The
male gaze is giving the audience perspective of a man. The gaze is simply
revealing the women’s best attributes for example the eyes, butt and breast.
The male gaze is very popular among this generation because everything that is
publicized and brought to media, pop culture has a huge impact on the people.
When thinking of the gaze old Hollywood movies and glamour time period is
mostly mentioned.
In
Bell Hooks “The Oppositional Gaze” she references “There is power in looking
(Bell Hooks 115)” but her essay refers more to the African American standard of
the gaze. She explains the challenges of authority and resistance of terror
during childhood. When Hooks explains a mother giving her child “the eye” its
instantly reminds many of the authority whites had during slavery, with that
thought in mind but now we use this term more so with just women.
Movies
like Pretty Women, Diary of a Mad Black Women and Mean Girls are all movies
that demonstrate the oppositional gaze in many different perspectives. In Pretty Women you have the
ideal beautiful white woman that has one of the unsatisfying careers of
prostitution and a man takes her and makes her into the women he perceives she
can be. This movie is a huge example of how men dominate woman and their lives.
Diary
of a Mad Black Women concentrates more on the logic of Bell Brooks theory of
how black women are looked upon. More so in the African American community
women discriminate amongst themselves. “ A woman must continually watch
herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself” so
if anyone strikes competition within the gender.
I
came to understand these structures by just watching and observing the common
things around me. Everyday the gaze is spoken about without realizing. In my
community the male gaze is something that women actually want, its sad to know
that a lot of African American women seek the approval of a man and how he
views her. Without recognizing the impact it has on the person she is trying to
become.
Within the media I always realized that women are not represented as
they should be but I think that we have a lot to do with the continuous cycle
of misrepresentation. We allow the media and males to take full advantage of
our biggest assets. In order to change this problem many will have to
understand and realize what it is doing to ourselves.
I agree with what your saying about making change and realizing that in order to affect change we must be aware of how we play into these misrepresentations and what it is doing to ourselves.
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