Chelsea McMullan Examines Female Gaze in Short Film

In a new series from Nowness, called "The Way We Dress," four female directors contribute their own vision using clothes as a storytelling tool. In the first installment, Toronto-based filmmaker Chelsea McMullan took to the streets of her city to find women of all ages, body types and ethnicities for the 16mm short, Notes on the Gaze.

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The film aims to deconstruct "that feeling of gazing and being gazed upon"--a secret language between women that serves to notice, compare, judge and obsess.

"If the male gaze wants to possess, or overcome a fear of, women, then what do I want?" McMullan tells Nowness. "I think I want to be other women, to feel what it would be like to change bodies; to have a different hair texture, eye color, or body shape; to see myself through the eyes of another women."

Check out Chelsea McMullan's Notes on the Gaze, below: