The male gaze arises in the belief/idea that women appear for the consumption of men.
Scratch that.
The male gaze arises in the belief/idea held by mostly heterosexual white males, that women appear and must always appear for the consumption of men. They must always be seen fulfilling the unrealistic standards of beauty set in place by said men in order to look pleasing to the same men who are gazing at them, because therein lies their worth and station. Men watch, women appear. (Berger, 47).
"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. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another. Consequently, how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated..." (Berger, 46)
I believe that in order to properly understand the male gaze, one must either be an actor, entertainer or performer of some sort; and I say this because this is the best analogy to describe how women are perceived by men. But sadly, since we cannot all be performers or entertainers, I will do the pleasure of explaining this analogy.
Performers….perform. It is their job/role to. They carry out a series of actions or activities that are intended to elicit some form of response, be it anger, excitement, guilt, or just plain sadness. But the point is that they act or pretend to be someone they are not, for the sole purpose of entertainment. Take a play for example. Say a certain gentleman named John Hill is the main actor in a play where he performs as the “perfect” young American man: white, tall, intelligent, wealthy, attractive, fit, funny…I’m talking the whole nine here. Now, say his character’s name is Liam Hunter. So John Hill is performing as the stereotypical perfect man who has all the women in the play (as well as in the audience) drooling over him. The playwright has obviously knowingly portrayed Liam in this way because he is intended to appeal to or appease a certain group whom he is aware are watching him (the audience), but one must remember that John Hill is performing as Liam Hunter, he is not Liam Hunter. Liam Hunter does not exist. If you saw John Hill on the street and wanted to get his autograph, you would not refer to him as Liam Hunter because that was a character he played, not who he is.
Now, since you (hopefully) paid for this play that you are now watching; a play whose preview you probably saw and decided that you would want to go see, you now have the right to critique. You may pass comments on whether or not you found Liam Hunter attractive, you may discuss with your friend how you found the set design to be quite lazy, or whatever else. The preview serves as a sneak peek into what the play will be about etc, and subsequently, determines whether you go to see it or not. If say, the play was not as interesting as you thought it would be or somehow did not advance in the direction you assumed it would upon seeing the preview, you may react in anger or disappointment at the waste of your money, time etc but most importantly, at the fact that the play did not play out in the course you had expected it to.
The idea here is that you are entitled to your opinions, comments, anger, etc on the actors (and play in general) not only because you paid for the performance, but also because the role or job of the actors was to entertain you, a job which, you feel, they failed to do.
Now where is the correlation you might ask. The correlation is this: the audience of the play serve as the men, and the performers/actors, or Liam Hunter to be specific, serves as the "women".
Because patriarchy only allows room for a specific type of beauty which most women do not fit into, many are forced to "perform" it, so they can fit in and finally be beautiful.
Because patriarchy only allows room for a specific type of beauty which most women do not fit into, many are forced to "perform" it, so they can fit in and finally be beautiful.
Men do not pay ownership fees/rent/tax on women's bodies, therefore they do not reserve the right to pass comments on it. They are not entitled to women's bodies, therefore they do not get to dictate or discuss how women should or should not look and whether or not they fit into the utterly ridiculous and unrealistic structures of beauty they have set in place. In the same vein, women do not exist to please or perform for men. Women do not exist for men, period. They are not performers, thus it is not their role to perform in order to be accepted/respected. You are expected to respect people because they are people, not because they do or do not possess a penis.
It would be unfair to discuss the male gaze without discussing its origin and so I will do just that. Ladies and Gents; I present to you: the father of the male gaze -- Patriarchy!
Patriarchy, as defined by author and social activist Gloria Jean Watkins better known by pen name "bell hooks" 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." (Understanding Patriarchy, 18)
Though it is important to understand that both men and women can be perpetrators of patriarchy and both suffer from its impacts even if men receive more awards from it than women; I will be focusing mainly on patriarchy as it relates to the male gaze as well as its pervasiveness in art and popular culture.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion To The History of Western Art reports that less than 5% of the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female. To this Brian Reverman asks: "If the predominant view of women in Western Art museums is that they are less worthy of recognition as artists, they are objects to be gazed at for pleasure, and that a certain type of female form and skin tone is seen as more desirable; does this reflect or does it help form the position of women in the culture at large?" Yes. The answer is yes. And the reason for this is best said by E. Ann Kaplan:
"If the depiction and view of women relates to a subservient status in the culture that they must fight against, then depiction is a method of oppression that effectively benefits those in power."
