OUR FITS PICS ARE NOT FOR YOU!

@madisonxwild

#stitch with @heritagin I loved this video🥲🥲 #femalegaze #fashiontiktok

♬ Lofi - Domknowz

“A lot of people also think people dress for men, but it’s just so glaringly obvious we don’t.” This is the response of Madison Wild, a digital fashion content creator, to a TikTok speaking about the female gaze. She interprets this idea of the female gaze through the lens of women and their dress practices. Prior to the obviously annoyed comment above, she explained the phenomenon as such: “...Every time I get dressed, I’m appealing to women. Like, a guy doesn’t care that you’re wearing a new Paloma Wool pant but a girl would notice and be like, ‘Oh she’s probably cool’...And that’s why fashion with women is so diverse and we wear so many different things that we know men aren’t gonna like, but it signals to other girls like ‘Hey, I’m like you or we might have similar interests’” (@madisonxwild). 

The female gaze is the lesser known counterpart to the male gaze, one of Laura Mulvey’s film criticism terms theorized in the 70s. While the male gaze objectifies, the female gaze reclaims, and sees the world through her eyes, instead of through the patriarchy’s. This is the exact phenomenon Wild talked about in her TikTok. In today’s digital fashion landscape, it’s surprising that this isn’t talked about more. After all, everyday girls are becoming trendsetting icons overnight just through posting “fit pics” on Instagram. Despite the claims of women dressing and posting to attract male attention, the actual success of this practice of taking outfit pictures originates in and flourishes because of the female gaze. 

To understand the link between these concepts, it’s important to define them. The female gaze is academically defined as “The ways in which women and girls look at other females, at males, and at things in the world. This concerns the kinds of looking involved, and how these may be related to identification, objectification, subjectivity, and the performance and construction of gender” (Chandler and Munday). A “fit pic” is a newly coined term of modern Internet culture, and is a play on typical elements of fashion photography. Urban Dictionary is one of the only websites explicitly defining it, saying, “An Instagram photo taken for the sole purpose of showcasing your outfit, often using strong colour coordination for aesthetic purposes and normally the background matches the colour of the outfit” (“Urban Dictionary: Fit Pic”). As you can see, elements like color, aesthetic, and background come into play here, a lot like professional fashion photography. Much like their more formal counterparts, “fit pics” are “images that succeed not just in capturing the specifics of garments and styles, but in immortalizing evocative nuances of gesture, mood and context – provide a tangible legacy of this fluid form of expression,” says Phillipe Garner in “The Celebration of the Fashion Image” (Shinkle and Garner).  Nowadays, all you need is an Iphone, the Instagram platform, and a trendy or unique style to make this happen, and gain traction for it. This practice has made accounts grow from 2k, to 15k, to even 50k followers in a matter of months. This exponential growth would not be possible without the presence of women on the platform, for they make up 56.5% of total Instagram users in the US in 2021 (Tankovska). The female gaze, or women’s eyes, works as a cycle in this situation: they see a photo on Instagram that they like or inspires them, they find other girls who feel the same, they bond over shared feelings towards an image, they share the image, and then they convert elements of that image into their own reality. 

The explanation of this cycle lies in the breakdown of identity expression and dress practices, which is heavily prevalent in fashion scholar Susan Kaiser’s “Fashion and Culture.” Her theories within this text explain the subconscious practice of women making decisions to wear certain clothing based on how they want to be perceived by others. Kaiser states “...fashioning the body is one of the ways individuals can represent their momentary sense of who they are becoming. These representations through style allow individuals to combine, or move across, their subject positions with a sense of self-awareness and self-expression: processes of subjectivity—the ongoing, changing sense of exploring ‘who I am’ and ‘who I am becoming.’” She uses the term “subject positions” to refer to categories that “organize identities, social relations, and the objects and images that culture produces.” She also defines “subjectivity” as “the agency to assert or articulate one’s own ways of being and becoming” (Kaiser). She explains dress practices as something we do everyday to express a part of our identity, or in this case a subject formation, a term used in place of identity to allude to our ever-changing personas. When you take that expression of one’s subject formation and broadcast it on a public platform for thousands of people to see, a shift happens. Normally, only a handful of people may have seen a certain outfit, a piece of your identity, when walking down the street or being in a restaurant. That number of people multiplies when you post it on Instagram, leaving your identity up for judgement and survey. Cheryl Buckley and Hazel Clark speak of this phenomenon, saying “Fashion parallels everyday life in creating, visually, materially and in writing ‘a reality readily available for scrutiny’” (Buckley & Clark). This scrutiny and judgement can sound negative, but that is without the inclusion of the discussion of the female gaze within fashion imagery on Instagram. While social media and posting has been referred to as unhealthy and addicting in many studies, they are not acknowledging the niche of posting fashion content, especially for women. Fashion content, through the theory of the female gaze, has many positives, including senses of community, empowerment, and inspiration for women involved. 

