The girl learns to view herself through an imagined collective male gaze

Evidence

As she pointed out, woman is indeed ‘other’ for man — but man is not exactly ‘other’ for woman, or not in the same way. Both sexes tend to agree in taking the male as the defining case and the centre of all perspectives. Even language reinforces this, with ‘man’ and ‘he’ being the default terms in French as in English. Women try constantly to picture themselves as they would look to a male gaze. Instead of looking out to the world as it presents itself to them (like the person peering through the keyhole) they maintain a point of view in which they are the objects (like the same person after becoming aware of footsteps in the hall). This, for Beauvoir, is why women spend so much time in front of mirrors. It is also why both men and women implicitly take women to be the more sensual, the more eroticised, the more sexual sex. In theory, for a heterosexual female, men should be the sexy ones, disporting themselves for the benefit of her gaze. Yet she sees herself as the object of attraction, and the man as the person in whose eyes she glows with desirability. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 681 (#expands, via linked claim)

What astonishes Olivia are the promises she thinks she reads in this image in which she recognizes her childish dreams and which is herself; but the girl also cherishes in her carnal presence this body that fascinates her as if it were someone else’s. She caresses herself, she embraces the curve of her shoulder, the bend of her elbow, she contemplates her bosom, her legs; solitary pleasure becomes a pretext for reverie, in it she seeks a tender self-possession. For the boy adolescent, there is an opposition between love of one’s self and the erotic movement that thrusts him toward the object to be possessed: his narcissism generally disappears at the moment of sexual maturity. Instead of the woman being a passive object for the lover as for herself, there is a primitive blurring in her eroticism. In one complex step, she aims for her body’s glorification through the homage of men for whom this body is intended; and it would be a simplification to say that she wants to be beautiful in order to charm, or that she seeks to charm to assure herself that she is beautiful: in the solitude of her room, in salons where she tries to attract the gaze of others, she does not separate man’s desire from the love of her own self. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 848 (#expands, via linked claim)

However, although some women affirm “I dress for myself only,” we have seen that even in narcissism the gaze of the other is involved. Only in asylums do the fashion-conscious stubbornly keep their faith in absent gazes; normally, they demand witnesses. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1574 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Seeing male dominance, not genital difference, alters a girl’s self-consciousness — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 698; A girl first learns her subordinate destiny through male-authored stories and culture. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 700; Being visually seen and commented on makes the girl’s body an object to herself. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 738 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Both sexes implicitly center perspective on the male, making woman the object #expands (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 681
• The adolescent girl fuses narcissistic self-love with desire for male admiration #expands (0.88) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 848
• Even self-directed feminine adornment requires an external gaze #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1574
• The girl’s narcissism follows from an early craving to be looked at by others #expands (0.82)