“Understanding Media: Theory and Everyday Life”
LIKE BAIT-THE MALE GAZE ONLINE.
( THE WORLD BEAUTY )
Thinness became the standard for beauty, and women and man were expected to have considerable curves, and if look at pictures of great beauties. The materialism and power dressing of the affluent, glossy, the relentless idealisation of the thin body underpinned by the billion dollar FASHION,cosmetic and slimming industries.(sarah Gamble). Kilbourne (2002) pointed out that advertising is a 100 billion dollar a year industry. Each day we are exposed to more than 2000 ads. Advertising can be one of the most powerful sources of education in society. Many women feel pressured to conform to the beauty standards of our culture and are willing to go to great lengths to manipulate and change their faces and bodies. Kilbourne suggests that women are conditioned to view their faces as masks and their bodies as objects. Through the mass media, women discover that their bodies and faces are in need of alteration, augmentation, and disguise. In addition, women are taught to internalize an observer’s perspective of their own bodies. This phenomenon is called objectification (Fredrickson & Noll, 1997).
Self-objectification comes at a high price for women in the form of disorders and other maladies of objectification. Scholarship on this subject is relatively new and sparse, but nonetheless compelling. Scholars who have measured the effects of self-objectification -- girls/women seeing themselves through the lens of the male gaze – find that this perspective is positively related to a variety of mental health disorders, including clinical unipolar depression (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997; Muehlenkamp and Saris-Baglama, 2002), “habitual body monitoring” leading to eating disorders (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997; Noll and Fredrickson, 1998; Muehlenkamp and Saris-Baglama, 2002), body shame, diet restriction, symptoms of anorexia and bulimic (Noll and Fredrickson, 1998), and “disgust and shame” about their menstrual cycles and other bodily functions (Roberts, 2004). “[S]elf-objectification has a direct relationship to restrictive eating, bulimic, and depressive symptoms” (Muehlenkamp and Saris-Baglama, 2002).
Furthermore, girls/women who are preoccupied with their appearance, known as “gaze anticipation,” have more body shame and “social physique anxiety” (Calogero, 2004).In short, girls and women who monitor themselves through the eyes of the male gaze (which many if not all girls/women do to some extent), constantly think about their bodies and physical presentation, deny themselves food, have anxiety about their bodies and bodily functions, and are likely to develop eating disorders and depression. Media images that present waif-thin women to emulate are contributing to these mental health issues by offering unreasonable standards of thinness, but the bigger issue here is the paradigm presented in media that women/girls are expected to place their value on how they stack up in the eyes of the male gaze.
One of the most interesting side effects of objectification and women’s self-objectification is sexual dysfunction or sexual malfunction. According to Fredrickson and Roberts (1997), women who self-objectify are more likely to habitually monitor their bodies, and situations of nudity are cause for anxiety which can limit sexual activities and pleasure. Women who are preoccupied with how their bodies look in sexual positions are less engaged in the activity than they could be, and are probably less comfortable with more “revealing” sexual positions. . Why, men look at women. Pearce has discovered the male gaze. A key aspect of feminist theory, the male gaze reflects the way that male power is brought to bear on women through the disciplining of the female body. Essentially, men look and women are looked at – and so it behoves women to be what men want to look at, since that gives them some modicum of power in a male-dominated world.( Dustin Wax)
In Mulvey's 1975 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey introduced the second-wave feminist concept of "male gaze" as a feature of gender power asymmetry in film. The concept was present in earlier studies of the gaze but it was Mulvey who brought it to the forefront. Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera. Hollywood films played to the models of voyeurism and scopophilia. The concept has subsequently been influential in feminist film theory and media studies.
The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may linger over the curves of a woman's body, for instance. The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as the spectator who is watching the film. The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of 'patriarchal' order and it is often seen in "illusionistic narrative film". Mulvey argues that, in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze, reflecting an underlying power asymmetry.According to Mulvey: “In a world of sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.
Roger Vadim’s Barbarella (1968) was made during the evolution of the feminist movement. One could possibly suggest that this was a reaction from patriarchy to the women's liberation movement; if they weren't going to be victims, then they would have to be objects. This Hollywood science fiction narrative sends out many stir ups on the male gaze, which I will elaborate later. Barbarella, played by the sex symbol of the 1960’s Jane Fonda (Eric, 2000), represents the human race was set on a mission to find Durand-Durand. Durand-Durand, played by Milo O’Shea, is a missing scientist who holds a thread to planet earth. Set in the year 40,000AD, Barbarella encounters men during her mission and even goes about sexually pleasing them by engaging in sexual-like activities with them in order to get her closer to Durand-Durand.
Mulvey's essay also states that the female gaze is the same as the male gaze. This means that women look at themselves through the eyes of men. The male gaze may be seen by a feminist either as a manifestation of unequal power between gazer and gazed, or as a conscious or subconscious attempt to develop that inequality. From this perspective, a woman who welcomes an objectifying gaze may be simply conforming to norms established to benefit men, thereby reinforcing the power of the gaze to reduce a recipient to an object. (The "Male Gaze" in Feminist Theory)
The world of ‘beauty’ was used to mean ‘women’, and even today most of us apply the world ‘beautiful ‘to women. It is attended by female. We can recognize how that might make women feel, and adjust our actions accordingly. We might call other men out on it. We might help create a world where the literal male gaze isn’t just one more hazard to be figured in while walking through the world. Many beautiful women in the world. these women are selected from beautiful supermodels, fashion, movies, music, and other arenas are filled with exquisite women each unique not only in respect of them talents but also in terms of their looks.
Women are tougher and stronger, smarter and more intuitive than men in many ways.. I truly believe that men and women are equal. Women are better than man. Women are just as strong as men in both physical, mentally and emotional.
Reference
· The "Male Gaze" in Feminist Theory In Mulvey's 1975,
· Bandura, A., 1997. Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. Freeman: New York.
· Bazzini, Doris G., 1997. “The Aging Women in Popular Film: Underrepresented, Unattractive, Unfriendly, and Unintelligent.” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, April.
· Meghan Murphy,(2012) Support The F Word and Vancouver's Co-op Radio
· Mulvey, Laura (1975) ”Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in Mulvey, L. (1989) Visual and Other Pleasures*
· Anonymous ( 2009) PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey
Originally Published - Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975/
· Calogero, Rachel M., 2004. “A Test of Objectification Theory: The Effect of the Male Gaze on Appearance Concerns in College Women.” Psychology of Women Quarterly.
· Scott A. Lukas, Ph.D,The Gender ADs Project, The Male Gaze
· (BOOK) An introductory guide to cultural theory popular culture, john storey
· (BOOK) THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO Feminism and Postfeminism Edited Sarah Gamble
· The Male Gaze Independent Study
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