The male gaze is described in different ways by different people, it is also perceived differently according to personal experience.  Its general description would be how a male looks at a woman, how each look has its own meaning, and how a man is expected and allowed to give such looks.  Men are known as the stronger and dominant gender and they are taught growing up that a woman is more like an object to admire. 

Berger and Hooks discuss it a lot.  I have to admit Berger did catch my attention more.  Berger says, "Men look at women" (47).  indeed no matter where you go, it is almost impossible to not find a man looking at a women and it is usually a look of sexual desire. Berger shows how men painted naked women for the eyes of other men, no one saw it as immoral, but it was seen as art. That is what i see is the male gaze.  

On the other hand, the oppositional look is where Hook makes more of a point, while Berger touches on slightly.  Hook talks about African American women and how they saw themselves.  They used movies and other media options to see themselves.  She says, "Black female spectators have had to develop looking relations within a cinematic context that constructs our appearance as absence, that denies the "body" of the black female so as to perpetuate white supremacy and with it s phallocentic spectatorship  where the woman to be looked at and desired is "white" (118).  Yes, women indeed objectify themselves as much as men do to them.  It is what they were taught.

Berger says, "Women watch themselves being looked at... The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female  Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" (47).  This emphasizes what Hook says, women mold themselves into an object, a simple sight for the delights of men.  

This made more sense to me than i expected, i did not think i could relate this issue within society to art.  Yes, all around was pictures of naked women, but in my mind women did allow such thing. Media even made by women, form the woman's body into a sight.  Now i realize more than before is that women are raised to believe it is okay to be a sight.  Only the inner woman is who would make the decision to allow such a thing or not.  No matter where a woman goes she does not feel comfortable in her own skin, because of the simple fact that she is always being watched.  That is something i can apply to myself.  Even jobs decide to hire women with sharp features because women are sights.  The better the sight, the better the sale.  I am a woman who simply refuses to be a sight.

This is a link that talks all about the male gaze and is the source of my image:http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/faq-what-is-the-%E2%80%9Cmale-gaze%E2%80%9D/

http://rookiemag.com/2011/09/male-gaze/