The male gaze, as defined by John Berger in Ways
of Seeing, means that “men act and women appear” (Berger 47). According to
this idea, women are meant to be the ones being looked at, while men are their
viewers and in turn, objectifiers. In this way, women are “passive” as Mulvey
says in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and men are “active”
(Mulvey 62). Women are valued for their bodies and their perceptions, to be
pleasing to the heteronormative demographic that commercials and other forms of
mass media aim at. What we see in movies and images distributed to the public
are a common form of a woman, based on set beauty standards. This thin, white
woman is the epitome of beauty, according to such ads, and other women must
strive to be her. Women buy beauty products to best appear as this ideal woman.
This is because women, not only are the objectified, but they “turn
[themselves] into an object”, an object to be looked at and admired by a
heteronormative audience. Men use women to cater to other men--women’s bodies
create the pleasure, and are sexually exploited by the eyes of men, assumed to
be a male audience.
According to Berger, in Renaissance paintings,
women held mirrors as a “symbol of the vanity of woman” (Berger 51). However,
this is contradictory. The woman is naked because her body is pleasing to look
at, but if she has a mirror and enjoys her own appearance, she is disapproved
of. Therefore, a woman’s nakedness is separated from her in the sense that it
is meant to create pleasure for others but herself. She is submissive to the
viewer always. With this, her judgment on herself, is just a reflection of the
society’s judgment and critique on her and her physical appearance. This may also
create competition among women, who may harshly critique themselves more so
than critiquing men, for their physical appearance, for example. There are many
different-looking men on television but there is not a lot of variety in the
representation of women on the same platform. It is implied that only one
particular-looking woman is generally accepted as the object of men’s desire.
Even lesbians are eroticized and meant to be seen as women having sex with
other women for the man's viewing pleasure.
With this in mind, the gaze has become a site
of oppression for women. We are expected to conform to a certain standard and
that standard is created to please men and even if women think they are doing
something for themselves, it is under the male gaze. Television reproduces
this, as well as the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchal” structure we
live in, (to use bell hook’s coined terminology). People of color are
underrepresented. She writes in Understanding Patriarchy/The Oppositional
Gaze, “To stare at the television, or mainstream movies, to engage its
images, was to engage its negation of black representation” (117). According to
hooks, in the slave/master relationship, for slaves to look at their master was
a sign of resistance, as black bodies were seen as “the other” and were only to
be looked at. People of color are highly underrepresented if not invisible in
the media. If they do appear on television, they are stereotyped and made out
to be caricatures. This oppositional gaze hooks presents includes creating
content for people of color by people of color. We constantly see this “white
representations of blackness” (hooks 117) which is inaccurate. The oppositional
gaze includes rejecting the representations of black women whites have
presented the public on television. In this way, black women are silenced. The
double standard is they are expected to be seen and if they are making
themselves seen on their own, through their own volition, they are criticized.
Therefore movies created by black women featuring blacks are criticized highly
for not upholding the white supremacist standard of many films. Selma is highly
critiqued currently and is oscar-nominated for best picture but the black
female director was not nominated for best director.
This video link below shows a compilation of
“Bodies in Motion” of the 2012 London Olympic Games. The article analyzes the
persevering male gaze evident in this video about “stereotypically “feminine”,
white, thin” women playing sports. There’s a questionable choice of music
reminiscent of 70s pornographic films (see Carrie’s opening scene), and many
close ups of women’s bodies. This implies the sexuality of clothed women
without showing them nude. It portrays women who are not nude still as sexual
objects, it is pervasive on the part of the looker. As athletes, the women use
their bodies in their craft, but this media twists it into an opportunity to
sexualize them, taking motion and using it to make it become something it was
originally not.
Lena Dunham in her television show, “Girls”
plays with the idea of the expectation of women needing to be passive and
seen/not heard. She appears naked in every episode of the series, and is highly
critiqued for not fitting the ideal beauty form. This article, with its
respective link below, speaks of a reporter at a panel who complained at her
and questioned why she was naked so often. The reporter assumes her nakedness
is for the attention of the heteronormative man. Therefore, she is critiquing
the male gaze by shoving her nakedness in the audiences’ faces. She knows they
do not like it and it is even questionable if it adds anything interesting to
the show. In this way, it is a sign of rebellion because she it is not
necessarily the nakedness people would want to see, according to many. She
takes away the ability for men to overtly sexualize her body by using her
nudity in the casual form. So maybe there are ways to resist the male gaze and
use the oppositional gaze, however there will always be such backlash. Below is
a screenshot from the show, Dunham on the left, as well as a link to article of
the reporter complaining. The image is a common one we see of Dunham on her
show.
A screenshot from
the show, "Girls"
Works Cited:
-Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1973. Print.
-Hooks, Bell. "Chapter 7: The Oppositional Gaze." Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End, 1992. N. pag. Print.
-Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen. (1975).
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