The Gaze

The male gaze is an objectifying way in which a male looks at a woman. Although the term was introduced by Laura Mulvey with respect to film audiences having to view characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male, the term is relevant in other forms of media as well. According to Mulvey, “The determining male gaze projects its fantasy on the female figure, which is styled accordingly”. With respect to media, the first thing we notice about a woman is their appearance. This is the case not only with models and actresses, but with women in the news and politics as well. It seems that these days even female news anchors and politicians have to live up to the male gaze.

In advertisements, the male gaze has made it so that the woman in the advertisement is what is being bought and sold. Advertisements featuring women are basically telling men that if they buy this product, they can get the woman. Moreover, these ads are telling women that if they buy this product they can be the woman in the advertisement.

The oppositional gaze is a term coined by Bell Hooks encouraging black women not to accept stereotypical representations of themselves in film. The oppositional gaze was in a way a solution to the male gaze put forth by Mulvey, at least for African American women. According to Hooks, “To stare at television, or mainstream movies, or to engage its images, was to engage in negation of black representation”.

Whether black or white, I have realized from these readings that women do have a great burden put on themselves merely for being women. As Berger puts it, “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself”. Women will never get to have the sort of freedom or power that men have always been able to have. The media has made it such that this is impossibility and that is sad.

I hate the fact that the male gaze exists and in a perfect world women would not have to endure this, but the sad truth is it may never change. This is why women will never fully get to realize full equality despite how hard they are working towards it.