Male Gaze

Ronald Solano

Art and Women

Male Gaze Paper

February 11, 2020



As a man I understand the power of the male gaze, I understand that in its root, it is how women are depicted in culture, media, art and more through the male lens. Women are often portrayed as figures of desire, objects waiting to be claimed by the man, and made to entice you. What people failed to realize in the past is that women are more than these outdated stereotype for women which depict them anything but a human being who has their own rights, they would be represented as a docile voluptuous being. Growing up, I’ve always seen the male gaze represented literally almost everywhere, everything from advertisement, newspapers, magazines, tv, movies, and music. Women are always depicted as objects of sex and submissiveness; companies and media always use popular women from television and media to sell their products.

For example, I remember a few years ago when Harry Potter became popular and the movies were doing amazing and everyone loved Hermione because she was so strong, independent and smart. She was recognized for her personality and achievements, as she grew older everyone still praised Hermione for her wits and intelligence. Then almost immediately once she got old enough, I started noticing that male artists would start to depict Hermione in a more sexual way in their artwork, while artwork is free to be expressive it is concerning to see that once actresses become of a legal age, men feel free to begin to sexualize them, and that it not always the case, men try to sexualize women even from a younger age. Even now people still use child stars who have grown up and sexualize them for more attention. I remember a few years ago the movie “The Bling Ring”, 2013, got famous for this one scene of Emma Watson dancing seductively on the dance floor. Everyone was freaking out about it and then recently they added the movie to Netflix and guess what the promotional image was. Although she is not displayed as docile it is still in the nature of using women as sexual objects.



Emma Watson, Bling Ring, 2013, Netflix







I believe that because of this chosen display of women, men are more inclined than they already are to predate on women. This imagery and “locker-room talk” of how women are supposed to be, submissive, an object to be desired, made to satisfy the needs of men does not help anyone. This imagery of women that has been used for years just send the wrong message of who women are and their capabilities, I feel like it has been conditioned into the mind of men that women will be as submissive and sexual as they are in media. It is so bad that women do not feel safe walking alone at night as men pass by. As a gay man, I hope I don’t in some way impose the idea that I am going to sexually assault them. It reminds me of this one video a gay man created about his experience with walking past girls walking alone at night.

https://twitter.com/theyansterr/status/1206365358182944768?s=12

(Not an image but a video)

“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight” (Berger 47).


This quotation by Berger explains it best, because of the history of the male gaze and how women have been portrayed, men and women are conditioned to think like this now. It’s become so popular because of how we started, men took over and women were barely given any rights, they were seen as caretakers and only needed to carry a child and take care of their husbands. Over the years it has gotten better, but it still is not enough, it does not help that sex sells and women are used for marketing strategies.

“Keeping male and females from telling the truth about what happens to them in families is one way patriarchal culture is maintained. A great majority of individuals enforce an unspoken rule in the culture as a whole that demands we keep the secrets of patriarchy, thereby protecting the rule of the father” (hooks 24).
I see that this is a very common practice in homes, and I see this happen in numerous households, especially coming from a Latino household, my mother practices some of these patriarchal views herself unconsciously but other times she also calls them out and stops them.

Work Cited:

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972.

Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Washington Square Press, 2005.