How to live for yourself: A guide to decentering others and stop living for the male gaze

0:11What is up? I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Hard. the podcast shape guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

0:24What is up and welcome back to Working Hard. I'm very glad you're here for this episode because this is a topic I've been wanting to unpack for such a long time, not from a place of blame at all but from a place of realism and agency and like how we can be authentic people to ourselves. Today we're talking all about decentering men and asking the question, how do you truly live for yourself in a world that still quietly rewards women for being palatable, attractive and easy to approve of? Because the reality is we're all growing up and moving through a patriarchal system and even when we intellectually reject it, it is incredibly hard not to internalise it, not least because you're usually rewarded when you do.

1:04The male gaze isn't just about who you're attracted to or who you're dating. It's about the invisible audience that many of us learn to imagine when we make decisions, consciously or subconsciously. So how will this look? How will I come across? Will this make me less likable? I think the tricky thing is, once you start noticing this lens that you like see your life through or see yourself through, it's really hard to unsee it. So instead of just kind of spiraling about the state of the world, I really wanted to do a video about what you do with that awareness and like how can you take this understanding that you are being perceived in a certain way in a very specific society that has been built in a very specific way and still know that and then recenter yourself within your own life which is something that I think I really had to learn in my late teens early 20s probably I mean I'm still unlearning parts of that today if I'm honest I've personally found it easier to decenter external validation since entering a long-term relationship and getting married, which feels very icky to say, but it is true.

2:02And I think that I don't want to sit here doing this video and be like, oh, you need to do sentiment, you need to not look at these things, all of that, because there is a very real reality when it comes to heterosexual relationships in general that is like the female body clock. And therefore the fact that if you are heterosexual, you are going to have to look for a partner. And obviously lots of us want partners as well. But obviously when you're looking for that, then you're going to do more things in light of the male gaze and I don't think that's shameful at all but it's just I don't want to sit here being like I'm coming from this scenario and then just be like oh decentra entirely because I think I would have found it a lot harder if I was at the stage where I was dating for example but looking back I do really wish I thought about this more deeply earlier and not because I was doing anything wrong but because so much of my energy was I think subconsciously being shaped around being perceived rather than being present or being myself and that's really why I wanted to make this video and I want to also say this up front because it really matters.

3:01Decentering others and decentering the patriarchy or like whatever it might be that has a big impact on you and your life and validation does not mean becoming selfish and it doesn't mean that you need to stop caring about people or existing in relationships with them. It just means that other people's approval is no longer the organizing principle of your life. You can center yourself and still be deeply empathetic, kind, connected. In fact, I'd argue you become more authentic when you remove those unhealthy dependencies and those unhealthy mirrors in which you only look at yourself rather than looking at yourself as who you are to yourself.

3:36So as always, the way I've done this episode is I've spoken to experts, I've gone down a few research rabbit holes with the aim of putting together what is hopefully a genuinely helpful guide to reclaiming your own life within the reality of the world we actually live in. Before we get into it, if you could just go and give us a follow on whatever app you're listening to this on right now. It means you'll get the podcast exactly where you want it every Monday morning and it does us such a solid here at the podcast.

4:08So you don't need to have studied feminist theory to have felt the male gaze. I first heard it described as an invisible lens that we learn to look through very, very early on and I think it's a lot of the time it's the voice that asks how will this look from the outside when we speak, dress, post or even walk into the room and most of the time this isn't something that we consciously choose. This is really important. The male gaze and doing things in line with the male gaze is not about wanting male attention or even being attracted to men. It is about being raised in a world that teaches women very early on that being liked, being attractive and being chosen is rewarded.

4:42Like we live within a patriarchal society. That is the reality. therefore we are going to have been taught very specific things that we operate within and that we get rewarded for that stick with us and that make us choose certain careers or certain ways of dressing or like whatever it might be and some of those might be so complex that you can't actually work out what the original aim for it was like I still do so many things that are 100 % under an accepted lens of the patriarchy like I have my nails done I wear makeup like all of these different things but it is important to know what you are doing because you want to do it even if it originally came from that lens and being able to strip back to yourself.

