FAQ: What is the “male gaze”?
Before talking about the male gaze, it is first important to introduce its parent concept: the gaze. According to Wikipedia the gaze is a concept used for “analysing visual culture… that deals with how an audience views the people presented.” The types of gaze are primarily categorized by who is doing the looking.
While the ideas behind the concept were present in earlier uses of the gaze, the introduction of the term “the male gaze” can be traced back to Laura Mulvey and her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” which was published in 1975. In it, Mulvey states that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the camera (and thus the gaze) comes from factors such as the as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience for most film genres. While this was more true in the time it was written, when Hollywood protagonists were overwhelmingly male, the base concept of men as watchers and women as watched still applies today, despite the growing number of movies targeted toward women and that feature female protagonists.
Though it was introduced as part of film theory, the term can and is often applied to other kinds of media. It is often used in critiques of advertisements, television, and the fine arts. For instance, John Berger (1972) studied the European nude (both past and present) and found that the female model is often put on display directly to the spectator/painter or indirectly through a mirror, thus viewing herself as the painter views her.
For Berger these images record the inequality of gender relations and a sexualization of the female image that remains culturally central today. They reassure men of their sexual power and at the same moment deny any sexuality of women other than the male construction. They are evidence of gendered difference… because any effort to replace the woman in these images with a man violates ‘the assumptions of the likely viewer’ (Berger, 1972: 64). That is, it does not fit with expectations but transgresses them and so seems wrong.
[Wykes and Barrie Gunter (pp. 38-39)]
The male gaze in advertising is actually a fairly well-studied topic, and it — rather than film — is often what comes to mind when the term is invoked. This is because, more than just being an object of a gaze, the woman in the advertisement becomes what’s being bought and sold: “The message though was always the same: buy the product, get the girl; or buy the product to get to be like the girl so you can get your man” in other words, “‘Buy’ the image, ‘get’ the woman” (Wykes, p. 41). In this way, the male gaze enables women to be a commodity that helps the products to get sold (the “sex sells” adage that comes up whenever we talk about modern marketing). Even advertising aimed at women is not exempt: it engages in the mirror effect described above, wherein women are encouraged to view themselves as the photographer views the model, therefore buying the product in order to become more like the model advertising it.
If you look at the image at the top right of this post, you can see that the image being sold to men is that of an attractive woman (they are encouraged to look at her in the same way the men on the curb are) while the image being sold to women is that if they buy the product that they, too, can be the recipients of male attention. Thus the image being sold, for both men and women, quite literally becomes that of the male gaze.
As feminist popular culture critics emerge, so does the use of the term in regard to areas such as comic books and video games. Indeed, it is from one of those areas that we can find a clear example of the male gaze in action:
The above image, which is a panel taken from the comic All Star Batman And Robin, the Boy Wonder juxtaposed with the script written by author Frank Miller (released in the director’s edition of the comic), illustrates the way that the male gaze works in a concrete way. When Miller says, “We can’t take our eyes off her” he is speaking directly of his presumably male audience, and the follow up (“Especially since she’s got one fine ass.”) says loud and clear that her sexualized portrayal is for the pleasure of the envisioned heterosexual male viewer. In essence, Viki Vale’s character is there to reassure the readership of their hetero-masculinity while simultaneously denying Vicki any agency of her own outside of that framework. She is the quintessential watched by male watchers: the writer/director (Frank), his artist, and the presumed male audience that buys the book.
As illustrated in the above examples, the term has applications outside of the framework that Mulvey initially imagined. Although it is most easily illustrated in places where creator intent is clear (or, in Frank Miller’s case, blatantly stated), creator intent is not actually a prerequisite for a creation to fall under the male gaze. Nor does the creator and/or the audience have to be male, nor does the subject of the gaze have to be unhappy with the result. In the end, the simplest way to describe the male gaze is to return it to its roots of the female model/actress/character being looked at by the the male looker.
And, well, if you’re still confused you can go read this Dinosaur Comic about it. It gives an overview of the subject in 6 panels, placing it in the humorous context of talking dinosaurs! And everyone knows things always make better sense when they’re put into context by talking dinosaurs.