As Madison Wild said in her TikTok, “Fashion with women is so diverse and we wear so many different things that we know men aren’t gonna like, but it signals to other girls like ‘Hey, I’m like you or we might have similar interests’” (@madisonxwild). Women’s agency within their dress practices, with the intent to appeal to other women, is the female gaze in action. Dr. Sarah Chong Kwan details this in her study, which examines the relation between the senses and the dressed body. Through the discussion of the “gaze,” seeing being one of the five sense, she reinforces the narrative of women dressing for themselves and other women, instead of within the standards males impose upon them. Her analyses stem from the works of Iris Marion Young, a political and feminist theorist. She says, “Young, in her seminal essay on women’s embodied experience, considers women’s intimate and emotional relationship with clothing...The exclusive focus on ‘the gaze’ and more specifically a ‘male gaze’ that acts upon women, denies the subjective perspective and agency of women – who are more than passive objects on whom meaning is imposed, but are themselves active agents in the process of meaning making” (Kwan). Due to women’s deep-seeded interest in clothing a representation of their identity, it is reductive to only speak of the male gaze in regards to their dress practices. Doing this denies the woman’s power to exert her identity or “subject formation” through fashion choices. Understanding the absence of the male gaze in the dress practices of women is crucial to the comprehension of “the female gaze” as a real, acting phenomenon in society. The dissection of dress from this feminist perspective is the start to understanding the presence of the female gaze in women’s “fit pics” on digital platforms like Instagram.

Research that combines the female gaze, fashion, and social media is absent from academia. This is shocking due to the increased population of fashion content creators on Instagram and other platforms like TikTok. Natalie Daher’s piece “Instagram’s Female Gaze” in The Week is one of the only works to touch on the concept, incorporating the idea of the influence of women’s eyes on the platform. She notes this lack of research, stating, “What we less often explore, however, are the celebrations of womanhood: the female gaze” (Daher). She goes on to discuss the idea of women doing things to appeal to what other women like and what women see. She makes a direct connection of this phenomenon to Instagram: “Instagram, a social network predicated on users' desire to judge aesthetics, has emerged as the most effective platform for women to safely celebrate, well, women.” As stated before, many like to address the judgement and comparison that result from posting on Instagram. However, like Daher says, women are able to celebrate and cheer each other on when they post visuals on Instagram. The community they feel in this creates a feeling of safety and comfort, as men’s eyes lack in these spaces. “As society re-evaluates masculine entitlement, the female gaze is sharpening,” she says, a truth that is becoming more and more evident as we move away from toxic narratives (Daher).

A note is also taken of Instagram’s ability to generate authentic connections more than other social platforms, due to the choice to accompany images or videos with short or long form commentary. This ability to contribute as much or as little to conversations that are formed through visuals creates a public forum for women to express themselves freely, and therefore put pieces of their personality or identity on the Internet. Daher also deems the visual-sharing app as an empowerment tool for women, referencing the “#MeToo” movement of 2017 as an example of how women used the app and its hashtags to expand the conversation of power abuse and sexual harassment in Hollywood (Daher).  It discusses Instagram as a hub of reclamation within female communities, as they start to rewrite their own narrative of how they want to be perceived, slowly breaking down the toxic standards that have been put in place before them. Knowing that visual images and captions can foster this kind of change shows the shifting purpose of these platforms for women. Daher’s personal take on the female gaze and Instagram is the beginning of understanding the role that it plays in “fit pics” and fashion content in the digital hemisphere. 

