Male Gaze and Oppositional Gaze

                 Since the beginning of time, women have always been objectified by society.  This fact has been engraved in us from birth to adulthood.  It is unconsciously taught to us by our parents, and through society in general. The male gaze has been a simple fact of life that we as women have grown so accustom to that we sometimes make excuses for it and look towards it for our self worth.  As a child my mother had always made mention that the way you look matters, but it matters more when you are a female.  Because of this knowledge spurred out by my mother, I was always very self-conscious of how I looked, and needed validation to make me feel whole.  If I was not told that I looked good or complemented, my mood would rely solely on that. I have noticed that this is the fact for most females weather they choose to admit it or not. Subconsciously women always have to watch how they dress in public, because of how much people judge them. A majority of women are very insecure about themselves, however women wouldn't be so self-conscious of themselves if it wasn't for how media portrayed them.  "She turns herself into an object and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" (Berger, 46).

                 Growing up in the Caribbean I have especially learned as a child, that women are regarded as second class citizens.  I have especially learned this being the only girl amongst three brothers.  Everything was always centered around the boys.  My brothers were always placed on a pedestal and waited on, while I was expected to do chores, learn to cook, and while doing that expected to look pretty. As children we are assigned gender roles and traits.  For example, little girls get baby dolls from the time they are toddlers, because someday we will be a mother.  Later when they are older they get barbie dolls which show how they should look when they get older. Meanwhile little boys get cars and trains, and when they are older toy guns. To this day, as an adult this role is even stronger displayed by my family.  I learned that a woman's place is in the kitchen and to tend to the children.  While my brothers were always served because this is what is expected.  Women and girls are expected to fall apart and be emotional, while my brothers were always taught to be strong and to never show emotion.  To this day, I can honestly say that I have never seen my brothers, uncles, or any male influences showing any sort of emotion that would make them appear "weak."  In Understanding Patriarchy, Bell Hooks mentions something similar, she describes it as patriarchy, "Growing up in the system of patriarchy, even if we never know the word because patriarchal gender roles are assigned to us as children and we are given continual guidance about the ways we can best fulfill these roles.  Patriarchy is a political- social system that insists that males are inherently dominating superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak." (Hooks, 18).  As a kid, I was taught that males are superior, and it was clearly displayed by the female influences in my life.  

There are toys for children at each stage of their lives, which heavily suggests what type of person they should become in the future.

                   

                 Women have been taught about the male gaze from childhood.  As girls we are told to always look a certain way by our mothers.  As you age as a female the gaze intensifies.  Women in society often rely on this gaze to make them feel desirable and wanted.  This gaze has made women objectify themselves, and is displayed in every media outlet that there is.  Today's videos are the staples of over sexualization.  Videos like Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" or even Beyonce's "Partition," as well as Shakira's "Can't Remember to Forget You," all have women bearing it all.  They are all clear examples of women trying to capture the men's attention by displaying body parts to draw album sales.  For these celebrities it's all about making money and not caring about the younger generation of people that they are molding to become whatever society wants them to become.  Magazines, television, and pretty much every media source are where little girls and women find the latest description of how they should dress and what look should be obtained.  This has caused eating disorders, and many ways of self hatred by young girls, and women today.  Television shows like Fashion Police is one of the culprits for either making fun of the way women dress or their weight.  When a celebrity woman has had so much as a muffin for breakfast or even eaten a meal, they create a dialog on whether she is  pregnant or not.  Society consists of bullies that either fat shame, or make women rely on plastic surgery, to fix whatever problem they feel may need fixing.  Commercials are mostly centered around skinny women who are seeking the males attention to validate their self worth.  This has always been the case, and is especially true today.  Women today are unknowingly and knowingly dressing to entice the spectator.  In a way you have to feel sorry for the females because this is taught to us as children.  Looking sexy and perfect is what is desirable and attainable.  These images of how we should look are presented to women by the media.  In his reading, Berger made an interesting example of how women are manipulated in falling victim to this.  "You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, this morally condemned the woman whose nakedness you has depicted for your own pleasure" (Berger, 51).

                In society women are mainly viewed by the male spectators as mere objects.  "She has to 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" (Berger, 46).  This pressure is placed on women by society but it is delivered to us from infancy.  The male gaze has been something that women whether they like it or not has grown accustom to because we have learned through the media and society in general that this is a way of life.  In today's society and from the beginning, women as simply being viewed as entertainment and something to entice the male spectator. "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.  The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly." (Mulvey, 837)

                In Oppositional Gaze by Bell Hooks, she specifically focused on black female spectators.  Hooks took a closer look at the intersection of race and gender but especially focused on the black females and how they were viewed and represented in the cinema.  She touched on the power of the look which she referred to as the oppositional gaze. She believed that there is a strong power in looking, she believed that this stems from slaves being denied the right to look, so being able to look gave them some form of power.  This gaze which was denied to blacks, Hooks believed, was taught from childhood.  She also explains that blacks came to accept certain things when viewing a movie. "Talking with black women of all ages and classes, in different areas of the United States, about their filmatic looking relations, I hear again and again ambivalent responses to cinema.  Only a few of the black women I talked with remembered the pleasure of race movies, and even those who did, felt that pleasure was interrupted and usurped by Hollywood.  Most of the black women I talked with, were adamant that they never went to movies expecting to see compelling representations of black femaleness.  They were all acutely aware of cinematic racism" (Hook, 119).  Black woman have the added pressure of not only being female, and the pressure that it brings.  They have to deal with the added pressure of being black and not being accepted, but instead being judged by their physical appearance and not their art.  In the cinema black females are given specific roles that are mostly negative and are stereotypical of what blacks are seen as by society.

Work Cited:
Berger, John (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books
Hooks, Bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation, Chapter 7 The Oppositional Gaze
Mulvey, Laura (1975) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Film Theory and Criticism.