The Gaze.

        As a woman in 2016 and while growing up, I can constantly feel the gaze of men around me. Is it because of my height? My makeup? Why is it that as a woman, I am constantly feeling judged and picked at for my appearance. This is not only in my personal life, but also in the personal life of every single woman. We also see this in the media. We see it in magazines, TV Shows and movies. The Male Gaze, a term coined by Laura Mulvey, explains that when a woman is in front of a camera for either a photo-shoot or a movie, she is always posing for a man. Her very essence is purely for the male eyes. She must be attractive so that men will find her attractive. She must strive to fulfill her goal to make sure men will deem her sexy. Everything that a woman does, and everything that a woman sets out to be will be nothing if it is not somehow benefiting a man. Laura Mulvey also brings up in her article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” she states, “To summarize briefly: the function of woman is forming the patriarchal unconscious is two-fold, she first symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis…” (Mulvey 832). At the end of her article she also stated, “The argument turns again to the psychoanalytic background in that woman as representation signifies castration, inducing voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to circumvent her threat.” (Mulvey 843) Now castration doesn’t have to be in the physical sense, but more in the psychological sense. In which the definition of that is, “to render impotent, literally or metaphorically, by psychological means, especially by threatening a person's masculinity or femininity.”1 This is a very interesting explanation as to why women are being subjected to these kind of beauty expectations. The male gaze effects the way society looks at women. Women are constantly being told how to act, look and speak in order to attract and not scare off men. 

        However, I think that as a society we can become more increasingly aware to the sexism that is at work in media across all types of plat forms. For example in magazine ads, images like this:

Natalie Portman modeling for a woman's perfume, yet somehow is posed
to be pleasing to the male mind. Her innocent stare, the bow, the fact that she is topless
all contribute to the idea that women must contain this "innocent image" for men

is really confusing to me as a woman. She is advertising a woman’s product, however, the way she is staring into the camera and the fact that she is topless makes it seem that this advertisement was not directed towards me, a woman, at all.  There are countless advertisements of women being used as sexual objects. Not only are women being depicted in a sexual way, a way that is supposed to be appealing to men. Women are then in turn criticized and judged for being too sexual. In his book “Ways of Seeing” John Berger stated, “ 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. “ (Berger 51) This proves the point that Mulvey was making when she claims that the women in the media is purely just for the pleasure of men, but also taking it a step further by adding that we as a society judge those same women being sexualized. As if they had a choice to be represented this way. Women did not ever in the history of time want to be a mans sexual object but because in todays corporate world is filled with men that they advertise women to appeal to them. What they think is sexy. Same goes for the movie/TV industry. Most casting directors are male, so they will pick women that look like other women he has seen being advertised and shown off as sexy, because it "works". It becomes an endless cycle of growing up and becoming immune to society's male gaze we see on TV and then incorporating in the entertainment world or even in our own work. We have been brainwashed by our culture that women must be sexy to please the male gaze, at the same time be mocked and shamed for it. Hopefully there will be a time where women can be sexy just because she wants to be not because she feels like she has to be for men and not be shamed for it. 

       
         Now according to Bell Hooks, the gaze is not referred to in a sexual, objectifying manner. Hooks speaks of the gaze as a way to learn, study and be critical of something. In this case it is for young black women to be critical of the representation they get or do not get in the media. Hooks notes that to be black and to gaze was something that did not sit well.  Hundred years ago, her people were killed for staring at a white person a certain way. I think in a way, this just means that in a world where predominantly white men run the media, to gaze upon it in a critical way is to prepare yourself for backlash. There is something to be said about our society when women of color do not have equal representation in the media as much as they should and many women of color just decide to turn a blind eye to it. Hooks states, “Every black woman I spoke with who was/is an ardent moviegoer, a lover of the Hollywood film, testified that to experience fully the pleasure of that cinema they had to close down critique, analysis; they had to forget racism.  And mostly they did not think about sexism.” (Hooks 120) But women of color must never forget this. They must always carry their oppositional gaze. They must always be critical of the world around them because that is the first step to make a change. Women of today cannot sit back and allow the current racism and sexism that occurs in the media like they did when shows like Amos and Andy were on the air. Not only are women of color not being represented in the way they should, but they are also being misrepresented. I cannot begin to count how many times a black woman was the sidekick to her white friend and she played the "sassy friend". Is that the only representation that women of color deserve? No. Simple as that. It always amazes me how a show/movie only includes one person of color and calls it "representation"

Viola Davis making a powerful speech on women of color being represented in the media. Very powerful. Very moving.

                          As a woman and as a Latina, I too must avoid and ignore the male gaze and start to look at the world around me with the oppositional gaze. I must be critical of movies being made because there is close to no representation of hispanic women and if there is, she is being over-sexualized or stereotyped to be "the help" and does not at all contribute to the plot of the story. I must avoid the hypocrisy that comes with the male gaze as well as becoming aware that I am constantly being watched by the world to fit other people’s idea of beautiful and sexy.  I know that by becoming more self aware of the world around me and not let myself get sucked in to the entertainment, this generation can change the way media is presented to us. We want our children to grow up being able to identify to characters in movies and TV. 

1) According to dictionary.com

Works Cited

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44

Hooks, Bell. "Chapter 7: The Oppositional Gaze." Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992. pp 115-31.