There is a place on Instagram that radiates. It’s colorful, it’s upbeat, it’s lively, and it exudes positivity. It is where the female gaze collides with the utter creativity that fashion contributes to society. The niche of posting “fit pics” in online female communities garners empowerment, community, and so much more. With Susan Kaiser’s analysis of how we express our subject formations, it is refreshing to know there is a place online for women to do so freely, and not under the suppressing male standards. On Instagram, women can wear crazy furry hats, ties, and things otherwise seen as “unappealing” or “ugly” to men, and have a community to embrace their individuality, and celebrate it. Dr. Sara Chong Kwan stresses the importance of women’s agency within their own dress practices, denoting that fit pics and dress practices are not for me, but rather for one’s own expression of self for other women to understand and appreciate. Natalie Daher was right when she said, “It's a flip of the script here that's key. From lifestyle bloggers to art curators to celebrities, these women aren't on Instagram to be looked at or evaluated by men” (Daher). By capitalizing on the female gaze on Instagram through fashion content, women are collectively saying “Our fit pics are not for you!” to the patriarchy, and the overbearing discussion of the presence of the male gaze in art, film, and society. If we teach women the value of their “gaze,” they will learn just how powerful they are.

If you want to check out a deeper dive into the blossoming of a female fashion content creator, check out Local Mogul, a short film by Gwendolyn Attridge about her muse for subjects like these, Chloë Felopulos, whose images are featured within this blog post:

Sources:

  Buckley, Cheryl, and Hazel Clark. Fashion and Everyday Life: London and New York. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

  Chandler, Daniel, and Rod Munday. “Female Gaze.” Oxford Reference, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095814800. Accessed 19 May 2021.

  Daher, Natalie. “Instagram’s Female Gaze.” The Week, 27 Apr. 2018, https://theweek.com/articles/766089/instagrams-female-gaze.

  Felopulos, Chloe. ◦•🧡💘✿ Ω𝑜𝐌έ𝓃’s ᗪ𝓪Ⓨ¥ㄚүƳ ✿💛💙•◦. 8 Mar. 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/CMLnV79HMLw/.

  ---. 𝕭𝖔𝖞𝖘 𝕮𝖑𝖚𝖇🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊. 26 Apr. 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/COI66dZHwTa/.

  ---. 𝓈𝑜 𝒮𝓏𝒶, 𝓌𝒽𝓎 𝒾𝓈 𝒾𝓉 𝓈𝑜 𝒽𝒶𝓇𝒹 𝓉𝑜 𝒶𝒸𝒸𝑒𝓅𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓉𝓎 𝒾𝓈 𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓇? 8 May 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/COnXTPyHpAI/.

  ---. 𝔰𝔱𝔬𝔬𝔭 𝔱𝔞𝔠𝔬𝔰🌮🌮🌮🌮🌮🌮🌮🌮. 23 Apr. 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/COCD1nJnPcA/.

  Kaiser, Susan B. Fashion and Cultural Studies. A&C Black, 2013.

  Kwan, Sara Chong. “The Ambient Gaze: Sensory Atmosphere and the Dressed Body.” Revisiting the Gaze, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020, http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350154247.ch-003.

  @madisonxwild. “#stitch with @heritagin I Loved This Video🥲🥲 #femalegaze #fashiontiktok.” TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/@madisonxwild/video/6919539014877924614?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1. Accessed 19 May 2021.

  Shinkle, Eugenie, and Phillipe Garner. Fashion as Photograph: Viewing and Reviewing Images of Fashion. I.B.Tauris, 2008.

  Tankovska, H. “U.S. Instagram Users by Gender 2021.” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/530498/instagram-users-in-the-us-by-gender/. Accessed 19 May 2021.

  “Urban Dictionary: Fit Pic.” Urban Dictionary, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fit%20pic. Accessed 19 May 2021.