Source: The Male Gaze is Uncool Publisher: Cartoons Hate Her | Author: Cartoons Hate Her Published: February 2, 2026 | Archived: March 21, 2026

You can say many things about the below outfit and styling. The woman is (unless you plan on being obtusely oppositional for no reason) objectively attractive. She is wearing an outfit that highlights what makes her body attractive to men. This is the platonic appeal to the male gaze outfit.

Versace, 1994

But these days are over. In 2026, the world of “clothes that regular, non-artsy, non-intellectual straight men like” and “clothes that make you a Fashion Person” are two completely separate Venn Diagram circles, with basically zero overlap.

(This is not to say that “weird” unsexy high-fashion didn’t exist in the ‘90s. But dressing in a way that was unambiguously attractive to men was not mutually exclusive with appearing cool.)

First, when I talk about “clothes straight men like,” I will clarify because I know straight men are not a monolith (#notallmen like leggings, I know). But if I may say something controversial, straight men enjoy looking at women’s bodies. They have even been rumored to enjoy putting their penises in vaginas. That doesn’t mean your average straight man wants you to wear a skintight fishnet crop top with iridescent stars over your nipples like you’re going to Coachella, but any outfit that emphasizes the shape of the female form will probably appeal to straight men more than an outfit that doesn’t. This holds true even if the outfit is not ultra-trendy or intended to be sexy. Between the two modest photos of Kate Middleton below, the yellow outfit will probably appeal to straight men more because it highlights her figure, even though the overall aesthetic/mood is the same as the red one. The red one might be cool, but given that it’s basically cloak-adjacent, it’s not going to be as appealing to men. This is not just a generalization based on my assumptions; it was reflected in my survey.

This is doubly true if the less figure-skimming outfit is deliberately weird or artsy. The below outfit, for example, just screams “you wouldn’t get it” to any straight man who may cross its path. I doubt any straight man would reject a woman over such attire, but if they were asked for their preference this one would not top the list.

I can’t fully explain it, but I kind of have straight man taste. Maybe I’m just painfully basic and millennial, but I can’t decouple my preference for figure-skimming, deliberately pleasant-looking clothing with the fact that I’ve been told, overtly and covertly, that these things make women look better to men. Even when I attempt to “dress for myself” I have a hard time appreciating any outfit that completely obscures my shape. And as much as I could do the libfem thing and claim to only coincidentally enjoy clothes that make me look attractive (See: “I wax my pubes for myself, I have sensory issues!”) I have to just be honest and say it’s impossible to really identify what’s “for me” in a vacuum when I don’t live in a vacuum.

But as I’ve gotten older, my preference has leaned away from stretchy clubwear from Wet Seal, and into things that feel more appropriate for my age and lifestyle (36, married mother.) I enjoy belted structured blazers, high-waisted wide leg jeans with tight turtlenecks, and long rib-knit sweaterdresses—all things that showcase the figure but don’t scream “hanging around the table to mooch off bottle service.” But even as I age into some degree of modesty, I have a hard time with the idea of wearing two things that are deliberately baggy, not highlighting my waist at all, or anything else deliberately ugly for the sake of intentional, artsy ick. In other words, I cannot look cool.

Things start to get anti-male-gaze when you combine the obfuscation of the female form along with deliberate weirdness or ugliness. When I look at the following photos of fashion icon Bella Hadid, my inner straight man (I’m calling him Dale, he/him) really only appreciates the sexy cowgirl one on the far right. The first two look irredeemably ugly, but they also feel intimidating, like the first time I watched Twin Peaks and posted to Reddit to ask everyone “what is going on” and got downvoted mercilessly for being too stupid to get it. Seriously—an olive green khaki jacket with slightly mismatching shades of khaki for a sweater and a skirt, and then a weird red/orange bag? A gray plaid knee-length skirt with an athletic blue rugby shirt and…a hairdo that looks like a girl from your third grade class who came back from a family vacation to the Bahamas? What am I missing here? Why are these outfits supposed to be good?

Versus, say…

The OG Man Repeller

But Man Repeller is no more. They shut down about five years ago. And not because people wanted something sexier and more conventionally flattering, but rather because the very concept of deliberately repelling men was no longer interesting—everyone was repelling men. Per a 2020 Refinery article announcing the blog’s closure:

While 10 years ago, the concept — dressing in defiance of the opposite sex — was lauded for its girl-power approach to dressing with complete disregard for the male gaze, now the (very heteronormative) idea that we ever dressed for men seems wildly outdated.

Obviously, the word “heteronormative” is being used here so we can assume this is, to some extent, a vestige of the 2020 fever dream. But I don’t want to dismiss this quote, because it’s exactly what happened. Leandra Medine Cohen walked so many Gen Z fashion girls could run by repelling men as the default. Man-repelling is only an interesting concept if it’s a deviation from the norm, and it no longer is. Today, a fashion blog called Man Repeller makes about as much sense as a mommy blog called Child Haver.

I should point out something else about Man Repeller, because I would be remiss not to mention it: Cohen experienced controversy around the 2020 BLM protests which I still can’t fully understand, but basically, she had posted in support of BLM on Instagram and defaulted to linking to “anti-racism resources.” But she faced massive backlash for “performative activism” and refusing to “look inward and learn.” This was what counted for a racist controversy in 2020—it really was another time! (Did white male bloggers face this same pressure? Hmm…hahahahah of course not.) Cohen was later criticized for not just surrendering the entire company to more marginalized voices and blasted for the fact that had things been done correctly, she would have handed the entire blog over to other people. Per her critics, Man Repeller would ideally be a “space for non-binary and Black voices,” or better yet, “a place for queer people to take over.” You heard the people: forget about your life’s work, just hand it over the BIPOC, queer and nonbinary populations and retire yourself to the sewers like a dead goldfish. But anyway, I don’t think this particular “controversy” was responsible for Man Repeller’s downfall. Per the earlier quote, people just didn’t have the same excitement about the once-groundbreaking concept of repelling men. By 2020, in the fashion world, the concept of repelling men was about as edgy as an artisanal cocktail made with rosemary and hibiscus.

