On the internet, phrases catch on like wildfire. And one phrase in particular that’s caught my attention is “dressing for the male gaze.” TikTokers talk about it constantly, putting celebrities like Sabrina Carpenter, Megan Fox, and Kim Kardashian in the category, while also modeling outfit examples.
The very popular college hockey romance book-to-TV adaptation, Off Campus, tapped into this discourse, too. During the second episode of season 1, while preparing for a joint birthday/costume party for Dean and Beau (played by Stephen Kalyn and Khobe Clarke, respectively), main character Hannah Wells (played by Ella Bright) says, “Not all the women I know want to get dressed for the male gaze,” to which Garrett Graham (played by Belmont Cameli) says, “The women I know do.” Her best friend Allie (played by Mika Abdalla) agrees with Garrett, claiming that there’s a difference between “girl hot” and “boy hot,” which determines the (decidedly “boy hot”) outfit Hannah ends up wearing to the party.
[Light spoilers ahead] That scene was a bit jarring, given that one of Hannah’s main plot points is centered on her being a victim of sexual assault, struggling to move forward. The casual way they all talked specifically about getting dressed for men is in direct conflict with the harm her character has faced via male attention. The show takes a ton of inspiration from TikTok-forward verbiage, so this scene felt like a testament to how “dressing for the male gaze” is already deeply ingrained in our culture.
Thinking about the origins of the concept, however, has me stressed. The term “male gaze” was popularized by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which describes how visual arts, media, and literature (so, culture in general) historically depict women from a heterosexual masculine perspective, often transforming them into sexual objects for male pleasure rather than active subjects with agency.
Nowadays, we also see the male gaze thrown around in punchy soundbites about popular television and film, debating whether subverting the male-dominated thriller status quo with a woman’s trauma and rage makes Promising Young Woman a product of the contrasting female gaze or how Sydney Sweeney’s character Cassie on Euphoria, a very sexualized, male-centered person, is so male gaze, it’s almost hard to watch. It’s also a common refrain with supercuts from nostalgic shows like The Vampire Diaries or Entourage comparing characters and particularly love interests, highlighting which are written by women versus men.
I love that some of this critique is appropriately seeping into the public sphere, but please hear me out: Nothing any of us wear should be willingly categorized in this way. Yes, you could say that this is the inevitable water-down cycle we’ve come to expect online: phrases and fashion lost in translation, stripped of their larger context and made to be accessible for a short-form video app that often misconstrues definitions, choosing to redefine and categorize everything and lose all the nuance while doing so.
The thing is, when this language is directed at real people’s (and, yeah, fictional characters’) fashion choices, it makes a judgment call on those people, inadvertently perpetuating objectification. Claiming a person is dressing for the male gaze oversimplifies the complex reasons people choose what to wear. Do we not see the direct comparison to the “well, what was she wearing when it happened?” types of discussions that lie ahead? Since it bears repeating: Clothes are not sexy nor provocative on their own; people, culture, and power structures project meaning onto them. This use of the phrase completely misinterprets what the original theory set out to expose.
You may think a piece of clothing looks hot on you, and you might hope someone else feels the same way about your outfit that you do. No one is saying that that behavior is problematic. All I’m saying is, let’s not spell out a wish to be objectified or say someone else looks like they’re going for that goal.
When we carry this language into everyday conversations about how real women dress, we flatten personal agency and validate the incorrect idea that all clothing choices we make are in response to being watched by someone else. Not to mention, claiming you or someone else is dressing for the male gaze already undermines itself. The original term was coined to call out the way film and television reflect the patriarchal society and systems we experience daily. Misogyny has already been at it, claiming that everything women do (and wear) is for male attention. So stating you’re wearing something “for the male gaze” unfortunately upholds those archaic, anti-feminist beliefs.
It’s easy to latch onto and repeat what we hear online, especially if it feels like a fun, new way to say something that seems boring in contrast. People always want to find meaning and belonging by categorizing and identifying with things that are hard to define—ourselves and our fashion. But we get dressed for all types of reasons, most of which aren’t for the male gaze. The clothes we wear don’t determine who we attract and who is attracted to us, because clothes simply don’t hold that much authority over us. Fashion, at its best, feels like a place that’s for the girls (and their allies). Let’s stop centering men in the discourse.
Aiyana Ishmael is the style editor at Cosmopolitan magazine. In her work, Aiyana focuses on the culture of fashion and how it intertwines and shapes the zeitgeist. She is an award-winning journalist from Miami, Florida, and a graduate of the historically Black university, Florida A&M. She is a 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30: Media honoree, and her debut romance novella PASSING GAME is set to release March of 2027 (831 Stories/Simon & Schuster).
