The Male Gaze: Classics, Coming-of-age, and the College Campus
As a young girl, I was curious about what it meant to be a woman. I desperately tried to predict what would eventually happen to me during my transition into adulthood. During this time in my life, I was painfully shy. My quiet nature allowed me to live vicariously through movies, TV shows, and books. From the media, I gathered that being a woman was defined through one thing: male attention.
In 1975, feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term “the male gaze” in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. In films and tv shows that show the male gaze, women are preyed upon, chased, and desired, but may have no actual effect on the plot. They are ornaments, used to emphasize a man’s desire and sexuality. Mulvey writes, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly” (62). Essentially, men are the observers, and women are the observed. Mulvey continues, explaining that women in film often “freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (62). When I consumed media as a young girl, I only saw what men thought of women. I learned about male sexuality before I even learned what being a woman meant to me.
Since Mulvey’s essay, the male gaze has become more mainstream. The male gaze is no longer just used as a way to analyze film, but is rather a complicated concept that women feel the effect of in their everyday lives. It’s the feeling that there’s a man’s opinion inside your brain, existing with you at all times. The male gaze directly tells women how to express her sexuality, because it is the only form of sexuality that is deemed socially acceptable. In addition to this, the male gaze includes gender roles, telling women to act a certain way, and of course, that women are property to be controlled by men. I’m incredibly interested in this topic because I am a feminist. Even though I am a feminist, I find myself influenced by men’s opinions. I am conscious that I care too much about men’s sexual preferences, and I do find comfort in knowing that I can fit into a set list of expectations. I want to undo this process within me, and am looking to unlearn beauty standards and gender roles enforced on us. This became prevalent to me even more so when I left my three year relationship and began to date. From this, I know that I can never be happy as long as I search for validation through others instead of myself.
To nobody’s surprise, the male gaze has existed for as long as men and women have. It seems more acceptable, OK even, for a sexist thought process to have prevailed in ancient Greece. In Athens, women were not citizens. They had children and ran the household, and were encouraged to stay in their own homes, even in the daytime. Athenian comic playwright Menandros, born 342 BC, once said “It’s better to bury a woman than to marry her.”
Women were clearly belittled and treated as property in Greek society. The Trojan war began when Troy’s prince, Paris, took King Menelaus of Sparta’s wife, Helen. The Iliad illustrates this ordeal and the conflict following this event. Homer’s poem begins with the Achaeans sacking a Trojan-allied town and taking two beautiful maidens, Chryseis and Briseis. Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Achaeans, takes Chryseis as his prize, while a respected warrior named Achilles takes Briseis. The women are seen as objects, or tokens from a raid…not as human beings.
A conflict occurs between Agamemnon and Achilles, and the two men fight over their “prizes”, threatening to take them away from each other. Chryseis and Briseis have no dialogue, and only their beauty is emphasized. When Achilles threatens to take Chryseis, Agamemnon says, “And now you threaten to strip me of my prize in person, the one I fought for long and hard, and sons of Achaea handed her to me” (Iliad, Book 1, p. 82). Chryseis has no autonomy. The men who kidnapped her feel as though it is their rightful duty to have obtained her. The male gaze is seen when the two women are solely described as beautiful; in addition to this, the female characters are only used to cause conflict within the plot and are one-dimensional. We as the readers see the women in Book 1 primarily as commodities that are exchanged among men for their benefit and status.
In Book 14 of The Iliad, the reader discovers that women are able to obtain power through sex. This a motif seen in many works of ancient literature, with the most common example being the Bible. The trope of the “seductive woman” usually exists to create conflict for the male characters. The seductress woman can also sacrifice her body for the greater good, which is seen in Book 14. This is all seen through a lens of male sexuality; the woman appeals to a man in order to receive something that cannot otherwise be obtained. In The Iliad, Hera deceives and seduces Zeus in order to support the Achaeans. Hera is unable to convince her husband to support her beliefs, so she turns to Aphrodite and specifically the gods Love, Longing and Sleep for help. To accomplish her task, Hera puts on a breast band, described as piercing and alluring. Aphrodite tells Hera, “‘You won’t return, I know, your mission unfulfilled, whatever your eager heart desires to do’” (The Iliad, Book 14, p. 377). This sexual conquest is a mission, and Hera’s seduction will lead to a preferable outcome if she plays her cards well. She will appeal to the male gaze. Hera’s mission illustrates the type of society that Greek women live in; it is ruled by men, even when it comes to the divine.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses objectifies women more blatantly than The Iliad. In the poem Apollo and Daphne, Apollo aims to seduce Daphne after he sees how attractive she is. Daphne is shy, and has no interest in men, and in fact, “wants to enjoy her virginity forever” (Metamorphoses, Apollo and Daphne, p. 19). Her father tells his daughter, “…your very loveliness, Daphne, prevents your wish, your beauty opposes your prayer” (Metamorphoses, Apollo and Daphne, p. 20). Her father explains that she has no control over her virginity, because she is too beautiful; this also suggests that she has no control over her body.