Related Reading:
Introductory:
- Laura Mulvey (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Screen 16 (3): 6-18.
- Nancy M. Brannon (Feminist Theory, Spring 99): The Patriarchal Gaze
- (TV Tropes Wiki): Male Gaze
- Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics): October 06 2006
- Maggie Wykes and Barrie Gunter (The Media and Body Image, 2005): “Ways of seeing women”, pp. 38-47.
- Daniel Chandler (Notes on ‘The Gaze’): Laura Mulvey on film spectatorship
- Examples of the male gaze: Scott A. Lukas (The Gender ADs Project): The Male Gaze
Clarifying Concepts:
- Gender differences in seeing women:
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
[Berger, John. (1972): Ways of Seeing, p. 42]
- Layers of the male gaze:
This article effectively, although unintentionally, reveals the layers and layers of perception that surround us. Bailey Rae sees objectification in images where women are blatently sexualised and speaks out against it. However she is apparently not aware that she can still be objectified and sexualised despite keeping her midriff covered. I think a certain blindness to aspects of the patriarchy can affect us all, purely because we are all products of it in one way or another.
[la somnambule (la somnambule): Where does the male gaze end?]
- How the male gaze interacts with sexual objectification:
In Miller’s hands, photographer Vicki Vale becomes a gossip columnist “gadfly” who struts around her apartment in lacy lingerie and fluffy heels, sipping a martini, and dictating to herself while Gotham City gleams in the huge, uncurtained, picture windows behind her.
[...]
Frank wants you to drool over Vicki Vale. She’s hot! She knows what she’s got! She’s strutting around her own apartment – technically alone – but you, dear reader, you are allowed in to watch. She’s stripped down for *you*.[Karen Healey (Girls read comics): I HAVE A DATE WITH BRUCE WAYNE.]
- tekanji (Official Shrub.com Blog): Obscuring the Male Gaze
tigtog
tekanji
shakesville
Hmm, why people might want to exchange comfort for aesthetics? I think there are lots of reasons. How you dress says a lot about you, from your personal style to identifying you with a particular social group – it’s not a simple question of looking good/attractive vs. not looking good, there can be a huge amount of personal expression involved. I’d say too that for many people it’s really an artform, that they’re aiming to create something beautiful without needing any particular purpose to it.
And hmm, that’s very interesting about the geeks. Being a geek myself, and working in a geeky field, I’d be very interested in how geekyness and sexist social pressures interact. I tend to think of geeks as being people who tend to ignore social pressure, who tend to do their own thing even if it’s not trendy or socially acceptable. Maybe women grow up with more intense pressure to conform? Maybe they’re just pushed away from the things people tend to get geeky over in the first place?
I don’t know. Are there any girl-geeks nearby who can share first-hand experience of this sort of thing? (although maybe I should ask that question elsewhere, since I suspect it’s a bit off-topic here)
Thanks for the close analysis on color, very interesting. In contrast, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Sensory"the science seems pretty solid on women hearing and smelling more acutely, and there is some evidence that women’s brains are more balanced between the hemispheres.
More broadly, I find that male-gaze type theories aren’t a good fit for reality. Both men and women enjoy looking at attractive people (granted women are usually more subtle about it). And women clearly spend time (and enjoy) looking at other women, their fashion, hair, style and figures. It’s women who watch beauty pageants, read magazines and articles about style etc. As a young “feminist” guy I didn’t believe or want to believe this, but really — have you ever met a guy who watches beauty pageants? I haven’t, but I know many (strong, feminist) women who do.
Without wanting to start a “who has the best articles” contest, I had a quick look through some of the references for the wiki-article you linked, and I think they’d be well worth your time to check out.
The article about hearing says at length that while there *is* a difference, it’s generally blown way out of proportion – men and women will typically score about the same, with the difference only being apparent on average, and then it’s very much at the limit of perceptibility anyway.
The ’smell’ reference is also slightly dicey, it comes from a BBC report which doesn’t say quite what they’re claiming – it says women’s sensitivity to smells increases more with repeated exposure than men’s. Actually, it also says that this is with *one* smell, that they couldn’t reproduce the effect using a different smell, and that the difference disappears by middle age(they suggest it’s hormone related). Also, crucially they say “personality and semantic memory were found to be better predictors…”.
