spoiler: no one wins!

You ask for a mirror to check if your face is pretty. You ask your friend to check whether your side profile is appealing. You fidget on your chair wondering if you look pretty. Questions like: is my lip-gloss still noticeable? Is my hair still presentable? Are the jeans I’m wearing flattering on my figure because I think I saw some sour stares coming from men? Is my cleavage enticing enough and not too much to turn people off? If these questions have ever popped into your mind at any given time of your life, then congratulations…you are mentally enslaved to the male gaze.

So, what is the dreaded male gaze?

Verywellmind.com describes the male gaze as a way of portraying and looking at women that empowers men while sexualizing and diminishing women. The male gaze assures that women are not seen as a human with autonomy and agency.

The male gaze is one of the key ideas of feminist film theory. The concept of the male gaze was introduced by scholar and filmmaker Laura Mulvaney. It was introduced in her now famous 1975 essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.

Basically, the male gaze sucks. But what makes the male gaze suck even more is that it is not only based on the premise of how men view women but also how women view themselves and other women as well. That means females be they women, pre-teens, teens, young adults and elderly women tend to view themselves through men’s thoughts, fantasies, opinions and expectations of women.

The dreaded male gaze often stifles women and leaves you wondering who you’ll be if you unpack the male gaze and when you disassociate yourself from it. Are you going to be being of agency and autonomy or will your identity as a whole always be built off of what males think of you? Questions, questions, questions.

How Puberty and society enslaved me to the Male Gaze

It all started when I woke up with boobs.

 I was twelve and very scared. WHAT WERE THE LUMPS OF FLESH sprouting from my chest? I remember my granny waking me up at sunrise and taking a grass broom to sweep my breasts—–(a Zimbabwean custom that aunts or grandmothers performed in order to stop a kid’s breasts from protruding far too much). I felt uncomfortable and even a little weird because in my little brain I was trying to figure out why the heck I was growing up. And that scared me.

Men were already leering at me long before my chest became bigger. Puberty basically changed my body into something desirable and I leaned into the desirability to get attention and seek male validation. —The maturing of my body assisted me in my brainwashed mission to garner male attention. Whilst I questioned why I did what I did or felt the way I felt, it didn’t feel abnormal to me.

Me vs the male gaze

I went from a little girl no one paid attention to, including my peers both boys and girls, to a girl who garnered a lot of unwanted attention. At first it was weird that people’s eyes would immediately land on my chest. It felt gross, rather I felt gross. My little brain however rationalised that this was the most attention I had ever received in my twelve years of life. I got more friends outside my primary school best friend and a boy regarded as cool in our class and our entire grade was giving me attention. I was over the moon and life didn’t feel so lonely anymore. I was only twelve and I had unknowingly delved into the tumultuous ocean of the male gaze.

The attention—whether good or bad at the time came with nasty drawbacks. I was constantly hanging out with people who didn’t like me and somehow made me feel bad about myself. I already had an unhealthy relationship with my body at that age. Bullies would call me fat and point out every imperfection on my body and it sucked. It really sucked.

Anyway, high-school was no better. It was always a constant battle with my body. I would do work-outs and then quit after a week because I felt as though it was too hard and I didn’t have any support either. I was called a carrot by a guy I had the biggest crush on when I was 15 which made me realise just how much men have no problems or qualms about commenting on your body. I didn’t like myself anymore—-boobs and all. I often found myself wanting to chop them off. Boys’ comments ranged from wonder and amazement to disgust and teasing. I always felt uncomfortable. The male gaze was literally a scale I used to measure my looks. Catering to the male gaze made me want to work-out and look pretty, not because I wanted to do it for myself or to feel good about myself for myself. It was as though boys in my class and school as a whole owned female body and were entitled to dictate how they should be presented in their midst.

I remember sitting in a combi (commuter omnibus), chatting away with a dear friend of mine. There was a man at the backseat of the combi who was boldly and unabashedly commenting on how he was okay with going to prison if it meant he got to rape my friend and I. We were beyond traumatised as our bodies were being grossly scrutinised. It was humiliating and even dehumanising. I found myself hating my body again, but for reasons that I was getting disgusting male attention. The male gaze made me want attention but not harassment.

How the male gaze affects females and society as a whole

The male gaze impacts the portrayal of women in film which in turn leads to all the drawbacks females experience in every aspect of day-to-day life. Video games also involve women being overly and impractically sexualised to cater to the male gaze. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable some films have made me with regards to the portrayal of women. I’m an avid consumer of film, anime and just about everything, so believe me when I say I have noticed my fair share of women’s portrayal in media. I’m sure you remember Transformers, that one scene that was entirely focused on Megan Fox’s torso and body. It wasn’t so much as her body that perpetuated the male gaze because everyone has a body, rather it was the way the camera was hyper-focused on zooming into her body and even tracing her figure. It was the objectification.

Video games also involve women in very questionable get-ups that often have me questioning their practicality. There will be cases of women engaging in say a battle but they will be clad in a bikini and boots yet they can still blow men’s brains out and do insane flips and engage in impressive hand to hand combat. In the aforementioned visual, think of the video game character Quiet from Metal Gear Solid, I get that she’s a plant but geez. Anime also destroys female characters in some cases so they can appeal to the male gaze, like Princess Hibana who was really cool and iron-clad only for her to fall for Shinra in Fire force. Even before I delve into the complexities of characters, just the size of boobs in anime should tell you enough about the male gaze. Suffice to say, the male gaze is well…entirely based on capitalising on the sexualisation of women in a dehumanising way.

