The Male Gaze

Eerily the term sounds seductive and fantastic: the male gaze. Immediately upon hearing it images from just about every romantic movie began spiraling in my head. Images of handsome men in dark lit bars, sipping malted whiskies – neat – from short glasses, sitting intently as they observe women across the bar. These women – often white, in a pack – dressed for a GNO with make up and heals gather giggling and clinking wine glasses aware that with each hair toss they are being watch by the debonair whiskey-drinker sitting adjacent.

Feminist writer and activist, Laura Mauvey, coined the term The Male Gaze and actually credits the cinema as its prime example in more recent history (Mulvey 836). In simplest terms, the male gaze is the idea of the image and the image’s keeper (Mulvey 837).  There is a clear dichotomy here – one which create a power dynamic. The keeper of the gaze is the man who turns his neck at his leisure, while the one subject to the gaze is the woman who must remain patient as she waits for the man to look her way. It is key to remember that female does not control the male’s gaze. This idea naturally creates a very obvious power structure where there is one who controls the image and the other who is at the will of the controller – where one is active and the other is passive (Mulvey 839). Mulvey explains, this concept is mimicked in society, and portrayed in images and films.

John Berger argues that this is first visually recognized during the Renaissance with the European nude oil painting  (Berger 49). These images were some of the earliest visual images that captured of women where this relationship is clearly depicted. Consistently, the relationship of men being the spectator-owner of the women in this painting is depicted again and again (Berger 56). Men, particularly white men of the upper class, would have this large stretched canvas with naked women painted. The women’s facial expression were always passive and patience. They rejected sex of other men, and were worshiped by the cherub, a symbol of love and affection, never harming the ego of the painting’s owner. She was his pleasure and no one else’s. He owned the painting and thus own the women.

However, this relationship, contrary to Mulvey belief, was not all encompassing. The relationship was exclusive to heterosexual white men and women because those were. Black women were not identified in this dynamic preventing from identifying with the relationship displayed. Additionally, African Americans were pushed for staring – for having a gaze (Hooks 116). The exclusion of African Americans and other races from this gaze allowed them to look in on it, but never adhere to it. This is known as the oppositional gaze, which is thoroughly discussed by Bell Hooks. The oppositional gaze may be looked at in terms of a snow globe – as African Americas were able to look at what’s happening on the inside, and draw conclusions based on what they saw. However, they will never actually be on the inside of the snowstorm. This outside view allowed African American women to develop a phallocentric graze. Hooks, similar to Mulvey, argues that cinema is one of they best depiction of this lack of representation. Here, African Americans are the spectators to characters they cannot fully identify with or are misrepresented by (Hooks 119). According to the article, African American women felt particularly misrepresented by maid stream movies, which is where characters such as Sapphire come in to play (Hooks 120).

Currently, this structure is still very much in play. I am a white women from a very traditional heteronormative family, which mean I can pretty easy relate easily to many of these concepts. Growing up, I loved Rom-Coms.  I also loved watching shows about "love" like The Bachelor, where women all fought for the gaze of a single strikingly handsome white man, or Millionaire Match Maker, where women were taught out to attract the gaze of a man. However, one of my favorites was The Girls Next Door, with Hugh Hefner, where once again a mans attention determined the power of the women he possessed.

The Bachlor Season 19. Man Gazing, Women Waiting.

The Girls Next Door. Hef so creepy in the background.

Although the The Girls Next Door may have went out the door, along with Hefner's pseudo-relationships with each of the girls, Playboy is still huge proponent of the male gaze. Pages of this magazine feature young hyper-sexualize females posing submissively for their male audiences, who purchase the magazine. These examples display how ever present the male gaze is even today.

Works Cited:
Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1972.
Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.