Not that I’m saying there are *no* differences, or that there are no studies showing this, just that this article seems to be overstating things a bit. I’d suggest too that this is a good article to read, if you haven’t already:
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/05/10/faq-but-men-and-women-are-born-different-isnt-that-obvious/
There are certainly a number of biological differences between men and women. They are all minor though, the overlap between men and women in all of those areas you mentioned is significant. The minor differences in biology cannot account for the extent of ‘gender traits’ we see in the population everyday.
It could be that our cultural stereotypes are based on real biological differences but they are surely accentuated. It’s the accentuation that I have trouble with; it makes life difficult for anyone who doesn’t fit the stereotype. Also these stereotypes create populations within specialist fields that are largely single gendered, which have unhealthy consequences for those within these groups, and for society generally.
You may be right about the male gaze, I may be ascribing too large a net to it.
I don’t know many men who go to fashion shows (An exception: I do know of a plasma physicist who modelled in a few, he was also an extreme sports enthusiast and the most popular guy with women I have ever met.) I do know of a few guys who watch the fashion channel and shows like Next Top Model because they are “a good perv.” Clearly men and women get different things out of fashion. I worry, somewhat, that male designers design more for men, and that perhaps female designers do so by osmosis. Once something becomes part of a certain culture it is hard to eradicate it. I once heard a fashion designer say they liked using high heels because they have the same affect on a woman’s posture as foot binding does.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, maybe the affects are real but irreversible, I’m not sure, but I do think it is worth examining further.
I think there’s a lot of generalizing going on here. Maybe it’s because I’m young, I don’t know anyone who watches beauty pageants anymore, but I know many men–both gay and straight–who will go to a fashion show (and not just to ogle the models) and read [men’s[ fashion magazines. It’s the societal bias regarding masculinity that tells men they shouldn’t be interested in fashion, not that “men and women get different things out of fashion” in general.
As for the foot binding comment, that fashion designer was off, I think. Foot binding had the purpose of making the feet smaller, often to a point where they could no longer support the rest of the body because having tiny feet was a high aesthetic. High heels have the purpose of elongating the legs (sometimes to the detriment of the balls of the feet) and straightening the spine–and one can definitely not straighten the spine if even standing up is not an option. The two things, while both being painful to the feet (to varying degrees) have completely different purposes.
Except for all those centuries where it hasn’t. You really need to look at a history of male fashion.
I can’t quite see your point. Your point seems to be that in a society where women are judged first and foremost on their looks, women spend time on their appearance. And since men aren’t around when women are spending this time…it’s not really women’s status that has determined this necessity that they look a certain way? Women actually spend all this time doing practically the only thing that gets them any status in society just because they feel like it? I don’t see how that makes sense.
It is incredibly hard for me to believe that anyone would dispute male gaze. It’s making me quite daydreamy, actually. Can you imagine being able to go through your life (hell, even a single day of your life), without having to constantly worry about the male gaze and whether you measure up to it? If one is really imaginative, going through life not even aware it exists and actually able to dispute it?! The idea is so utopian, so heavenly, that I can hardly believe that there are people in the world who actually live that way. Dreaming about it is akin to dreaming about fairies and unicorns.
Lastly, I want to say that it is quite irritating when someone says something that makes no scientific sense, and then prefaces it with “I know this isn’t PC, but…..” Twisting science in order to avoid addressing an issue isn’t bad because it’s “non-PC.” It’s bad because it’s twisting science in order to avoid addressing an issue.
Kandela wrote: “It could be that our cultural stereotypes are based on real biological differences but they are surely accentuated.”
Absolutely! I also have problems with the accentuation, and with stereotypes that makes individuals feel weird for not matching broad trends (since individual variation swamps the broad trends). I’m not a traditional guy by any stretch — highly verbal, cry at movies, relationship-focused, process-oriented, etc. — so I know how that goes. But I also made the mistake for years of trying to live according to idealistic theories of gender sameness, rather than take life as it comes, and that doesn’t work either.
