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livsmithviscom · 11 months

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The Male Gaze vs. The Female Gaze - According to Feminist Theory.

The Male Gaze: The Male Gaze sees women in the context of heterosexual male desires. Women’s bodies are usually perceived as objects, as well as their personalities, for men to ‘view, own, and conquer’. There are countless examples of the Male Gaze throughout the history of media.

Where did the term Male Gaze come from?

1972: John Berger (British art critic, novelist, poet, painter) coins the term in a 1972 docuseries (Ways of Seeing) where he argued with the traditional way women are viewed and presented in Western European Art. He argued that there was a long ‘cultural and artistic history of portraying women as passive objects to please men’.

1975: Laura Mulvey adopts the term and uses it in her “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” essay. She took the idea and used it to analyse the portrayal of women in Hollywood, exposing once looked-over misogyny. Mulvey argued that Hollywood relied on scopophilia (the sexual pleasure of looking, a Freudian theory). ‘Women are the bearer of meaning, not the makers of meaning’.

Mulvey also stated that The Male Gaze is often depicted in 3 ways:

1. How men view women 2. How women view themselves 3. How women view other women

Mulvey’s psychoanalytical theory still has an influence on media studies, and has also helped Hollywood begin to move on from these negative ideologies.

Criticisms of The Male Gaze:

The emphasis that the Male Gaze has upon appearance can and has been extremely damaging to women’s self-esteem and self perception. It influences the way a woman sees herself, as when they see other women in the media being subservient objects to please the men, it’s easy to believe that her being and her mind is second to her objectified body. ‘The Male Gaze’ is ultimately just terminology that describes and justifies the objectification of women.

The Female Gaze

The Female Gaze is a concept that focuses on viewing women as individuals as opposed viewing them from the voyeuristic point of view of a male protagonist.

The Female Gaze is becoming more common in modern media, for example in shows and films such as Girls (2012, HBO), or Someone Great (2019, Netflix). Someone Great’s (directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson) plot follows Jenny who is navigating the break down of a long term relationship with the help of her best friends. They go on nights out in the town, dance in the kitchen in their comfy underwear and pyjamas, and give each other honest and sound advice. Films about female friendship are becoming more and more popular, with other examples including Girls Trip (2017), and Booksmart (2019). These coming-of-age/friendship based films are typically directed by women. Able to give their input and use their own female experience gives these films a relatability that is rarely found in other films, and these are often the movies that represent women the most accurately.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-the-male-gaze

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-male-gaze-5118422

https://ciaracatherine.medium.com/the-female-gaze-does-it-exist-and-what-does-it-look-like-26d0ba6d85f6

#livfmpresearch

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honeyhopeful · 5 years

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The Beauty Industry Profits on your Unhappiness

In 4,000 BC, historians traced the first ever beauty product - kohl eyeliner that the Egyptians used to create dramatic eye looks. Social media emerged in the 1970s when the internet really transpired in this time period. These days, the beauty industry and social media have seen immense growth. The beauty industry is appraised to be worth above 15 billion Euros, and social media is expected double in growth in the next few years - with Snapchat and Instagram being in the lead for most users.

The beauty industry has always had problems - especially when it came to women's' expectations. Feminist movements have always admonished the use of makeup - as most women felt rigid feminine expectations were being pushed on them. In recent years, makeup was seen in a different light - as a way for women to express their creative side, to feel good about themselves, and that despite wearing makeup - they should always be respected not as women but as people.

However, makeup and the use of social media is being viewed in a critical lens once again.

Social media is a double-edged sword in the 21st century; what was seen as a way to open doors, connect with like-minded individuals, research topics, and have educational discussions over an online platform. However, the curse that lies in social media is how accessible we have become - with a lack of privacy and a fast-paced environment, many users are feeling fatigued and dissatisfied with their social media use and accounts. Social media in its infancy celebrated creativity and open-ended dialogue between users from all over the world, but now with marketing changing along with our online communications - social media has quickly turned into a virtual department store where products, ideologies, and misinformation are at the ready.

