What's the Male Gaze Still Got to Do With it?

Moving through the decades, I’d thought that public male attention would cease to be the basis of my circle’s self-esteem. It appears I was wrong…

My younger self post school and uni, navigating romance unskilfully

A month after saying yes, I picked up my resized engagement ring this week. The delayed gratification felt apt for a second waver marriage, and I am so made up about every part of it all. Several cogs suddenly feel like they’re turning after years of brick wall blockages – it’s as if a wedged champagne cork has finally popped. Mental note: rebottle this moment to provide succour for the inevitable crash back down ahead. I’m not being a pessimist here, more, just as we need to remember the existence of light in the darkest hour of night, there’s also value in appreciating that the good times will not forever roll. Perspective makes you squeeze every ounce of joy available, which I’m doing with gusto.

Considering how genuinely thrilled I am to be marrying the man I love, this week’s column is a bit off-key, because it’s about…other men 😂. Thankfully, not any particular one of them, but more men in general, which I know means nothing, but you know what I mean. More specifically, I’m talking about male attention and its continued impact on my grown-up circle of straight female friends.

While there was probably no more or less of a barrier to garnering male attention before a ring was put on it, the fact that I am now wearing one has made me laugh at my clichéd thoughts of, ‘gosh, just one man for the rest of my life.’ Which rom-com instilled this nugget into my cortex? What’s most hysterical about this thought path (aside from the fact I have two children with my fiancé), is not a single member of the male species has made anything resembling a pass at me over the nine years I’ve been dating my babydaddy. In fact, when I think more broadly about it, I can’t ever remember being approached as a potential conquest, in a public space, by anyone I didn’t already know. I’ve never once been bought a drink by a man I wasn’t in a relationship with or related to. No-one has ever asked me for my number or left theirs on the back of a napkin. I can’t remember anything resembling a public come-on in my life. This is not hyperbole, although there is the potential I may have forgotten a fleeting instance because I am highly skilled at paying for my own drinks. Conversely, my fiancé has been asked for his number in front of me on two occasions, which was and still is awkward. While I’m a serial monogamist, I’ve spent a hell of lot of time without my partners, in many social contexts on multiple continents around the world, sans ring and often sans that many clothes (I love a cut out, what can I say). And yet, on that kind of attention front, it’s always been tumbleweed.

This is not the case for many of my friends. Fair enough, some of them are leggy blondes with modelling portfolios. I understand that I am more of an acquired taste and there are enough mirrors in my house to remind me that Kendall Jenner and I were not, lamentably, separated at birth. But still. It’s not like I’m cracking the mirrors. Fortunately, I’ve had a long time to get used to man repelling (and yes, I have considered that my fashion choices may have played a part in this dynamic, especially during my Dita phase 🤣). Even from my first forays into the world of courting, it was clear I wasn’t destined to be catnip to roving bucks. I never got chatted up as a teen on the town (14-18) or twenty-something night owl (18-22) at Uni. My decade commuting across London every day and going out three nights a week—the vast, vast majority without my partner at the time—led to precisely zero frisson. Online dating in between husband one and two included a situation where a gentleman hid in the bathroom for 45 minutes amongst other, not-at-all-funny-at-the-time rejections. Every single one of my romantic relationships has progressed from being thrust together in a group environment through extended social networks or work.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve watched friends —some single, some not—navigating varying levels of both wanted and unwanted male attention. Aside from a bit of a situation when I travelled on my own last year (and in honesty, I think he wanted to talk to me about which cameras I use for Instagram), this has just never been part of my human experience. I regularly go out with girlfriends, some of them mums with kids of similar age, and find them being charmed by a gentleman chancer. A few of them are glamazon types, but others are decidedly less flashy. Mates and professional peers – as well as my mum – also tell me about being contacted online by men, but despite having 70k people following me and being on social media for a decade, I’ve never had one slip into my DMs. NOT ONE. I have never—this is not a complaint—received a dick pic, whereas a married friend of my age tells me she’s had them airdropped to her on the train on multiple occasions. I was agape, who even knew this was a thing?

