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There Is No Escaping the Male Gaze — and Women Are Crumpling Under Its Weight
With technology giving us unprecedented access to images of women, the dangers of objectification are becoming increasingly evident
I’m in a stage in my life where I suddenly feel like a horrified Narcissus. Unlike this well-known figure from mythology, I am not gazing into a reflective pool of water, admiring my own beauty… I’m watching myself through a camera as I pursue my goal of monetizing my YouTube account.
It’s true that, like many women, I do not like what I see. Or, more accurately, I have been taught not to like what I see.
But what truly horrifies me is how attuned I have become to the male gaze. In this case, I don’t mean the ways I used to expend so much effort in shaping, grooming, and dressing my body in a manner I hoped would be pleasing to the male gaze. (This is called self-objectification, by the way, a mindset that is inevitable for most women who live in patriarchal cultures.)
When I say I’m attuned to the male gaze, what I mean is that, after five years as an internet presence, I have an eagle eye for the tiny details men will catch and then catalog like a robot, data they will use as an open door to assert their desire.
I first had this experience of horror in the very first video I recorded, in which I was wearing short shorts and repeatedly bending over to open a drawer and put laundry away. The protective part of me was screaming that if I posted the entire video, rather than a sped-up clip, I’d be inundated with lewd comments from men about the size and shape of my ass, and what they think of when they see me bent over.
When I took a video of myself paddle boarding on my knees with the camera capturing only the middle part of my body, my eyes immediately went to my crotch, where the seam of my boy-cut swim shorts could have been mistaken for a camel toe, and I knew I’d get dozens of comments about my full and sensuous “lips” and how much these men wanted to see what was between them.
This awareness makes me sick. Don’t get me wrong — I’d rather be aware of it and try to avoid it rather than be unprepared. But this is my body…
