The Male Gaze and Patriarchy
The male gaze is the way a male’s perspective is used to portray women as objects, whether it be in art, literature, or film. This gaze may also be a woman’s conscious awareness that she is constantly being watched or judged through a male's perspective. John Berger believes that the male gaze causes women to “consider the surveyor and the surveyed” (46). Berger is stating that because of the male gaze women have to constantly judge themselves in order to get a sense of how a man may judge them. Berger states that women turn themselves into objects (47). The male gaze creates an environment were women are putting on a show for men, but women are also watching themselves and internalizing how men treat them. “Men act and women appear” (Berger 47). Men are always looking at women, while women watch themselves being looked at by men.
The image on the left, Reclining Bacchante by Trutat, is a perfect example of the male gaze used in art. The woman in the painting is being both surveyed by the man in the painting and the person looking at the painting. However, she is also the surveyor because she is watching you watch her. The male gaze creates competition between women and violence between men and women. Women are constantly competing with themselves, making sure they are being surveyed the way they see themselves. Women are also always competing with other women for the approval of men. This has been happening for years and is still happening today. Social media, specifically Instagram, is a perfect example of a contemporary male gaze. Women routinely post “selfies” in hopes of getting a certain amount of likes. Each “like” is an approval of her image. If the selfie does not not get enough likes, more often than not it is taken down.
The male gaze is so powerful because we live in a patriarchal world. According to Bell Hooks, “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 and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence” (18). Simply put, males are the head of the household, the breadwinners, and basically the dominant gender in a patriarchal society. In a patriarchal world women are meant to bear children and serve men. As you can see, male gaze and patriarchy go hand-in-hand, women are objects and servants to men.
Patriarchy is detrimental to females for obvious reason, in the 19th and 20th century women were no allowed to do certain things, such as work or educate themselves, simply because they were female. While those harsh gender roles have diluted slightly, patriarchy still oppresses the lives of women today. For example, women are held to certain unrealistic beauty standards, not many women become CEOs, a pay gap still exist, and unmarried women are still viewed as “less than.” Patriarchy restricts women from reaching their full potential just so that they do not over shadow or emasculate their male peers. Clearly there are blatant reasons why patriarchy is detrimental to females, but the less obvious is the negative impact it has on males.
Men who are not considered masculine by societal standards reap the negative backlash of patriarchy. Men who are not violent or domineering are seen as less than; are considered feminine, as if that is a bad thing. Bell Hooks states that “boys brutalized and victimized by patriarchy more often than not become patriarchal, embodying the abusive patriarchal masculinity that they once clearly recognized as evil” (28). We, as a patriarchal society, do not allow children to live as they please, we hold boys and girls to certain gender stereotypes. When young boys have a negative patriarchal experience, they often tend to reject patriarchy into adulthood until they want to gain greater respect and prove their masculinity. Parents reinforce patriarchy by using phrases like “boys don’t cry” or “that game is only for boys.” It forces women to follow with what Bell Hooks refers to as “blind obedience,” meaning the repression of all emotions except for fear, the destruction of individual willpower, and the repression of thinking for one’s self (Hooks 23).
While the male gaze and patriarchy clearly oppress women, there is also the female gaze. The female gaze is the constant femininity that is forced upon women from a young age. In Emma Jones’s Ted Talk about The Toxic Female Gaze, she emphasizes how little girls are forced into femininity. Toy stores push pink clothing, barbie dolls, and tea sets at our little girls in the hopes that they grow up to become nurturing housewives. The female gaze is the world’s fascination with a woman’s looks and age. Emma Jones mentions that toxic female gaze can lead to “envy, comparison, and in worse cases mental health issues.” As mentioned above, with the social media example, the male gaze also creates comparison among women. Women are always trying to impress someone, whether it be a man, another women, or even herself. Jones explains that male and females are affected by the female gaze, especially in the media. Everyone is judged based on appearances and that has detrimental effects. We live a world where we are constantly being watched and judged. The image below is simply to show the possible turn of events, in most renaissance paintings, women are nude and the men are fully clothed but here the woman is in control. 
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Chapter 2 & 3. Penguin. 2008. Print. Feb. 2, 2019.
(Image) Reclining Bacchante. Trutat. 1824-1848
Jones, Emma. TedTalk. The Toxic Female Gaze. June 28, 2017.
“Understanding Patriarchy.” The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, by Bell Hooks,
Washington Square Press, 2005, pp. 17–32. Print. Feb. 2, 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment