The Warp of The Male Gaze

In the patriarchal society we live in today, the male gaze is a view point that is nearly inescapable in the media we enjoy and take in from day in to day out. We see it in magazines, billboards, films, television shows and advertisements; the use of the female body as nothing more than an object for male eyes to consume, to leer at and stroke the male libido to the point that it is shocking the female population at large is not waving their fists in disgust and outrage. On a daily basis, young women are stripped away of their humanity and used as a selling force for Coors brand beer or the new Honda Civic, parts of their nude bodies super imposed into the product they're trying to promote as if they are the products themselves.

Well, ain't that refreshing.

Two for the price of one deal? Maybe?

How are women or even growing girls meant to feel when they see members of their own gender be used as nothing more than selling vehicles and objects to the sexual satisfaction of men? Their bodies spliced and transformed into a mishmash of lewd images and body parts to get the boys' gears rolling? It's an insane concept that dehumanizes the female sex in such a way that many young women grow to glorify this hyper sexual imagery and internalize it themselves. They agree that yes, they do desire to attract the attention of men by amplifying their sexual allure and availability to them...even when they are hardly the age for that to be even the slightest bit appropriate.

According to John Berger, it has become that a woman must always be conscious of themselves and how they are viewed externally by men. That they must look from beyond themselves and act accordingly to make themselves more desirable to the male gaze. “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood, she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.” A female must always, without a doubt be available to be an object of desire for her male colleagues...and why wouldn't any woman doubt that when we are given a slew of imagery in our every day lives that confirm this ridiculous belief. A woman can't even go to the cinema without being bombarded by imagery of buxom barely clad babes gallivanting across the screen with their seductive eyes focused on their boyfriends, fathers, husbands and sons. Their testosterone pumping love interest playing as a simple tradeoff for what the attractive beauty really wants.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982

Really imagine how audiences would have reacted if the genders were swapped. I mean, really...imagine it.

Now the above clip was censored, but all you were really missing was a young Phoebe Cates baring her breasts to the love sick (and fully clothed) protagonist and capturing him in an erotic kiss before we are brought back to reality and the main guy's apparently intense masturbation session.

This is a perfect example of what the media does to women every single day with their raunchy advertising and hyper sexualizing of young bodies. They've transformed women into walking self pleasure tools for the male eye. Though, of course, it's natural for boys to have fantasies such as the one depicted in this film as they go through their teenage years, I'm not a complete tyrant...but how often do we have quirky raunchy romantic comedies about young girls and their sexual needs and frustrations growing up? Almost never and that's exactly the problem. How is a young woman supposed to relate to media like this that forces them to view themselves through lenses made for men and by men? How can someone even comprehend creating an identity beyond something that is so well accepted that it's become the ultimate standard? It isn't an easy task and it's hard to blame girls that go along with the grain instead of against it since doing the latter tends to get them ostracized by their peers in the most outrageous fashion.

Sources:
Text: Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing”, Penguin, 1972
Video Clip:  Fast Times At Ridgemont High, 1982

Male Gaze

           The male gaze is how media is shaped into a way a White, American, male may look at something whether it be a movie, commercial, etc.  This concept is very popular in today’s media culture.  We see this very prominent in our news, magazines, websites, and other outlets.   For example if we were to look at any medium, we would she how women and men are portrayed in different ways. The author, Susan Douglas from, “Where the Girls Are”, says “my friends and I were slaves to fashion, and slaves of the mass media...” talking about her experience as a young adult in a world where those things were an important part of life.

            We see that women are portrayed much differently than men and what is apparent is, “according to the prevailing cultural history of our times, the impact of boys was serious, lasting, and authentic” (Douglas 5).  Furthermore, Douglas says “none of our teen girl culture, none of what we did, apparently had any redeeming value at all.” She speaks about how she changed looking back at her earlier life as a young woman and how she realized the shift in the way she thought.  One of those factors ties into women being portrayed as being skinny and unrealistically thin.  She calls them “twig-thin models, and go-go-boot-clad dancers in cages.”  We see that they have no blemishes and their skin is completely flawless, which influences the unconscious part of the mind to believe that things should be this way.  In fact, this view on women is wrong and we know that real women can never be in this hyper-fantasized unrealistic ideology, thus putting an immense strain on normal women and making it that much more difficult for acceptance.  This leads to the question of how women view themselves and how they can avoid the male gaze.