The beauty industry and social media are now seemingly joined at the hip with more companies using influencer marketing strategy. Here is where the article gets ugly.

I'm not going to pretend that beauty ideal, marketing, and social media were not an issue before - I'm sure women in my generation back then felt the pressures as much as the women of this generation do - but back then, the beauty industry was not in our faces 24/7. I myself as a young girl barely read any magazine articles concerning beauty, and I wasn't interested in fashion, or any notion of performative femininity. And my friend would tend to agree, back then we were free to be kids. I didn't even start wearing eyeliner until I was seventeen years old, and even if I did wear eyeliner it was because my mother forced me to because it was a holiday. Even if you Google teenage celebs in the 90s to early 2000s and compare to teenage celebs in 2014 - 2018 - you can definitely see a difference in how the beauty industry and the beauty standards have changed. Young girls today are feeling more and more pressure to look a certain way that young girls in my generation ever did.

And the consequences of these societal expectations are causing teens to not only become prematurely depressed, but body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and self-objectification is on the rise.

Tweens, teenagers and young adults who are interested in makeup all follow at least one social media mogul - usually its' Kylie Jenner, Jaclyn Hill, Tati Westbrook, or any other celebrity such as Ariana Grande. The beauty of social media was that it allowed users to have complete control over their image and use promotion as their means to get funding. Each day, as I scroll on my phone, I often see women with long, incredibly toned legs, plump breasts, pouty lips, chiselled cheekbones, flat tummies and perfectly, rounded buttocks. The comments on each one of their photo and captions is fans wishing to look like them, often chastising their own appearance whilst praising their looks and ask for dieting tips, look tips, fashion tips.

As influencers share their dieting tips to look the way they do, this is seen as an honest way to connect with their audience and provide insight.

Unfortunately, this is not what happens.

The problem with the beauty industry is that it heavily relies on false representations and unrealistic standards. An Instagram model or even a well-known celebrity will post on their social media the secret to their physique and over-all look - and usually that "secret" comes in the form of detox teas that are filled with laxatives and dangerous ingredients, diet pills that have not been properly researched, or whatever snake oil they needed to push on impressionable young women. In reality, this is farther from the truth. Kylie Jenner was one of the celebrities to promote a laxative-based tea that can induce gastrointestinal problems later in life, but it is well known that Kylie Jenner, American socialite and TV personality, has been very open about retouching her photos, undergoing cosmetic surgery, and even has a personal gym and trainer within her residence. The same can be said for Kendall Jenner, sister of Kylie Jenner, who was recently criticized for becoming a spokesperson for ProActive, claiming it was the sole cure to her acne. Mostly because, a few short months earlier in 2018, Kylie Jenners' dermatologist explained that the cure for Kendall Jenner's acne-problem was a mix of well-formulated skincare products that were not ProActive and a laser treatment.

Los-Angeles based makeup artist Jordan Liberty stated on his Instagram stories that a models' job was not to look attractive, but it was to sell products by using her facial muscles and body. A models' job is to always promote merchandise - and recently the beauty industry has been taking models to promote unrealistic beauty standards and the quick fixes and products to attain that level of beauty.

The problem with the products that most models becomes a spokesperson for is that none of these products promotes a healthy lifestyle. As I have mentioned, many diet-based teas often have laxative ingredients that will damage the intestinal system and can cause serious dehydration to a young girls' body. Not to mention, that by utilizing hashtags such as 'thinspo' and 'body goals', including the high amounts of re-touching and intricate makeup placements to allow the model to look thinner, healthy and well-toned, often leads young women to negative thought patterns, depression and body dissatisfaction.

