A reflection on how girlhood and friendship are shaped by the male gaze — pouring one out for the women still stuck in the matrix
As a heterosexual woman, most of my life is shaped and commodified by the male gaze. I can remember the first time I ever thought about how the other sex perceived me. I was in fourth grade, and my all-girls school was having an event with the all-boys school down the road. Up until this point, I had not really spent time with the opposite sex aside from family, and siblings of my friends, as I have a female-dominated household and went to a single sex school.
My life had been exempt from the woes of the male gaze until I saw Alex Wolf. Justin Bieber was all the rage at the time. I remember screaming at my dad that my friends and I needed to see JB in concert on his debut My World tour, with one stipulation: I had to sit in a box (sorry, Dad). Alex had the signature JB swoosh, and with one gaze in his direction, my thoughts flooded with questions on what he thought about me. Not only what he thought about me but for the first time, I had thought about how I was being compared in his eyes to my friends.
This here is the double-edged sword of the male gaze, not only does it affect your relationship with yourself but your relationship with those around you. It’s primal almost a darwinistic suvival of the fittest to see if the guy you fancy will choose you above the rest, even if the rest are your best friends.
In college, we would have these big dinners at this restaurant called Sushi Hana, a shitty Japanese restaurant that served questionable fish in landlocked Colorado. We found refuge in Hana through afternoons of eating white rice mixed with eel sauce and spicy mayo, and 20-person+ sake bombs nights where no one knows how the check got paid.
Sophomore year had just started, and I lived legitimately a one-minute walk from Hana, where we were having our inaugural big group dinner. At the end of the table, I was chatting it up with Jimmy, a cute boy who lived in the frat across from my sorority. The night was written in the stars. I would definitely be going home with this Kappa Sig cutie; I knew it, and everyone at the table knew it. This was until a “sister” of mine swooped in on him post-dinner on the group walk to the Mansions. I remember being upset, not understanding why a friend would go after a guy everyone knew I was into.
After that night, I looked at this “sister” differently, but realized I was just another in a long chain of girls she’d snatched boys from—and I felt bad for her. She derived her self-worth not from her own amazing qualities or her friendships, but through the boys she met—whether organically or “taken” from her friends.
I am 26 now and obviously far from the adolescent minds of college-aged women, but this, I have to say, does not make me immune to women stuck in the male gaze matrix.
Moving to London this year, I immediately became close to a girl who was a couple of years older than me in college. I felt safe and familiar with her – we were from the same place and had many people in common. A great companion to discover this new city together.
It wasn’t until, like déjà vu, we were at a group dinner with the same setup as Sushi Hana – she and I on opposite sides of the table, and me chatting it up with a cutie. We were clearly into each other; I was getting winks from the table and questions from his friend like, “Are you into him?” Then she swoops in, coming down to where we’re sitting, and wedges herself between us—#1 red flag. The next course comes out, and she leaves. I think nothing of it until she returns post-course and sits between us again— #2 red flag. She then hijacks the conversation, turning it all towards herself, and then does the most elementary flirt move in the book: she puts on his glasses—#3 read flag.
When the next course arrives, she doesn’t move. Instead, she slides my plate and silverware towards herself, looks at me, and casually says I could “just eat something else from the table.” It was a small remark, but it landed heavily. That’s the thing about microaggressions, they’re quiet reminders of who’s allowed to take up space, and who’s expected to shrink. She used the language of politeness to conceal privilege beneath it – expecting me to fall into submission, to shut up and eat.
Instead of causing a scene, I leaned in and whispered, asking her what she was doing and to please return to her seat. Not only was it rude to switch places at a set dinner, but I told her I was trying to get to know this guy. She looked at me as if I had said something insane, feigned an excuse, and returned to her seat.
I wish that the story ended here and that she respected my obvious dibs and wing-womaned me into oblivion. Instead, she continued to corner and kiss him after we left dinner for dancing. I wish that she had apologized for breaking the unspoken girl code to me, but instead she said she didn’t understand why I was upset, as since “it wasn’t like he was my boyfriend or anything.”
The issue with being friends with women who derive all their confidence from male perception is that they are not a safe space for other women. When you’re fucked over by a friend via a guy, it’s never about the guy; it’s about the prioritization of the male gaze over the sanctity of female friendship.
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