Male gaze just doesn’t ring true for me (and I’m sorry, but Mulvey’s article is gibberish). Outliers aside, most boys aren’t much interested in dress up (or invited to play); my daughters and their friends love it, without any traditional socialization to do so. Every woman I know likes to look nice and be noticed, in a way few men do. Since studies show that attractive, well-dressed men are also far more successful than other guys in practically every field, oppression of women (having to trade on looks) doesn’t make sense as an explanation (to me, anyway.)
There’s a clear reality that creepy guys stare at women and most women have been made to feel really uncomfortable as a result. But that doesn’t justify the connection to oppression and rape that is often argued.
Why do I care? Because “male gaze” and objectification are used, I think, to imply that women are morally superior to men, that regular guys engaging in normal behavior are “oppressing” women, to lump decent guys in with rapists. It’s not only incorrect abstraction that distorts reality, but it’s exactly the kind of critique that tunes a lot of men out of feminist discussions. It sounds like blaming BS to them, and it kind of is.
You write that “Outliers aside, most boys aren’t much interested in dress up (or invited to play); my daughters and their friends love it, without any traditional socialization to do so.” Do your daughters have any interaction with the media? Watch TV, see a magazine, talk to people who do? Because then she’s getting all the “traditional socialization” that she needs to feel like she needs to buy into traditional societal images of what a girl or woman should be. When young girls are constantly inundated with images that tell them that well-dressed females wearing makeup are “beautiful”, they begin to practice that through things like dress-up. If this was a “natural” activity with no societal influence, then these images wouldn’t inform how she plays “dress up.” There’s a reason why playing “dress up” tends towards dresses, makeup, other pretty clothes rather than, say, military attire or other scenarios that are not so heavily sold to women and girls via the media.
As for your example of staring, I would argue that all humans want to stare at people they find beautiful–but that girls are taught that doing so is immodest and men are often taught that it’s okay to stare beyond what is comfortable for the other person (there’s a difference between welcome and unwelcome stares and I highly doubt that men don’t understand the difference). The “male gaze” we’re talking about here is the extent to which, for example, the mere act of someone playing dress up is indicative of a male-dominated society acting upon women and impressing upon them the idea of the image of their natural self versus the image of themselves that men would prefer them to have. On the flip side, this pressure hardly exists for men coming from women. If you think that the “male gaze” doesn’t exist, turn on your TV–why do you think sub-par looking men are so often paired with unbelievably (and unattainably) beautiful women? (The answer is not that women are any less interested in a man’s sheer good looks.) It’s because the heterosexual “male gaze” expects that women perform to a standard of beauty that the general man simply is not interested in seeing in another man. Don’t ever forget that men get to “tune out” of something like this because they have the privilege not to be subject to it.
Hi LN, You are right of course, I’ve generalised a bit. What I should of said is that at present the majority of men get different things out of fashion than do the majority of women.
To expand on what the designer said, he was most interested in issues of balance and foot-print. Both foot-binding and high heels require smaller steps, which was the balance issue. The way foot-binding produces a smaller foot-print is obvious; the way a high-heel does it is a matter of geometry. If you put the foot on an angle less of it will be on the ground.
This, of course, doesn’t negate anything you’ve said. My point was to show that the designer was interested in historical standards of beauty, and that he didn’t care in the slightest about what it was doing to the wearers.
Just a note that you’ve reached your 3 comments in 24 hours limit as a new commentor. If you weren’t aware of this rule, could you please read the Comments Policy now?
I read the policy–barring this post, I’ve only put two up in the last 24 hours.
LN wrote: “Do your daughters have any interaction with the media? ” You know, condescension doesn’t really help your argument. Your theory is not hard to understand, it’s just not rooted in reality. It hasn’t changed since 1973, which is exactly the problem; society, individuals and the media are drastically different over that time. This topic on Metafilter has a ton of great examples of how sexist early 1970s America was. Read it and marvel, young ‘uns! Things are very different now.