The whole sex sells premise is based off of the pure sexualisation of women. The male gaze is why advertisements feature all these women who are hyper-sexualised. Women can literally be splayed on the hood of the car clad in a bikini so they can entice men to buy the car, because men fantasize about fast cars and hot women. Therefore, advertisements tend to cater to men and their constant sexualisation of women. Posters advertising bars tend to feature half-naked women.

It’s no secret that the male gaze forces women to conform to rigorous AND strenuous AND expensive beauty standards. It’s not easy to live in a world where the universal beauty standard—perpetuated by men states that a woman should be pale, blonde, blue-eyed, skinny but voluptuous in build. Think of 2013-2022 Kim Kardashian. Think of Jessica Rabbit. Those are the Eurocentric beauty standards. I’m sure you’re probably wondering what any of that has to do with black women living in Africa, but there is in fact a correlation. Zimbabwean beauty standards are just a slightly and I mean slightly “Africanised” package of Eurocentric beauty standards. Europeans prefer pale and fair skin, Africans prefer light-skin, Europeans prefer bone straight hair, Africans in this case Zimbabweans prefer women to have a bone-straight Brazilian weaves or wigs. Those are just a few examples of beauty standards.

The correlation with the male gaze is that males in society are the ones who set the precedent on what women should look like in order to be considered pretty. The European male gaze determined women’s beauty standards which were then shipped to Africa in the advent of colonisation. Of course, Africans already had their own beauty standards for women that they set, however colonisation saw the African beauty standards being somewhat diluted so they could cater to colonisation and the African man. These dynamics are found in primary schools, secondary schools, university and you know—in society in general. (Read my previous blog post on beauty standards, I swear I’m totally NOT fishing, teeheehee).

Because women have somewhat been hotwired or brainwashed to believe that everything they do is to garner male attention, they conform to beauty standards. I can’t tell you how many times a hairdresser at a salon has told me that relaxing my hair will make me desirable to men. I’ve been told by women of different generations that men won’t find me pretty if I don’t wear a dress. I’ve been told that my skin complexion will have men fawning over me as long as I stay out of the sun. All of these opinions were centred on men’s expectations for women—in other words the male gaze. Do you see the cycle?

Look, I believe women can chase after beauty standards if they want to feel good about themselves, in the event that said beauty standards are attainable in a healthy way. As long as the women or females feel pretty for themselves. I’ve just seen way too many instances where women demonise other women for trying to attain beauty standards and some women demonise those who don’t desire to attain beauty standards. It really is quite the dynamic. But I digress.

The Male Gaze also affects women’s treatment in public spaces.  Zim girlies, you know the cat calls and hollers you get from the icky ‘dusties’ at City Hall or the older bald men who probably have wives? Those situations are usually perpetuated by the male gaze. Because when you look pretty and put together, men believe that you are doing it for them. The male gaze makes males think that everything you do, you do for them. How you dress and doll yourself up is for them. The male gaze is so deeply rooted in our heads that it doesn’t need men to be present to affect females.

The male gaze messes with one’s self esteem in a very messed up way. The male gaze creates a situation where a woman’s self-esteem is entirely dependent on how men perceive them or view them. Females whether young or older absolutely hate cat calls and hollers from men because it makes them feel severely uncomfortable. But the saddest part about these situations is that some if not most women feel ugly or unattractive when they don’t receive those unwanted vulgar cat-calls and hollers. Basically, women feel as though they are damned if they are cat-called and damned if they aren’t cat-called.  Their self-importance is now simply based off of men sexualising them and that sucks. If only there could be a balance where women could be complimented by men on the streets without being sexualised or objectified like a simple “umuhle” or “you look beautiful” instead of the “izibunu zonke lezo!” or “look at all that ass” or “you have great tits!” You see the difference? Wouldn’t polite fawning be great?

The Male Gaze doesn’t only focus on how men view women. It doesn’t only focus on how women view women through the lens of the male gaze. The male gaze also affects how men view other men. Have you noticed that men are always competing with other men? You think that men buy cars or get those abs to impress you? Oh sweetie, they don’t. They get those cars and those abs to impress other men and possibly dominate those male spaces. The male gaze is a cycle that everyone is part of in one way or another.

Can we ever be free from it?

Well yes and no. The male gaze is a social construct one can even say is as old as time. Dismantling it or getting rid of it is a taxing challenge that starts with everyone.

I’ve found that escaping from the male gaze started with my walk with God. My value and worth in God, is more important than the what the worldly perceptions of my body and overall does God say about your body and your overall value

Why I say yes and no also primarily depends on your own actions. You can be rid of it mentally. That’s the beginning of seizing it or quelling it. Seek compassion, more-so self-compassion. Stop objectifying yourself. Stop poking and prodding at your body like it’s playdough.  I had to learn to be kind to my body at every stage, when I was overweight, when I was bloated and when I was trying to. Being kind to my body was one of the best things I ever did for me.

Taking my body back is a way I believe I have freed myself from the male gaze. The realisation and notion that my body belongs to me and me alone was an epiphany. The mere fact that I have autonomy and agency over my body made me realise that I alone dress my body, I take care of my body and it doesn’t have to cater to anyone else to make me happy. I just have to like it. The choices I make are for me and me alone. No one else.

Dismantling the male gaze also requires us to teach our sisters, cousins and friends that doing things for themselves rather than patriarchal dictates is way more fulfilling. We shouldn’t be teaching girls that “if you do this, men will like you” or “if you don’t do this, men won’t like you”. We need to teach girls that they can shave, wear wigs, straighten or curl their hair, wear pretty dresses or jeans only if they want to, only if they believe it makes them pretty not because men will be disgusted with them if they don’t.

• The “Weird” Brown Girl

sources:

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-male-gaze-5118422

https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-male-gaze-definition-theory.html