It's All About The Males

The female form in the public eye has essentially been built up from the male perspective. Whatever males view as being the ideal woman is what the woman is presented as to the world. The male gaze is the creation of an image for women by men for other men in regards to what they believe other men will want to see and what they can hypothetically own. The concept, however, defines what women see in themselves as well. Woman will, as John Berger states in his essay “Ways of Seeing”, “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” (46). Women have come to view beauty in themselves as defined by the male.

Hence the male gaze has become a pervasive form of vision in popular culture. From paintings to magazines, from music videos to movies, the male gaze has been adopted as the basis for the presentation of the female to a general and all too gullible audience. As Laura Mulvey mentions in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, in film women serve the role of a powerless bystander to which “man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command” (834). In cinema, the female is always presented through the lens of someone without a penis. She is defined by the lack of the anatomical feature that distinguishes her from the male. It is the lack of a phallus that literally makes her subservient to the male characters in the cinema. She is presented as an object of desire for the male character in film as well as the male observer. Also, she is presented as an object of desire and an image to own to the male audience. Men who watch films often associate with the male protagonist and therefore imagine they can have such a woman, who, of course, is constructed through the male gaze.

The influence of the male gaze in music videos can especially be observed. Videos such as that of 50 Cents “Candy Shop” is a classic example of how woman, whether through nudity or vulgar presentation, has been constructed by the male for the pleasure of other males. 50 Cent has all the females in the videos to himself for himself, and likewise, males who watch the videos can see the females' image as something they can own and enjoy for themselves. The male gaze, of course, has even defined the modeling world. The tall, often busty, and voluptuous yet fit Victoria's Secret models covering the full page ads of magazines with lustful and sensual facial and body expression are the epitome of what the male gaze has constructed as the standard of beauty. It is essentially such an image of woman that males desire. Hence, Victoria's Secret's ad reps choose and prep models to look such a way so that other women who desire to satisfy the male observer will buy their products in an attempt to do so.

Within the population of spectators openly welcoming the male gaze, however, is the group that regards all media with an oppositional gaze. Such a gaze acknowledges the creation of an unrealistic phallocentric fictional image of both men and women the media has come to present to a general audience. As Bell Hook implies in "The Oppositional Gaze", racial groups, namely African Americans, and furthermore, African American females, see cinema through an oppositional gaze. Groups who have experienced oppression such as African Americans see the support of a white supremacy through the lack of representation of other races in the cinema. African American women saw the representation of women in the movies through this oppositional gaze. To see women presented through this unrealistic, male defined lens and being observed, stared at, and desired by the white male in the media was, in the eyes of the African American female audience, pure fiction, mainly since the ability to relate to any of the characters in the cinema was absent due to misrepresentation, or lack of, of their population. This lack of representation can still be widely seen throughout an array of movies in present day. Minority groups are generally not present in films. When they are, they rarely fit under the role of the male protagonist defined by the male gaze as one with power and loads to offer, rather, as the sidekick or a comedic addition. When it comes to females of a minority group, they rarely come to present the object of male desire or attention. Rather, they come to play the role of either caregivers, the help, or simply extras in the sets. The white female still remains the first choice as female leads and the object of the male character's gaze and desire such as Megan Fox in "Transformers".

I have come to observe such structures in the media every single day. I have even come to experience such in a very personal way. After being convinced by a friend, I tried out for a modeling agency. I had a portfolio full of shots ready to hand them. The moment I stepped into the office I was already being torn apart. The talent agent immediately began an extensive list of ways in which I did not meet the standards they looked for in a model, which of course, were set up by the male himself. The first thing I was told was that my tattoos were completely inappropriate. They did not, in his words, 'express the femininity they wanted their models to embody". Every time I flip through the pages of magazines, I see pictures of models in ads posing provocatively in clothing I would never dream of wearing, their faces plastered with layers of makeup to make their lips look fuller, their eyes more exotic, etc. I've come to realize that the world, particularly the world of media, is literally male dominated. Everything presented to a general audience in regard to image and power is all constructed to suit a male point of view. I've never let this get to me. Many times, because I do not exude "femininity" in the way the male desires to see, I have been ridiculed, at times, sadly enough, by my own family. The majority of my friends, consisting of males, have joked around claiming I'm "such a dude" because I do not enjoy spending hours doing my make up, worrying about my breast size, fussing over my hair, or spending hours shopping for clothing that will get me noticed. I've never been one to worry much about being stared at nor defining my image by the male standards, but now that I have come to learn about the male gaze and the oppositional gaze, I feel the need to be even more defiant in my ways.

"Your Body is a Battleground"--artwork by Barbara Kruger