In 2016, Fardouly and Vartanian researched the high-rise of social media and the correlation of body image concerns, and they found that users with more appearance exposure suffer a lot more from weight dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, and thin-idealisation. They concluded that social media does indeed impact teenagers appearance concerns. Dr Helen Sharpe was quoted by The Guardian and she stated that most teenage girls resort to unhealthy weight loss practices, such as skipping meals, smoking, and lower levels of physical activities. Social media such as snapchat and Instagram are even damaging to young women due to filters and facial-reorganising that occurs on both apps - thus giving an overall distortion of ones' appearance. Time Magazine even reported on Snapchat causing self-esteem issues, dubbed as 'snapchat dysmorphia', plastic surgeons are writing that there is a surge in clients wanting to look like their filters, with bigger eyes, thinner noses, and fuller lips. They describe such a trend alarming since those filters are meant to be an unattainable facial structure and the lines between fantasy and reality are slowly blurring. Plastic surgeons are also arguing that these apps are making people lose touch with reality, and are expecting to look perfectly prim in real life.

Accounts such as @celeblife have taken upon themselves to remove editing, plastic surgery and enhancements to show users before and after shots of the models in question. These accounts are not there to ridicule the celebs or poke fun at their bodily enhancement, but really it is to remind users that at the end of the day social media is just smoke and mirrors. None of it is real. The images that we see, the videos that we observe - they're all scripted, edited, filtered, and processed.

The Beauty Industry will let people - especially impressionable young women - fight to attain those unrealistic beauty standards - but all the industry is doing is leaving a sea of depressed young women in its' wake. All the industry does is prey on women's' insecurities and fear by pushing and pushing products to make them 'selfie ready' or 'life-ready'. I myself as a woman have often skipped going to social events because I didn't want to put on makeup, or wouldn't even call my friend using video because I wasn't wearing makeup.

Accounts like @celebself and beauty influencers like Samantha Ravandahl, a Canadian Youtuber, talking about what it truly means to sell product - citing that brands sent over scripts instructing her to claim that no other product has helped her as much as this one - Ravandahl stated that she could not cooperate with the brand because at the end, she did not want to lie to her audience. Ravandahl recently talked about no longer receiving product launches from brands and wants to return to her authentic, educational roots than constantly act as an advertiser. These accounts and outspoken, honest influencers may remind us not to be so hard on ourselves, and that at the end of the day, we're admiring a tiny, unattainable fraction of reality.

So, if you're a young girl reading this and you're worried about the way you look - I can't tell you “don't be” as we both know these things are harder to shake off, but I can only remind you that everything on social media is glamorized and even if you do not look like the models on Instagram - you're still beautiful, worthy of respect, intelligent and you should give yourself more time and credit.

#makeup #beauty #beauty industry #youtubers #social media #mental health #the beauty inside

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stealthknights · 7 years

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The Sources of Stressors, Trauma, and Abuse That Affect the Lives of Women In Society (DO NOT REPOST OR COPY!!!)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the first wave of feminism, or women’s rights, came into being. It involved fighting for the belief in gender equality on two general fronts. The first regarded voting rights, also known as women’s suffrage. The second took educational equality into account, and argued for women to have equal access to higher education all the same as men did.

Following the earlier 20th century, a second wave of feminism shifted focus onto violence and domestic violence perpetuated against women. This consecutive wave of feminist thought and theory also brought recognition to the oppressive system known as the patriarchy, a power system that keeps the male gender in power and in a higher status above women. Along with the patriarchal system in place, a number of other factors contribute to the abuse, trauma, and stress that are experienced by women in society.

As one of the larger issues in society, the patriarchal system is responsible for a large source of trauma, abuse, and harassment as well. The patriarchy itself is defined as a political and social system that insists and promotes the ideology that men are inherently the more dominant or superior sex over women. The ways that these ideologies and beliefs are promoted and instilled within society are numerous.

One method in which the idea of patriarchal thought is promoted is through gender schemas or verbal assertion taught to individuals at a young age. This methodology ensures that children absorb and learn rigid and specific roles in accordance to their gender. As children, information that they absorb and learn becomes a part of their identity through their early development. Children up through younger adulthood actively seek out the answers to which roles in society they should conform to and identify with, with respect to societal expectations or acceptance. Gender schemas themselves are taught in a number of ways. Sayings that sound similar to “Don’t play football, it’s too rough and aggressive for girls.” Or “It is not very lady-like of you to dress in such a manner.”