            The oppositional gaze is essentially opposite of the male gaze.  Bell Hooks talks about his in her book, Black Looks: Race and Representation, where she says, “…all attempts to repress our/black peoples’ right to gaze had produced in us an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze” (Bell 116).  The significance of how we look at things can impact how we interpret meanings.  Hooks says “there is power in looking,” (Hooks 115) which is why it is very important to understand the concept of the oppositional gaze.   She says, “subordinates in relations of power learn experientially that there is a critical gaze, one that ‘looks’ to document, one that is oppositional” (Hooks 116).  This type of “looking” helps us look at things outside of the box and to step away from the conventional ways of seeing things.  Her focus was on African Americans and says, “It was the oppositional black gaze that responded to these looking relations by developing independent black cinema” (Hooks 117).  She implies that if you step away from how you look at movies there “are moments of ‘rupture’ when the spectator resists ‘complete identification with the film’s discourse’” (Hooks 117).   We can apply the concept of the oppositional gaze to not just films but all other media forms that comply with the “male” gaze.   We have an idea of how these types of looks work but it is also important to note how does this tie into our understanding of what we see in our films and other forms of media.

              Laura Mulvey in her writing, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, speaks about some of the things that may help us understand the “prescribed” role of women.   She says, “the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is two-fold, she first symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and second thereby raises her child into the symbolic” (Mulvey 833).  This quote signifies how women have been suppressed over time as far back as you can recount any historical context.  The physical “absence of a penis” is suggested as a negative trait to women and used as a way to denounce power to women.  She further explains, “women then stands in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by symbolic, order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent women still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (Mulvey 834).  The idea that women are seen as “the bearer” and not the “maker of meaning” is very powerful in how women view themselves and how men perceive women.  This is very true even today where we have a lot of powerful women, they are still stigmatized as not “manly” or for example if she is “manly”, we relate her action to that of a male.  She can never just do an action that is powerful or influential, it is almost always seen from a male perspective.   Another important part of what she says is the fact that men can “live out (his) phantasies…” which restricts women, for example if a man is cheating on his wife he may be seen as a player, or it may be played off as just saying “he is just a guy” but if a woman cheats on her husband she is viewed and punished more harshly by the public by slut-shaming or calling her other derogative names.  She further talks about how women are viewed and the idea behind looking derived from the works of Sigmund Freud, saying “he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey 835).  This is how we look at most things unconsciously and how we use our gaze to objectify women on the screen.  Furthermore, she says “…the position of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of the repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire on to the performer” (Mulvey 836).   This exemplifies our need to see a fantasy that we cannot obtain from the real world and why we are so in tuned to the images we see in our daily portrayal of women.   Women themselves enjoy seeing the fantasized women who are in no relation to them with their flawlessness, which is something that advertisers are very aware of.  They would rather you not use an oppositional gaze to look at things, rather stick to what they want you to see.

            I never understood the relationship in media images and reality.  I look at these women in advertisement being super skinny and frail.  I am not in the least bit attracted to these models and neither are any of my male friends.  Therefore, it doesn’t make sense that media is portraying women this way, who are they appealing to? Women are used as objects in the big screens and advertisements.  Objectifying women in this way dehumanize them and this leads to a dangerous path.  Women are now viewed as symbols of sexuality rather than human beings.  This is very disturbing because these images are being put on younger and younger girls.  We can always speak with anonymity because we may not know the person, but I think this is a mistake.  How can we make progress? We must change the system it rides on.  We can’t simply tell women to not accept these things and rebel.  That would not be enough.  From my understanding of what I have learned so far, we need to impact the industrial backbone of where the problem really lies.  We need to take a second look and take into consideration the hard work it will take to change the mind of the masses.

            Here are some illustrative examples of our popular culture:



This video is a comparision to give you an idea of how women have been viewed for a long time:

Now compare that to this more current view of models:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wvC40NWVnZs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Obtained from: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/fashion/ss/Super-Skinny-Fashion-Models_10.htm

           

Image obtained from:

http://www.likecool.com/Sexy_Robot_Women--Pic--Gear.html

And We'll Gaze Until We Wither Away

What is this concept of the male gaze? And why does it make us feel so bad about ourselves?

