Web Essay: The Impact Of Male Gaze On Women

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The Web essay on Male Gaze by the authors Thomas Streeter, Nicole Hintlian, Samantha Chipetz, and Susanna Callender on the University of Vermont website discusses the exploitation of the male gaze in advertising and provides several convincing examples to explain its impact on women. Male Gaze has been a long tradition in western art, where women are represented as objects to be viewed by male viewers. This tradition continues in modern advertising and the omnipresence of this tradition has made it so that "Women watch themselves being looked at" (Berger, 1973, p.47). Through the ages and even in modern times, advertisements assume man as the ideal spectator therefore women are acclimatized to look at themselves through the eyes of a man. I completely agree with the authors that the advertisers understand the power and tradition of the male gaze and exploit it even in modern times, and the primary spectator is the male. …show more content…

A prime example used in the essay that beseeches the idea of male gaze is the WW II-era (1943) ad for soap. The upward and unfocussed glance of the woman is the expression of someone who is not looking at anything, but is actually being looked at by a variety of men. The words in the advertisement “ I pledge myself to guard every bit of Beauty that he cherishes in me” subliminally tells the female viewer to view herself as being looked at by men. The male gaze is even a construct of advertisements that cater to women, as illustrated by the Vogue advertisements in the essay. Women are always subliminally told that they are always on view, and to view themselves through the eyes of a

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