I must have been five, maybe six, when I first felt that silent yet persistent gaze from an anonymous onlooker. It was an unsettling look that would stay with me throughout my life.
The same chilling sensation overcame me as when, sitting on the couch at home, you feel like you’re being watched.
But no, it wasn’t a human, an alien, or a yellow-eyed owl perched on a branch watching you from outside the window. It was worse.
A collective gaze, a group’s stare, a swarm of heads pricking at your back.
Men.
Or, back then, the ‘Boyfriend’.
“Well done, make yourself beautiful, that way you’ll find a boyfriend!”
“Don’t use foul language, or you’ll never find a date like that.”
From a young age, I was somehow taught to expect the gaze of boys, to attract it, and to satisfy it. The Male would always be there to judge me, relentlessly. Like a universal, fair, and stern judge. A ‘God’. And my parents didn’t hesitate to remind me that the day of judgment would come soon.
“Don’t speak like that. What would your boyfriend say?”
As unfair as it is to impose such enormous expectations on little girls from perfect strangers, many girls have learned to appreciate this new 'God.' To blush. To chase after him. To worship him. And we had fun with very little, imagining with wide-eyed wonder which classmate would become our little Childhood Sweetheart.
We didn’t know that this brainwashing would slowly, consistently, erode our self-esteem.
But with time, as they say, the world begins to take on a different hue. The innocence typical of children leaves us. Everything loses some of its saturation, like a faded photograph. And we truly begin to see how things are.
We start reflecting on how, perhaps, the gym teacher was too interested in making the girls jump and maybe spent too much time observing them from behind.
We realize that the appreciative whistles we heard on the street came from men who could be our grandparents. That when Mom wouldn’t let us have a pajama party at a friend’s house, it was only because of her fear of leaving us in the hands of a pervert. That when we had to change our outfit two hundred times, it was only because it might have seemed too provocative, even though we were only ten years old.
This is the harsh reality for women. We’ve learned to deal with it and survive in this society without complaining too much, rebelling only when necessary. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve come a long way compared to centuries or even decades ago. But I notice a certain stagnation now when it comes to women’s rights. It’s not our fault.
We’ve never stopped advocating for our rights. Unfortunately, there’s just a tendency to “sweep the dust under the rug”, to not make too much noise, hoping that things stay the same for men. As if walking on tiptoes might, just maybe, not trigger an active volcano.
Because, for some reason, giving rights to others has always felt like depriving oneself of their own.
This Male Gaze dominates the world, the perfect universe where women are depicted from a heterosexual male perspective, framing them as passive objects of desire or pleasure. Made just. For. Them. A world where girls from a very young age are taught to respect this unspoken rule.
As the girls grow up, they will put into practice what has been taught to them since they were young. That they must speak, behave, dress, smile, apply makeup, and even breathe in a certain way. They grow up feeling insecure, in constant search of male validation and approval.
You can easily notice this just by observing today’s young girls. At the age of thirteen or fourteen, they already dress and behave like adults. This fast-forwarding in their development will have serious consequences on their psyche.
Sad troops of young girls and children, reenacting and repeating the tragic fate of Marilyn Monroe: mocked by many for being “a mere object”, valuable for display, but never finding anyone interested in delving into the depths of her soul.
留言