Male Gaze: A conversation worth starting
Both sides of the Gaze
The Male Gaze it’s a conversation I’m willing to discuss. To understand it fully I had to learn about the female Gaze. I’ve learned while writing this article both sides have valid points. My purpose is to inform and educate those who have a lack of understanding. My targets are also those who are male and don’t know the feeling of being a woman in a sexist world. I don’t intend to shame or blame. I hope the readers just listen and try to understand to reflect on their actions. Throughout the process connecting an understanding of how not to be offended and usage of words to persuade was a struggle. I felt like when I first started the article I was so passionate that I was very biased. Learning to understand how to control my bias with words and understand the other side helped. It was nice to read articles opposing my views. It helped me understand the mindset of my target audience. It even helped me understand my purpose and let me further my intentions.
The Male Gaze
In the era of 2021 women are still subjective in the views of men. Women have more freedom than in the past. The past still haunts women in many shapes and forms. Women have come a long way to have simple ideas set them back. How women view themselves has been an ongoing issue. There have been social movements to protest equal rights. Also throughout time, there have been changes that women have fought. Now the topic is to be seen as more than as an object. Yet the Male Gaze contradicts the achievements woman has done and the achievements woman continues to fight for. The Male Gaze uses the perspective of viewing a woman through what a man wants her to be. Not who she allows herself or wants to be. That’s an issue. It also shows the damaging results of women trying to please men to blend into society. This has a negative outlook on how women view themselves. Researchers say that the Male Gaze is harmful to how women subjectively view themselves and has caused damage to how women have been forced to see themselves through a males view. This limits the woman’s freedom of sexual liberation, feminism and more. The Male Gaze has been an ongoing issue and I’m here to discuss how it’s impacted the evolution of women. Through media and through science. Representation is important and how women get to understand themselves and view is their choice. So why not talk about the historic connotations The Male Gaze has on women. Let’s start the conversation about something rarely talked about.
In Scholarly Article Perfetti-Oates, Natalie,Chick Flicks and the Straight Female Gaze: Sexual Objectification and Sex Negativity in New Moon, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Magic Mike, and Fool’s Gold, 2015, and Sherwin, Miranda,Femme Fatale in Fatal Attraction, Body of Evidence, and Basic Instinct, 2008, Gwendolyn Smith,Taking Back the Male Gaze he secret to feeling beautiful and confident, 2017 and Like a natural woman: how the female gaze is finally bringing real life to the screen, 2020 all share the common message. The effects of Male Gaze/Female Gaze. They both talk about analyzing the construction of Male Gaze/Female Gaze with proving cinema context within Author’s/Movies.
The article talks about looking through the eyes of the opposite sex. While the new articles talk only about how the female is viewed. This reflects how the female gaze and male gaze is constructed. It impacts males and females but heavily impacts females more. The non-scholarly article Like a natural woman: how the female gaze is finally bringing real life to the screen, 2020 had the same views expressed adding that more context of how women view themselves through a female lens rather than a male’s lens. The author also concluded that women still to this day don’t have an accurate/realistic perception of themselves. Stating in the article “they paint women as they are: thinking humans who are as capable of scrutinizing the world as the world is of scrutinizing them.” She wrote the female gaze focusing on females while the author who talked about the female gaze talked mainly about how males were viewed.
The Scholarly Article Perfetti-Oates, Natalie,Chick Flicks and the Straight Female Gaze: Sexual Objectification and Sex Negativity in New Moon, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Magic Mike, and Fool’s Gold, 2015 talked about a lady I never heard about Mulvey as the author talk’s about how her impact has had a change on the views of Male Gaze. This adds to the topic of sex culture and how the Female Gaze is a subject matter rarely talked about but she covers. While Femme Fatale in the Sherwin, Miranda,Femme Fatale in Fatal Attraction, Body of Evidence, and Basic Instinct, 2008 has a little more of a biased viewpoint with only talking about The Male Gaze and how the female is a fatal small role with the guys objective in the narrative a stronger role. She goes more in-depth with the cinematic tropes in the movies that make female’s over-sexualized and objectified such as stating “Fatal Attraction perfectly exemplifies the film negotiation of castration anxiety that Mulvey asserts as central to organizing spectatorial pleasure around thematically male psycho scenarios.”(Shewrwin, 2015) Accidentally I used a term and found a new term. Gwendolyn Smith, Taking Back the Male Gaze he secret to feeling beautiful and confident, 2017 sourced from the The observer culture addresses the Male Gaze using sources from “Laura Mulvey to describe the cinematic angle of a heterosexual male on a female character.”(Smith, 2018) addressing the psychological effects the male gaze has on women that most women may not be aware of.
Each article was very similar but different when gathering claims. Most of the articles sourced from the famous researcher Laura Mulvey. Even though they might not be from scholarly articles the articles I chose were from trustworthy sources. Since they were from trustworthy sources they had enough credibility to persuade with valid points.
Jacobsson, Eva Maria wrote about her opinions on the Female Gaze. Her article A female gaze (1999)? Shows her perception of the stigma surrounding this issue. She claims that the “ fatal attraction” trope used in movies has challenged the views of the Male Gaze. Which is an interesting argument to persuade her thoughts on the topic. She adds that the Male Gaze is a social construct that we cannot escape. Which I’d have to agree to disagree with.
