I do not attract the male gaze
This is a good thing. I think...
Last week’s Sunday Times Style magazine had Dolly Alderton on the cover. I swoop upon anything with Dolly in it. I enjoy her columns and books but mostly I just like knowing what she thinks about stuff. She drops in things like, ‘At a dinner in New York recently…’ And rather than feeling embittered as I shovel in last night’s claggy reheated noodles, I experience a vicarious thrill.
Really though, it’s one of those writer-crush situations. When they could be going about anything - radiators, celery, how to descale a kettle - and you’d gobble it up.
For Style magazine Dolly has written a sort of ‘how to do fashion’ piece. I need to know this stuff. Then my eyes land on a phase and it hits me that Dolly’s universe and my universe are light years apart.
She writes:
‘I guess what I hate is the idea of dressing for the male gaze.’
The male gaze hasn’t been anywhere near me since John Major was Prime Minister and even then it was just some old drunk bloke who wanted money.
It was on my radar, though, as a thing. Shoot me, but in the ‘80s attracting the male gaze was a major priority on any night out. Witness:
1983. My friend Ellie and I are installed in Da Vinci’s, our regular haunt in Dundee. ‘Teabag boy’ - ie, a boy I have a crush on, who favours a T-shirt made out of mesh, like a teabag (mmm!) - is in attendance.
Me, pointedly gazing away from Teabag Boy: Is he looking over?
Ellie: Er, not right this very second… (the implication being that at all other times he was staring hungrily, wanting me).
Me: IS HE LOOKING OVER NOW??!
Ellie: I think he might’ve just then. Wanna drink?
I want the gaze of Teabag Boy more, but yes!
While Ellie goes to the bar I sit, still pretending to be looking away, while swivelling my eyes towards him - weirdly, creepily - in order to keep him under surveillance.
He’s still not looking! What’s wrong? Is it my massive nose, my lopsided boobs or the fact that my hair looks like this?
No male gaze whatsoever tonight. What a waste of a can of Elnett!
This is the tragic way in which girls tended to think back then. Awful, I know. But then British girls of my generation grew up reading Jackie magazine - which I went on to work for, and this is not an attack. It was just the attitude of the times. Barely a week went by without some variation on the perennial feature: HOW TO GET HIM TO NOTICE YOU.
I’m sorry to say, a major preoccupation was to be deemed attractive by others when out and about. It’s why we obliterated body hair with foul-smelling Immac. Why we tottered out in tiny dresses and bare legs, mottled blue with the cold for at least six months of the year (this being the east coast of Scotland).
It’s why I subjected my thin mousey hair to terrible perms and savage bleachings. And why - briefly - I embraced the ‘underwear as outerwear’ trend, as spearheaded by Madonna, and forced my hooves into what were known as ‘court shoes’: narrow, constricting, teeteringly high.
This is why I now have horribly misshapen little toes, crammed up against the others as if huddling in fright.
I blame you, Teabag Boy!
Today’s young women and girls would deem this behaviour quite deranged and tragic and they’d be right. But back then, we even (sort of) enjoyed being whistled at in the street. At least we were noticed. What the heck was wrong with us? Once, at some point during the night, a pervert stuck a scribbled love note to the front door of my bedsit. I was thrilled!
Thankfully, young women today don’t have any truck this kind of behaviour. And on the very rare occasion that any man happens to look at me these days, I think they’re either mad, or their eyes have accidentally wandered in my direction.
I can’t say I ‘hate’ the idea of dressing to attract the male gaze - because the concept is too ludicrous to contemplate. It would be like saying, ‘I hate the idea of dressing to attract golden retrievers.’
There is no male gaze. At 59 I glide through life invisibly, and when I get dressed all I think is, ‘Is this comfy and okay for climactic conditions? Does it look alright?’
It’s so simple, getting ready when you’re old. I was going to say that’s because no one ever looks at me in public. But actually, a few weeks ago in London, a handsome young guy did seem to be ‘noticing’ me on the tube.
‘Ooh,’ I thought. ‘Still got it!’
The man smiled. I felt myself flushing a bit, like this was Da Vinci’s in 1983.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ I said, eagerly.
And then he stood up and I realised. He was offering me his seat.
Love,
Fiona xx
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Ah the 80's, those were the days. This piece made me absolutely howl - mostly with pain as I could relate so much 🙈 But I mean, if there's a way of dressing to attract Golden Retrievers, I'm all for it!
Fiona what a brilliant read. I loved this and loved the flashback photos! I’m a millennial and very much grew up with magazines telling me how I should dress, how I should act all for the male gaze. I bloody admire the women growing up today who are unapologetically themselves and can call out toxic culture.