Post #2 Ways of seeing....

“To be born a woman has been born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men” – Berger page 46.

           The Male Gaze is a term used to describe how certain works of art such as photography, film, and other forms of media assume the male point of view.  Although most works don’t specifically reveal the point of view female characters are represented as objects to be appreciated. According to Berger females are aware that they are subjected to being just “things to look at”. Something that stood out to me was on page 46 where Berger states “How a women appears to man can determine how she will be treated” in other words how attractive a women is staple of her worth.  In media women are constantly told if your beautiful and thin success and prince charming come easy. We as women are brainwashed to be obsessed with our appearance not to make us feel good about ourselves but to look good  for the male gaze. While doing my own personal research i found an article about Cosmo magazine and how the magazine pretty much "sells out" the female gender by using keywords to manipulate our thought process. Such as instead of encouraging a female to exercise for health it is encouraged to exercise for a date to look good for a man.

        Within film Mulvey points out that a women is not only an object of  the male main character but the gaze is shared between him and the spectator. On page 840 it is pointed out that due to a women castration   we appear different to a male. In order to better process the difference of a women men tend to turn them into a fetish or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish that way it is not seen as a threat. Watching old movies is a guilty pleasure of mine and I have noticed that throughout the years of objecting women has become more obvious compared to movies then to now. 

(Marilyn Monroe in the film Bus Stop)

            In the film Bus Stop we see many examples to the points that Mulvey writes about such as the scene when Marilyn's character is introduced she is dressed in a show girl outfit and is sharing the gaze of all the men in the saloon with the spectator. Of course Marilyn Monroe herself is an icon of sexuality for just being who she  is. When I watch movies with actress Audrey Hepburn in them i see the difference between the two. Audrey possessed sexuality but it was more demur and was attached to the "little black dress". Even though both women were seen as objects of beauty and the male gaze they were showcased differently in film and photographs. In movies today we see most scenes with women providing close ups of T&A. When a women enters a scene it is usually in slow motion with shots scanning her figure. Throughout times it seems that it is almost normal to objectify a women before allowing other judgement to surface.
         Bell hooks shines light on how throughout history of how the oppositional gaze had been affected. The black community laced positive representations of blacks in the media thus any ideas of blacks came from a white point of view. Black women had very little opinion as spectators until Hooks dug deeper into the issue. Since most television programs were "white" it was thought that only a white women would be one to be desired by both men white and black.  Hooks also points out that the black women and their female form were always "ready to serve" even to a white women. The ironic thing about the white supremacy in television with actresses is that even white people longed to be whiter (page 119). Since there were poor stereotypes of black women in the early years of television it was harder to progress. Today some stereotypes still influence our judgement of not just the black community but others as well. 

http://www.beautyredefined.net/cosmo-magazine/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/women-and-objectification_n_1701275.html

(A article i found on how the brain processes women in parts of the body not as a whole)