Red lips. Seductive glare. Breasts exposed. Clothes lacking. The camera lens needlessly lingers on her curves, emphasizing the gap between her long legs and the perkiness of her boobs. She moves her painted fingers away from her plump lips and reaches down to grab…
A hamburger.
Surprise. This is not a porn clip. It is an advertisement for a burger joint.
This, my friends, is the male gaze, whereby media companies generate products from a heterosexual male’s lens. We reside in an image based culture in which sex sells. Despite recent progress towards gender equality, the media industry continues implementing the male gaze in order to gain viewers and consumers and therefore maximize profits. Because, of course, objectifying and sexualizing women brings in the cash. Tell me our world isn’t messed up.
The Male Gaze theory was created in the 1970’s when Laura Mulvey analyzed Hollywood films and recognized that women in media were simply spectacles for the male to examine and scrutinize.
Today, the media is so monopolized and consolidated that six corporations control 90 percent of American media. These six corporations are GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. These six corporations are each run by male CEOs. In all six of these companies combined, 232 media executives control the media output for 277 million Americans. And guess what? The vast majority of these media executives are men.
The bottom line is, men dominate over women in media in a 64 to 36 percent ratio . No wonder the male gaze is so popular.
Now now Mr. CEO, I understand that it is important to make profits and the cash flow is lovely how it is. However, employing the male gaze strategy by objectifying, dehumanizing, and sexualizing women, further reinforces our patriarchal society. It intensifies and fortifies the male position of power while simultaneously reducing the woman’s role down to a mere object whose sole purpose is to provide pleasure for the all-mighty male.
Through constant exposure to these images of women, females are subconsciously socialized from a young age that in order to be visible, appreciated, wanted: feelings that are innately desired by humans, we must expose ourselves. We must sexualize ourselves. We must dress, act, and do in order to please the opposite gender. The male gaze creates detrimental implications and a skewed mindset for women of all ages. Yet, it is so tangled in our culture that it is difficult to be aware of.
So, I challenge you to open your eyes to the media and advertisements that you are exposed to all day, every day. I challenge you to think about them, understand them, and in many cases, reject them. Do not conform to them. You are better than that. You are worth more than that.