The male gaze is how women have come to be viewed in society as sexualized and objectified. John Berger explains the concept in his 1972 article "Ways of Seeing." It assumes that the main audience for the media are white males. The idea forces women to be subject to scrutiny in everyday life, and it forces the mainstream media to create images of women that are highly sexualized and unrealistic. The toll this often takes on little girls to grown women is lowering their self esteem and forcing them to feel as though they need to look just like the women they see on television, movies, magazines etc. Berger says "...the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed... the 'ideal' spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him" (Berger 64).

You are made to feel you should look like THIS. And your body, even if you workout and diet, looks like THIS.

The oppositional gaze, as explained by Bell Hooks in chapter 7 of her book "Black Looks: Race and Representation," comes charging in like a knight on a horse to defeat the evil male gaze. It allows us to open our minds and understand how media affects us. Men, women, black white, whatever. Anyone can realize what is going on with our impossibly glamorized media products and people. And ultimately: people that become products. Hooks describes it as rebellious, courageous and a method of agency in the face of societal white male domination (Hooks 116).

I think we have made some strides toward equality in several ways. In earlier decades, at least from seeing television and picture portrayals, people seemed to care how they looked in a more uncomfortable way. Men wore suits that were stuffy and hot and layers upon layers of clothing while women wore dresses and coats and corsets etc. that were extremely uncomfortable. Nowadays, if you feel like you don't want to comb your hair or wear something other than a t shirt and jeans, you don't have to. And no one will think you look absolutely horrible. The ways in which we haven't made any progress, however, is in the media's portrayal of women as sexual objects. It happens with men too though. Sadly, male models are scrutinized similarly to how female models are. Some friends of mine are models and the girls are always trying to lose weight and the guys are always trying to simultaneously bulk up and slim down. Because of the media, no one has a mind of their own. 

Let's take the sex symbol Jessica Rabbit for instance. She was debuted to the world in the 1988 movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." A children's movie (albeit with adult inuendos). I remember wanting to look like her when I grew up. But she embodied all of the fake, unattainable features that the male gaze and the media have created. 

Yet another form of media that Ms. Rabbit has
invaded that makes us feel inadequite: here is
a fashion model made up to look like her. 

As if the images weren't enough, pop star Katie Perry dressed up as Jessica Rabbit and performed a show. 

Jessica Rabbit isn't even a real person, yet since she has been created with the male gaze in mind; models and pop stars alike are dressed up to look like her even if most of the viewers of that fashion spread are women, or if most of Katy Perry's fans are young girls. The entertainment industries have had the male gaze mold how they present women to viewers. Even though half if not more of the views come from women, we aren't even always offended by it because it has shaped so many of the ways in which we see the world and the people around us. We don't even notice it that much anymore. Since childhood we have been flooded with images and video representations that portray women as second class citizens, inferior to men. The sad part is we women don't even always realize this truth! I did not realize how sexualized and inferior women are made to look in so much of what we see everyday until this class and the readings opened my eyes. The portrayal of the double standard that women have to look perfect all the time while men can be "gritty" or "ruggedly handsome" or just look plain bad and it is still acceptable is all around us! It is interesting to think of the origins of this ideal however: was it in the earliest advertisements? When men had much more of the disposable income than women? If it is, that is no longer the truth: women buy just as much if not more of the products offered by companies who choose such distasteful ads. Such as this one, from a WOMEN'S MAGAZINE! 

An advertisement by Sisley, a high fashion clothing company. Really?

As much as it pains me to say it, I can give some insights about the modeling world because I used to be a model. When I arrived on set at shoots I looked absolutely haggard (in this sense, like a real person). The makeup artist would recommend some product or another for my acne but shrug it off with a "they'll edit it out later, no biggie." When I would see the final products, they were flawless. 'I don't look like that. But wow are those sure going to look good in my book.' I would think. The money was blinding. It made me not really realize how self-esteem damaging it was to me and other girls. It seemed at castings that a lot of the girls were unhappy and I now realize that it was most likely because they were not eating enough. Not to mention they were sitting in a room full of other beauty contestants in the pageant. Because ultimately that is what it is. You are being judged by your looks for money. Thankfully, I was never told to lose weight or anything, (I was naturally very thin in those days) and I never suffered from an eating disorder. But it sickens me that only now am I realizing that something I saw as a great accomplishment (a spread in Teen Vogue) was seen by however many teen girls who, based on the photoshopped and highly stylized picture of myself thought, subconsciously or not, that they were fat or ugly or just not good enough. Not enough of these girls- probably not any of them, if they are still purchasing magazines like that, are able to see through the bullshit (excuse my language) and view any of the images with an oppositional gaze. 

