The GAZE

What does “gaze” mean? I personally defined the gaze as looking at someone’s eyes. Bell Hooks’ The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, reminded me of my childhood. When my mother was talking or teaching something to me, she always said “Hey, look at my eyes.” She was saying that it means I was not paying attention when I was not looking at her eyes. However, just as Hooks argues, I was punished by looking at my mother’s eyes when I was scolded though I thought I did nothing wrong. There is an interesting saying: Eyes are more eloquent than lips. My mother got after me because my eyes express some resistance without any words. The gaze has power to tell everything what we are thinking. As we can tell when someone is pissed through looking into their eyes, our gazes can let people know our feelings.

The oppositional gazes are “gestures of resistance” and “challenges to authority” (Hooks 115). As I mentioned above, eyes tell everything. The gaze is one of ways to express your feelings, and to show your identity. Some use their gazes to show the authority. But some use them to show their will.

As we discussed in the class, the male gaze is different from female one. My understanding of the male gaze is looking women as an object. One of the reasons is physical difference. Since men have more power over women (physically), male can have a straightforward gaze. For example, men feel more comfortable walking on the street than women do. Men might look at women’s body parts, and they even tell women how they like the specific part of body. Therefore, the male gaze shows how males have the power over females. This is still a pervasive of vision in popular culture because of media. I have seen that the camera focuses on females’ body when they first appear on TV shows. They show her foot first, then gradually move up the camera to her face.

However, it is true that women want to be looked at certain way. They buy fashion magazines or watch TV show to learn what the “standard beauty” is in the world today. As John Berger states in his essay Ways of Seeing, “Men look at women. Women watch themselves,” women care more about how the others look at them. But as I mentioned above, women do not want to be told how they look. I feel that women are a little egoistic, but this is how we are. Women care about their looks and try to look better, but men cannot tell them how much they think the women are beautiful.

I was not aware of the power of the gaze until reading these essays. But now, I know that there are some ways to show your authority and dominant status, or resistance and refusal. The male gaze is so different from female one because of the needs. Men see women to amuse their eyes therefore women are seen as an object which is supposed to be looked at. People were saying all they need is equality, since women did not have as much power as men did. However, I personally feel that women want be treated better way than men. This is a difficult issue to solve since there are so many differences among gender. These readings made me think that I should pay attention what I see on TV shows, movies, or advertisement because I was not aware of this kind of topic.