The Male Gaze and The Oppositional Gaze

The problem of women being treated as objects rather than seeing their intellectual activities has always become the inevitable concern in this society. Seems like men don’t get the blame or be judged on certain things but women do because the majority thinks this is concerned as unappropriated action for women and they should stay on men’s back. After all, what’s more, deep inside human consciousness, the human society is still under the control of patriarchy that makes women look so vulnerable and silent. In Berger’s article, “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 women in herself s male; the surveyed female”(Berger 47). We can see how women are portrayed in the society and women’s appearances are the privilege for men to decide whether to keep in touch or no. In the reading, looking through the example of criticism of many paintings with a nude woman with different nude gestures suggests how men painters consider these types of appearances as the sign of beauty and to entertain themselves. When discussing the “Vanity” painting by Memling during the early Renaissance period, the author states “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you out a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure”(Berger 51). That is, men create those women characters in order to entertain themselves and satisfy their sexual imaginations and if the painted woman was with clothes, men would have thought a complete different way and probably won’t attracted by the painting because what matters is women have good body shape or look “beautiful” enough to attract men’s sights rather than looking at the inner side of her. 

This is the cartoon from Cartoonstock that explains
how the man is giving job opportunity based on
the woman's appearance. 

The male gaze is the stereotype that trapped women from what they are seeking for, equality. “..but because the ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumbed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him”(Berger 64). That’s how we can see women are spending hours doing their makeup and get ready for hanging out and guys are wondering why girls take so much time on dressing up, what they won’t probably be thinking of is that girls try so hard on their looks in order to fit to a guy and guys like girls that have big boobs or skinny waists. In the 2009 documentary “Picture me: A Model’s Diary” by Sara Ziff, the fashion model and Ole Schell. The documentary talks about the untold story behind Sara’s modeling career and some details were shown about how these women models have been treated like “machines and objects”. Models are asked to keep losing weight even though they were already super skinny. Some of them may get fired by the agency because they gained four pounds of weight or they couldn’t fit into the runway clothes. What’s bad is that they sometimes get sexually harassed by the male photographer and if they don’t obey the rules their photo shoot might get canceled and that does affect their careers. Some male photographers use the chance and take some unappropriated photos of the models and force them not to spread things out. Even though a lot of people or feminists criticize about the model industry what’s sad about these models are that they don’t get treated nicely and appearance seems all that matters of being chosen on the runway show or fashion campaign. 

This is American Eagle's "Back to school" campaign and has seen the
retailer "accused of "fuelling Lolita fantasies" and "rampant sexism" for
showing a model beinding over in one of its mini-skirts"(from The Independent UK report).

The oppositional gaze is somehow related to the male gaze but more specific since this is mainly focusing on racism on black women. Bell Hooks describes in her article “The Oppositional Gaze” that how black people can watch white people on the television without getting blamed and talks for the black women that “We are afraid to talk about ourselves as spectators because we have been so abused by ‘the gaze’”(Hooks, 125). Black women couldn’t be shown on the movies because their race speaks for their identity in the old times and even if they were, they always played as some ignorant characters in order to set off the white female characters. As the example the authors talks about watching “Amos ‘n’ Andy” and “Sapphire”, the black female character didn’t impress her a lot because “She was even then backdrop, there to soften images of black men..to a white audience..her black female image was not the body of desire.”(Hooks 120). White supremacy is what makes black people, especially black women so vulnerable and lower their social stances without any persuasive reason. The oppositional gaze insert another problem which the male gaze doesn’t have is the racism and the issue of inequality among women in general is as important as the concern for black people. After that, Hooks states the example of two black characters Louise and Maggie in the film “Passion of Remembrance”, both of the characters defined the gaze as “Looking at one another, staring in mirrors, they appear completely focused on their encounter with black femaleness. How they see themselves is most important, not how they will be stared at others”(Hooks 130). I especially love the last line because this shows there is no need to struggle about how other people see you. Everyone has their own lives and as women, we need to live with our own satisfactions not to satisfy the men. 

Work Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting : Penguin, 1972. 
Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End, 1992.