This skewed image of women (and men too in some cases) needs to change. And the only way it will get done is through people deciding to open their eyes and accept themselves for who they are. The problem is that modeling and advertising are businesses. In our capitalist system, they are going to keep making girls think they are fat and making them anorexic or bulimic similarly to how McDonald's is going to keep making people unhealthy. Big business owns all, and it is hard to break away from their influence. 

Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing”, Penguin, 1972

Hooks, Bell.  “The Oppositional Gaze.” Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Male Gaze: Men Afraid of Women/ All About the Tittaes

The male gaze is synonymous with the erotic look. It is a way for men to normalize the image of the woman—an object. Touching back on our class discussion, the dehumanization of the female body in art and media instilled a culture where the female identity is built upon the idea of being looked at and displayed. The male gaze functions to oppress women and make it acceptable for us, as a society, to oppress women.

It can be argued that the male gaze is the image of the woman as an erotic object for the pleasure of men. But what I noticed from Laura Mulvey and Jean Kilbourne’s articles is the idea that the male gaze is a tool to oppress and suppress the potential power of women. In Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she provides a deeper psychoanalytic reading of the “active/male and passive/female” roles. While she acknowledges that the female image serves as a pleasure factor for the male phantasy, she states that it is a way to undermine the power that women actually have. The image of the female, “her lack of penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the meaning of women is sexual difference” (Mulvey 840). From this psychoanalytic approach, the image of the female should be one of those extremist, anti-male, Amazon feminists; but its not. This is where the male gaze comes into the picture. Mulvey later says of the male gaze that, “The argument turns again to the psychoanalytic background in that woman as representation signifies castration, inducing voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to circumvent her threat” (843).

I related Mulvey’s psychoanalytic assessment to the Kilbourne article because she too talks about the idea that mass media is distracting girls from reaching their full potential. "Powerful women are seen by many people as inherently destructive and dangerous" (Kilbourne 137). So what better way to undermine their potential than by convincing women to focus their energy on looking at themselves and each other? Mass media, similar to the male gaze, instills a culture of oppression. Albeit more subtle, mass media makes women believe their goals should be superficial, and "empowers" them to believe that obtaining unattainable "beauty" is the only way to achieve "success". Kilbourne says, “Girls in false quests for power and control, while deflecting attention and energy from that which might really empower them” (138). 

Bell hooks’s oppositional gaze was a way for non-white, females to choose how they look at the media. It was a way to create an identity based on yourself rather than what mass media tells you to be. Bell hooks states this identification better, “enables both black women to define their reality, apart from the reality imposed upon them by structures of domination” (129). In a way, the oppositional gaze was a way of looking not as a passive female, but as an active female. I don't think its enough to say that the oppositional gaze is just reclaiming something. In fact its claiming something that was never thought of. Its a creation of "a special syntax for a different articulation of the female body" (hooks 129). I agree that identification can stem from recognition and representation of what already exists. But I also understand bell hooks's understanding of the oppositional gaze roots itself in creation and as a "form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover who we are" (131). 

One example I immediately thought of was the Axe Hair commercial which perfectly illustrates the male gaze. It tries to satirize the idea that men only initially pay attention to women’s breasts. But in the ad, it blatantly objectifies women. “She” is just a set of breasts on legs. While Axe tries to romanticize this “office love” it turns the objectification of women into something that should be humorous and even encouraged, saying "its not our fault we're visual creatures." As if males, or society, should take absolutely no responsibility for perpetuating this idea that women are merely objects to be looked at. I guess I could understand the thought behind the ad to make both males and females guilty of objectification but it doesn't work. Even though it says "we're visual creatures," the man (hair) is still the one calling the shots, the male is still in a position of power. This ad further reinforces my idea that males have instilled the male gaze into society and mass media so not only do men judge and objectify women, but women are placed in a position to judge and objectify not only themselves but other women too. 

