The Female Gaze and a Woman's Body

The male gaze is an objectification of women as sexual commodity in media. Because men control a majority of media, women are often portrayed with the assumption of heterosexual man as the default target audience. We see a focus in media on this concentration of sexuality surrounding women, they merely become objects of entertainment for the assumed male audience.  This gaze permeates real life, past media. I feel the male gaze every day, men stare at me in the street, on the train...nearly everywhere I go- not because I am dressed provocatively or purposely seeking attention, but because this hyper sexualization of women is embedded in their minds. 

In a satirical article by The Onion titled, Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does, the author quotes Barbara Klein, a professor of women's studies at Oberlin College.

"As recently as 15 years ago, a woman could only feel empowered by advancing in a male-dominated work world, asserting her own sexual wants and needs, or pushing for a stronger voice in politics. Today, a woman can empower herself through actions as seemingly inconsequential as driving her children to soccer practice or watching the Oxygen network."

http://www.theonion.com/article/women-now-empowered-by-everything-a-woman-does-1398

         The topic of weight loss and gain are mentioned in the article, one quote which I found to be amusing- is as follows, 

"Eating energy bars specially fortified with nutrients "for women" has become a feminist trend, as well. "Unlike traditional, phallocentric energy bars, whose chocolate, soy protein, nuts, and granola ignored the special health and nutritional needs of women, their new, female-oriented counterparts like Luna are ideally balanced with a more suitable amount of chocolate, soy protein, nuts, and granola," Klein said. "Proto-feminist pioneers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony could never have imagined that female empowerment would one day come in bar form.""

I found this is advertisement for ProtienFX, a protein company in Australia. 

The ad suggests that being fit and thin is beautiful, and that

it is somehow a woman's responsibility to keep Australia beautiful 

by being thin.

The purpose of this article and most satire is usually meant to be humorous; its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society, like the objectification of women in the media and a manifested obsession with weight loss and thinness. We could assume that all media has negative portrayals of women, indeed most do. With the new age of technology and social media, we are exposed to massive amounts of images and videos that send out adverse ideals and false representations of women. 

And advertisement for for Pretzel Chips
stating "you can never be too thin" and "tastes
as good as skinny feels", implying that
skinnier and thinner are better.

We are constantly told we are not good enough, that we need to be thinner, prettier, and that our intellect doesn't matter. In "The More You Subtract The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size" by Jean Kilbourne, she breaks down and analyzes the way women take in messages from media, and how they effect girls at a fairly young age.

“Most of us know by now about the damage done to girls by the tyranny of the ideal image, weightism, and the obsession with thinness. But girls get older messages too that “cut them down to size” more subtly. In ad after ad girls are urged to be “barely there”--- beautiful but silent. Of course, girls are not just influenced by images of other girls. They are even more powerfully attuned to images of women, because they learn from these images what is expected of them, what they are to become. And they see these images again and again in the magazines they read, even those magazines designed for teenagers, and in the commercials they watch” (Kilbourne, pg. 138). 

This cover of Nitro has the same woman on both the left and right side,
the original photo on the left is how the woman actually looks, however, the photo
on the right...which has been photoshopped, airbrushed and altered--- is
the one that gets published and is viewed by media consumers. Creating a false
expectation and desire for what the female body should look like.

This idea that our body is meant for the enjoyment of others seems quite ridiculous to me, I see so many advertisements telling me how thin I should be, or how I can never stop trying to lose weight. Kilbourne also discusses this topic of weight, how its become completely normal for women to be insecure about their size, and needing men to confirm their beauty. It has become nearly impossible for a woman to feel secure about her body, however, it is not only girls who are not "thin" that are made to feel insecure. In an example given by Kilbourne she says,

"Being obsessed about one's weight is made to seem normal and even appealing in ads for unrelated products such as Scotch add that features a very thin and pretty young woman looking in a mirror while her boyfriend observes her the copy address to him says listen if you can handle honey do I look fat you can handle this these two are so intimate that she can share her deepest fears with him and he can respond by chuckling at her adorable vulnerability  and knocking back another scotch.  And everyone who sees the ad gets the message that it is perfectly normal for all women, including thin and attractive ones, to worry about their weight" (Kilbourne, pg. 136) 

Who are we to be thin for? Why do we put ourselves in a position to feel insecure? Most young women who are dealing with insecurities surrounding their bodies fail to understand is that a woman's sole purpose is not to please men- no matter how much the media makes us feel like it is. 

"To be born a woman has to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She's almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across the room or whilst she's sleeping at the death of her father she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself by walking or weeping.  From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually" (Berger, pg. 46). 

We are taught to always be self conscious, we are taught that being ourselves simply isn't good enough. There is this ideal body image portrayed by the media that is almost nearly atomically impossible, and therefore impossible to obtain. Young girls who are exposed to these images don't understand that the women depicted in the photos have been airbrushed and photoshopped to look like something they are not. This is a direct cause on women by the male gaze in media. 

This photo of a young woman
displays the realistic and natural
forms of the female body, pubic
hair and imperfect thighs are
being celebrated and embraced. 

However, social media is becoming a vehicle for women to control the male gaze and provide their own female outlook, especially on sites like Instagram, where photography and video are the main forms of sharing.
Ashley Armitage, the photographer behind Ladyist, http://www.refinery29.com/pubic-hair-instagram - slide has said of her desire to show women in their most natural states, “I’m interested in creating a platform for girls, by girls, completely the female gaze.” (NY Mag)

There is a history behind the gaze- the way we view and the way we are viewed. Bell Hooks studies the oppositional gaze held by black women, as well as its progression throughout time and media in the form of films.

“All attempts to repress our/black peoples’ right to gaze has produced in us an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze”(Hooks, pg. 116).

           Hooks speaks about how as children we were chastised for staring. Through punishment they began to realize that the way we look at a person can be risky. During the course of slavery, white slave owners punished enslaved black people for looking. Consequently, the gaze became a procedure of deviancy and opposition. As viewers of the media, we are the ones who develop an interpretation, which is usually based by our ethnicity/race, gender, and social class. It became obvious for black people that they were misinterpreted in film, their portrayed roles displayed they where there only to serve white women. As a result, some black women would boycott film altogether. As said by Hooks,                   
     "that some of us choose to stop looking was a gesture of resistance, turning away was one way to protect, to reject negation" (pg. 121). There, the oppositional gaze developed.

          My understandings of the male and oppositional gazes allows me to gain more perspective when analyzing advertisements, tv shows, movies etc, that I see today. I've developed a habit of paying close attention to women in media, what their roles are and how they compare to men. I feel as if I've gained some major clarity because I have been so accustomed to seeing women portrayed in the way they are without questioning it. 

Works Cited:
"The More You Subtract The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size" by Jean Kilbourne

"Understanding Patriarchy/The Oppositional Gaze" by Bell Hooks

"Ways of Seeing" by John Berger