When I was a lot younger, green in the art of love and fresh from my all-girl’s school romantic yearnings, I desperately craved any kind of male attention and the fact I never got it on BNOs with my gfs had a big impact on my self-esteem. The only real qualification any of my early partners had was that they were interested in me, rather than any particular attraction from my side, which is why I have dated a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker (metaphorically obviously, although there was a sailor). There has never been any red thread to connect any of them, because it was never about my desires, more I took what I felt I could get. I used to feel gutted by it, but as I’ve matured, I’ve realised how much of a gift it has been, because I have gone on to develop my esteem outside of that kind of gaze.

It goes without saying that there is a huge difference between wanted and unwanted attention and the fact that I’ve received scant amounts of either has protected me from the hideousness of the latter. One of my girlfriends, a girl next door approaching 40, is dogged everywhere she goes by unwanted male attention. Every bar, restaurant, even the theatre, and it’s hardly ever gentle in intention. The weight of that has impacted her identity, how she dresses and her feelings of security which enrages me on her behalf.

Anyway, getting to the point, having never felt like I’ve been the focus of this kind of interest has meant I’ve also never felt the pressure to try and keep it up. That feeling of ‘disappearing’ as sexual beings that women speak of in the decades ahead won’t happen to me, because I was never there in the first place. But all around me, I’m starting to see the shift begin. This kind of attention was decidedly on the back-burner for those building families. But now babies have been weaned, work is back on, some partnerships are quivering and the awareness of feminine appeal – or a perceived lack of it – is front of mind again. Suddenly the clock to Amy Schumer’s ‘last unfuckable day’ is ticking down and with a slither of space to think of themselves again, some have begun to pine for the rush of being desired. Potentially not just by the father of their children.

For more than a few – and this goes for both the single and coupled around my age – this change of gear has manifested itself in a new chapter of body obsession. I’m not talking about a bit of Botox on frown lines, back to back HIIT classes or even post-child bearing tweaks. Instead, it’s the triad of boobs, bum and lips and the decision to sexualise their forms in ways which I had never thought would appeal. One friend says her iPhone face recognition doesn’t work anymore. Of course, you can have surgery entirely for your own vanity (addressing my knee and underarm vaginas would be first on my personal list, niche I know), but when frozen porn face teamed with a Jessica Rabbit physique seems to be the aim, it’s hard to believe the male gaze is not at least tangentially involved. No matter what you tell me about self optimisation. I have zero judgement; we are all in a thrall to patriarchy one way or another. It’s just surprised me how many of my 40+ peers are still seeking esteem from that font. But I suppose when we’ve spent our lives being conditioned that our value lies in capturing this kind of attention and so much emphasis is put on public preambles as the route to meaningful intimacy, it’s little wonder it would continue to echo even as we round the top of the hill. Even after babies, there’s still that muscle memory.

Offering up an alternative narrative to anyone still seeking their mate or toying with rolling the dice again, I would like to say that even though I have never had to bat the boys off like flies, I have spent most of my life in some phase of loving someone and being loved back. Just because you don’t turn heads when you walk into a room, doesn’t mean you won’t meet someone who can, perhaps in a slower, less testosterone-driven way fall for you. You don’t have to be chatted up in a club, or at the luggage carousel, or a hotel lobby to find your person. In all likelihood, the will come to you via a far more circuitous route, especially at this time in the match.

As for anyone feeling unfanciable as they emerge from the battle of attrition that is early parenthood, I totally get it. If a boob job helps you feel yourself, you do you. Just keep trying to come back to what is really valuable. While I’m not going to offend you by saying it only matters what your current other half thinks, what appeals to random blokes in bars or on Love Island is so baseline common denominator as to be laughable. Don’t get suckered into believing that the low hanging fruit has anything to do with you, even if you do feel Medusa-esque at the end of a long week (me every Friday). Desirability is so infinitely more layered and complex, we all deserve to remind ourselves of that - especially in the midst of the bleak midwinter gooseflesh. My only recommendation? Save any surgical decisions for the summer and see how the vitamin D pick me up makes you feel first.