Pleasure of Looking

Most times, when a woman is advertising a product or featured in a show, she is shown in a very sexual manner in which the spectator, who is assumed to be male, is watching her. This way women are portrayed in the media is exemplary of the male gaze. The male gaze is the way a woman is objectified through the eyes of men where in their eyes, the women are simply there for the men to look at. To the man, in many of the paintings and in the media, the woman is always seen as trying to seduce the man. Again, the male is not shamed for being the spectator, but rather the women is at fault because she was seen as the ultimate temptress. John Berger, who writes the article "Ways of Seeing" about the male gaze, says "men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at... The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object--and most importantly an object of vision: a sight" (Berger 47). Berger even comments on the way that women these days are prone to objectifying themselves by looking at themselves or other women the way a man would. They assume that the image they give off is purely for a man's attention.

The image above portrays an accurate representation of the male gaze in ads, paintings, and in the media.  

The advertisement above is meant to showcase Calvin Klein perfume for woman, but instead we see a nude model posing for the camera - the male gaze is yet again used to sexualize an ad.

The male gaze is pervasive to popular culture because it is so prominent in everything we see today. Everything on TV and billboards and in music is so sexual and it appeals to the spectator and the listener. After all, the porn industry is the fastest growing and richest business in the world, and they do so by attracting viewers who tend to take pleasure in these pictures and videos which often times makes them feel a specific ownership over the woman. The male gaze is more than the way a sex-crazed man looks at a woman. It is the way every single aspect of a woman is thought by men to have been for them. The way they look, the way they dress, the way they act is, to them, a ploy to seduce the spectator, the man looking at these women. Suddenly, they begin to think it is okay for men to objectify women because "the women seem to enjoy it themselves" because they know the effect it has on men. Berger reiterates this theme, saying "Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated" (Berger 46). 

               

An important factor of the male gaze is the overarching theme of patriarchy that coincides with the spectator. As Bell Hooks stated in her essay "Understanding Patriarchy," "Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence" (Hooks 18). Hooks explain that males feel inherently deserving of domination, and being a man should enable them to dominate over women in order to assume their "macho-persona." Hooks even provides an anecdote where her parents attempted to brainwash her and her brother to assuming their gender roles in order to create harmony in the family when, in fact, it did exactly the opposite. Whereas Hooks was more aggressive and enraged at times, her brother was cool, calm, and always collected. Their parents would scold Hooks for her inappropriate, unladylike behavior, and they would encourage her brother to use his emotions of rage (Hooks 20). Their parents enforced these gender rules in their house, and the male gaze was something that was accepted when it was associated with patriarchy and gender roles.

After reading about Berger's and Hooks' articles on the male gaze, I feel that a veil has been lifted from this taboo. The sexualization of all women in the media is something I saw often, but I was so used to seeing it and I was desensitized to it, that it did not strike a cord anymore. At this point, I learned to look at the nude woman on the advertisement, avert my eyes away, and not even think about what I just saw. It's maddening to think that as a female, there are men who may look at me with this type of mindset in which I am not a person, but rather I am defined by my body parts, and consequently, that it the way I am treated. In an interesting study, it was proven that when thinking of images of women, most participants thought of "men as wholes, and women in body parts." With many of the paintings with the nude woman, I never realized how the intent of the painting was to make the male spectator feel tempted by this woman. Additionally, the blame was placed further on the woman when the painter added a mirror to the woman's hand, which was supposed to represent her vanity.

Work Cited:
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.