The loomimg threat of dominating beliefs we all live with.

In society, throughout history women have been subject to various forms of "expectations" within society that can be considered offensive towards women and even victimizing. The "male gaze" is considered one of these forms of victimizing woman or ways in which men attempt to dominate over women. The "male Gaze" as described by John Berger, is how men view women in the media and how they envision what they what women to look like. Women in turn are put under pressure to conform to resemble society's image of how a woman should look. Berger argues that woman are taught to survey themselves from early childhood. He also mentions how others see her or how men see her is crucial.

At first I found this alarming, but then I thought of how true it is. I don't usually care what others think, and in action I do what I want to do. But somewhere in the back of my mind I sometimes think, "what will people think of this, or I can't wear that what will people think?" I think many women say this automatically even if they don't agree with it because it is something that has been taught by society since childhood.
In the media the audience is subject to the gaze of a heterosexual man. This gaze in the cinema has been present since the 1930's but may have been present in other media before that. The woman in the film is meant to only be looked at. It is a form of voyerisim that the audience is subjected to and that caters specifically to the popular male perspective that society promotes. The woman is made to look no more than an object and is often exploited in this way.

Much of this has been going on for a long time and still does today. Girls are brought up around the media and exposed to it more than ever before. Some of these messages are presented subconciously. Women are under pressure to change themselves or look a certain way to please men. Some girls do not even realize they are doing it until it.
The "oppositional gaze" is a concept put forth by Bell Hooks in the readings. Hooks encourages black women to reject the stereotypical images they that are presented in the media and instead critique them.
I have noticed in many older movies that women are often depicted as "helpless" without the men. Even television shows such as "I Love Lucy" where the woman often rebels against the norms, at the same times her schemes usually end with her husbands shaking his head at her silliness or helping her out of the bind she is in.
Today I think this image has somewhat changed and independent woman are more accepted and respected. However there is a new turn the media has taken which I think undermines what women have been fighting for. There is an increasing pressure on women to be overly sexual in modern movies and T.V. shows. There is a notion that this sells better. Perhaps it does, but it is still offensive to women and leads us to wonder if there has been any improvement at all or is there still a struggle against society's typical image of how a woman is expected to behave. This obviously does not apply to all men, but rather more to the image put forth by the media.
Interestingly one genre of movies (horror), according to Carol J. Clover, author of "Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the modern horror film", Clover claims that men are subject not to the male tormentor but instead to identify with the female character. An example of this is the female lead in "The Shining". The female character is the one to triumph at the end of the film.

images from fashionandfancies.blogspot.com and http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org