This is very much highlighted by Bell Hooks in her recount of a childhood experience she went through regarding the teaching of gender roles by an authoritative male figure, namely her father. Her story recalled about how her father had physically and violently beat and abused her because she had been competing in a match of shooting marbles. Her father had hit her with the wooden game board due to the fact that she refused to remain inside the “normalcy” of her own gender role. Hooks’ father insisted that stop being heavily competitive, even in something as small and simple as shooting marbles, and punished her for filing to conform to her gender role as dictated by patriarchal belief which states that men should be the more superior sex, which explains why Hooks’ father attempted to stop her from being successfully competitive in that instance. (Hooks, 2013).

Hooks also goes on to theorize that there may possibly be two different spheres where patriarchal thought is perpetuated or instilled, as in public versus private spheres. The first is the private setting in locations such as one’s own home with family. This is where gender schemas will affect a younger child the most during their earlier years of development. It is here where parents pass on the beliefs and rules of the patriarchal system onto their children, even sometimes without recognizing that their beliefs are ones that uphold sexist, classist, and socio-political ideologies. (Hooks, 2013). In contrast to the private sphere of influence is the public sphere. Much more of the influence that comes from the public sphere is sourced from places or settings outside the home such as on the street, in school, at work, or possibly within a restaurant. The public setting can be considered more malicious as it is host to instances of cat-calls and similar unwarranted verbal remarks or approaches from men to women. It also ostracizes women, such as female rape victims in court being blamed for their victimization. The public sphere also has a “peer-pressure effect” on men. Initially, Hooks had stated that her father was openly opposed to the ideologies surrounding patriarchal thought, but once he entered a public setting with her outside their home, he would revert back (possibly unknowingly) to criticizing the way she dressed or acted if they weren’t in the confines of what it means to be an average woman in her gender role of society. (Hooks, 2013).

The traumas that come with the public sphere alone is harmful to women and their safety. Harassment such as cat-calling or verbal assertion by men are defined as traumas that contribute to the wearing-down of women in regards to their safety, self-esteem, moods, and identity. Patriarchal thought ensures men that their position of superiority and status above women protects them from deflections and promotes the idea that they are “always right” because of the belief that they are inherently superior to women.

Regarding status, authority, and male “power,” the theory of the male gaze states that power can be defined by the perspective or point of view. In things such as movies, TV shows and books, the male perspective gives insight to the power structure that is held within society. It shows the audience what is valued, namely physical female attributes. Value is placed on women’s bodies as shown by the male gaze and perspective. (Burstow, 2003). This connects to the the epidemic of catcalling in public, targeting women for their physical appearance. Because value is placed on the physical being of women, value “calls out” for male attention, hence the male gaze. Value itself is placed there by the belief that women are more so objects of admiration and ownership than independent individuals. This, again, stems from the power structure that is perpetuated and instilled by the patriarchy and patriarchal belief that insists that the male sex holds the power and status of superiority. The wide reach of patriarchal beliefs is so vast that it attempts to define what is normal or abnormal, even medically.

According to criterion A in the DSM-III-R, “trauma” is defined as something that is experienced outside of the normal range of the human life experience. (Burstow, 2003). According to Burstow, the subject of “normal” refers to the group with the highest level of power and authority, in accordance to the confines of patriarchal ideology. Combining race, socioeconomic status and physical ability, the range of normalcy extends solely to what is supposedly defined as the most powerful individual: young white male who is of the middle class, educated, and able-bodied. This is what is defined as the normalcy, and even the set “standard” that is sought to being achieved. (Burstow, 2003). Needless to say, with this standard in place, it is impossible for women alone to achieve such a level of status or privilege, according to misogynistic and patriarchal ideologies. Because normalcy is set and defined, there is not a way in patriarchal society for women to hold the same exact status as the defined normal male. In this case, women are further ostracized and ridiculed when it comes to the traumas and stressors they experience.

