What are you looking at?

 

The male gaze is best defied by Laura Mulvay In her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, where she describes by what scope society views women. Women throughout history, through the use of paintings, films and advertising, are designed to the liking of the man. According to John Berger, a painting of a naked woman transforms that woman into an object. Therefore, giving a woman no real identity, she then becomes an object of desire or judgment. As John Berger states “men dream about women and women dream about men dreaming about them”. The notion that the word is seen through a man’s point of view is precise and has been prevalent since the beginning of time. Times have changed, however, one thing remains; no matter how far women think they have come to break free from the shackles of a man’s craving, even with the oppositional gaze, the reinforcement of the male gaze seeps through.

Author Bell Hooks recalls a time where the “gaze” was looked upon as disrespect to people who had power and control over one. Such as your parents and slave owners. The power to take away or restrict what you can survey constitutes power.  I too remember growing up and being taught the same thing; looking directly into your parents eyes or someone in authority is “fresh” or disrespectful, the notion children should be seen and not heard was dominant, as I believe it is so the case in today’s society with women.  The oppositional gaze is a sign of rebellion. The concept: I’m looking at you looking at me, all of the sudden changes how you are perceived by the surveyor. As Bell Hooks states “there is power in looking”, however, I believe there is even more power in looking back.

You can see examples of the male gaze all over the media. When you watch the news, all the women are pretty, thin, and well dressed for the most part. Those concepts are preconditioned concepts and subjective to the male and therefor transferred to the subjective truth of a female. Take a closer look at who naturally defines such concepts. The media is filled with advertisements which enhance the way women look, making them accessible to man’s desires. Men’s advertisements too, put forth methods of which a man can enhance his looks to conquer the woman. It is “This is how to conquer a woman”, for the men, and, “this is how I get a man to want to conquer me”, for the woman. The oppositional gaze has many forms. It does not only give way to a viewer and the viewed, but it is also denoted by the audio world as well. Music consumes most human beings in the world. Think of what songs are all about. What does the song writer want to reveal or achieve? Most songs are about sex, the power to conquer love, the failure of not being able to conquer love, and beauty.  While the man is always wooing the woman to his infallible embrace, the woman is always working hard to get the man to notice her and let her into his life in some way, shape, or form.  

               As far as women think they have come they have not come far at all. The most difficult challenge is having the ability to shape and form opinions that are owed by the woman alone and freeing yourself from preconceived notions of who you are and you are supposed to be. A woman must strip away from all that she has been taught through media, books, paintings, advertisements and music to then have the ability to feel, love and act with her raw instinct. I believe that women sometimes have no clue as to their identities and what makes them truly blissful. A woman’s sexuality has always been defined by powerful forces created by man. The mere fact that heterosexuality is the norm to most people is an example of objective truth being created by a subjective male. The power that the man has over a woman has dehumanized women to the point where women dehumanize themselves.

          The “new woman” or the “modern women” in the media, as well as outside the media, express themselves as if they were expressing the oppositional gaze. Take artists like Rhianna for example. Her albums and videos have been rebellious, sexually explicit, vulgar, and provocative. It seems as though she has reversed the sexist role of the male gaze and created her own male gaze through a females eyes. Rihanna is not breaking any barriers; she is simply exposing how she is not going surrender into submission by voluntarily being submissive.  “I’m not going to let you control me, I want to be controlled”. This is not exiting to me; nor does it define the oppositional gaze. Some women, like maybe Rihanna would argue that it is fine for a woman to feel sexy, or that it is possible that a woman naturally wants to be wanted by a man and want to be just as sexually explicit as a man. To this I ask; what defines sexy? Who defines it & why do you feel the need to do it to get the male attention, and why do you want it so bad?  Are you lacking something within yourself that would otherwise make you feel whole? Will this “attention” you seek get you what you really want? I believe Most women want to be loved for who they are they use their bodies as vehicles to get it. Sure sex feels good, but when a man only wants sex, most times it doesn’t satisfy that real need of a woman. We have to look deeper for the answers.  

               Woman in the media now a day have a pattern of rebellion against the male gaze by sexualizing themselves, which can only have positive result if they know what it is they really want. I believe it is crucial for a woman to answer these questions to help identify themselves to themselves; Am I really the person that I have been portraying?, do I really want to be this person, and is so, why?, for whose sake?, and am I completely satisfied and happy with MYSELF, without any ties to or influences from anyone else? There are very little actions a woman takes without the influence of a man. I too am guilty of this despite my knowledge of the scheme. It is embedded deep within me; cemented in my psyche, and like many other women I lose myself and fall into female stereotypes created my man.  It is as an adult, now 30 years of age, when I have learned that as a woman it is okay to have my own identity and view my life through my own eyes and that the pleasures of my world can be created only by me. It took years for me to learn that I have been molded by the constraints of the male gaze.   Thankfully so, to have knowledge is to have power.

Bell Hooks. In Black Looks: race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992

Berger, John. Chapters 2,3. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1972. 

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. NY: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-844.