Ways of Viewing & Seeing Through The Male Gaze in Media

By Kafaya Shitta-bey


What is the male gaze?

The male gaze is a concept in which the images of women are meant to specifically cater to the viewing pleasure of men.

 

"Active/Male and Passive/Female." Laura Mulvey

It ensures that children are reared to subscribe to the gender roles of society where the men are meant to be powerful, confident and always in control, as they control the gaze and women are meant to be docile and appreciative of the gaze. “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.” (Mulvey, Laura. 837)

Women judge men’s bodies all of the time but this has no real power, as a woman’s judgment of a man would not change the patriarchal paradigm in which society operates. John Burger, speaks about this in Ways of Seeing. “ To be born a women has been to be born within an allotted and confined space into the keeping of men.” (46)

Berger, goes on to explain that men posses the power of looking, while women are meant to appear and not having an active role. He states that women have formed two ways of seeing themselves, in what he describes as the surveyor and the surveyed. According to Berger, men are the surveyor of women; always watching to determine how women are to be treated, while women take on the role as the surveyed. She knows that she is on display and this affects her decisions such as, how she speaks, what she wears, how she styles her hair and whether or not she chooses to be assertive. Since women are conscious of being judged by men and also by other women, they take on the role as the male and survey themselves. “ This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women. They do to themselves what men do to them. They survey, like men, their own femininity.” (63)

As it relates to the media, the male gaze results in many women being competitive with one another for the attention of men, as society is highly influenced by the media. Billions are spent on advertisements that are based on the premise of the male gaze to promote products that are rooted in insecurities of women. 

                                                             Miss America Pageant 

                           What if Disney princesses looked like this when I was a child?

As children we have no idea that the media is the largest and most influential machine reinforcing societal gender roles. As a child, I did not recognize or understand the concept of the male gaze. I grew up watching Disney films; I thought that Belle, Snow White and Ariel were so pretty and I loved to watch them fall in love. As a teenager, I looked forward to watching the annual Miss America pageant. My mother and I would watch them together, as she critiqued all of the women, saying, “This one has bad teeth. This one is ugly. That one is too skinny and this one can’t even speak well!” My favorite parts of the competitions were the final questions, the swimsuits and the evening gowns. I looked up to those women, not even realizing that I wanted to be like them. That’s how powerful the media is. You develop thoughts and beliefs that are essentially not your own.

Revlon Advertisements for nail polish and lipstick 

Magazine and television advertisements still dictate how men and women should think of themselves and also how they should think about each other. This is why there are so many advertisements that are targeted toward the physical appearance of women such as face cosmetics, push-up bras, high heels, hair extensions, breast augmentation and even nail polish. Advertisements focus on these areas because they know that women desire the attention of men are always thinking of what men view as attractive. Other advertisements that target men reinforce the idea that women are meant to be dominated and sexually pleasing. 

Advertisements for men's suits 

100 Ads That Got People Talking by the Huffington PostHuffington Post: 100 Ads That Got People Talking 


What is the oppositional gaze?

"The power is in looking.”(hooks, bell.115) The Oppositional Gaze acknowledges race and gender. This is very important because in a society that operates in white supremacy and patriarchy, men are made to be above women and whites are made to be above people of color. So to be a black woman in America means that you are generally not being represented. In The Oppositional Gaze, hooks talks about black women being absent from film. She explains that black women do not go to the movies to see themselves even if there are black women being presented on the screen. hooks believes that black female audiences watch films with the knowledge that stereotypical characters will be reiterated. 

Artwork by Carrie Mae Weems

   Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind

hooks states that she developed the oppositional gaze by not being hurt by the absence or the violating representation of black women in films. Instead she chose to interrogate the films. hooks had to look past race and gender to gain aspects of content within what she was viewing. “Identifying with neither the phallocentric gaze nor the construction of white womanhood as lack, critical black female spectators construct a theory of looking relations where cinematic visual delight is the pleasure of interrogation.”(126)

Paula Paton in Baggage Claim

In my own experience, I have applied hooks' concept of the oppositional gaze while watching black films. There are many movies that have required me to set aside my dislike and frustration of black female stereotypes.

A recent example of this is "Baggage Claim", a comedy about a single woman named Montana who is in her 30s. Montana is determined to get engaged before her younger sister's wedding and she feels heavily pressured by her mother who makes her feel like she has not accomplished much because she is not getting married.

I remember being highly annoyed at the beginning of the movie, because the main character was yet another single black woman who can't keep a man stereotype. I literally had to stop thinking about this single black woman trope in order to fully see the film; I essentially had to filter what I was taking in. Another example of a black female stereotype in film is Tyler Perry’s Madea character. Madea is a loud, sassy, violent and short-tempered black woman. Each time that I have watched Madea on screen, I had to completely block the character in order to view the movie. Till this day, I refuse to watch a Tyler Perry movie if Madea is the main character. 

Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson

"No Good Deed" is a movie that I watched recently, in which I did not have to think about race while viewing. The thriller has two black leads, one as the killer and the other as the scream queen. The absence of many black stereotypes in the film is what allowed me to just simply enjoy it without having to be overly critical.

Works Cited:
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Brandy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999 : 833-844. 

Berger, John. "Ways of Seeing." London: Penguin Books, 1972 : 45-64.

hooks, bell. "The Oppositional Gaze" Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992 :115-131.