What are the Gazes

What is the male gaze? Simply put, it is the view of males and their exertion of this view in the society they are embedded with in. Historically speaking, the male view has been one of oppression and  dominance of women, by creating and enforcing a system of patriarchy. To understand why this male gaze is one that still exist and continues with strength, one must consider history and its relevance in male and female relations. If you were to start history by following most religions beliefs, males were created to be dominant and females were created to serve them, of course even if you leave religion out it most early records of humans show a strict structure where women raise children and serve men with little to no value outside of those occupations. This trend continued well through history, even in America where laws were created that would theoretically make women and men equal. When this extensive history of oppression is considered, one can see why erasing a way of thinking that has been in place thousands of years can be no easy task. Broadening this scope of this inquiry, one must than consider what determines what is popular culture or what is art that should be put in museum verse art that should be on a curb? Well art is normally judged and valued by what are considered art critics and thus most boards of art museums employ and are embodied by these art critics. Now with that in consideration lets consider what gender has traditionally been and still currently holds most positions as art critics. Those who hold power rarely try to give it away, thus if men control what is considered and valued as art, men are unlikely to just change their historical pattern and give power and value to women, thus this oppression has continually made it nearly impossible for women to find value in art and why without drastic pressure from women there is little hope for changing this trend. This same principle carries over to why women are limited in their influence in popular culture. Who controls the wallet? Money is power, a point some argue but most general concur with. At stated above men have almost always and continually hold and control power in the world which therefore means that men also control money. Popular culture is made up with what is the hot trends to buy, posses, and show off. So if you are a marketer you are going to advertise your trends and products to those who control and have money or in this case men. This explains why women in popular culture are display and advertised in ways found pleasing to men, more specifically in ways that are found physically pleasing by men.  Now it should be evident why women in popular culture are always ideally beautiful and why they are always displayed in sexually attractive ways. When this is all considered, it is clear why the male gaze exist and continues to even today.
This gaze is of course not a one way looking glass, there exist an oppositional gaze. Bell Hooks wrote, "There is power in looking" while describing the relationship between a mother reprimanding her child for staring at others. She continues this ideology when she explains the serve punishment for a slave staring at an owner or other white person and that knowing these risks the slave still choose to stare. There is power to gain when one chooses to see whats around them. This power is the opposition to male gaze and the Achilles Heal to male oppression. The first step to overcoming a problem is admitting there is one, this stands very accurately for women. Women first must dare to look, and dare to see they are being oppressed as the first step to over come it. Bell Hooks came to discover this by watching how movies have continually depicted not just women but more specifically black women. Even today the role of black women is a minor role often used as comic relief, or to be a hated character as a tool to unite the audience for a different character. When women choose to watch these movies but not to see what is actually there, they are just promoting a oppression but when the view these movie with the oppositional gaze, than they gain power and the ability to bring change.  This oppositional gaze must exist not only in watching movies as Bell Hooks focuses on, but on how society views everything from art, to music, to popular culture, and even general interactions between men and women. When people dare to look they gain power from it, this power is what drives the urged to speak out against it, gives the power to unite a group against it, and drives the power that will in the end defeat it.
I too was oblivious to the existance of both gazes before entering this class, seeing neither oppression nor the ability to critically judge what i do see. From this point forward I know carry the ability to critically judge everything i see and with the oppositional gaze  judge and decide either to support or oppose it. I have no doubt that this tool will greatly assist me in the future.


A great example of what the gaze of young Bell Hooks might appear like


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