Analyzing the Male Gaze & Patriarchy

The male gaze is simply both how men view women and how as a result women view women. In both instances, the male’s perspective and pleasure is prevalent. “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves”(Berger 47). This argument made my Berger has stuck most with me. After analyzing pictures from advertisements, snippets from movies and shows, and paintings of Western history, I can identify and pick up not only how men view women, but also how women view women. How we want to see ourselves depends on how we want a man to look at us. While picking out an outfit or taking a selfie, women have this unconscious effort to keep the male audience in mind. Somehow the male gaze has set a standard not only for what they expect and want to see from women, but also from women. Analyzing Mulvey’s film theory, which also contains psychological explanations (scopophilia which literally means “love of watching) as to why there is a “male gaze” also helps point out why in the 21^st century, the male gaze is no different from the male gaze of the 11^th century. The male creates the image, the objectification. Only 16% of media creators are female. Why? It is because even if they were 50% of the total media creators the image of women in art would not be the same. Artists like Artemisia Gentileschi, who have been fighting to change the objectifying of women since the 15^th century, would produce brilliant and accurate depictions of women. About 500 years later, we have gotten almost nowhere. And the two images below show that. In both images, the women is acknowledging a male audience and is acting in a way to please him.

Giovanni Bellini's "Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror" (1515)

An advertisement for the men's brand "SuitSupply" (2014) 

Another thing that Berger argued was that male painters put mirrors in the females in their paintings for vanity, and are “morally condemning the woman whose nakedness” the male depicts for their personal pleasure. The male not only paints the female for his own pleasure, but also remains to be held responsible for looking at her because of her vanity. The male is blaming the female in every single circumstance. If he looks at her, it’s her fault. It is also interesting how the term vanity and femininity are almost interchangeable in society’s terms. If a male was to be illustrated in a way where he were to look in a mirror and pose vulnerably, as many females are painted in Western nude paintings, then he looses his masculinity.  Vanity is strictly for females. It is a quality that exists only in females. The male has associated this characteristic of having excessive pride in oneself to females!

Bell Hook’s definition of Patriarchy can answer the question as to why the male gaze even exists. According to Hook patriarchy is male dominance, weakens females and gives males the right to dominate with terrorism and violence (18). Male domination and the target in keeping women under their control, is the motivation in the male gaze. This is precisely what Hook is arguing as well. She highlights the terrorism and violence in her own personal life, and I think that most women, if not all, can relate and trace back to their own terror and violent filled experiences. The greatest example of this is rape. Why are there 69,000 female rape victims compared to 9,000 male rape victims? It is because males feel that they have the right to dominate and violate a female’s rights. The rape culture in America, and popularly worldwide as well, is that if a female gets raped “she was asking for it”. It goes back to Berger’s idea of how the male blames everything on the female. If he rapes her, it is also somehow the female’s fault.

Lastly, I really like how Hook pointed out that “boys brutalized and victimized by patriarchy more often than not become patriarchal, embodying the abusive patriarchal masculinity that they once clearly recognized as evil” (28). Males who have suffered from patriarchy and have seen the violence and domination that comes with it, STILL COMMIT IT AGAINST OTHER FEMALES. Instead of realizing how damaging and disgusting it is, they continue to act patriarchal. I believe this is why after centuries of sexism small progression has been made. Males enjoy this power of controlling the rest of the weak population (females) and would not advocate in stopping it. I hope that at least the males who have gone through the experience of not being given their basic rights as human beings, realize the patriarchal affects on the larger female population.

References 

Berger, J. (1973). Ways of Seeing (pp. 45-64). London: British Broadcasting Corporation.

Hooks, B. (2004). Understanding Patriarchy. In The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (pp. 17-33). New York: Atria Books.