The Male Gaze and the Distortion of the Feminine Self

Growing up in a patriarchal society, it started early, with my own father.
Policing what I wore. Telling me how to dress “appropriately.”
It wasn’t about safety. It was about control.
About making sure I was palatable, respectable, invisible to male desire, or at least not “responsible” for attracting it.

This is how the male gaze enters our lives, not just through strangers, but through the very people meant to protect us.
And it teaches us, from girlhood, that we must adapt to the oppressor.

I’ve never felt comfortable around the male gaze.
Because even as a child, I could sense the projection.
Desire that wasn’t mine. Judgments that weren’t earned. Expectations that didn’t belong to me.
It felt invasive. Possessive. Sometimes perverse.
It taught me that I was not just seen: I was being interpreted.

And so, like so many women, I adjusted.
Not for comfort. For survival.

Some of us cover ourselves to avoid the gaze.
To shrink our visibility, to reclaim a sense of safety.
Some of us hyper-sexualize to appease it.
To be seen as “fuckable,” and therefore worthy of attention, praise, protection.

We shape-shift.
We dress according to how men will perceive us.
We say less. Smile more. We watch ourselves being watched.
It’s exhausting.

And men?
They don’t worry about this.
They don’t fear their clothes will justify their assault.
They don’t live in a world where being seen is a liability.
Their bodies are never battlegrounds for morality.

In Iran today, women are still arrested for refusing to cover their heads.
Not because their hair is dangerous, but because their autonomy is.
Can you imagine what men would do if they were told to cover themselves to accommodate women?
They’d start a war.

The male gaze distorts the feminine psyche.
Like in quantum physics, the observer changes the observed.
And when women are constantly observed, we begin to alter who we are.

But I’ve tasted freedom.
Freedom from being seen through male eyes.
And in that space, I became whole again.
I laughed louder. Moved differently.
Felt safe. Reclaimed my gaze for myself.

Freedom is spiritual. Energetic. Psychological.
And it begins with removing the need to be digestible.
The more I live for myself, the less their gaze matters.

Let them watch a woman who no longer watches herself through their lens.
Let them witness the undoing of their power, without our participation.