The Male Gaze and Patriarchy

Karan Patel

The Male Gaze

In “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger writes on the male gaze, which is the manner in which the arts depict the world (but mainly women) in the masculine point of view. John Berger explicates the description by saying “One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. 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” (Berger 47). By what John Berger means by this is that women are denied to be the judges of themselves and they are also objectified by men into being purely pleasurable for their own sight. In other words, he states that men portray women through the media in a method that allows them to satisfy themselves by depicting them in a sexually revealing appearance. Berger condemns the male gaze by using multiple paintings as as examples. One of these is examples is the painting Vanity. He states “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure” (Berger 51). Berger explains that the male artist was hypocritical for painting Vanity since he basically painted the woman because he was excited to see her naked and then put a mirror in her hand and called her vain for telling her to pose in such a manner.

Personally, the topic of the male gaze really made me have a self realization to the way media is always portraying women. I always knew that females were objectified when I saw commercials with women barely wearing any clothing in an a sad attempt to appeal for a greater and wider male audience for a cologne product. But I never truly realized how deeply it ran. For example, I used to watch Japanese anime ever since I was a child, however, I never realized how deeply the male gaze was rooted in it. In this image of an anime girl in a red dressed with her heels off and keeping her arms open which appeal to a young male demographic since it signals a symbol of availability. This type of the male gaze (which I now realize is more or less a form of objectification of women for appeal in the male audience) is used in other types of the media such as tv shows, commercials, music etc. all to satisfy the masculine visual desire. When next I see a form of the media utilizing the male gaze I'll think twice about whether it's actually worth indulging in.

In “The Will to Change” by Bell Hooks, the male dominating system of patriarchy is dissected and torn apart showing its most darkest parts. Patriarchy is defined by Bell Hooks as “a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence” (Hooks 18). While this definition might suffice on giving a brief description on what patriarchy is, it does not begin to explore all the horrors and injustices that it truly brings. Hooks begins this by telling the story of when she was younger and used to play marbles with her brother. Playing marbles was seen more as a “boys-only game,” and was looked down upon by her father when he walked in watching his daughter play a more masculine game with her brother, which goes against the system of patriarchy since females shouldn’t behave ‘tough” or “masculine”. Hooks’ father talked to her brother and told her never to let her play again and when Hooks’ became infuriated (which was another thing apparently only boys could do) her father broke a board out of the screen door and proceeded to beat her with it as a punishment. Once display of brutal violence was over, her mother walked in not only to comfort her pain, but reinforce her father’s patriarchal lesson by soothingly stating “I tried to warn you. You need to accept that you are just a little girl and girls can’t do what boys do” (Hooks 21). Her point in this was to say that it is not only male role that enforce patriarchy to suppress female strength, free will, and power, but that it is also the female role in the system to reinforce these teachings in order to ensure their children to grow to follow it to the letter.

From Hooks’ writing, I have come to understand that patriarchy is a vile and disgusting system that not only represses females free will and personal growth but also male’s as well through fear, violence, and finally conformity. I never considered the way that we are brought up and how we are forced into these predestined gender roles of the weak and the strong which I truly find disgusting. Looking back however, I was still raised to know that men and women are equal and should be treated as such, so I still view my own identity more or less the same as before, just surrounded by patriarchal oppression.

Citations

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing Chapters 2 & 3. Eggingen: Edition Isele, 1996. Print.

Hooks, Bell. Understanding Patriarchy. Louisville, KY: Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2010. Print.