The Outcomes of the Male Gaze and Patriarchy

Margot Robbie and Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf Of Wall Street, 2013
Robbie's character in this scene is using her female body parts to take control of DiCaprio's character.

Two terms that aren't addressed in our daily lives, but affects every aspect of our lives in someway are patriarchy and the male gaze. The “male gaze” refers to the sexual politics of the gaze and suggests a sexualized way of looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, a woman is visually put as an “object” of a straight man's desire. Her feelings, thoughts and her own sexuality are less important than as to how the man perceives her. When you google the word gaze it says that it means "to look steadily and intently, especially in admiration, surprise, or thought."

Right underneath the definition, the example of the word gaze used in a sentence was "he could only gaze at her in astonishment. Even the male gaze is used as an example by just simply searching up the word gaze. "Male gaze" is a term coined by film critic Laura Mulvey to describe the cinematic angle of a heterosexual male on a female character. As fiction imitates life, and vice versa, the male gaze has become a familiar cultural perspective that we've all grown up on. Research finds that the male gaze has significant and pervasive psychological costs for women that they might not even be aware of. The male gaze plays out most obviously in two main areas: actual interpersonal and social encounters.

For example, catcalls, “checking out,” gazing at women’s body parts, making sexual comments and exposure to visual media that spotlights women’s bodies and body parts, depicting them as the target of a non-reciprocated male gaze. Through media representations and direct experience, girls learn at a very young age that their appearance is social currency and that it is the only important aspect about them. That being said, women look at their bodies in the mirror and only see themselves through the eyes of men. Over time, as women place more attention on their appearance, they began to internalize the observer view of their bodies as a primary way to think about themselves and end up placing greater value on how they look than how they feel. Berger puts it best, "But the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men- not because the feminine is different from the masculine, but because the "ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him. " (Berger, 64)

When you google the word patriarchy, one of the definitions of the word is "a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is traced through the male line." It is funny that women are left out of this definition. Because patriarchy affects not only the men in the family, but also the women. The word "patriarchy" is seen in a negative light now when feminists use it and it's seen now as women trying to break up the "boys club". But before the #MeToo movement, the word patriarchy was barely used let alone be a national topic of conversation. Over the years in history, patriarchy has been looked at as the natural way of how things take place. "This is what normal looks like." Since those who wrote the laws, books, philosophy, and history were made by men and who benefitted men. With patriarchy, which men love to leave this part out, comes the oppression of women. If there are a group of people who benefit from an ideology, there must be a group that suffers from it. Still to this day, and we are now in almost the year 2020, women still do not receive equal pay, millions of girls are still denied education around the world, and millions of girls under the age of 18 are still forced into marriages that they don't want to be in. And these are just three of the hundreds of inequalities women around the world face each day. "Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation. Yet most men do not use the word "patriarchy" in everyday life. Most men never think about patriarchy- what it means, how it is created and sustained. Many men in our nation would not be able to spell the word or pronounce it correctly. The word "patriarchy" just is not a part of their normal everyday thought or speech." (Hooks, 2)

Work Cited:

Hooks, Bell. Understanding Patriarchy. Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2010.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2008.

Team, MAKERS. “21 Facts About Gender Inequality You Need To Know Now.” MAKERS, MAKERS, 21 Nov. 2018, https://www.makers.com/blog/21-facts-you-never-knew-about-international-gender-inequality.

“Taking Back the Male Gaze.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-clarity/201711/taking-back-the-male-gaze.

Cover of GQ Magazine, Male VS Female Covers
As seen above, females are almost always put on the cover almost or completely naked, but the males are pictured in portrait style.