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The Male Gaze
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 <Background:
Sexual harassment is manifested in numerous ways. The power of men
over women is exhibited in many linguistic senses—more derogatory terms
for women exist as compared to men; men whistle and cat-call, while there
is no comparable register for women; and men have more linguistic power,
because of social status, which allows them to harass women. Sexual
harassment can also be understood at a visual level. Think back to the
Enron scandal—not only did Enron executives commit some of the most
horrific acts of elite deviance, but its executives were known to use a
“hottie” board to degrade female Enron workers. Pictures of the women
would be placed on a board which was used by the men to rate the “hottest”
Enron workers. Visual harassment means that men have the power of the
gaze—they can watch women in private (voyeurism) and in public. In the
case of Enron Playboy later did a feature on “The Women of Enron.” A
number of the ads in this set, as well as in the Male as Hero collection,
are taken from Bordo’s “Can a Woman Harass a Man?” (1997c). Bordo’s
article nicely situates the complex levels of power and interpretation
involved in understanding sexual harassment. She points to the film
Disclosure—in which Demi Moore “harasses” Michael Douglas, her office
subordinate—as an example of the loosening of sexual harassment in popular
culture. Disclosure is a pathetic film, but sadder is the idea that women
are equally harassing men in the United States. Of course, any cultural
analysis must take into account the intersecting levels of power (Crenshaw
1993) in society. Clearly, a woman can have more power over a man in
certain situations, but the real issue is the prevalence of male power in
this society, not a few cases of the contrary. What films like Disclosure
or works like Mamet’s Oleanna inaccurately portray is the idea that
the male harassment of females has declined or that females are equally
harassing men in society. The relevance of visual harassment in
understanding the male gaze cannot be overstated. A classic look at the
nature of the male gaze is Walters (1995), specifically “Visual Pleasures:
On Gender and Looking,” pp. 50-66. In this chapter Walters draws on the
work of Berger (1985) and Mulvey (1975) and suggests a tripartite
construction of the male gaze. In the case of a film, the characters in
the film constitute one level, the viewers of the film another, and the
director a third.
The
Ads:
The ads below constitute all of the levels of the male gaze that I
have described. I would choose ads 13 and 22 as the epitomes of the male gaze,
especially as the image of the woman (image 22), taken by the man, is projected on
multiple screens; and in ad 13 in which men watch the woman while the
woman enjoys it.
You might also note that the scenario of the woman gazing at herself is an
increasingly common one (see ads 52, 55, 58). Image 31 seems to critique
the male gaze, while image 21 (a television commercial) uses the male gaze
in the context of blindness. Questions:
(1) Why is the male gaze a pervasive form of vision in popular
culture? (2) Besides advertising, can you locate other examples of the
male gaze? In what media did you discover the gaze? How or why was it
used? (3) Are there examples of males in advertising who are similarly
objects of the gaze? >
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<presented by Scott A.
Lukas, Ph.D.>
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