This foreshadows the event of Apollo chasing Daphne. Apollo sees Daphne and is enamored by her beauty. He “sees her mouth, which nearly to see is hardly enough…her arms, which for the most part [were] bare, and what is hidden he imagines is better” (Metamorphoses, Apollo and Daphne, 20). Daphne exists, and Apollo observes her body; just like Mulvey writes, there is pleasure in looking at the passive female. Even while Apollo chases Daphne as she fears for her life, he describes his victim as “still a lovely sight…her beauty augmented by flight” (Metamorphoses, Apollo and Daphne, 20).
Daphne resists him, so Apollo decides to make Daphne his tree. Disregarding the literal meaning of objectification, this act of Apollo turning his sexual interest into a tree indicates that he has significant power over her. This makes sense because Apollo is immortal, but he abuses his power in order to keep his love interest to himself.
The character of Io has a similar story. Jupiter sees Io from her father’s stream and tells her that she is “clearly destined to make some man or other happy in [her] bed” (Metamorphoses, Io 20). Jupiter asserts his own sexuality onto an unsuspecting Io. He demands that she not run from him, and tries to convince her that she will be safe with a God. Again, we see an abuse of power, where a God uses his supernatural abilities to overpower a woman. Io runs. Juno, Jupiter’s wife, senses that Jupiter is up to no good and pays her husband a visit. Out of fear that his wife might find out his secret, Jupiter turns Io into a “glossy heifer” that is described as “still stunning” (Metamorphoses, Io, p. 24). Ovid writes, “Juno looked at her but couldn’t help but admire her looks” (Metamorphoses, Io, p.24). The whole situation is absurd, especially when Juno appreciates the cow’s beauty.
Although The Iliad and Metamorphoses have frequent instances of sexism, there are also female characters who are empowered. The Iliad has strong female characters, such as Athena, who actively assists the Achaeans, and encourages them in battle. Helen also seems to be an empowered female in Book 3, when she insults Paris and basically tells him he should have died in battle. One could say that the Iliad is both misogynistic and empowering. However, the existence of bold female characters alone cannot solve the issue of the male gaze in the media.
In reference to classical literature, specifically The Odyssey, Margaret Atwood created a narrative titled The Penelopiad. I believe works like this are the solution for the male gaze. The more representation of women’s perspectives in media, the more women will be portrayed as three-dimensional characters. In conjunction with representation, I think it is important to recognize that these messages are ingrained in us as a society.
As stated earlier, the male gaze in the media affects women in the real world. Because the media represents male sexuality and desire, but refuses to put female sexuality in the spotlight, women are dissatisfied with their personal relationships and themselves. Laura Klinger of Grand Valley State University compiled research from multiple sources in her article “Hookup Culture on College Campuses” that lead to this conclusion. Klinger notes, “women’s depressive symptoms increased incrementally with their number of sexual partners. However, this result was not found for male participants” (9). I argue that sexual dissatisfaction is not a biological trait found in women, but rather exists because male pleasure is seen as expected and female pleasure is seen as a privilege. Sexual empowerment is never truly possible if a majority of society only values male pleasure. Klinger writes, “Popular media consumed by college students is highly sexualized, and often portrays casual sexual encounters. A 2005 study found that 77% of prime-time television shows contained sexual content” (10). Klinger continues, “This same study also found that young adults base their understandings of sexual behavior and norms on media portrayals” (10). Klinger notes that only 52% of women were happy to have experienced a hookup, whereas 82% of men were happy to have done the same thing (8). Perhaps the source of dissatisfaction for women comes from the fact that only the male sexuality is represented on television and in movies, seeing as though young adults learn about sexuality through the media.
The male gaze is prevalent in both our society and classical society. Although it plays a big role in literature, the male gaze also affects contemporary women. Today, the male gaze is ingrained in impressionable young people, and has ultimately harmed our ideas surrounding relationships and sex, as seen in Klinger’s research. In order to progress forward and change the way we view women, female characters in the media must be represented as three-dimensional beings. My generation is responsible for undoing the harm that has already been done; art, movies, and TV shows of the future will hopefully emphasize that women are more than a man’s opinion of them.
Sources
Klinger, Laura (2016) “Hookup Culture on College Campuses: Centering College Women, Communication Barriers, and Negative Outcomes,” College Student Affairs Leadership: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 5. Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/csal/vol3/iss2/5
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 4
(1975). Available at
https://www.asu.edu/courses/fms504/total-readings/mulvey-visualpleasure.pdf
