"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at"(Berger, 47). This quote has been on my mind ever since reading John Berger's, "Way of Seeing". I find myself on the subway thinking about it and low and behold, I look up and I am watching myself being looked at by a man. I found this very interesting and thought provoking. A gaze in general to me, is knowing that the same of how much you can view of others is no different than how much they can view of you.
A male gaze is a male who gazes at the other, in this case, the other is a female. This gaze is in an objectifying manner. This gaze brings upon the idea that women want to be treated as something that men can look at. Berger talks about a painting that has a women and a male lover. He states, "But the woman's attention is very rarely directed towards him. Often she looks away from him or she looks out of the picture towards the one who considers himself her true lover-the spectator-owner"(56). This description of the painting points to how she is viewed, how she feels, and how she needs a stamp of approval from her lover. Along with the male gaze, in society we are brought up with our big brothers and fathers protecting us, telling us to be safe and not allowing us, women to feel any sense of empowerment of our gender since the day we were born. Men are "stronger" in ever sense, and women? What are we?
In media, Laura Mulvey expresses that, "Although the film is really being shown, is there to be seen, conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world"(836). This idea plays a role in the "male gaze". It gives a setting where we feel we can go outside of the cinema and while we gaze at others, we will get the same pleasure. Film may have opened up new doors to a level of knowing more about the opposite sex in an overall private setting. women usually are portrayed in a sexual way to sell a product in an advertisement. This Berger King advertisement definitely grabs your attention right away, which I am sure was the point. Everything in this AD, from the words to the images don't leave anything up to imagination.
Bell Hooks describes The Oppositional Gaze, from the perspective of a black feminist, where black women have a stereotypical representation in film. She explains that growing up they were told not to give direct looks at others. "Black looks, as they were constituted in the context of social movements for racial uplift, were interrogating gazes...black viewers of movies and television experienced visual pleasure in a context where looking was also about contestation and confrontation"(117). Media was and still is extremely powerful. Having shows on T.V. with all kinds of misrepresentations of race, sex as well as many other issues, gives everyone a way to make assumptions of those who are different than them.
Equinox Advertisement. Their ads always gets me. Equinox is a gym, if I were to see this AD, I wouldn't think it was a gym.
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