The Male & Oppositional Gaze

The male gaze for hundreds of years now has always been powerful, a gaze that establishes a power dynamic between men and women. Its a pervasive look, where the man trys to see what's underneath the garments that the women has on, as well as a look filled with control and power and an analytical look where the man tries to figure out and begins to assume what the women is like. The control comes from many years in which women were just the object in a painting, in film, and in photos. The men painting, filming or taking the picture controlled the female and had her in any kind of position that was pleasing for him. The pervasive side stems from many centuries of men depicting women naked, and as time has progressed, it isn't as socially acceptable as it was before. The analytical part of the look comes from the man attempting to figure the woman out, to see what she's about.

Due to the power that the male gaze holds, women watch themselves in order to uphold the standards by which society holds them to. "A woman must continually watch herself" (Berger 46).  A woman must be able to cook, clean, do laundry, be a good spouse, be able to have children, nurture the children, dress decently, has to sit with her legs crossed, etc. These are all examples of what society holds women accountable to, so therefore men have power in how women should behave, should act and should be. The male gaze analyzes the woman and determines if she is capable of doing all that, which allows the man to see if she's a good partner for him.

The pervasive aspect of the look comes from how attractive the woman may appeal to the man. The way she walks, she talks, what she wears and how she presents herself. Men have always been physical beings who enjoy touching, enjoy seeing as opposed to women who are often portrayed as emotional beings. "Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder" (Berger 48). The beholder here is the man, which is why there exists such a large volume of nude illustrations of women in art and why so many magazines feature women who are most of the time half-naked. This appeals to the many men who gaze at the many women found in many art exhibitions and magazines such as playboy, and 85% of the nudes found in the metropolitan museum being female.



Maxim January 2012 Edition

The image above is used to further emphasize how the male gaze has affected media and what and how something such as the Maxim magazine becomes published.

http://www.dailystab.com/jwoww-covers-maxims-january-2012-issue/

 

The oppositional gaze is a gaze which opposes something or someone. This is characterized by Hooks to be "an overwhelming longing to look, a rebllious desire, the oppositional gaze" (Hooks 116). Its a gaze that many slave owners, many white folk in the 19th and 20th century's have recieved from tons of African American's in those years. Its a gaze that opposes, as well as challenges the power that the white folk had over the black folk during that time period. Despite reforms taking place before the 20th century for racial equality, they were just words written on paper, the actions that took place thereafter however determined that reform was slow and that there were many outlets for people to continue racial injustice or discrimination such as film.

That gaze has developed over time due to the amount of racial discrimination which was present in media throughout the course of the past century. As stated by Hooks, movies portrayed black women as being nothing like they are in reality. In cinema they were nothing more than amusement for the audience, mostly whites, something akin to a Jim Crow character. This is where the development took place, instead of the gaze being directed to white folk as a form to rebel against their oppression. It was now directed to the many forms of media which  depicted black women incorrectly, challenging the many films and series of media, no longer accepting of that image that described them incorrectly.