The Gaze (Post 2)

To date, media society's most versatile tool. With the capability to reach far and wide, and across most industries (web, music, the film and entertainment industries), it serves as a major source of influence and interconnectivity. But in the hands of our patriarchal society, women are subjected to over-sexualization and misrepresentation, to the point of it becoming commonplace across all forms of media. Women are made and expected to cater to a specific subset of the population, to elicit a specific response, to satisfy the male gaze. 

Coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey, the male gaze can be understood as the tendency of visual media to portray women as the subjects for masculine pleasure- nothing more and nothing less. Historically significant, the influence of the male gaze is commonly seen today through needless sexualization of women in film and other media (you might recognize a few of these American Apparel advertisements). It has developed as a result of our "modern" society's history of deeply rooted patriarchal ideologies and discourses.

A Dolce & Gabbana ad portrays male dominance and the sexualized woman 

English art critic and novelist John Berger offered his own insight on the issue. In a patriarchy, women are made conscious of how they appear to others (specifically men). And as such, how she appears to man not only determines her self worth, it determines "the success of her life" (Berger 46). Meaning, of course, that the only means a woman has to advance her life and career is to align with the societal schism that men have already predetermined for her. Berger goes on to powerfully argue the case that the male gaze serves as a means to blatantly sexualize a woman's body, shaming her for any attempt at having agency over her own body. He speaks directly to male artists, and more broadly, the patriarchy, when he states, "you painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting "Vanity", thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure" (51). 

The male gaze in the fast-food industry

Stemming from the male gaze, race was taken into account in popular media (specifically film) in the form of the oppositional gaze. 

Mass media is notorious not only for the misrepresentation of women, but for the under-representation of women of color. Most forms of media, even in their over-sexualization of women, only depict white women as the objects to be desired. Women of color are all but absent. As women, they can be consciously aware of the male gaze, but as black women, there is a disconnect between themselves and the portrayal of the women in mass media. Here is where the oppositional gaze came into play. In discussing resistance struggle, bell hooks states that "the power of the dominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating "awareness" politicizes "looking" relations-one learns to look a certain way in order to resist" (hooks 116). So in order for the oppositional gaze to be most effective, it is our collective responsibility as mass media consumers and film critics to actively deconstruct and analyze media, taking into account "blackness and specifically representations of black womanhood", as a means to provide effective solutions to this issue (124). 

As time goes on, I've begun to develop a definitive understanding of the male gaze and the oppositional gaze. As a result, I have become conscious of it as a consumer of popular media. I have a much lesser tolerance for media, specifically films and advertisements that rely on the over-sexualization of women in order to make a sale. I've learned to distance myself from these kinds of media, in the hopes that I can somehow contribute to making a difference in the methods used by media creators. 

Works Cited:
-Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
-John Berger Ways of Seeing
-bell hooks The Oppositional Gaze