Are women done with men?

Some are, I suppose—and some were never interested in them to begin with—but on the whole, no, women aren’t quite finished with men, not just yet. But man-liking has become a bit passé, as well as politically embarrassing to admit, at least in fashionable circles, at least on paper. This goes a long way towards explaining the spate of New York Times articles in recent years, by different Styles section authors, but all attributing women’s purchase of whichever designer item to—paradoxically—a rejection of conventional heterosexual femininity.

Six years ago, one could learn that women were wearing bralettes (as opposed to sculpted or push-up bras) because, “‘Women are now dressing for themselves and other women—not for the male gaze.’”

A report on London Fashion Week in 2023 spoke of a number of designers who, together, made up “a movement redefining sexy dressing for the female gaze.” This maybe means women are the designers, but gestures at the idea of women wanting to be comfortable as well as looking sexy, or, perhaps, at the idea that sexy in this meaning is about something other than looking good to men.

Last fall, an article about normal-looking T-shirts that for some reason cost more than $100—and those are U.S. dollars—emphasized their appeal to the “Female Gaze.”

A month ago, an article about enormous sweaters costing even more enormous amounts claim that the sweaters appeared “[a]t a time when women in America have lost rights to their bodily autonomy.” Yet another 2025 story about “adult bonnets” (these can cost more than $200 USD), explains that these are, per their wearers, a form of man-repelling. “‘[A bonnet-owner] sees the growing interest in the accessory as indicative of women not dressing to be noticed by men, but instead ‘thinking about looking cute for the female gaze.’”

I use “man-repelling” intentionally, because while reading the bonnets article, it hit me that I had seen this way of talking about fashion before. I had seen it, to be specific, long before Donald Trump’s first term and the ensuing #MeToo moment. This notion that women are wearing slightly eccentric (or not) designer clothing not because men ask this of them, but rather in spite of the fact that men absolutely don’t ask this of them, is not the invention of any of the New York Times journalists cited above, but rather of one audaciously dressed woman.

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Leandra Medine Cohen—the second surname arrived when she got married in 2012, at age 23—will one day be studied in Jewish Studies seminars (if there still is such a thing), whenever they do the lecture on Jews and whiteness, on account of her curious place in the 2020 racial reckonings. Leandra was a white girlboss who had a downfall amidst the girlboss-downfall moment, but also, was she white? For one thing, she’s Jewish, and the whiteness of Jewish people is the topic of many exhausting debates. But her self-deprecating humour puts her more in a Jewish tradition than a generically white fashion-commentator one. For another, she’s Mizrahi (on both sides), so if she wanted to claim Jew of Colour status, she’d be well within her rights. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The Man Repeller........

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