The Male Gaze & Patriarchy

Male patriarchy is feeling nervous when walking alone at night as a woman. Male patriarchy is assessing every man near her as a threat. Male patriarchy is not having a single female president of the United States. Male patriarchy has different ways of manifesting itself in society; most importantly, male patriarchy is that implicit oppression of women just because they are women. However, we must not forget that male patriarchy is not only the oppression of women, but it is also the way in which young boys become vulnerable to preconceptions of masculinity. Starting in the home, boys learn to reclaim their identities with their fathers, being the main teacher of oppression. In Bell Hooks’ book, The Will To Change, she observes firsthand how differently she was treated as a young girl compared to her brother. She was taught that being a girl meant “to be weak, to be free from the burden of thinking, to caretake and nurture others” (Hooks, 18) while her brother was taught to be the opposite. According to Hooks, patriarchy is “a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females” (Hooks, 18) We see patriarchy in our society manifesting in homes, in the streets, in the workplace, and in popular culture. Even more, the ideas and assumptions that structure this form of patriarchy all root from the ideas that it is white, middle-aged, middle-class men who have this specific kind of power. Because of this, expressions of racism and sexism are revealed in society. Let’s take popular culture for example. Have you ever seen a man being advertised sexually in order to sell a product? Maybe you have, but probably not as much as you have seen women being sexualized in advertisements. 

Pamela Anderson for PETA. This advertisement shows a captured image of model Pamela Anderson, trying to encourage people to go vegetarian, showing that animals have the same parts are humans.
(https://www.peta.org/features/pamela-anderson-shows-animals-same-parts/)

Do we need to have a female dressed in a bikini, being photographed sexually, to show that animals have the same parts as humans? It's ironic that while PETA tries to promote vegetarianism in order to fight against animal cruelty, they are dehumanizing a human being at the same time. So which one is it, PETA? 

Because we have patriarchy that rules our society, we also have the male gaze. The male gaze is a man's perspective on the woman. In John Berger's Ways of Seeing, he simplifies the male gaze as the idea that "men act and women appear" (Berger, 47) Women become the objects for the man to admire and judge. Berger includes a painting in his book, The Judgement of Paris, seen below. 

The Judgement of Paris, 1577-1640
This image depicts Paris judging different women, and whoever he found most beautiful received an apple.  "Those who are not judged beautiful are not beautiful. Those who are, are given the prize. The prize is to be owned by a judge--that is to say be available for him" (Berger, 52)

The simple fact that the man decides for a woman when she is available to him is the same ways in which many women can relate to the catcalls and male gazing that she experiences in the streets. Unfortunately, as men seem to think women owe themselves to them during this Renaissance period, many men still feel as though they have a right to a woman's body today. The Judgement of Paris was created during 1577-1640 by Peter Paul Rubens. Let's fast forward to 1975, where an ad for some sort of construction equipment came out:

Construction News advertisement. London, England.
(http://msmagazine.com/blog/2010/05/21/from-the-stacks-heavy-where-she-has-to-take-the-strain/)

"She's built like all our products ... Heavy where she has to take the strain"  

Although we do not see it as clearly as we see the male gaze in The Judgement of Paris, this particular advertisement was geared obviously towards men. The woman is compared to a construction tool and her body is seen as a commodity. She is clearly turned around, her face not visible to the audience because it seems that nothing else matters than her body. This advertisement was meant to appeal towards men, all while desensitizing themselves to these sexual images of women clearly being exploited. How is a woman built like a product? And why are men never subjected to these kind of insensitive adverts? Because our society is built on patriarchy and patriarchy is dominance of men over women. 


Works Cited: 

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC Television Series with John Berger. British Broadcasting Corp., 2012.

Hooks, Bell, 1952-. The Will to Change : Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York :Atria Books, 2004. Print.