Male Gaze and Patriarchy

Rahmeh Abdulaal 

Ever looked at media ads that pop up randomly most of the time, either while watching a video on Youtube, or a show on TV. looking at these ads, most of them are "women portrait" ads, meaning they are there for men's pleasures, to please their inner self with these ads. For example, an ad of a perfume bottle, almost all perfume ads have half-naked women that turn and twist the idea of smelling a certain way as that bottle/brand portrays into a more of a sexualizing act that would attract one's eye more. Below is a picture that uses women as the cover of a perfume ad, from the first glance the first thing a person sees is the women and the way she is posing and looking. Therefore, sexualizing the ad, it is more of an attraction and grabbing a person's eye, then it is about the perfume, and the only way to attract a person's eye and attention is through the use of women since they solely assume that mostly men are seeing it.

The 2013 "Rogue" by Rihanna is a perfume ad that uses a specific women model as the main focus, for the reason of attraction and proving the idea of the male gaze.

This idea of using women in platforms to attract a certain crowd is called "Male Gaze". English writer and art critic, John Burger explains his own definition of the male gaze in his article saying "To be born a woman has been born to be born within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men" he continues "The surveyor of women in herself is male the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object and most particularly an object of vision: a sight"(Burger, 46). In simpler words, Burger explains that the male gaze is the idea or act of using women as objects, hence him mentioning "a sight", meaning they are only to be looked at, women are drawn and used in the art for the purpose of men's sight. Throughout John Burger's piece, he gives the reader multiple pictures and goes into details about the importance of each pose and what each part of the women's body symbolizes. Looking back at today, interpreting this idea to our modern day art would be sexualizing women on all forms of social platforms, such as TV shows, movies, magazines, and etc, the ideology of the male gaze still exists in all cultures and platforms just in a more less prominent way. Which we constantly see throughout all forms of communication, not only social media platforms but also posters on the walls that are located in different stores or some even on the streets. Glancing back at the European nude paintings during the 15th century, these pictures were mostly used for men's pleasure, since back then women had no legal rights but to be owned by a man. The women in most of the painting were looking back at themselves. John Burger explains this idea saying "he is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man" (p.54). Reflecting back at the paintings in John Burger's article, looking gave men power, same applies to today's ads and social media in general. Nonetheless, The idea of the male gaze is very manipulative and persuasive and still exists until now, even though it's been going on since Greece or even before.

Looking back at John Burger's time period, we see that the male gaze came about from the idea of "Patriarchy". According to the English writer 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" (Hooks, 18). Throughout Hooks piece, we see the struggle that she went through with her own family and society members, where men were in control and she could not be as free as she wanted to be. However, this did not only affect her as a female member but looking deeply we see that this ideology affected males as well. For example, her brother clearly was not as 'male-like' as he should be, which was frowned upon, he had to become someone he was not comfortable with, which affected him in a certain way. Hooks explains this saying "I was always more interested in challenging patriarchy than my brother was because it was a system that was always leaving me out of things that I wanted to be part of "(Hooks,20). Looking back at the time of Bell Hook to our time period now, we still see patriarchy everywhere, whether it is in the social system, political system, or cultural system. Relating this back to my personal life, I grew up in an Arab household, where most of the time women were treated a little less privileged than men. Thankfully, my parents are understanding and never showed this type of discrimination, even though many assume that it exists, however, I have seen it first hand with my extended family. Where my cousins were not allowed to leave the house at all, either with their brother or father by their side, until they got married. This personal example proved that patriarchy still exists, and it is a very harsh system that people like to deny that it does exist.




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.

Rihanna's Rogue Perfume advertisement. https://www.thefashionspot.com/runway-news/413891-14-other fashion-beauty-ads-that-were-banned-in-the-uk-besides-rihannas-perfume-ad/#/slide/1

The Male Gaze and the Oppositional Gaze by Hanan Abdel-Hamid. http://artandwomenfa2012.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-male-gaze-and-oppositional-gaze.html