The Female Gaze
Written by Maddy Chelmis
To gaze is to look, to observe. It appears simple in this context, we open our eyes and we look. But what do we see? How do we see it, and what do we do thereafter that impacts the way we look.
Let me introduce firstly the familiar term ‘The Male Gaze’, coined by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The Male Gaze is commonly analysed in film, advertising and art. However it leaks into the everyday and influences many more elements of life beyond the screen and canvas. This is where it becomes even more dangerous. So, what is the Male Gaze? It is representative of the perspectives that are built from the hetero/cis-normative male world view. It involves the sexualisation and objectification of women. The world seen through a cis-het males eyes. It places the inherent value of a woman on her appearance, on how well she can mould herself into the patriarchal ideal of a woman.
In an interview with Laura Mulvey on ‘Gender, Gaze and Technology in Film Culture’ she quotes “Women are represented as other.”[1] As well as “Women are seen and showed at the same time. Their appearance is so much coded for a strong visual and erotic impact that it can be argued that they connote the true essence of being seen.” This quote speaks volumes to me as it brings about the question “What does it mean to truly be seen?” Does being authentically seen really boil down to how a man perceives me? If so I’d rather be invisible… But of course this doesn’t have to be your truth. You ultimately decide what being seen is to you.
I’m sure when I ask you to visualise the ‘ideal’ woman through a straight mans eyes we all get a similar image. Now that is very presumptuous of me, but I am confident in this assumption unfortunately. Why is this? Because from the time we were able to consume media with some semblance of consciousness we have been bombarded with films, art, adverts, comics, music, and other pop-culture that is littered with examples of the Male Gaze. No wonder it is so engrained in our minds, and thus seems so inescapable. But it is possible. Welcome in, The Female Gaze.
Now contrary to the Male Gaze, the Female Gaze is a feminist film theoretical term representing the gaze of the female viewer, in case that wasn’t too obvious. Of course it is not limited to film alone.
Let’s look at art. It unfortunately doesn’t take a highly skilled art critic or analyst to see that the majority of artworks in renowned galleries are by men, and the subjects, are oftentimes women, likely nude. Take the Guerrilla Girls and their infamous ‘Weenie counts’. In 1989 they scoured the Metropolitan Museum of Art and counted the ratio of artworks produced by male and female artists. They found that 5% of artworks were produced by women, but 85% of the nudes were of female subjects. You see what we mean…?
Here we have two examples of a female nude. One painted by a male baroque era artist, the other a more contemporary female artist.
The Toilet of Venus, Diego Velázquez, 1647-51, Oil on canvas
Secret Spaces, Joan Semmel, 1976
I won’t go too in depth into both of these pieces, this isn’t an essay I’m afraid! But let’s look at some obvious differences in the depiction of both of these female bodies.
The Toilet of Venus shows a white woman reclining elegantly on a bed of perfectly draped silk, admiring herself in a mirror held up by a bouncing little cherub. An everyday occurrence in 1647 I’m sure. In terms of looking, she is looking at herself, perpetuating the notion of vanity, of checking her appeal to the outside world. Her back is turned to the viewer, the viewer is looking AT her, but she is unaware. She is a spectacle unwillingly. She is smooth, has rippling curves in the patriarchal idea of the ‘right’ places. She is a vision, being looked at, looking at herself, because she has been painted according to the beauty standard.
In an essay written by Eva K. Pankenier entitled ‘Patriarchy and the Female Sublime’ she quotes “The female body in its unaffected state is merely naked, but in the process of being depicted as art a “sublimation” occurs, in which the female naked becomes a socially acceptable female nude…this transformation is a shift from the actual to the ideal.”[2]
Thus, here we are gazing upon the 1647 version of the photoshopped female body. Painted by, of course, a man.
In stark contrast, Joan Semmel paints her own naked body. Not nude. But fully and authentically naked! The angle is literally from her perspective so this piece already has that going for it (quite the literal interpretation of the female gaze I know). It also showcases Semmel’s own body in its natural state. We have depictions of ‘unconventional’ aspects of the female form: stomach rolls, wrinkles and skin texture. How very refreshing! What is void here that is very present in The Toilet of Venus is the overt sexualisation of the female body.
In essence the Female Gaze encapsulates everything that the Male Gaze is not.
To me the Female Gaze is empathetic, and intimate. It doesn’t capitalise on the sexual nature of our bodies. It is about respect and realness, living in our bodies without the need to appease men or live up to an unrealistic standard because we feel we are being surveyed all the time.
In his book Ways of Seeing John Berger quotes:
“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. 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.”[3]
This perfectly sums up the female experience. Feeling as though life is one big performance and you are constantly being watched. You must look good under the stage lighting, put on a smile for the camera, be best dressed in show etc. so what if we just stopped performing? Cut the cameras? Called curtain call?
The best thing is: we can. It won’t be as easy as just doing it, it’ll take work and time, but we can switch the lens to the Female Gaze when we finally decide we are done entertaining ‘the crowd’ (being men).
Now this topic could be a whole blog post on its own but it is extremely important to recognise that the Male Gaze and Female Gaze play into the prescribed gender binary. This is another topic that must be dismantled. But the topic poses the question, “Who do you perform your gender for?”. After scrolling through artist and author Florence Given’s Instagram I was left speechless at the realisation that a lot of the ‘femininity’ I present is in an effort to live up to the perceived feminine identity I am expected to adopt. When we erase gender from the conversation altogether it seems as though we are free from any particular gaze. After all, gender is inherently performative and the societal norms that we deem to be ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ have been created by years and years of practiced actions, and rituals that fit into the specific gender binaries.
So, to our trans and gender non-conforming community, we see you. Navigating a world in which the media around us is predominantly presented as from the Straight Male lens is isolating, and while it is getting better, it is high time that we really opened our eyes and looked at the world through everyone’s eyes to breed a more inclusive and safe place to live in.
In conclusion, while the Male Gaze is still ever-present in our society, it is possible to escape it and reframe your world through your own eyes. Ask yourself, how would your life look if you were only concerned about your gaze? If you saw yourself as the main character and nobody else’s perceptions of you mattered. With a lot of hard work that reality is possible. But it takes a lot of self reflection, and ultimately the dismantling of the patriarchy… But we’ll get there eventually!
[1] ‘Interview with Laura Mulvey: Gender, Gaze and Technology in Film Culture’, Sage Journals, accessed April 2021, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263276411398278?casa_token=XmfHxpsbPnIAAAAA%3A4QdmAgBLuCStXrUKo9wLKftdCIjG2f6xGzfL7cUF4zRgp30J9XFIb4q-V3SgGNn0YUr6J0XYX9VN&
[2] ‘Patriarchy and the Female Sublime’, Lehigh University, accessed April 2021, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/228634578.pdf
[3] John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Published by the British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books.