One crisp morning in the Himalayas, over a perfectly good breakfast that didn’t deserve to be ruined, a casual conversation laid bare a frustrating, universal truth. A well-educated businessman from Delhi, discussing his family’s heritage saree business, casually mentioned , “Anyway, women dress up for men”
An immediate debate followed. I asked him why men automatically assume they are the main target audience for a wardrobe choice they didn’t pay for and don’t have to wear.
To prove my point, I gave him a very real, very recent example. Just days earlier, on a rare sunny day here in the mountains, I had put on my favourite Milumia blue and white ditsy floral print dress which usually just sits in my closet because mountain weather rarely cooperates. As I walked the one-kilometre path from my house to the castle, I checked myself out in every single glass window and mirror I passed on the street. I wasn’t hoping a passerby would faint from admiration. I was simply celebrating myself, the sun, the dress.
Yet, to this grown, highly educated thirty-year-old man, my private ritual of self-love was automatically reduced to a performance for a male audience.
This is the exhausting reality women face: our personal joy is constantly misread as a public invitation.
If you put on a favorite shade of lipstick, style your hair, or wear a striking outfit just to sit on your own couch, the immediate question from the world is always, “Whom are you meeting today?” There is an implicit assumption that our effort must always have a target consumer, and that consumer must be a man. It is quite a fascinating paradox, considering our society gets intensely uncomfortable talking about female sexuality or desire, yet confidently assumes every swipe of eyeliner is a calculated plot to grab a man’s attention.
The audacity of this assumption isn’t just a stranger’s problem; it routinely creeps into our closest circles. Recently, a male friend of mine noticed that I apply blush and dress up every single day. Since we live in the mountains and I work entirely from home, this routine made absolutely no logical sense to his brain.
When he asked me why I bothered doing it, I explained a simple truth: it gives me immense joy to express myself through clothing.
His immediate response? “Yeah, but I like you without makeup.”
I had to pause at the sheer comedy of it. I looked at him and said, “Yeah, but why should I do what you like? I don’t tell you to do anything about your appearance.”
Defensively, he replied, “I am not asking you to change, but I am just telling you how I like it.”
And there it is. The absolute, unfiltered core of the issue. Even when explicitly told that an act is done for personal joy, a man will still look a woman in the eye and offer his personal preference as if it is a necessary critique. He truly believed that his opinion on my face was a crucial piece of data I was missing.
This highlights the exhausting, inescapable trap of female appearance. We are caught in a constant crossfire of pressure where our looks are never allowed to just be. If you wear something nice ( subjective ) , style your hair, and apply makeup, you are instantly accused of doing it to hook male attention. But if you dare to step out completely unbothered, raw, and casual, the gaze shifts to judge you for failing to be attractive enough for them. We are caught in a rigged game where doing “too much” makes you a performance , and doing “too little” makes you invisible. Society has designed a landscape where a woman’s entire existence is measured by her perceived value to a male spectator.
This relentless main-character syndrome from men is exactly what we are trained to swallow from childhood. I remembered my own adolescent phase back in school around 2011. My cousin sister gave me a beautiful, layered haircut. For the first time, looking at my natural curls falling in layers, I felt genuinely beautiful to myself. It was a pure moment of self-discovery, fueled by that exact same desire to just feel good for myself.
Yet, the very next morning, my hostel PT teacher shattered that joy by shouting, “What did you do to yourself? Whom do you want to impress here?”
The transition was instant and brutal. One day, you are a kid experimenting with your look for your own happiness. The next day, an institutional authority figure steps in to sexualize your choice, framing your internal joy as a calculated act to attract someone else. The confusion was so deep that I spent the next few months forcing fifteen bobby pins into my hair just to keep it tightly bound and hidden. I literally walked around looking like I would set off an airport security scanner from 150 km away or attract stray kitchen magnets.
This is the psychological tax levied on women. We choose to celebrate our unique style, yet society turns around and punishes us by claiming we are only doing it to please men. We are caught in a loop where our authentic autonomy is aggressively denied by a world that refuses to believe we can exist for our own pleasure.
Honestly? It is exhausting. But the next time I put on a killer outfit just to sit home and answer emails, or spend an hour playing with makeup on a Tuesday afternoon, I am not going to second-guess my motives.
Our bodies aren’t a public utility and feeling great in your own skin is a private luxury. Soooo, here is your daily reminder to wear that favourite dress, or not. Wear the makeup, or step out completely raw. Go ahead and check yourself out in every single shop window on your path. The world is just a backdrop anyway; you might as well enjoy the view in the mirror.