So is there a female gaze? Yes. But it is not sexy men jumping around, like in Magic Mike, or a closeup of Thor’s badonk. This tends to confuse people. If hypersexualized depictions of female bodies, like up skirts in anime, and mega tight clothing in superhero movies (that shows a surprising amount of booba that is in no way tactical), why is it then, that the “female gaze” isn’t Magic Mike? How are they both the male gaze? Well, despite Magic Mike being about hypersexual and overly sexualized sexy men dancing for women, it still views people not as people, but as bodies, a habit the female gaze argues cinematographers should get out of.
Linguistically, I completely understand how the female gaze sounds like it should be defined as "what women idealize" if the male gaze is of course what men are taught to idealize. But it is however, much more complicated and abstract. The "female gaze" and "male gaze" don't actually gender the abstract ideas they hold, though they are colloquially "gendered" terms. I believe these types of intricate differences between colloquial language & academic language is such a huge barrier to the understanding such abstract ideals, and at the risk of sounding pretentious, this video essay attempts to delve into the Male Gaze VS. Female Gaze debate.

Conversations about the male gaze and female gaze can easily get really heated and muddled and people can argue about definitions, subjective experience and even biology. And the most complicated part of that conversation would be that nobody’s argument would be incorrect, but all parties must accept there are multiple lenses to the same issue. Without acknowledging both subjective experience and empirical evidence, we will never be able to to enact meaningful change. Having these sorts of conversations are pivotal because figuring out why we think the way we think isn’t as simple as it sounds. To acknowledge that the reason why we find something  or someone attractive has to do with what we’re taught, what is expected, and what is shown to us, and that is terrifying.

So, if we understand what the male gaze is, and how it hypersexualizes women and has the ability to even degrade men too into being hyper masculine macho people. We then recognize how ridiculous it is to value someone’s attraction based purely on bodily aesthetics, and how much more important it is to value a person's personality and what makes them unique and different. This then goes into a deeper recognition that men and women should both be allowed to wear whatever they want. Like Harry Styles in a beautiful dress or Demi in an awesome pantsuit. They are just clothes after all, personal, how an individual chooses to show

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