![]() ![]() One thing we do know then is that when it comes to the representation of women, the female gaze is supposed to fill the lacunae left behind by the male gaze and to right its wrongs.īy stressing that a female gaze deals in emotions rather than actions, it seems we are in danger of falling back into the trap of the male gaze. Writer and director Joey Soloway suggests that part of the role of the female gaze is to depict what it feels like to be the object of the gaze and to defiantly return that gaze. With that in mind, the female gaze is instead understood as an empathetic, sensitive, thoughtful gaze, depicting women as fully-realised individuals with complex inner lives. Critics often rest content with giving a negative definition of the female gaze, telling us what it doesn’t do, namely seek to subordinate or objectify. While the literature on the male gaze is well-established (think John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”), the relatively new concept of the female gaze is under-defined. The female gaze may be a hot ticket but it remains something of a mystery, with some even doubting its existence. We know, in other words, that the reign of the male gaze is over. ![]() It pervades our visual culture, objectifying, reducing, and simplifying women – an expression and reinforcement of an unequal power dynamic in a patriarchal society. Moving away from the male gaze then isn’t simply a matter of replacing it with the female gaze, but overcoming the idea of gendered gaze altogether, argues Emma Syea. What was meant to act as a liberation from the male gaze turns out to be a different limiting view of women. The way the female gaze has been conceptualized still propagates the usual stereotypes about female identity. So, the antidote must be balancing it out with a new emphasis on the female gaze, right? Wrong. The male gaze is objectifying, reductive, and dominates our visual culture. ![]()
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