The Female Gaze Is Watching: The Rebrand of Female Empowerment

Written by Sylvia Yum (C’30) & Edited by Nina Rawal (W’27)

“Do you dress for the male or female gaze?”

Scroll through TikTok long enough, and you will inevitably encounter this question. Perhaps you have also been asked whether you are “written by a man or woman”, or whether you are “boy pretty or girl pretty”. These trends may seem harmless, even empowering. Instead of dressing to impress men, young women are encouraged to dress for themselves. 

But beneath these seemingly innocent comparisons between male and female desire lie a more complicated question: why does female empowerment so often require an audience?

In 1975, the feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of the ‘male gaze’ to describe how women in film are portrayed as objects of heterosexual male desire. Women were presented through the perspectives of male film directors, male protagonists, and male audiences. She created this term because she believed that the presentation of women through this lens dehumanised them. 

Subsequently, the ‘female gaze’ emerged to challenge this concept, encouraging women to look at subjects with their own desires and perspectives. Yet, in the social media incarnation of ‘the female gaze’, instead of challenging the idea that women should be evaluated through their appearance, this term just changes the evaluator. Women are no longer necessarily trying to appeal to men, they are now trying to appeal to women.

But what has this revival of the term changed?

A Rebrand with the Same Standards?

There is value in the ‘female gaze’. It can challenge conventional beauty standards and represent women in ways that don’t revolve around male approval. The problem arises when it becomes another framework for ranking women. Consider the phenomenon of being “written by a woman”. This has become the shorthand for someone who is emotionally complex, independent, and desirable in ways that challenge male desires.

The irony is that women can become so preoccupied with rejecting male validation that they begin seeking it elsewhere. The audience changes, but the scrutiny remains. Of course, dressing for other women is not inherently problematic, and neither is enjoying the validation of others. The contradiction emerges when women feel like they are only empowered through a particular appearance. When a woman has to look a certain way to prove that she is liberated, empowerment becomes just another beauty standard. 

Sabrina Carpenter and the Question of Sexualisation

One celebrity that illustrates the severity of this tension is Sabrina Carpenter. Her outfits, choreography, and theatrical performances have sparked a huge internet debate over whether her image carters towards the male or female gaze.

Supporters argue that her performances are playful and deliberately exaggerated, and her music often criticizes the male subject in her relationship, making it more targeted to her substantial female and LGBTQ+ audience. Yet, the same performances and choreography can be interpreted as objectifying and promoting a sexualised image to young girls. So, how does one distinguish between the two gazes? 

Perhaps the answer is that sexuality itself is not the problem. A woman should not have to dress modestly to prove that she is empowered. The same performance can mean different things to different people, and women are no more united in their preferences than men are.

The demand to categorise every expression of female sexuality as either liberating or oppressive risks creating another set of rules women must follow. This directly works against Mulvey’s argument that perception dehumanises women. We have spent decades questioning the way women present themselves, and we must take a stance against the patriarchal system all together.

Who gets to define empowerment in our future?
Social media encourages young women to be individuals while simultaneously prescribing what an empowered woman should look like. At Penn, these pressures extend beyond our feeds into the corporate world. We are told to be ambitious but approachable, polished but authentic, assertive but not intimidating. As we prepare to enter industries where women have historically faced inequality, the last thing we need is another set of rules imposed on us by one another. 

This does not mean female solidarity is harmful. Women supporting and inspiring one another is powerful! But there is a difference between learning from other women and treating their approval as a measure of our worth. A woman pursuing finance is no more or less empowered than one pursuing theatre; a woman who wears makeup is no less independent than one who does not. We do not need to look alike, behave alike, or pursue the same definition of success to respect one another.

Working against the female gaze does not mean rejecting femininity or disregarding other women’s opinions. The male gaze taught us to question a world in which women were defined by how others saw them. We should be careful not to recreate that dynamic by constantly evaluating one another. As young women entering a world already full of expectations, we should start by questioning the ones we impose on each other.