no you don’t understand, i have to be the hottest person at the grocery store

Inspired by one of the coolest people I know, Katie Sharbaugh, I’ve been thinking about writing and posting on Substack 

I told her that I was worried about what people would think and spent an entire day wondering what I would write about between doing a shitty at-home gel manicure (at risk of giving myself contact dermatitis), watching Succession, and working on a birthday gift for one of my best friends employing my newest craft obsession that I have spent tons of money on and probably will never touch again after the next season rolls around. 

As I was laying in bed trying to numb the massive headache I was experiencing from weaning off my SSRIs by scrolling through Tiktok, I saw an image. 

My mouth parting slightly with intrigue, I scrolled to the other image on the slideshow.

I have always related to similar sentiments as the one expressed using the classic top text/bottom text format transposed over the picture of Strawberry Shortcake, reposting them semi-ironically on my “close friends” Instagram story. However, seeing it for the first time next to a real, eloquent, fleshed-out explanation made my breath hitch. In the past year or so, I have truly begun to explore my relationship with the male gaze. As with all behaviors we carry from early adolescence to young adulthood, it’s always hard to find the exact root, but it is easy to see where some pieces of the foundation were laid. My easy access to the internet (specifically tumblr), casual objectifying comments from adults, interactions with certain boys in my early adolescence — all of these things point to an unhealthy relationship with the male gaze. While recognizing my unhealthy relationship with my inner male gaze is easy, stopping myself from acting on it is another story.

When media presents women acting upon their urges to please the male gaze, we typically see more drastic or semi-permanent physical alterations that women undergo to impress a specific man, such as dying their hair or doing their makeup a certain way. Another classic portrayal in media of young women bending to the will of the male gaze includes pretending to be “dumb” or “ditzy” in order to get attention from a man and somehow seem more attractive in the process. What we don’t usually see portrayed in TV and movies, and what is even harder to catch yourself in the act of doing, is the smaller acts. These acts are almost self-fulfilling, because, likely, no man is as attuned to these small details as you are.

(I realize I’m writing in the general “you,” in the hopes that maybe someone will read this and will be able to think to themself “I could see myself doing that.” I am going to pretend that this is the case as I give the following example, to make myself feel less crazy.)

This past fall, as my senior year of college was starting, I was invited to attend bar trivia with a group of people. For a while, I would attend trivia every Monday night with this group of people. While the group changed with each week depending on people’s availabilities, there was almost always one constant: there was some amount of young men who did not know me well enough to have any preconceived notions about me, which meant I got to carve out a specific persona. Who was this version of me I attempted to display? The confident, dazzling, slightly ditzy, chill girl who consumes a little bit more media than the average person just enough to impress a few genres of men. I attempted to exhibit this persona by never having strong opinions on answers; talking about my love for Chet Baker with the jazz musician of the group, while casually bringing up my love for artists such as jpegmafia and Panchiko in front of the male-presenting person wearing jewelry and a large thrifted sweater; and, of course, toting around my point-and-shoot Canon giggling while taking pictures of them chugging beers or pretending to kiss each other in a grand display of how comfortable they are with their masculinity. But the pièce de résistance to this persona was my e.l.f. tinted lip balm in the shade “esctatic” that I would delicately apply before our weekly walk into our college town to the local Irish pub.

In between half-hearted answers to trivia questions, as I sipped my club soda with lime out of a pint glass, every once in a while I casually made sure to place it down in a way that my mauve lipstick print faced the men of the group. I am unsure why a lipstick print is the epitome of femininity in my eyes, but I’m sure it has a lot to do with my idolization as a teenager of the side of tumblr that would post grungy, cool-toned edited images of cigarette butts with lipstick marks on them. I am also unsure why, in the moment, I thought any man sitting at the table would notice the wrinkled pattern of my lips transposed onto my glass and develop a new, subconscious attraction to me. I did this a couple of times over the course of a few weeks before one night I repeated the same charade and immediately felt disgusted with my inauthenticity. The remainder of the night I continued to giggle and take photos of the group, but I ultimately could not shake the feeling that I was a fraud in all aspects of my life simply because I turned a glass around. 

Later that week, I talked with my therapist about this small act, and how it connects to my deeper insecurities about not feeling feminine due to my size and general temperament. We talked about her own experiences with feeling like she wasn’t feminine enough because she is brash, loud, and from New Jersey (speaking my language here). I shared anecdotes of my one roommate telling me I have the personality of a 13-year-old boy in jest, but unpacking how that actually negatively affected my view of myself. Right as I was expecting to reach some sort of epitome that would solve my anxieties and insecurities overnight about how my relationship with femininity and the male gaze affects my core beliefs, the session was over.

That’s how it feels writing this post — I’ve told the stories and drawn the connections, but I am unable to wrap it up in a nice, neat package. I feel like that is because there is no definitive answer or action plan as to how I will approach my relationship with the male gaze. The easy answer would be to simply do things for myself rather than for specific or intangible men. However, I am only just learning how to do things for myself, and not the general public. My entire life until this point has been dedicated to the American education system, and while I immensely value my education and chose a major I was interested in, 18-year-old me truly only attended college because it was what I was “supposed” to do. Yes, I have made many decisions over the past 22 years with my own self-interest in mind, but I have never done anything truly for myself. I am only now learning how to do so since graduating from college in May.

I believe that a large part of challenging myself to disconnect from my inner male gaze, and ultimately healing, is to treat myself with grace and humility, and not be quick to ridicule myself. Instead of immediately judging myself when I decide to put lip gloss on before going into my local restaurant filled to the brim with New Jersey Italian men, I need to acknowledge my act and unpack why I feel it is necessary that complete strangers see a slight sheen on my lips. Additionally, I need to do a lot of processing to fully separate what is actually done for myself, and what is done in my self-interest of appearing feminine and appealing to the male gaze. Living to appease my inner male gaze feels as if I have a 1984-esque “Big Brother” speaking to me and influencing my actions. In an ideal world, I would deliver this omnipotent being in my brain an eviction notice. For now, I will do my best to ignore it and starve it of attention in hopes it gets fed up and moves out. That’s all there really is to do.