Forehead Tittaes w/ Marion Cotillard (Funny or Die link)

I believe this Funny or Die video actually satirizes the idea of women being on display for men. It not only makes it funny, it illustrates the ridiculous sexist issue that exists. While it is still a comedic video, you can tell it wasn’t just made for male viewers, but also female as well, unlike the Axe Hair commercial. It makes light of the frustrating situation, but it still (at least I hope it does) make you think twice about what the deeper issue is. It addresses the problematic male gaze in a way that is relatable to both men and women. It satisfies women because it isn't just all about the tits and men's attraction to them, and it doesn't turn men away because it is too preachy/feminist. I love this video not only because I love Marion Cotillard, but it also give me some hope that there is a way to have this conversation, bringing the male gaze into consciousness while still engaging both male and female.

Works Cited:

hooks, bell. "The Oppositional Gaze." Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992: 115-31

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

Kilbourne, Jean. "The More You Subtract The More You Add Cutting Girls Down To Size." Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. Touchstone, 1999. 128-54.

Am I Sexy Enough For You Now?

Males, the white male specifically, have always had power. They never had to organize protests or rally to fight for their rights unlike other minorities in America. It is a given then that a lot of the principles and values of society today are built upon their original visions for the future. Consequently, media portrays men and women differently; men are the surveyor: able to “exercise [his power] on others” whereas women are the surveyed: “everything she does [is] because [of] how she [will] appear to others, and ultimately men.” This is the foundation from where the male gaze originates. In Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she connects the male gaze to objectified women. When the film industry first took off, it was composed primarily of male directors. They filmed what they wanted to see: women as either “pin-ups or strip-tease” and nothing more; they were visual pleasure for men. This powerful medium dictated what society thought they should see women as and also what women should see themselves as. Thus, sparking an idea that would be embedded in people’s minds as a cultural norm for decades.

Being restricted to possess the same degree of freedom men had caused a counter reaction to the male gaze: the oppositional gaze. According to Bell Hooks, it developed because females wanted to have their own say in society. “There is [enormous] power in looking.” It was built upon their internal “rebellious desire” in despising only being seen as “objects of male gaze.” It comes from years of repression and taking a passive stance on everything, even how she should look. In Bell Hooks "The Oppositional Gaze," the dominant ideal image of a woman was to be "white." It is such a conflict-filled statement and causes even the most confident women to feel self-conscious about her appearance. The lack of diverse representation in the media has come to a state where a black female in an article is quoted saying that she "never went to movies expecting to see compelling representations of black femaleness" which is sad. Her voice almost comes from a state of hopelessness and regretful acceptance of this as reality. Something must be changed.  

Rihanna's Edgy Style

Even in today's society, things haven't changed all that much. We can take celebrity singer Rihanna as an example. Above are images that show Rihanna in scandalous, revealing garments. In a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, she seemed genuinely shocked when Oprah told her Esquire magazine in 2011 called her the "essence of fuck." She responded in her native accent with, "I don't even know what that means" but found it "flattering" nonetheless. 

From a media consumer's standpoint, being an avid reader of women's lifestyle magazines, that is something I find hard to believe. She is seen everywhere in barely-there dresses, clothing selected at free will yet she claims she doesn't "understand it." You almost want to roll your eyes and say, "Really?" Maybe her response was coming from an honest place? Barely anyone can escape the powerful influence of the media, especially celebrities when the spotlight is always on them. 
For girls there is a "terrible double bind" where they are told that you have to have it all. 

You must be nice yet aggressive and "compete with men in the business world to be successful," sexy yet "passive and virginal." These high standards can leave many females to be confused, vulnerable and more susceptible to the mixed messages. Rihanna revealed to Oprah that she "had to fake it until she made it" and "pretend that she was comfortable." Judging from these pictures, she's done a very good job in assimilating to American societal ideals but, what message does that send to young girls everywhere?

Seventeen Magazine's Editor In Chief, Ann Shoket & The Pledge

A great example of a small step forward was when Julia Bluhm recently started an online petition asking major magazine publication Seventeen Magazine to “print one unaltered photo spread every month,” a case she won. Now, all the editors of the magazine must abide by a eight-point Body Peace Treaty where they will emphasize the importance of being healthy.

