Intent Look.

I might not be a female, but I was born out of a great women. Growing up with three females at home, my mother and my two sisters. In which I had always had a fear of disrespecting a women in any sort of way. In which I too wouldn't want to see any one of my sisters or my own mother. These readings, have help me shape my views better on not just caring for females in my household, but for every female I will come across. The way media portrays females as subjects and objects are now more than ever very devastating to me.

The male gaze is when females are portrayed as subjects for the satisfaction of a male audience. In Ways of Seeing “One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Man look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between man and women but also the relation of women to themselves” (John Berger, 47).  Berger states how the appearance of women equals the presence of a man. The stated fact that women and their bodies are what men demand and are a custom to. the idea for women to be shown as such since the times of Adam and Eve. “She is not naked as she is. She is naked as the spectator sees her” (John Berger, 50). Women's bodies become an object or subject, Adam and Eve had no idea they were naked until they both took a bit of the apple, in which they became nude. In today's society being naked is now illegal, to be portrayed as being naked is bad, yet being nude is what really is harmful. It's the difference of being naked and nude. Being nude is to show love to yourself, to be a viewer of yourself. Being nude is to be the subject and let others, in this case the men to be the viewers of the subject or object. On ads of high-end clothing lines, in which all models are slim and their image are manipulated to look like the ideal woman. Another example that do not represent how real women are is reality TV.

(Dove Campaign versus the Victoria Secret Campaign is

the difference between being Naked and Nude.)

It is a pervasive form of vision in popular culture because as boys become men in a society where women are portrayed as subjects, it seems like a very “common” idea for a boy growing up with such a state of mind.  “To indoctrinate boys into the role of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings.” (Bell Hooks, 22)  Patriarchy is how gender roles are played out, how a boy should act, how a girl should be. Hooks, tells the reader that boys don't always say how they feel and what they feel. Maybe if they truthfully show the real them, then other would portray them as not being ‘manly’ enough. The fact that boys don’t cry, just for the fact that they shouldn’t express their feelings. That a young girl is limit to how she can act and what she can play with or the way she can dress. There is a thick line between being a male and female or a boy or a girl that teaches children at a very young age not to cross that line and stay within its boundaries. 

(The way most parents raise their children, 

without the knowledge of Patriarchy.)

“Not only will I stare. I want my look to change reality.” (Bell Hooks, 116) The Oppositional Gaze, is the point of view of a black female as Bell Hooks herself looking into the male gaze and realizing that there is more than just a female subject and a male viewer. There is race involved in the oppositional gaze. Hooks could not completely relate to just the male gaze itself, because she being a black female and  had a different view in which she felt that her race does play a huge part into this. A great example of this is a character in a film in which an audience member can relate to. Disney movies always had a white princess until a couple of years ago. The film must be full of diversity, in which more people could relate, different races or even same sexes.

After looking into all of these readings, I was able to understand the meaning of patriarchy, and how this has an impact on the male gaze. How the male gaze has an impact on the oppositional gaze. As I too was raised in a patriarchy society, in which as a child, I used to hear people say “this is for girls or this is how boys should play”. Even in all those twelve years of school, it was so narrow on what a boy and a girl could do, for the fact of doing something different, people were to judge. Reading about the male gaze does indeed have a great impact to realize, how the media portrays it. I do consume different type’s media on a daily basis, and never really realized how bad a women was portrayed. The oppositional gaze, I could relate to because I am a consumer of media, I do look for views to relate to.  With patriarchy, I learned that as a man, it is alright to express the feelings felt inside and never to hold them back.

Ted Talk Cameron Russell

Citation:

Bibliography
1. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting : Penguin, 1972. 
2. Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End, 1992.
3. Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Atria, 2004.