Gazing, a Reflective Problem of Perspective

Credit: youaredoingthatwrong.com

The issue of the male gaze is one that is not only prevalent in today's society, it pervades the lives of anybody that has even paid attention to an advertisement, even unknowingly (adverts are everywhere these days...).  John Berger points out in "Ways of Seeing" that the male gaze has been alive and well since the renaissance in which it was most blatantly represented in nude paintings. The male gaze objectifies the female subject which is on display as it were. The female subject is without an identity, feeling, or power of her own. She exists solely to please the viewer as an object of beauty Berger continues.

One of the more interesting phenomena is that the male gaze is not only used by men towards women, but by women on themselves. This, perhaps ironically, is probably the epitome of the male gaze. So powerful is it that it is able to make women look at themselves in order to see themselves as the object that is to be put on display for men. During renaissance times, this phenomenon was portrayed by having a nude woman painted from the point of view of a voyeur gazing at her while she is admiring herself in her hand mirror in a portrait given the name "Vanity". While we as our present day media empowered selves might scoff at this, companies have subverted this phenomenon into the media that we are constantly consuming.

Photo Credit: TX Creative Blog

Take an imaginary walk through midtown Manhattan. You pass through Times Square (I know this is a bit of a stretch because most denizens of New York that I know generally avoid the place like the plague if they can help it) and you can't help but be overtaken by the sheer amount of simultaneous advertising that bombards your being. Flashing billboards are basically screaming at you to buy their products, ooh look over there! You see an impossibly attractive, thin, female figure gracing the enormous building front of the American Eagle store obviously and loudly displaying their new line of lingerie (this example may or may not be hypothetical here depending on the quality of my memory and the items that American Eagle may or may not sell, but stick with me here and pretend that what I'm saying is correct). The average human being is probably not thinking this, but the woman in that advertisement is being portrayed as an object with the intent to attract viewers (which it does) and increase the population in the AE ladies' unmentionables department (which it probably did). And this ad works its "magic" so effectively because women view this subject as an achievable ideal by reflecting the male gaze on themselves (see? we came full circle!) even though the only male involvement was probably, if not definitely, in the creation of the ad to attract women.

Interestingly enough, this ad effects men as well. While the advertisement so eloquently presented above (if I do say so myself) was, in its essence, targeted at women, men are also drawn to look at it because of the male gaze inherent in their being (duh...) even though the advertisement is not targeted at them. This gaze emblazons an impossibly idealized image of a woman into his brain. The woman he sees has no identity, and only exists to serve his desire (as Berger states) by giving the impression that she (this fictional character which is now in the male gaze the representative of womankind) is "available" to him. This causes men to view women as an object that will always be "available" and "attractive". And to add insult to injury, the very media which we consume is dependent on these displays, creating an ouroboros effect (or chicken and the egg, whatever works for you) where the beast which is advertising is constantly feeding itself to itself while only growing more powerful.

This brings me to another gaze indirectly brought about by the male gaze. The oppositional gaze is critical of the representation of other gazes. In Bell Hook's case, watching white people, or the white portrayal of black people on television. "We laughed at television shows like Our Gang and Amos n' Andy, at these white representations of blackness, but we also looked at them critically." Because Hooks was not represented in those television shows, as an outsider she was able to criticize them from an angle opposite the perspective and intended audience of the show. The oppositional gaze is important because once we as the targets of advertisers realize that we are being shown images that create an impossible ideal, we will be outsiders who can criticize and oppose the advertisements which seek to exploit the insatiable desires they create.

Case in point, it's pretty easy to have an oppositional gaze when male and female roles are reversed in advertising.