Looking at everything critically is essential to understanding current societal values. It has made me more aware of media’s role in the advancement of feminism or the lack of. Although there have been major advances over the last several decades, we’re still not at a place where we as women and as a society can say there is complete equality. There is truth in the statement, “The more things change, the more they stay the same;” twenty years ago the magazine covers weren’t as scandalous and racy and females nowadays are dressing more provocatively than ever before and at younger ages however, a consideration must be factored that times are different.

 We now live in a digital era where information is easily accessible and women feel liberated enough to dress as they please even if it means wearing mini skirts. The goal is to be able to somehow create a filter, restriction to tame this new medium in a way where it won’t have too much of a psychological impact on men and women. Achieving this fine balance is difficult yet necessary. We must constantly strive for this goal with a hopeful optimism because only then are we able to move toward this ideal place of acceptance and equality.

SOURCES:

Oprah Interview with Rihanna on "Sexiest Woman Alive"

http://www.oprah.com/own-oprahs-next-chapter/Rihanna-on-Being-Called-the-Sexiest-Woman-Alive-Video  

Seventeen Magazine Pledge

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/07/05/156342683/seventeen-magazine-takes-no-photoshop-pledge-after-8th-graders-campaign

Male Gaze

The Male Gaze

The male gaze is objectifying of women.  This point of view depicts woman as ever alluring, speaking predominately (if not only) with her body and nakedness depicting a message vulnerability, eroticism & availability. What Laura Mulvey describes as “ in their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 837)  

The male gaze has extended and transcended from European paintings to popular media now. The overt and subliminal message it depicts continues to strip women for male surveying, trivializing their life potential thus causing a fracture and compartmentalizing of the female psyche, distorting her feelings of capacity, self worth & acceptance. In ‘Ways of Seeing,’ John Berger, goes further to say that “ to be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into keeping of men.” (Berger 46) This type of mentality continues to perpetuate mixed & incorrect messages to men on how to survey and treat women and to women on what they should expect and what they actually deserve as a basic human right.

painting by Salvador Dali 

Despite the efforts of the women’s liberation movement and feminists alike the male gaze is still very prevalent in popular culture today; from film to t.v. to print advertisements. Just a look through any fashion or “men’s interest"magazine is bombarded with this type if imagery from cover to finish.

I can’t remember the exact momement I had the shift and this awareness, it was some time in high school, but as a result I kind of freaked out and went through a long phase of some type of androgyny. Where I did not want my body to be surveyed or on “display” so I began to where my fathers old clothes. I became more and more conscious of not being able to identify with teen mags and advertisements that I felt I had reached Mecca when I discovered alternative outlets for inspiration and support amongst independent ‘zines’ (magazines) across America. I discovered girls who were on all on different levels of dealing with the male gaze and message.  From girls that were very broken and hurt, to girls offering alternative messages on self identity and self worth, to girls offering valuable information on reproductive health & safe sex. In essence a positive, pro-active network of girls finding and making an alternative to the “male gaze” imposed on them.

 

© Carrie Mae Weems

Bell Hooks presents a point of view as a black woman spectator not being able to identify with the object on survey of the male gaze, traditionally white women.  She explains that originally African Americans as slaves were denied the ability to look,  “ that all attempts to repress our/black peoples’ right to gaze had produced in us an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppsitional gaze.” (Hooks 116) How in order to for a black woman to identify as a spectator she would have to ignore the racism to be able to have some type of bond or identification with the women under survey. This “oppositional gaze” became defiant, non-identifying, questioning and “on guard”of the typical representation of woman. The work of Carrie Mae Weems I think is a representation of the "oppositional gaze. "

© Carrie Mae Weems

Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing”, Penguin, 1972, Pg 46 

Hooks, Bell.  “The Oppositional Gaze.” Black Looks: Race and Representation.  Boston: South End Press, 1992:. Pg  116

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. NY: Oxford UP, 1999:  pg 837

Looking

            We like heroines. We like them in action films, dressed head-to-toe in spandex, with sleek hair and prepped faces. Preferably holding a rifle, portraying an atypical, badass, black-belt female, only she must stand a bit behind the male protagonist, the real hero, the one who’s risking it all to save the world and get the girl. We watch these films and, whether we are male or female, we moviegoers identify with the male protagonist, the real fighter, the evolving character that the story is all about (Mulvey). Regardless of how many bad guys the heroine shoots in her spandex glory, and regardless of how much we get to watch her run, and see her look at the true protagonist with her wanting, beautiful eyes, we only turn to the heroine, the secondary character, for her “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey).

