Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of Male gaze in her well known essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. The paper intended to psychoanalyse the patterns in the media which is focused on the sexualisation of women through the eyes of men in the film and media industry. This topic had an obvious interest in feminism and attracted many of them to look further into this topic.
Pleasure in looking
The ultimate aim of the media focusing on the sexualisation of females is to attract more audience to watch what is being shown.
The male gaze is seen in nearly all media outlets when portraying women. The aim of advertising when trying to sell a product is focused on the body of a female through the eyes of a male. This attracts the target audience to ‘look’ longer than they would have if there was not sexualisation on show.
The male gaze has transformed into a marketing tool for the sake of sales.
Digital Media and The Male Gaze
Through the world of social media, male gaze has turned into female gaze with more and more people empowering women through social media platforms. The ‘free the nipple’ campaign shows this as the aim was to create a part of the females genitalia the norm in society and not having to ‘hide’ parts of the body. As what is hidden becomes the mystery and the male gaze profits from what is a mystery in the female body and shows it in more enhanced sexualised forms.
