The Male Gaze

On men having eyes to see and what happens next

“As the beverage cart halted, she slid from her mules, spread her toes wide and roll-stretched her ankles. Mid-flight bliss, three rows at a time. She caught his eyes eyeing her feet. Then his eyes rose and caught hers with that Jeremiah Johnson GIF nod of approval. They exchanged smiles, and he got an extra pack of Biscoff cookies. She was all-too-familiar with the male gaze. But every once in a flight, she saw a man's eyes. She didn't need them, but she didn't not need them either.” -John Blase

Ask any woman and she’ll tell you the tension of the male gaze. From what I gather as a man, they all experience it—the uncertainty of wondering what’s going on behind a man’s eye balls when he gazes. A woman once told me. “Oh, I like it when I catch a man staring at me, like in the grocery store check out line or while I’m getting gas. It’s flattering.” She smiled for a minute before fading to serious. “But then there are those other looks. The creepy ones. Those are awful.”

A Harvard study found that, of women age 18-25, a staggering 87% had experienced at least one of the following violating sexual advances from strangers: catcalls, sexualized insults, unsolicited sexual comments, and even touch without permission. And all of these began from a man laying eyes on them. No wonder women are nervous about the male gaze. I learned from the women in my counseling program that women actually rank men according to their creepy factor. And as the data would say, they are right to do this.

But creepy isn’t the only thing that stares back in the eyes of a man. Not by a long shot.

Sheila Wray Gregoire did a study asking if lust was indeed every man’s battle, as we’ve been taught in purity culture. Her findings were revealing. Of the men studied, 76% self reported that they indeed struggled with lust on a daily basis. Not quite every man, but up there. Yet, when she asked questions about actual lust behaviors that would validate this statistic, she found that only 42% of these men actually exhibited any form of discernible lust. In other words, when they see a beautiful woman, the majority of men experience something other than lust.

So what are they experiencing instead?

I believe they are being moved to awe. These men are being moved by beauty, no doubt. They notice beauty, they even feel beauty stir them. Sheila Gregoire concurs and says. “Noticing that a woman is beautiful does not mean you are automatically lusting and therefore sinning... Seeing is not the issue. Looking is not even the issue! The issue is looking with the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification (even if it’s just mentally).”

There is a way of looking, beyond lust, that is more like beholding and reverencing. It’s a form of appreciation. Its awe. Though both begin with being overpowered by beauty, lust moves to control where awe moves to reverence. Philosopher Martin Buber called it the difference between seeing someone as an “It,” an object to manipulate, and seeing someone as a “Thou,” a reflection of the very presence of God (In his words,“…a ray of the eternal You”).

I once had a man admit to me he had so degraded his ability to behold a woman that he only saw body parts. He did not see a person; he saw a butt, breasts, hips. There is a certain horror to this erosion, from beholding to mutilating. But I believe a man is not this at his core. I believe a man was made to appreciate beauty. After all, the first man to see a woman (a naked woman, no less) broke out in poetry.

A man’s heart was made to behold. That can be a gift in itself. Eyes can hold blessing, convey respect, and show appreciation. Yes, the male gaze can actually do this.

How do we restore this capacity in a man to behold not simply to ogle at?

A man must be initiated into this.

My wife tells the story of seeing a guy around our college campus that was always wearing a black leather coat and always staring at her. This happened regularly for a couple years. It wasn’t every day or even every week. But every so often, there he’d be staring too intently to be random.

Creepy, she thought.

What she didn’t know at the time is leather coat guy was my friend Dan and he was only staring because I was always standing right next to him, elbowing him in the side and saying, “Dan, Dan, there she is!” I was smitten with Amanda, this glowingly beautiful woman that I saw around campus every so often.

My crush started our sophomore year, during chapel one day, when she preached and shared her story of coming to faith in God. She was so gorgeous and beautiful and her depth of faith in God enthralled me. But, for a few years, she remained the mysterious beautiful woman I had a crush on. I did not catch her name in chapel or know anyone who knew her. Our paths never predictably crossed. We had very separate majors. I commuted while she lived on campus.

But all of that wasn’t the real reason. The lover in me had his obvious struggles. I lacked the courage to just go introduce myself. I was not confident in the goodness of my lover heart. I was the unitiated. I also thought Amanda was too attractive for me and surely God couldn’t be in it. I thought I wasn’t supposed to feel this aroused by a woman.

So I nursed a crush. Which made it awkward when it didn’t have to be. Dan eventually got so tired of me that he threatened to embarrass me and dragged me into a conversation with her in chapel, the day I asked her out.

Asking Amanda out was the initiated thing to do. But that’s of course not the only thing you can be moved to do. Sometimes seeing a beautiful woman simply invites us to thank God for beauty in the world. The beauty of another person, the reflected glory of another, may simply be an invitation to worship God.

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I also wrote a whole book about this topic and more called The Sex Talk You Never Got, which releases next June 11. I’ll tell you about it and do a cover reveal very soon!

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