In his work Ways of Seeing, English artist and art critic John Berger deconstructs the oft-misunderstood term “male gaze”. The male gaze, coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey, refers to the way women must present themselves and operate under the assumption that men are always watching and scrutinizing them for appeal, attraction, and any threat to their own power. “To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men,” Berger writes. “A woman must continually watch herself…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). In simpler terms, men look at women, who watch themselves being looked at as if they themselves are males looking at women.
This concept is derived from visual media, particularly paintings and film. Historically, the female nude painting has been a staple of fine art and cultural significance. Beginning with the depiction of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, mostly male painters have created naked portraits for largely male viewership and consumption. As society and the art world grew more secular, “other themes also offered the opportunity of painting nudes. But in them all there remains the implication that the subject (a woman) is aware of being seen by a spectator. She is not naked as she is. She is naked as the spectator sees her” (Berger 49-50). Through art, women and their bodies are offered as objects to admire and therefore exploit for male benefit.
These mindsets and behaviors extend also to other media, such as film and advertisement. Much like the nude, these forms of content hypersexualize women for male consumption, as well as female judgment and comparison. The kicker is that ads especially aim to sell products to the demographic they alienate; women become upset at the marketing, but also at the fact that they do not look like the model in the ad, so they become inclined to buy said product to grow closer to this male ideal.
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| A Bebe ad demonstrating the modern male gaze |
What allows this sort of behavior is another thrown-around term known as “patriarchy”. In her work Understanding Patriarchy, author and activist bell hooks defines patriarchy as 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 and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence” (hooks 18).
Though to some this may seem like an outdated system, patriarchy is still alive and well in modern day society, everywhere from expectations about what a “traditional” family should look like to the way men are given preferential treatment in most every field. These dynamics teach young people to act, present, and treat others in particular ways that--at best--are unsettling. And even though times have changed and grown more progressive, there is such a road ahead to combat and perhaps end the patriarchy and male gaze.
There are several things to address that persist in contemporary culture. Firstly, as bell hooks points out, "many female-headed households endorse and promote patriarchal thinking with far greater passion than two-parent households" because, as she continues, "women in such households are far more likely to idealize the patriarchal male role and patriarchal men than are women who live with patriarchal men every day" (hooks 24). It is pivotal for parents to teach children not to repress their emotions or establish dominance through violence, not to act in total submission or think of everyone else as competition for affection and praise.
Also worth noting, both as a direct counter to patriarchy/the male gaze and a generally important term, are "intersectionality" and "intersectional feminism". Defined by Merriam-Webster (through the IWDA) as “the complex, cumulative manner in which the effects of different forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect”, intersectionality is a crucial concept in understanding the different ways prejudice affects people. Coined by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, the term presents a necessary perspective on how women of all sorts---as well as men and non-binary folks--are affected by patriarchy. Though seeming straightforward, the system does not isolate its oppression, thus making it essential to examine it through an intersectional lens.
Ultimately, in order to dismantle the system, men and women must work together. Everyone must learn about it and its ongoing and lasting effects on all people, and together unlearn the toxic mindsets encouraged by patriarchy. Learn, address, teach, criticize, act, improve.
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| Buzzfeed staff recreates impractical female superhero poses |
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books. 1972. Print.
Hooks, Bell. Understanding Patriarchy. Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2010.
Tiven, Lucy. “What Happens When Real Women Are Photoshopped Like Female Comic Book
Characters.” ATTN:ATTN: 2 Apr. 2016, archive.attn.com/stories/7017/women-in-comic-book character-poses.
“What Does Intersectional Feminism Actually Mean?” IWDA, International Women's Development Agency, 8 Nov. 2018, iwda.org.au/what-does-intersectional-feminism-actually-mean/.
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