Patriarchy thrives on the ideal of entitlement. Because men are seen as superior to women, consequently, they are entitled to the policing of women's bodies such that actions like cat-calling and thinking that a woman owes you something for buying her a drink at the club or for "being a nice guy" are seen as normal.
The problem with patriarchy (aside from male domination of course) is that it belittles men and women. It hurts us by demanding that we reduce our complex selves into one small part which is then magnified, so that this small part is then used to define us as a whole. Women and men are both sexual beings. They are both capable of strength, weakness, anger, rape, abuse etc, but it is because patriarchy insists that males are inherently superior to women that many people believe that it is impossible for a woman to rape a man. But I digress.
In the case of women, patriarchy reduces women to sexual beings and allows for them to always be depicted in this way, be it in film or in something as non-related as a car ad.
A big part of how patriarchy thrives is embedded in the mode in which women are represented, and because of the male gaze, they are represented in a manner most suitable and palatable for the consumption of men. Take this Sports Illustrated cover for example. I mean....come on.
Swimsuit 2015. Sports Illustrated. http://www.si.com/swimsuit/2015/assets/images/2015/cm-mag-ipad.jpg
As CNN so eloquently put it: "This year though, Sports Illustrated has gone too far. In the photo, the cover model Hannah Davis eagerly pulls down her bikini bottom and thrusts forward her pelvis in a way that's clearly meant to draw the eye to that very spot between her legs -- far more so than her eyes, or even her breasts. It's an invitation to picture her naked, and more. And in case there was any ambiguity of what the image is supposed to evoke, there's the clever cover line that begins: "Hannah Davis Goes Down South" ...The ultra-revealing cover shows Davis pulling down her already-minuscule bikini bottoms to within a millimeter of an area typically reserved for intimate partners and gynecologists. She's been waxed, it is evident, to bald perfection. One wrong breath, and she'd expose actual labia (how's that for news-stand appropriate?) It is explicitly explicit, and as such impossible not to view it as intending to reduce women to billboards and sex objects. Claiming to portray Davis in this way in the name of "celebrating the female form" is a lie balder than her nether region."
Exhibit B and C are hamburger ads....apparently.
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Burger King Singapore Ad https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3616/3675588942_be0d91c51e.jpg
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Burger King Singapore Ad http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/news-slide/bk_blow_ad.png
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Really Burger King? Really?
I will be honest in admitting that I was not always aware of the way women were and are still portrayed in art and media; though I have always been aware of the male gaze and patriarchy, I just didn't know that was the name for it. I have always "watched myself being watched" (to quote John Berger), and tried to mold myself to fit patriarchal beauty; a beauty which does not accommodate black women to start with, because patriarchal beauty or femininity is fundamentally white, slim and long straight-haired, to name a few. But because we are socialized into this system, one hardly ever fights back against it. We just accept it because we assume it is the way things are supposed to be. I have learned and I am still learning about the damaging effects of patriarchy, but in the meantime, I have reassured myself that we are all of different skin-tones, sizes and hair types because beauty accommodates all skin-tones, sizes and hair types. There couldn't possibly be just one form of beauty. That's boring. And stupid.
I know I am expected to "perform" patriarchal femininity {which involves (amongst many other things) looking good and keeping fit not for myself but for men because they are watching and I won't find a husband if I don't and if I don't find a husband, I am apparently, not even a real woman. Because you know, never mind that you've won several accolades from your excellence in your field of interest....none of that matters if you're still single. Marriage is the greatest accomplishment in a woman's life. Duh.} but I don't because I don't have to. Now, I know that I don't have to, and let me tell you something: It feels so. damn. good.
Works Cited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdV1F4f7jSobell hooks, Understanding Patriarchy
The Guerrilla Girls, The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion To The History of Western Art
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/05/changing-male-gaze/
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