Next, we have Body on my mind: The lingering effect of state self-objectification written by Quinn, Diane M., Rachel W. Kallen, and Christie Cathey (2006). While they study the scientific projection heavily, the male gaze mentally affects women and young girl’s lives. They study three girls while understanding the process of self-objectification because of the Male Gaze. They used an experimental approach which I thought was very unique. Their results concluded that society’s views impact women heavily without people understanding the true effects of how Male Gaze shapes young women’s views of themselves.
Since I’m a college student I wanted to read an article about the views and effects on college students. I wanted to see how maybe I could have been affected with self-reflection. The author Calogero, Rachel M with her article A test of objectification theory: The effect of the male gaze on appearance concerns in college women (2004) Studies what I wanted to see. Her article studies the psychological effects of college girls because of the effects of the male gaze. Using 150 female students to complete this study to conclude her research.
Lastly, we have the author Goddard, Kevin with the article Looks maketh the man: The female gaze and the construction of masculinity (2000). This article is from the male perspective instead of the female because I didn’t want to have a bias within my research. I wanted to understand both sides and how each gender has faults in the perception of the other. The author points out how men’s identities are closely tied to their perceptions of what they think women expect of them. Which is the opposite of the Male gaze. From research and understanding, the men and women view Female Gaze from different perceptions which confused me. I think that was shown with my previous writings. He proves his theory by using the media to back up his evidence and the pressures it comes within society.
Some articles used reasoning with experiments to conclude accurate research. Others use emotions and how they see society. The articles had enough stasis to argue their reasoning for each side. Even if they were different they each concluded that their problems in society that we have created over time. As a collective, we need to address the issues. We also need to listen to each other instead of ignoring the underlying issues. This led me to agree we all have issues male or female. No one’s issues should be ignored because of gender. We all need to reflect as a whole and just listen to each other.
The counterargument that I found may be triggering to females. The argument suggests that it’s the female’s fault for being portrayed in a certain way. The argument claims that women are at fault for what they wear in media representation. This is a problematic statement. To clarify the reasoning is that some women do take advantage of over-sexualization to please male counterparts. These women profit off of over-sexualization because sex sells. So in movies, women are objectified to sell a story or theme. It’s also the woman’s fault to a certain degree because they are the ones repeatedly damaging themselves letting this media representation happen. So the author explains both sides with having a bias. This is understandable because most of the articles are biased because they are presented to explain awareness of the Male Gaze.
This argument wasn’t very strong and it’s hard for me to justify this argument since I disagree. Understanding why this is the counterargument is to justify the reason why women are treated unfairly with the Male Gaze effect. Understanding the author’s arguments the author made it so simple to achieve equality since women have been fighting for centuries and still aren’t treated at the same level yet. Only time can tell if there will ever be equality in society since there always seems to be a problem. So thinking about it in further context males and females to a certain extent are to blame for the over-sexualization of women. Sometimes people play into things to survive but that doesn’t mean they should be treated fairly or poorly for their past actions.
Female Gaze
Sources
Perfetti-Oates, Natalie. “Chick Flicks and the Straight Female Gaze: Sexual Objectification and Sex Negativity in New Moon, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Magic Mike, and Fool’s Gold.” Gender Forum, no. 51, 2015, pp. N_A.
Sherwin, Miranda. “Deconstructing the Male Gaze: Masochism, Female Spectatorship, and the Femme Fatale in ‘Fatal Attraction’, ‘Body of Evidence’, and ‘Basic Instinct’.” The Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 35, no. 4, 2008, pp. 174–182.
Tara,Well Ph.D. “Taking Back the Male Gaze The secret to feeling beautiful and confident. Nov Psychology Today 06, 2017
Gwendolyn,Smith. “Like a natural woman: how the female gaze is finally bringing real life to the screen.” The Guardian, Sat 22 Feb 2020 09.55
Jacobsson, Eva-Maria. “A female gaze?.” (1999).
Quinn, Diane M., Rachel W. Kallen, and Christie Cathey. “Body on my mind: The lingering effect of state self-objectification.” Sex Roles 55.11–12 (2006): 869–874.
Calogero, Rachel M. “A test of objectification theory: The effect of the male gaze on appearance concerns in college women.” Psychology of women quarterly 28.1 (2004): 16–21.
Goddard, Kevin. ““Looks maketh the man”: The female gaze and the construction of masculinity.” The Journal of Men’s Studies 9.1 (2000): 23–39.
Closing words from the author
I’ve learned to listen to different arguments because they can change the meaning of how things are being intended to be expressed. I’m unsure if I’ve gotten feedback since we haven’t really had class. I don’t remember the feedback my peers gave me. I can’t really add that on. I think during the 1 on 1 session I was told I was on track. I should use the other drafts we made to build up the structure. So I changed the layout to fit the intended purpose.Overall I enjoyed this assignment, it let me grow and made me have unexpected changes. This article let me learn how to not be as subjective with my work as a writer and will further help me out on my path to journalism. Which I am grateful for with this assignment especially with the relaxed structure. Unsure if my structure is well but the counterarguments are split within each paragraph since I used Male Gaze and Female Gaze to show opposing views. Hopefully, that is clear and I added it towards the end which is a personal reflection. The personal reflection supports my views on how I made my decisions within the article without supporting evidence. I used 8 articles 4 of them are Male Gaze and 4 of them reflect the female gaze with some using data used by my colleges to understand how each impacts a female and male. I am satisfied that this evidence backs up the knowledge I’ve learned and a proper understand of the impacts of the Male Gaze and how the Female Gaze is its counterpart with inequality.