On Ways of Seeing

The male gaze is the way with which society views women.  It is also sets the standard of beauty and femininity that a woman is compelled to follow.  The male gaze isn't limited to certain societies that are shortlisted as "backwards" and patriarchal by default.  This lens that dictates the standards by which women must abide by exists in every patriarchal society and every patriarchal system.  This society and the media surrounding it, is heavily permeated by patriarchal ideas that have encircled our society for ages.  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 the weak, and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence" ("Understanding Patriarchy", 8).
 Within this system, the male gaze is the dominant one, thus, it violently thrusts itself upon women and their own perception of themselves.  Women begin to view themselves through the male gaze.  This idea is illustrated in John Berger's, "Ways of Seeing;" he claims that in early Renaissance paintings, a woman was portrayed as vain and self absorbed.  She was presented as a bare sight for the dominant male gaze; she was presented for men.  However, this presentation of a woman as a mere sight forced women to see themselves as a sight that must be adorned to suit a typical mold.  Berger says, "You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.  The real function of the mirror was otherwise.  It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first a foremost, a sight" (51).  A woman views herself by the prevalent forces that influence her.  The media today is coated in male dominated images that are constantly shoved in our faces and convince us of something that essentially shapes how we live our lives and view ourselves.  For instance, in the most cliche sense, women are viewed as sexual objects that serve as embellishments to ads that cater to both men and women.  This just proves that the media is trying to convince women of this image as well, so women internalize this sexual view of themselves. 

This is a beer ad for Bavaria which depicts a woman wearing a bikini, handing the beer to someone.  Clearly, the audience seems to be men, and she is presented for the male gaze.  However, a woman must meet these standards in order to have sex appeal.  

 

 

 

 

In the ad above, the woman is presented as both sexually available, due to her body language and attire, and subservient.  She is available and she is openly serving the beer to the buyers of this beer.  What better way to entice men to drink this beer?  Now, this ad may not make people jump to their feet to go buy this brand and start drinking it.  But it certainly associates a certain sex appeal and ease to Bavaria.  Now, if I ever go to a super market and if I see a pack of Bavaria's beer bottles, I might not remember any facts about the taste or the quality of the beer, but I will remember this picture.  And I don't even drink.  This presents the power of the media and its patriarchal force.  But going back to women, this ad perpetuates a woman's need to be more sexually appealing.  She might think, "if this is what entices a man, maybe this is how I should be."  This is the most prime example of the male gaze and its tremendous effects on women. 

Now, a less talked about example of the prevalent male gaze in the media is the promotion of makeup as being a tool for women's liberation.  Women are now advertised to be beautiful for themselves, to self-indulge in beauty products that made them more feminine, more beautiful.  They are expected to look flawless, have a narcissistic obsession with their self-image, and, simultaneously, act as if they are not narcissistic at all.  Women are told to have flawless bodies that show no signs of aging, weight gain, stress, or laziness.  Fitness was and is the most banked upon institution to promote a certain image of a woman.  Yes, there are woman who work out because they feel good, it’s good for their bodies, and because it makes them powerful.  However, the mass media took that for a run and turned it into a means for women to achieving the perfect feminine body expected of them.  

This ad promotes fitness supplements and being in good shape.  However, it doesn't take a genius to understand the absolute unnecessary nature of the woman in the ad.  She isn't just fit, but she's sexual, and appealing.  Women will then equate being fit with being sexually appealing to men.

 The beauty industry makes billions and billions of dollars off women who are striving to become more desirable to themselves, only to be desirable to society, and only because these corporations present images of what they should be striving towards.  Women are now expected to be bold and are pioneers for an egalitarian society, but these concepts come from the mass media.  It provides definitions on what a feminist is, what a feminist does and what an egalitarian society is.  This may be the epitome of oppression.  Despite a common feminist wave of ideals that have taken the media by storm, the mass media stays misrepresenting women.  Take for instance the Cover Girl commercial that depicts various powerful women in the media smiling and posing, stating that “girls can” do everything and anything . 

  Using themselves as examples, they solidify the fact that women can accomplish anything and break the common stereotypes set by society for them.  What’s absolutely contradictory about this commercial is the association it holds.  It seems that the only way a woman can accomplish whatever she sets her mind to is by going to the store and purchasing Cover Girl products so she could look like the perfectly airbrushed personalities in the commercial.  There is nothing liberating about having to believe that you are equal to men because of…makeup.  Therefore, a woman must looks good in order to be successful.  The mass media uses feminism as a means to reach a capitalistic and patriarchal end.  The male gaze has been so much internalized at this point in time, that even women that empower each other, do so with a gaze other than their own.  
This is a problem because I need to stop believing that my face will look better without the dark circles under my eyes, I need to stop spending hours trying to cover one pimple, I need to stop believing that I do things out of my own will, when I know that I've been convinced by the media, and I need to understand that the media is the presentation of somebody else and their perception of who I am to be.  We need to adopt an oppositional gaze, such that Bell Hooks suggests in "The Oppositional Gaze."  According to Hooks, this gaze is a form of resistance, resistance to the gaze that doesn't belong to us.  The oppositional gaze is the gaze that a woman must adopt for herself and posses her own gaze and her own perception of herself, not fueled by the gaze of an expectant man.  She must do for herself and see herself in whatever way she desires.  Certain media platforms are promoting such an ideal such as All India Bakchod, which is an online Indian channel that produces satirical comedic videos (not a beauty product company or beauty magazine).  One such video is the following, where two women claim that rape is a woman's fault.  This video presents the male gaze but in a satirical and nonsensical way, taking it for what it is: 

 
       This type of media can channel a woman's gaze into being oppositional and working against the dominate male gaze that should have nothing to do with her.