The Male Gaze

   The male gaze referrers an active man's looking at women presenting ownership, which means power. Male gaze represents social structure and power relationship between male and female in society - those who hold power and those who are under power. The representations of male and female through media reflect this active and passive relationship. Mulvey indicates the function and role both male and female play in cinema. She introduces the pleasure structures of man's looking in cinema; "The first, scopophilic arises from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. The second, developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identification of the subject". (Mulvey 836) While male satisfies their desire by looking at an object (women), the function of female is being seen as an object to satisfy the male scopophilic instinct and the ego libido; "the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium". (Mulvey 838)


   Berger focuses on oil pairings in terms of the gender relationship - male as an active audience or artists themselves who satisfy their greed by looking at their art, and women as receiver of the male's looking. He points out the difference of nakedness and nudity; women's nakedness is to be herself, while nudity objectifies female body, which is built upon the male gaze. Nudity is consist of a mutual relationship between the women in the painting who are perceived, and the male spectators who are looking at the women. "to be naked is simply to be without clothes, whereas the nude is a form of art." (Berger 53) In other words, nudity of paintings is a permission to men's demand. This idea signifies that women are only valuable to be seen because how they show themselves determines how they will be treated by men. "the 'ideal' spectator is always assumed to be  male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him". (Berger 64)

    Although the male gaze is toward women, the gaze only targets a specific group of female. Oppositional gaze referrers the ignored presence of black women. It has developed opposed to the norm of society and the representations of those norms by media. Bell Hooks introduces the black female spectatorship and subjectivity in films. Even though black male broke the wall of white supremacy in Hollywood films, black female had or has been dehumanized and represented as victim at most of the time. The representations of different class, gender and race was a reflection of "real-life" situation; "white womanhood was the radicalized sexual difference occupying the place of stardom in mainstream narrative film." (Hooks 122) Even in the feminist films, they only focus on unequal representations of male and white female, rather than focus on female of all races; "'women' when it in actuality it speaks about white women". (Hooks 123) Black female identification was ignored which built  negative consciousness of black female spectator that they were afraid of pointing out their identification in films. "The extent to which black women feel devaluated, objectified, dehumanized in this society determines the scope and texture of their looking relations" (Hooks 127) Hollywood has constructed the norm of white supremacy in films, and it has eventually perpetuated in society, which even developed the ignorance of specific group of female - the oppositional gaze.

Women Only Carriage Sign

   As this discussed in class, the male gaze sometimes produces women's fear in daily life, which men usually do not feel - fear of sexual assault. What was interesting about the discussion was that somebody pointed out the fear that women felt on subway. That makes me recall women only carriage system during rush hour in the morning in Japan. Since sexual molestation in metropolitan cities have been a controversial issue, this women only carriage system is offered on the purpose of preventing women's targeted sexual molestation. It had introduced and received the profound media attention, and it has succeeded in providing the awareness of the fear women have in daily life. However, some critique raised from a perspective of male discrimination. From my perspective, I believe that male do not feel the fear or danger to same extent, in terms of being targeted as sexual assault. Yet, at the same time, I understand it is a male discrimination from men's perspective, claiming women's being given too much preferential treatment during excess jam-packed train, in which anybody feel stress and obnoxious. But to be honest, I was really glad when the system was introduced because I felt more safety and less stress without male passengers. Moreover, I believe it really helps preventing the sexual molestation and relieving women's stress by the fear of the sexual molestation.


After reading 3 materials and class discussion, I try to observe the representations of male and female which are designed based on the power relationship, and plays different functions in media. I do not really come up with the good examples of media that significantly represent the gender relationship because we are unconsciously affected profoundly by media, which enhance and accelerate to construct "norms" which will then be perpetuated in society. But this idea helps me to understand the tendency that female models are much more appeared or featured in magazines, compared to male models. In addition, those representations of female models are conveyed as an ideal female figure, which introduces how women are supposed to be and how they should be looked at, and even what the "beauty" is.
I am interning for a new fashion magazine, which is directed by Japanese male editor. We had a casting process of cover model last week, and in the director's mind, the cover model had to be a white thin model with blond hair. Therefore, he eliminated several models who were not fit with the qualifications of those features. This experience makes me realize how the "norm" is already constructed and prevailed, and what is considered beautiful, which leads the attraction for  audience to buy the magazine. Those representations has a power to think how do we identify ourselves as a women.

Kate Moss as
White Female Ideal Figure

Magazine Cover
Representation of Norm
White, Thin and Blond

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". 1975.

Berger, John. "Ways of Seeing". BBC Four-Part Television Series. 1972.

Hooks, Bell. "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators". In Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, 1992.