Ways of Seeing/Viewing

       The male gaze is the idea that “men act and woman appear,” (Berger, 47). It’s the idea that if you are looking you are male and if you are being looked at you are female. In the old times when artist would paint a picture of nude woman it was always assumed that the female was an object, or sight. The male was the spectator, the owner of the image. They assumed ownership of the object, which would be the female body. “ To be born a woman has been to be born within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men,” (Berger, 46). This idea of the male gaze has prospered due to the everlasting patriarchal system that is currently in place. From early on even in the biblical structure as Berger described to us, a gender dichotomy is set up.

This is an image of singer Rihanna
from the 2014 issue of Esquire. The singer is
shown in nothing but jeans on a magazine that
has a large male readership, the male
gaze is in effect 100%.

This idea of the male gaze has become a pervasive form of vision in popular culture. We can always see the female body used as a way of attracting consumers.  The female body does not have to have connection to anything that it is being promoted but will be used to market. We see this all the time in advertisements, music videos, etc. Lets take Kim Kardashian's Super Bowl Commercial, the commercial was supposed to promote T-Mobile’s new Data stash plan, but instead focused on Kim’s body more so then the plan.  Similarly in movies we always get a close up of the female’s bottom no matter if it has nothing to do in context to the scene, this can be seen through out such films as The Wolf of Wall street.  This is a common tool used in today’s media.
  The oppositional gaze is a way of challenging the male gaze, by viewing what’s put fourth in a different light. Bell Hooks comes in contact with the oppositional gaze while viewing a movie in the movie theatre in which she had no connection to. After viewing in as an outsider she had a different take then she probably would have had as someone with connection to what was portrayed on the screen. “Mainstream feminist film criticism in no way acknowledges black female spectatorship,” (Hooks, 123).  As a black female looking in on the movie industry Hooks was able to come to the conclusion that black females are not vivid in the movie business.  But then again the movie industry is dominated predominantly with men. “Feminist literary critics have already made a firm decision that gender shapes signature and that there is an aesthetic difference in the way in which gendered signatures right,” (Melvey, 110). An example of the oppositional gaze can be seen in the film Mean Girls, where we the viewers are introduced to what is termed girl world through the eyes of the movies protagonist who is a complete outsider.

This is a scene from the film Wolf of Wall Street,
in which we see a female in nothing but
undergarments and money plastered all over her body.
The male gaze is once again in effect.

  The media business being male dominated it is easy to see how the male gaze come in in to the foreground. Those of us who are users of the oppositional gaze need to inflict others to use it. Not only is it degrading to use the female body as an object simply of lust. It is dehumanizing to females as a whole. It leaves us to be seen as simply objects rather than human beings. It only adds on to the patriarchy political status, which put males in a higher status than woman. We need to dismantle this male gaze in order to achieve any type of equality among the sexes, in terms of viewer representation.
Before taking this class and reading any of the assigned readings I never noticed how much the female body is used to market. I also did not notice how little of an appearance we make in movies. After reading Bell Hooks and myself being a woman on mixed nationality, it shined light on how much color limits representation. If being a woman alone made you get little camera time. Being one of color gave you little to none. Being of Latino and West Indian decent, whenever females of my race are presented, which we limitedly are, we are put in supporting roles such as maids or slaves. This prejudice not only to females but of ethnic females needs to be put to an end.
               
Works Cited:
 Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting : Penguin, 1972. 
 Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End, 1992.

 Mulvey, L. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18. Web.