5:16This is not something that just affects us socially, but economically, professionally and emotionally. Approval very early on for all of us becomes linked to safety, opportunity and belonging. And this conditioning starts very young. We see it in the way that girls are subtly steered away from subjects like science, maths and sports and towards things that reward neatness, compliance, being good rather than being bold. We are praised a lot of the time for being quiet, helpful and pretty, while confidence and competitiveness and authority or being bossy and risk-taking are so often discouraged from very early on.

5:51So by the time we're adults, the habit of checking ourselves through someone else's eyes is already very deeply ingrained. I've known, I think, about the term male gaze for years, but I don't think I've really had an idea of where it came from other than thinking it was just wanting men to like you, which it absolutely isn't. So I wanted to read up on where it actually comes from. The term male gaze was first coined by British feminist and film theorist Laura Mulvey. She wrote an essay in 1975 called Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and in it she argued that mainstream cinema was structured around a heterosexual male viewer and that female characters existed largely to be looked at.

6:25Which we know many films are still not passing the Bechdel test. If you don't know about the Bechdel test look into the Bechdel test. It's very interesting in terms of what is actually viewed as acceptable and encouraged in wider culture. So her observation was that the women in these films weren't agents of the plot. They were basically there to be aesthetically pleasing, desirable, passive objects. And Mulvey rooted this in psychoanalysis, particularly Freud and Lacan, explaining how the act of looking in film mirrors deeper psychological dynamics. So we won't get too far into this, but her essay essentially argued that in patriarchal culture, women are constantly positioned as the spectacle.

6:57And in watching women be watched, audiences, regardless of gender, began to internalise this gaze. obviously there have been so many different things throughout history in terms of women being secondary characters or helping men get to where they get to rather than prioritising their own things that have also formed this as well but that's kind of where the term came from. So since then this idea has obviously expanded far beyond just film theory. It's become a kind of shorthand for how society conditions women to prioritise how they appear over what they think or feel or do and I often think that the effects of this conditioning are much more serious than we realise, especially at a point where I think a lot of us grew up thinking and feeling that equality was a lot closer than maybe we do now.

7:41I mean, part of that is because politics have changed so much in recent years as well. But I think that there was definitely this perception. So, you know, we were definitely luckier to grow up, for example, in the 90s and noughties than our parents who would have had even more specific expectations on them as women or preconceptions on them as women or stereotypes on them as women and things that they couldn't physically do, whereas a lot of ours is based on stereotypes and based on specific boundaries we put on women, not necessarily legislation, if that makes sense. Just to give you an example, psychologist Dr Caroline Heldman, who studies self-objectification and published work showing that exposure to objectifying media leads women to adopt a third-person view of their own bodies.

8:21So she calls this basically habitual body monitoring and describes it as chronic low-level attention drain that pulls cognitive resources away from whatever you're doing and redirects them towards assessing how you look while doing it, which I think is really, really interesting. And a good example of this is a 1998 study by Fredrickson and Roberts where women were asked to try on either a swimsuit or a sweater and then take a maths test. The women in swimsuits, even though they were alone in the room, performed significantly worse on the test. Why? Because self-objectification hijacked their cognitive bandwidth, which is crazy.

8:55like their mental energy was split between the task and their body surveillance. How, like, if that's a tiny example of that in a psychological study, imagine how much that is affecting us and taking away from full potential every day. And I know it is, like, I find it very interesting, and this is a whole other episode, but how much beauty trends increase, for example, when there are massive things going on in the world, like when there are recessions, all of these different things. It's like this mass distraction culture that's now so embedded into us. And this research has been replicated so many times since, showing consistent links between self-objectification and impaired performance, increased anxiety and body shame, and ultimately cases of disordered eating in women.