According to a study completed in 2015, intersectionality was a large factor that could explain for the perpetuation of violence against women by male figures. The 2015 study surveyed Southeastern Asian women in regards to intimate partner violence, also known as IPV. The study came to disheartening conclusions regarding intersectionality. Age, sex, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status contributes to discrimination against women, with each being layered atop the others cumulatively, each one stigmatizing or ostracizing the female individual more. (Thongpriwon, et al., 2015). This study also found that amongst Southeastern Asian women, intimate partner violence was most common in the age range from 16-25 years old. Women were also discovered to be affected differently in regards to their immigration status, or acculturation. Those who were not legal citizens were found to earn less, and the power structure allowed male perpetrators to assert dominance and superiority over their female counterpart. The male was then said to be the major source of income the woman would need to rely upon for housing or other economic means of support, promoting the idea that he held more power than her even further. Tying this into the proposition by Burstow, trauma and the victimhood of women are pathologized as women who are victims become further outcasted. This is due to the complete lack of responsibility or accountability that is held against men in patriarchal societies and within those very beliefs. Furthermore on the ostracization and discrimination of women in such a power-structured society, recent occurrences in the news only highlights the fact that the system is still very much so present in the lives of women, and especially a young woman in these recent events.

According to a Huffington Post article authored by Alanna Vagianos, a female senior at Hickory Ridge High School in Harrisburg, North Carolina was suspended for ten days from school because of her apparent infraction with the school’s dress code. During lunch period, the student, named Summer, was approached by the school’s principal and was asked to wear a coat or hoodie over her top, which was exposing only as low as her collarbones just below her shoulders. Summer openly complied but it was deemed to be unsatisfactory as the principal later arrived with school security, threatening her arrest if she did not agree to change her outfit in its entirety.

The theme of objectification and the male gaze appears here again in light of these recent news regarding the high school in Harrisburg, North Carolina. Because value is placed on the female body, patriarchal belief here influences even a school dress code that attempts to regulate the clothing of students to where it is not too exposing or risqué. Within a society with these rules and beliefs, women are the subject of observation and gaze more than their male counterparts, as defined by objectification theory. (Fredrickson B. L., & Roberts, T. A., 1997).

While the number of oppressive methods and ideologies remain numerous, they are a part of a larger issue that surrounding patriarchy, patriarchal thought, and misogyny in society. The power structure as defined by the patriarchy is source of these ideologies and beliefs, which then allow the perpetuation of violence and oppressive acts taken against women by men, without regards for accountability, responsibility, or safety (as this is done purposefully). It also fosters a toxic environment that is constantly wearing-down and overbearing on women as they must deal with the host of traumas, oppressive beliefs, violence, and ostracization that is and are perpetuated by the people in power within a male-dominated society.

References

Burstow, B. (2003). Toward a Radical Understanding of Trauma and Trauma Work. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1293-1294.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women’s Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks. University of Michigan and Colorado College, 173-189.

Hooks, Bell. (2013). Understanding Patriarchy.

Thongpriwon, et al. (2015). Reflections on Attitudes, Experiences, and Vulnerability of Intimate Partner Violence Among Southeast Asian College Women Living in the United States. Asian Journal of Psychiatry (18).

Vagianos, Alanna. (5/22/2017). Honor Student Banned From Graduation Because of This Shirt. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/honor-roll-student-banned-from-graduation-because-of-this-shirt_us_59232b79e4b034684b0ea6cc

#personal #feminism #some writing i did for my psych class #k #if you wanna read it!

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psychotherapyconsultants · 7 years

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Gender Differences: Some Thoughts on Female Embodiment and Disordered Eating

In September 2016, Psychology Today ran a cover story about narcissism. The accompanying visual was of a young, white, conventionally attractive woman preening into her cellphone. She was wearing a tight little mini skirt and had the body of a fashion model. Leaving aside the tedious misogyny of this image — with some difficulty, but that’s not what this article is about — I do want to say something about the host of assumptions about women and their bodies encoded in this image.

