Taking Back the Male Gaze

A secret to feeling more confident

“Male gaze” is a term coined by film critic Laura Mulvey to describe the cinematic angle of a heterosexual male on a female character. As fiction imitates life, and vice versa, the male gaze has become a familiar cultural perspective. Yet, research finds that the male gaze has significant and pervasive psychological costs for women that they might not even be aware of.

The male gaze plays out most obviously in two main areas: actual interpersonal and social encounters (e.g., catcalls, “checking out,” gazing at women’s body parts, making sexual comments) and exposure to visual media that spotlight women’s bodies, and body parts, depicting them as the target of a non-reciprocated male gaze.

Through media representations and direct experience, both women and girls learn their appearance is social currency and begin to take the male gazer’s perspective. The process of habitual body monitoring, wherein women monitor their bodies as they believe outside observers do is called self-objectification. Over time, as women place more attention on their appearance, they began to internalize this observer view of their bodies as a primary way to think about themselves and end up placing greater value on how they look than how they feel.