9:40Dr. Heldman describes this as a kind of dual consciousness. So one part of your brain is participating in life, the other is constantly scanning how you look doing it. And when you've been taught from girlhood that being appealing is your currency, it makes sense that your mind starts monitoring that asset just like it would any other asset. And I really think this constant mental split between being and being perceived comes at a cost. And that cost is presence, confidence, creativity, focus, and generally anything else you could be doing with that energy that instead we spend a lot of time thinking about how we look.

10:14And I want to be very clear. This is not an issue of women caring too much about appearance or approval. It is that we've been taught that being perceived well is part of survival. And if it's part of survival, then it's part of progression. If it's part of progression, it's part of what makes you able to earn more and get the career you like and get a stable relationship. Any of these things that we've been taught are important for survival. And once you understand that, the question becomes, how do you live well inside that reality without losing yourself? So rather than trying to opt out of the world entirely, which obviously isn't realistic, I've put together six steps to help you recenter yourself within it.

10:52And this is about learning to win, thrive and feel whole in a patriarchal system without letting it run your internal life. I also want to say on top of that that there is absolutely no shame in wanting to look a certain way or act a certain way or dress a certain way. I think that often this has been used, the male gaze has been intrinsically applied and then been flipped to shame women. So like, why are women so rapid? Why are they thinking about their appearance at important times? Why are they thinking about what they're wearing when they are going to a job interview? That's not the most important thing.

11:21We've been taught that's an important thing. We have been rewarded for that going right and we have been penalised for that going wrong. So of course we're going to feel that to a certain extent. Like, I don't want anyone to listen to this episode and be like, oh, well, I can't partake in society then unless I just stop wearing makeup or stop wearing skirts or like whatever it might be or stop thinking about how I look like it is very internalized and it has been very much taught we cannot then be shamed for that and that is exactly why you will still see me like wearing makeup getting my nails done all of this I wouldn't say in a million years oh it's so men like me it's probably internalized from the patriarchy though let's be honest anyway on to the steps so step one is noticing the lens so catching the moments where your choices are being shaped less by what you want and more by how you imagine that they'll be received.

12:05So not by one specific person, but by that vague mental audience that many of us carry around. Are you pausing your plans just in case someone texts, for example? Are you choosing outfits based on how they'll read and be perceived rather than how they feel? Are you editing yourself because you are worried about being too much or not enough? None of this is about shaming yourself. These aren't personal failures. These are learnt patterns. Not every thought deserves authority. Some of them are just old scripts playing around on autopilot and the moment that you can name them they start to lose their grip.

12:38You're allowed to want connection and love and attraction. The key is making sure you are not shrinking or editing yourself to be able to earn that. For most of my teens and early 20s I didn't consciously think I was dressing for anyone else. Some of them I absolutely did. Like some of them I was picking out my little outfit for a party for a very specific person. But a lot of the time I think I just knew which versions of myself had like been rewarded more. What felt flattering, what felt safe, what felt approved of and without realising it I think that became very much my default but I feel like over time I realised how much that pulls you away from yourself.

13:12When your clothes are about being perceived correctly rather than feeling like yourself then getting dressed becomes a performance rather than an expression. Reclaiming your style as step two isn't about rejecting femininity, beauty or wanting to look good. I personally love all of those things but it's about asking one simple question. Am I wearing this because it connects me to myself or because it helps me manage how I'm perceived? So I think one really good example of this that I see on social media talked about a lot is the idea that like oh I'm in such a safe relationship that I've started wearing pink again or like oh you know she's happy because her hair's curly again or whatever it might be.

13:50And these are tiny little examples of where doing that thing before was not seen as the optimal thing to get you chosen. And I hate saying that because it sounds like all these women are running around just trying to be picked, which I don't agree with at all. But there is definitely like a lasting effect of certain desirabilities that the patriarchy then has on us. But it's like those different types of things that I do think is really important when you're talking about this type of thing is like, is this actually me? Am I dressing this way because it's me or am I dressing this way to come across a certain way?