What are those assumptions? That stereotypically attractive women (that is, women who are white, young, small, and in clothing that reveals their bodies) are vain and narcissistic; and that such women gleefully use their physicality as a commodity to promote themselves. The image both uses and enforces the idea that female-bodied beauty takes a specific form. It also both uses and enforces the connection between women and their bodies as social capital, and moreover as social capital that women themselves delight in and profit from. The realities of rape culture, of the ways women are objectified and commodified and tacitly understood to be cultural property, and the toll this takes on the personhood of so many women, these realities are actively denied by this image.

Given the strong associations made in our culture between women’s worth and their bodies, it’s no wonder that the DSM-V notes the prevalence of eating disorders in women is 10 times greater than in men.

Twenty years ago, Becky Thompson made the point that eating disorders are not illnesses of middle-class white vanity. Women of all ethnicities, classes, and sexualities, deal with childhood trauma by internalizing what they cannot control in the world: how their bodies are seen, how their bodies are treated, how their bodies are used. So many of my clients who struggle with eating disorders have been managing years of abuse through the ways they manage their relationships with food. As Thompson says, disordered eating, whether starving, binging, purging, or any combination of the three, can be a coping strategy. It’s not only white women who struggle with how they look and feel in their bodies, and that struggle is not about narcissism.

Why do women use their bodies in this way? Because, as the Psychology Today image reminds us, we are taught from the moment we are born that our job is to be an object as well as a subject. Because girls and women’s bodies are public property, available for commodification and consumption in ways that remain gendered, even as certain privileged women have profited enormously from this exploitative system. Hell, you can proclaim outright that because you are rich and powerful you are entitled to access to a woman’s body regardless of her consent, and millions of Americans will agree with you and want you to be president. Women of color have additional burdens to manage, additional meanings projected onto their bodies as legacies of slavery and colonialism, an additional layer of object status, of objectification, to fight their way through. The relentless message to girls and women is that we are our bodies, that we are worth what our bodies are worth, and that our bodies are worth as much as their desirability in the terms of a specific visual system that relies on a reductive definition of femininity.

Most of my female-bodied clients are not middle class. Many of them are not white, or cisgender, or straight. And so many of them struggle with their relationship to food. It’s an issue of self-care, and self-esteem, and self-actualization. Although the clinical presentation can show up quite differently, it seems to me the underlying causes are similar: how do they achieve a felt sense of inner worth, of inner beauty, of self-ownership, when throughout their lives their families, churches, partners, social and other medias, have told them that they are their bodies and that their bodies need to change? To be politer, quieter, more feminine, more heterosexual, less disruptive of the status quo.

One of my masculine-of-center transgender clients who grew up female-bodied in a religious context that shamed bodies, desire, enjoyment, and yes, their love of food, has begun living with a bevy of straight men in a house-sharing situation. They remarked to me in wonder the other day, “Men take up so much room, and they don’t think about it or notice it.” Of course not all men are like this, and different men will carry their gender privilege differently in different contexts, depending on their other, intersectional, identities. And I have some men in my practice who are cisgender and heterosexual, and either non-normatively gendered in their identities or struggling with the strictures of binary masculinity. I know these men exist. Equally, men do also suffer from eating disorders, and their suffering matters as much. And 10:1 is encoding something highly significant about the gendered nature of embodiment in our culture, and the ways many women are responding through internalizing the violence.

I wish for my client, amazed at how easy it is for their housemates, who struggles so much to occupy relational space without feeling responsible for anticipating the needs of the other, just a little iota of the ability to take up space without thinking about it. I wish this for all my female-bodied clients, or those who grew up female-bodied, who cannot fathom being entitled to their appetites, and to their own flesh.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/10/01/gender-differences-some-thoughts-on-female-embodiment-and-disordered-eating/

#World of Psychology

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positivepsychologyinterventions · 7 years

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Gender Differences: Some Thoughts on Female Embodiment and Disordered Eating

from World of Psychology http://ift.tt/2fHvgWE via IFTTT

#IFTTT #World of Psychology

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