The Male Gaze Is Not a Hate Crime

Raise your hand if you've heard, "I don't dress for men. I do it for me." At this point, I think I hear it more than the voices in my head. It's a mantra women have been dutifully repeating in unison for years. Great. Love that for them. But this just in: it's OK to want to look hot for a guy. Or to just… be hot. Don't blame me. Blame it on this crazy concept called human nature. The innate feminine urge to want to be sexy for our partners. To want the guy across the room to notice us. Or to experience the pure power of being feminine, sexy, desired, even adored. (I swear it's in a footnote in the Adam and Eve manual. Either way, it goes way back.) When exactly did admitting that become selling out? This warped narrative has been living in my brain rent-free because of my own experimentation and firsthand experience of what happens when you decide not to buy into it. As a red-carpet reporter in the 2010s, I was the "cute girl next door." Nothing but love for her. And her grandma bras. And her situational FUPA. But then a few years ago, something in me flipped. The rug had been pulled out from under me when I lost my job and had to move home during the pandemic. Blame it on this crazy concept called human nature. I was starting a new lease on life and was on a mission to discover something I don't know I ever truly had: my power. So I embarked on a pretty dramatic transformation, working my butt off, quite literally, to build the body of my dreams. I (half) jokingly dubbed the journey "Sex Goddess Body." It changed me from the inside out in a way I never saw coming. Little by little, I started dressing differently. I felt different. I carried myself differently. And yes, men reacted differently. (As did women, by the way.) I went from this: To this: Like I said, I'll always have a soft spot for the much… softer me. But let's be for real right now. There is an undeniable, zero-permission vibe in walking into a room embodying this energy. I've experienced it romantically, watching the fascinating brain recalibration that happens for men in real time. My boyfriend can confirm: a woman fully owning this femininity does things to the male nervous system. He's available for interviews. But the more interesting part is experiencing that same energy in places we're told, by women, it supposedly has no place: business. I've moderated events with billionaires. I've interviewed some of the most powerful people in entertainment, media, and tech in a pink miniskirt. I've walked into high-stakes rooms wearing things the Pantsuit Brigade might consider grounds for immediate revocation of my Serious Woman Card. And guess what? The men weren't creepy or disrespectful. They didn't hire me because of my body. They didn't continue working with me because I wore a short dress. In fact, any initial assumptions about the blonde in the sexy outfit tend to make what happens next even more fun. Then we get to work. That combination (unabashed femininity paired with competence, confidence, and charm) is powerful precisely because one doesn't erase the other. And on some level, men know it's a unique force they're both compelled by and don't have. (Men, did I lie?) Yet slowly over the last decade, natural male-female instincts became domestic terrorism. The male gaze, or a man simply noticing a female's hotness, became a hate crime. Men were so relentlessly shamed for appreciating beauty that some practically needed a permission slip to compliment a woman's outfit. (True story.) #MeToo cemented the idea that even primal thoughts and interactions, by men or women, were essentially punishable by death. Over the last decade, natural male-female instincts became domestic terrorism. Let's be clear: flirting or thinking someone's hot is very different from… violating someone. Just as basic male brain became wrongthink, so did women who deep down liked and felt good being noticed and admired. Call Mel Gibson, because it's what women want. It may be news to some that women enjoying said admiration, even a little harmless objectification, does not mean they're suddenly degraded, second class, or reduced to a brainless cutout poster. On a basic level, what men and women want are really two sides of the same coin. A coin that somehow was deemed counterfeit by a certain collective. This coalition, made up of self-important editors, desperate brands, and loud people on Twitter, intentionally aimed to destroy basic male-female dynamics, and all under the guise of a chic label: inclusivity. Victoria's Secret Angels got a reverse makeover . Calvin Klein ads replaced Mark Wahlberg's iconic six-pack with a pregnant man . Cosmopolitan put old-school Lizzo's body double on the cover as its definition of "healthy." It sadly wasn't really about being inclusive. It was about an axe to grind, distortion, and ridding the idea of "objective" beauty altogether. This brings me back to what I call the Pantsuit Brigade. It's strange to me that women bent on dismantling the patriarchy so often cosplay as men to project power. Pantsuits. Boxy silhouettes. Muted sexuality. Then there's the casual cousin: oversized sweats, where looking like you put in less effort than a pubescent boy somehow proves you're doing womanhood purely "for yourself." To each their own. But if masculinity is the costume women must put on to signal authority, what exactly does that say about their definition of authority? Well, newsflash to the Pantsuit Brigade: We can have our own form of power. Women understood this long before the phrase "male gaze" infiltrated the cultural conversation. Cleopatra wielded presence, seduction, and political savvy that started a war. Marilyn Monroe turned bombshell beauty into an iconic cultural force while actually being far shrewder than her caricature. Dolly Parton built an empire in rhinestones, hair to the heavens, and deliberately exaggerated femininity, all with a wink, never apologizing for it. Apparently liberation has terms and conditions. Now we're seeing it with the Sydney Sweeney phenomenon . We spent decades demanding that women be liberated to express their identity however they should like. Yet when one embodies a very traditional, straight-male-approved version of hotness, the "male gaze" alarms go off and undermine it as cheap, unserious, or "pick me." Apparently liberation has terms and conditions. I swear some of these people have never seen their own boobs in the mirror. They're missing out. I dressed how I did in the old days because of this very internalized belief I wouldn't be "taken seriously" personally or professionally. Thank God I told them to stick it where the sun don't shine, buried somewhere in Dolly's legendary cleavage. At the end of the day, I don't want women forced into miniskirts any more than I want them forced into pantsuits. Wear the sweats. Wear the suit. Wear the dress that makes your ass look otherworldly. Do it for yourself. Do it for your husband. Do it because you enjoy turning heads. Female liberation should probably include the freedom to enjoy being female. And if a man gazes? Even better.