered parallel dubbed “the female gaze” cannot and does not exist, as it does not embody the systemic dissonance in power. Men are not and cannot be influenced by a so-called female gaze because they have not been socially positioned within culture as objects to be looked at. To compare any type of aesthetic male performance to aesthetic feminine performance would be inaccurate because the visual nature of masculinity is not inherently tied to a man’s value and worth in the same way feminine performance is.