Of course, there’s something good about women wearing clothes for their own enjoyment without asking themselves “does this jacket make me look boxy?” or “does this skirt make my legs look short?” because they’re afraid of what a man might say or think. After all, we were coming off an era (the 2000s) when Maxim could randomly post a list of the “unsexist women,” and women were a little tired of being analyzed under the constant lens of “does she make my penis hard enough? And if not, HOW DARE SHE???” There is also something to be said for, even if you have positive feelings about men, allowing yourself to enjoy fashion in a way that just doesn’t center men. On some level, I enjoyed this when I was pregnant, because I had no desire or interest in appearing sexually attractive and I was able to channel my inner love of Regency styles by sewing some epic empire waist gowns. Removing the goal of wanting to “flatter” my figure opened me up to many creative options, such as this pretty dress I made myself (although you’ll notice that even without the male gaze in mind, I still do not enjoy looking edgy or ugly.)

The best way to think about this is the fact that pandering to the male gaze used to coincide with coolness, even if it wasn’t required. When I think of how I envisioned a “cool girl” when I was in high school (in the 2000s) it was a girl who was confident, popular, stylish, and men wanted her. It wasn’t cool to be desperate to attract men (desperation is never cool) but the idea of walking down the street and having men turn their heads was cool. At least it was cool to me.

Today, it feels different. In fact, turning heads feels uncool. People defend Sabrina Carpenter’s supposed male-gaze-pandering sexual provocations with the defense that she’s actually doing it ironically and she’s really “for the girls.” But this was not a defense you needed to make about your favorite celebrity in 2002. People were not arguing over whether Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera was only doing the whole sexpot thing ironically to do a wink-wink-nudge-nudge to her fellow sisters about how much men suck. Men liking them did not make them cringe or uncool, although they were obviously on the receiving end of various forms of shaming (body, slut, the list goes on.) A more modern example: Taylor Swift has always been unambiguously boy-crazy, given that all her songs are about men, loving men, and breaking up with men (and dare I say, this is part of why part of her appeal is in her dorkiness) but she was considered far less cool (even MAGA!) after getting engaged to a man.

Of course, there were edgy, cool women in the ‘90s and ‘00s who did not appeal to men in a mainstream way. Sinead O’Connor was cool, in part because of her shaved head and general edge. But remember: wearing things that were deliberately obscuring, unflattering or “man-repelling” was not required for coolness or fashion-insider-ness for most of fashion history, even if some people did this and were cool. And as Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada would have you know, many of the “basic” fashion staples of today—the boringly flattering ones egregiously associated with millennials or people even oldeer—were once high-fashion runway statements.

When I was in high school, we had a class for seniors that was basically a mini-college-thesis. We spent an entire semester researching to death any topic of our choosing. I chose 1950s fashion, specifically as it related to World War 2 and economic and technological events of the time. What I found is that the silhouette we associate with the 1950s—the extremely “classic” if not basic, uncreative idea of a cinched in waist, full skirt and tight bodice, now found everywhere from J Crew to Ann Taylor to shitty rockabilly sites—was at one point a groundbreaking high fashion statement. Even though fashion gets a bad reputation for being a vapid, frivolous hobby, fashion trends are always an artful reflection of the times in which we live. Christian Dior’s 1947 New Look (pictured below) reflected many themes of the era: economic prosperity, the end of war-era scarcity (more material could be used, skirts could be lengthened) plus women’s return to the home (many women worked men’s jobs during World War 2.) We also saw the invention of polyester around this time, which didn’t fade like cotton, and this new groundbreaking fabric (hardly Shein-coded yet) popularized wearing crisp pastels and brights, which wouldn’t fade as much. See: the groovy technicolor polyester garments of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

The New Look of 1947 is what we see today as a classic silhouette that we might be able to approximate in a more contemporary way with pedestrian, “basic” mall brands.

Hot in an “obvious” way. Gorgeous, but NOT cool.

There is quiet status behind being able to attract male attention not only without trying, but trying aggressively to ward it off. The reason bandage dresses are uncool isn’t just because they’re dated. It’s because they signal that a woman is unironically trying to look good for men. You know who really needs to try to look good for men? Ugly chicks.

This attitude doesn’t hold true everywhere. In right-wing circles, openly wanting to attract men isn’t embarrassing and is likely to signal something positive about your “feminine virtues” as opposed to something negative about your desperation and trying-too-hardness. This is why right-wing influencers are so much more dolled up and classically feminine-looking than liberal or apolitical fashion bloggers. Notably, there aren’t many Republican high-fashion bloggers, and that’s for a reason. You cannot have a Republican aesthetic and look cool!

Being visibly right-wing is just not cool. For that matter, neither is being visibly left-wing, but there’s something “cringe” about any aesthetic that signals desperation to make people—of any gender, for any reason—like you. If you have a left-wing aesthetic that screams “Look at how progressive I am, I’m such a good ally,” that is also not cool. I have never seen someone look cool with any politically-motivated button on a backpack. There is a reason that Old Money aesthetics got extremely embarrassing extremely fast. They signal “I promise I’m one of you! Please invite me to your game of Boar on the Floor!”