The heroine of In Time doesn't know any better than to shoot at people unnecessarily after the male protagonist shows her how to use a gun.

            Where does this leave the females in the audience? With whom are we supposed to identify throughout such dazzling, original films? Producers make sure that we can all identify with the male, because the male gaze sells. They help us do so by directing the camera just this way and that, so that we’re sure to understand the male’s point of view, and so that, by the end of the film, “what counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather represents… [because] in herself, the woman has not the slightest importance” (Mulvey). And so we all, as one society, take on the role of the male whilst enjoying a cinematic production, or reading a magazine, or watching women parade themselves down the street (because, clearly, one cannot question that they walk along avenues mainly to show off their bodies, to be judged by men and women alike, to be grinned at, or scoffed at, or catcalled). And while men grow up learning that this is how they must analyze a woman in all situations, including, say, when former First Ladies attempt to become president (their pantsuits must be critiqued! ignore their politics!), women learn to do the same to each other, and, naturally, to themselves. Men watch women. “Women watch themselves being looked at” (Berger). This is the male gaze.

            More specifically, it is often the white, male gaze. Historically, black women have not only had to identify with a foreign gender, but also a foreign race. It has been a step up from slavery, during which they “were denied their right to gaze [entirely], a strategy of domination,” as they can now look defiantly at white characters, but it has also forced them to choose between giving up their right to look and “engaging in [media’s] negation of black representation” (Hooks). Even contemporary black, male independent filmmakers are representing black women as objects of the male gaze, regrettably using such representations to inject “violence [in]to the image” of a black woman. “Responding to this assault, many black women spectators…[have] looked the other way” (Hooks). It is this representation (which can be found in most compelling black cinematic productions, such as Precious, the story of an abused, overweight African American teenager and her inability to access education) that brings forth many contemporary disparities between blacks and whites, such as the lack of media coverage of violence against black women; it is to be expected, and therefore much less newsworthy than Kim Kardashian’s wedding. These realities can be countered with the oppositional gaze, the opposite of the white, male gaze, via independently produced black media. Why are we allowing white, male filmmakers to represent female blackness? How much has our society really evolved since the days of Amos ‘n’ Andy?

            These two opposing structures, the male gaze and the oppositional gaze, put women in an odd place, torn between two radically different ideals: the flawless sex object and the independent, confident woman. Adolescence becomes a “cultural schizophrenia,” in which we strive to please our spectators, participate in consumerism of products that promise to make us more worthwhile of the gaze, and conform to patriarchy’s expectations of female submissiveness, but also strive to express our independence, to say that we don’t care what people will think on the street (Douglas). Women cannot escape. They attempt to fight back, to make advertisements in which girls “treat men like sex objects,” or glorify becoming “the first woman who refused to take [a man’s] phone calls.” Yet, “why should any of us, male or female, be interested in someone who won’t take our phone calls, who either cares so little for us or is so manipulative?” Why do we “act as if it were a good thing to be rude and inconsiderate?” (Kilbourne). Why do we strive to “have balls”?

RationalSkepticism.org

This is no more what it means to be an independent woman than is the heroine dressed in spandex. It is simply another barrier against equality. In fact, it is worse, because it is a barrier dominantly built by other women. How can we fight this looking war if we won’t even stand up for our own side, and instead try to live up to standards created for males by males? Why do we tell boys to leave the cleaning to us after a party, because they aren’t “as good at it as we are” and “they’ll just mess it up”? Why do we call each other sluts, and silently smirk at each other’s outfits on the street? Why do we judge each other so harshly? Because we can’t become that ideal heroine, no matter how much money we spend at Sephora. We are not the enemy. The male gaze is the enemy. Because the male gaze sells.

References

Berger, John. "Ways Of Seeing Chapters 2&3." Ways Of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting  Corporation, 1972. 36-63.

Douglas, Susan. “Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media.” Three Rivers Press, 1995. 3-20. 

Hooks, bell. "The Oppositional Gaze." Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992. 115-31.

Kilbourne, Jean. "The More You Subtract The More You Add Cutting Girls Down To Size." Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. Touchstone, 1999. 128-54.

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