What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?
Although the phrase “female gaze” was not directly written in Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” it was developed in accompaniment with the “male gaze” - a controlling force in cinema, constructed for the pleasure of the male viewer (Mulvey). With all narratives and portrayals being told from the male perspective, female characters are objectified. Their thoughts, values, and ambitions are diminished to a pretty face.
The female gaze is not a swap of gender roles with the gross objectification of male figures. Instead, it aims to empathize (“The Female Gaze”). The physical, action-packed, and logical stories driven by masculinity are transformed into intimacy and respect for characters. Three general factors make up the female gaze including Feeling-Seeing, The Gazed Gaze, and Returning the Gaze. The core theme of these principles is reconstructing an object into a subject through conscious and developed feelings.
One of the key reasons why the media is oversaturated with the male gaze is the gender imbalance in the film industry. When men make up more than three-quarters of directors, writers, and producers, the female perspective is easily drowned out. This is not to say the female gaze is not present in current media, the most recent success being Barbie directed by Greta Gerwig. Outside of the extravagant plastic world with every possible shade of pink, Barbie has a much deeper influence with the narratives and thoughts of so many different female characters being broadcasted on the big screen. While the extreme comedic moments help buffer the subtle but insistent commentary on feminism, not all stories are approached this way. Portrait of a Lady on Fire displays a beautifully tragic relationship between two women, and Lady Bird shares a turbulent relationship between a teenager and her mom as she comes of age. Both stories had the potential to be corrupted by the male gaze. The characters could have been sexualized for the appeasement of male viewers or objectified into a prop in their story. The delicate treatment of these characters and their perspective is the female gaze.
The female gaze is predominantly explored and analyzed in cinematography as this is the most general visual media, but its presence is also engrained into art. All paintings have aspects of masculinity and femininity. Stereotypical “masculine” paintings are more objective and rigid while “feminine” paintings are more conversational (Rabin). The artistic style has less of an influence on the gaze of the painting than the narrative of the subject. For example, although the Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli has a soft feminine style with a female character as the main focus of the masterpiece, it is an artifact of the male gaze. Her nudity is ascribed to the voyeuristic tendency of a male artist and audience. The femininity of the pose and figure is a construction of the male fantasy, a common trend in nude art (Starr). As a muse, women are presented with a dreamy offering of herself to the audience, a vessel for erotic desire. An object, not a human (Matthews).
Subverting this gaze is difficult, and it is not a common endeavor. When the goal of art is to display to an audience, removing the objectivity of a muse and instilling her with the gaze is an impossible task. But, it is a critical component to dismantling the patriarchal narrative.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an epic poem entailing the different transformations of notable figures in mythology. A common narrative point throughout these stories is the rape or attempted brutalization of women. Approximately 20% of the novel depicts sexual assault, and a large portion of these stories then details the “monstrification**”** of the victims. The most famous of these stories is that of Medusa, but Daphne and Callisto also an identical narratives.
The violation of the body does not end after the rape. Their bodily autonomy is also physically violated by forces beyond their control, by nature and magic. They are deprived of their humanity and voice. Now symbols of the patriarchy and control, these women are objects in a cautionary tale rather than autonomous subjects of their own lives. The artistic representation of these tales further imposes this narrative, ensuring the enduring brutalization of these women, across time and space.