The male gaze can really harm females of any age; my nine-year-old niece often gets made fun of in school because she happens to have really dark skin. Because of the male gaze it has become unacceptable to be beautiful and have really dark or pale skin, to be beautiful you have to be a perfect shade of tan, and even a nine-year-olds know this from seeing the male gaze in action. The age of nine is also around the age that I started to be made fun of for being naturally too thin, having “twig” legs, and not developing physically as fast as the other girls in my grade. Eleven years later I can still remember the cruel things I was told about my body not being as developed and not leading up to the impossible expectations that the male gaze has set up. Being made fun of for not living up to the male gaze is something that still sticks with me and sometimes still affects the way I look at my body. Whether you are nine, twenty, fifty, or eighty the male gaze still affects you because society will always have these expectations of what is “beauty”.  Not living up to the impossible physical and sexual expectations that comes with the male gaze really lowers females’ self-esteem, and those who have seem to meet the expectations of the male gaze in reality have not; it’s all fake, it’s all an act.