14:22And how would I be dressing or how would I do my hair or whatever it might be if it was to please myself rather than other people? And I think that that is a particularly powerful part of this when you're able to kind of like claim that back. So step three is act for yourself. And I feel like I need to give some context here because acting for yourself is not about like refusing responsibility or pretending that you don't have a job or a boss or people you care about or certain milestones like in your romantic life that you want to achieve. We all have obligations, we all have preferences and we all have to compromise sometimes.

14:55But I spent a long time thinking about this and I think the key difference is noticing where you are compromising your own needs and boundaries for someone who has not earned that level of access to your time or energy. So for me, this showed up most clearly in dating. I, a while ago, not recently, but a while ago, absolutely would drop plans, maybe because someone finally texted me back or like rearranging a bit of my schedule for a low effort invite and like putting my own life on pause in a certain way, big or small, for the possibility of being chosen, I guess. And it's embarrassing to say it, but it is absolutely something that I've done before and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't.

15:36And it is really hard when you're dating and you want to find someone to distinguish between being keen to date and putting yourself out there versus putting yourself first. Because in order to put yourself out there, you of course need to have some level of compromise and give up your time. But I think deep down, we all know when we are doing it for ourselves and when we are like outsourcing our self-worth in a dating situation in a way that we wouldn't allow a friend to treat us, for example. And when you act for yourself, you stop letting other people's availability or their lack of planning dictate your priorities.

16:08You don't cancel your gym class, your work, your friendships, or your rest because someone gives you a crumb of attention. And I think most importantly, you start treating your time as valuable before anyone else does. Because no one's going to treat it as valuable if you don't treat it as valuable. Boundaries are not about pushing people away. We've talked about that so many times on this podcast. They are about protecting the life you are building. When you constantly act in a way that reinforces your own priorities, your nervous system starts to settle. You stop living in like reaction mode, waiting to be picked, and you center yourself without becoming self-centered.

16:42And I think acting for yourself also changes the kind of relationships you attract. When you're no longer available for half effort, you make space for people who are willing to meet you with intention, with respect, and with consistency and that is definitely something I saw in my 20s. Step four is to focus on your friendships. I see why this might seem like crazy advice in an episode that's like about centering yourself but I think having a small circle you rely on actually helps you secure what you want in life. One of the strongest antidotes to living for general external validation is building deep intimate friendships with people who see you fully and don't need you to turn up in a certain way to like you.

17:20Platonic love is so often underrated, but it is one of the most powerful things that you can invest in. If they are true friends, these are the people who remind you that your value doesn't depend on being attractive or being a certain size or being agreeable or easy to digest. These are the ones who love you in your contradictions, who celebrate your full complexity, who reflect your real worth back to you, and who understand if you prioritise yourself. I would recommend getting really honest about what you're feeling and what you need. And if you don't have those people yet, then focus on building them before you focus on building a relationship outside of that that maybe exists more on external validation because you haven't got those base needs covered.

18:00I've actually done a podcast episode on specifically that, on building particularly female friendships in your 20s, because when you are surrounded by people who love you outside of performance, the male gaze starts to lose its power. Okay, that is it for this episode. I want you to remember first and foremost that you don't need to reject beauty standards entirely or pretend you don't care about approval or finding a relationship and getting where you want to in your romantic life or your career or whatever to be able to re-center yourself. Like you can still want those things and still center yourself.

18:32This episode was about choosing to stop performing and start living for yourself because I think the male gaze and the external gaze generally will always exist within the patriarchy but it does not also have to live inside your head. Now if you enjoyed this episode please send it to a friend and make sure to sign up to the Working Hard newsletter in the description below. We generally talk about lots of things related to the topics and if you like to have a discussion we're over on Instagram at Working Hard Pod as well.