The male gaze was introduced by Laura Mulvey in 1975 and is largely based on the medium’s presentation of female perspectives in narratives as a way of appealing to the aesthetics of male viewers. It is worth noting that the male gaze is partly a manifestation of sexism and gender inequality. King (2020)’s research suggests that the core of the male gaze is the objectification of women as objects of visual pleasure, rather than as individuals. In social media, women appeal to men’s desires by displaying sexy bodies, and the male gaze reveals an increasing problem of sexism and gender inequality.
Male gaze and gender inequality
Gender inequality in the male gaze focuses primarily on the objectification of women. In social media and advertisements, women often attract male consumers by showing sexy bodies or wearing revealing clothes. For example, the live broadcast of Chinese beverage brand Coconut has been attracting male consumers by showing women’s bodies. Especially in TikTok, female internet influencers usually reveal provocative expressions and gestures to boost traffic. It can be observed that women are often portrayed in social media and on the internet as objects of pleasure for male consumers. The gradual objectification of women in the male gaze further contributes to the accelerated judgement of women’s appearance and body image in social opinion.
With the growing problem of objectification of women, gender discrimination as well as the male gaze moulds women into dependent roles on men. Glapka (2018)’s research argues that gender stereotyping under the male gaze leads to women’s difficulties in obtaining equal opportunities for development in the workplace and in education. Notably, women who live in the male gaze for a long period of time tend to be more prone to developing self-objectification, which leads to constant anxiety about their body shape and appearance. In particular, the pursuit of sexy bodies on social media accelerates women’s appearance shaming (Tehranian, 2018). Thus, it can be found that gender stereotypes and objectification of women under the male gaze further exacerbate the problem of gender inequality in society.
Conclusion and recommendations
Overall, the male gaze exacerbates gender inequality in social media. Women’s self-objectification has led to accelerated anxiety about women’s body image and looks, as well as negative discourse among women in social media and public cyberspace. In order to further strengthen the expression of the female subject, especially to circumvent the objectification of women as objects to please men. Women need to further change their anxieties about body image and appearance on social media. Women as independent objects should not only exist in the male gaze, but the corresponding stereotypes and sexism need to be changed to strengthen women’s subjectivity in society. Female internet influencers in social media need to further strengthen their voice in public online environments by presenting a diverse range of female images and professional identities in order to help women gain a higher position of power in support of gender equality.
References
Glapka, E. (2018). ‘If you look at me like at a piece of meat, then that’sa problem’–women in the center of the male gaze. Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis as a tool of critique. Critical Discourse Studies, 15(1), pp.87-103.
King, C. S. (2020). The male gaze in visual culture. In The Routledge handbook of gender and communication (pp. 120-132). Routledge.
Tehranian, J. (2018). Copyright’s Male Gaze: Authorship and Inequality in a Panoptic World. Harv. Women’s LJ, 41, 343.
