The Male Gaze & Patriarchy

The term “the male gaze” can be traced back to Laura Mulvey and her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, which was published in 1975. The male gaze is a term used to describe the perspective the audience has which is that of a heterosexual male. These images that pertain to the male gaze show the inequality of gender relations and the sexual objectification of women in fine art as well as other media outlets. Women throughout history often had no say in anything that was done outside of the home and have been suppressed, kept illiterate, and were seen as property to their husbands and fathers for centuries. With this inequality present, women became fully aware on the fact that, “She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life” (Berger, 46). Her worth and her own sense of being is determined primarily on how much she is appreciated by men.

The male gaze is present from when a woman is born, where she is quick quick to learn that she is confined into the thinking of men.  Berger who is also a popular art critic, novelist, and painter states a harsh fact that “Men act and women appear”(Berger, 47). The women in pieces of artwork we observed were women that are seen to be attractive to men. These pieces of artwork that included nude women were often drawn by men and usually faced the viewer, who was male.  The women in these artworks were generally exhibited to be submissive, as if they are ready for the viewer, or “owner”. When a woman is being featured in art, she is more than just an object of a gaze, that woman becomes what is being bought and sold. Today, this male gaze is present and controls many aspects of women’s lives, such as what they wear, and how they present themselves in person and on social media.

Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538)

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This link shows the background and examples of the male gaze: The Gender Ads Project

Bell Hooks, an author, feminist, and social activist has a strong opinion against patriarchy. She wrote in one of her novels, “Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation”(Hooks, 17). Patriarchy means “the rule of the father” and is a form of household organization in which the males hold all the power. In this system, women are systematically disadvantaged, exploited and oppressed and are presented as weak. Male violence is accepted in patriarchy as a way to keep their women and children in line where if the father doesn’t believe the gender roles are being used, mental and physical violence is used to fix these mistakes. Young girls are taught to express feelings and that rage is not an appropriate feminine feeling. However, girls and women aren’t the only ones that are negatively affected by patriarchy. Boys and men are just as effected by this horrible system. Instead, patriarchy tells men that they need to be tough and that it is good to express their anger. Society forces them to feel pain and deny their feelings resulting in “emotional cripples” (Hooks, 27).

Hooks presents examples and her feelings towards this subject, due to growing up in a household where patriarchy was fully enforced.  She recounts back to when she was a young girl and wanted to play tin of marbles with her dad, who only wanted her brother to play because “girls do not play with marbles” (Hooks, 20). Despite this warning, she insisted anyway on attempting to pick up the marbles, resulting in a horrible beating from her dad. This recollection of this brutal whipping of a little-girl by a big strong man, served as a reminder to everyone in the family that their patriarchal father was the ruler in their household.

My views about various art and media has slightly changed after these readings. I knew about patriarchy and how it oppressed women and children, luckily not due to growing up in that type of environment, but I never considered how it affected and oppressed men as well. The message, and the male gaze behind many paintings of woman was something I never thought about before. The fact that men have controlled almost everything in history even what is painted and how they used women as objects in artwork showed how inferior women were to men, which can be still seen in different aspects of life today. I see men who view and treat women as objects despite the constant attempt women make to become equals. These readings have opened my eyes to things that I have overlooked and have never thought of before. There are always two sides to every story.