Here’s the irony that kills me: the theories of ‘male gaze’ and ‘objectification’ are all about how bad it is to treat people as abstractions for your own needs, and not as inidividuals. But that’s exactly what these theories do! The needs are ideological rather than sexual, but the effect is the same. Look at yourself in the mirror, LN, lecturing me all about my daughters and how they think. You don’t know me and you don’t know them. Life is complex. It doesn’t fit into all your neat little boxes.
someone wrote that “As for your example of staring, I would argue that all humans want to stare at people they find beautiful–but that girls are taught that doing so is immodest and men are often taught that it’s okay to stare beyond what is comfortable for the other person.” Who do you think teaches women to be modest and its okay for men to just stare? Today TV shows have both men and women gazing and objectifying each other. I feel that the “male gaze” statement is an out of date term used way too much.
Good point, brub. I guess what bothers me about some of these concepts is that they don’t allow for how fluid society is. Things are changing fast, but there is inertia, so we have some holdovers of the horrible sexism that was everywhere 40 years ago, but a lot is better.
I’m curious — a friend who is 25 told me that among his friends, it’s just as common for women to initiate romance or dating or sex as for men. Is that everyone else’s experience? I’m in my 40s and am amazed — that would be so different than in my age group, even today.
Msalt,
To answer your question, YES…women under the age of 30 are in a COMPLETELY different socio-sexual reticon than their 40 yr old peers. In an informal, non-familiar social situation (ie, bars, clubs, etc.), it is typical that I am APPROACHED at least four times during the evening by women under thirty. Last month I did “an experiment” and in each social outing into said environments, of the four to five women that approached me, at least three of them were willing to come back to my place of residence with me for the evening. Of the additional seven “under 30″ women with whom I initiated the contact, another four were again willing to depart and return with me to my place of residence. Two of the others suggested we meet for dinner during the following few days, but the last one asked that we return to her place of residence because she would need to get up early to prepare for work the next morning (!!).
The next week, at a different establishment (but very similar venue), I performed the same test with women over the age of 35. Of the twelve women I approached, only THREE of them would consider leaving with me, and only one of them was amenable to returning with me to my place of residence; the other two suggested a quieter late-dining establishment instead of the domicile scenario. The other nine women that I approached were open to conversation, but only five of them wanted to provide me with a telephone number to continue contact over the next few days (yes, I confirmed they were WORKING numbers!).
I believe that the difference I observed in the sexual pre-course dynamics with the women in the different age groups speaks to a quickly-rooting dysfunction in the way that young women are and have been guided, mentored and socialized. I believe the problem to be two-pronged:
1) Younger women have begun to devalue the experience
of intimate physical interactions, ie, the idea of engaging in
regular sexual intercourse, regardless of the co-existence of an intimate EMOTIONAL relationship, has become a more readily acceptable tenant in a young woman’s expectation of life experiences. My older sister (she is 43, I am 38, but we both appear 10-15 yrs younger than our chronology), agreed and substantiated our shared hypothesis by giving examples relayed to her, first hand, by six of her female co-workers in the 25-33 yr old age group. She even went on to say that of these six women, four of them willingly engaged in extra-marital affairs, and indicated that they would be willing to do so again…and two of those four women are CURRENTLY MARRIED.
2) There are SO MANY PARENTS now that are more concerned with the validation they receive from their child (and by child, I mean an offspring still dependent on the physical and financial care of the parent), that the thought of denying the child his/her wishes is abhorrent to the parent; I am so curious to know WHEN these parents developed such a repulsion at the prospect of telling a child NO.
**If a person over the age of 20, chooses to have offspring, there is a CATASTROPHIC Dysfunction occurring when said parent requires the validation of this DEPENDENT, that has no education, no job, no credit and would cease to thrive without the parent’s care.*** I believe this component
to be at core of a wide variety of problems with which we, as a society, are faced. Effective citizenship begins with being effectively PARENTED, and until dynamic of these validation-seeking, semi-adult/pseudo-caretaking parents can be addressed, I believe we are in for much more than we ever anticipated in the upcoming generations.
Is it just me, or is there a sense of chillingly detached male-gaze objectifying about your entire post?
Your detailed balance-sheet accounting of all the women who make/made advances to you – and you to them – in establishments A, B, C etc (aka pick-up joints) is impressive, but a tad unnecessary … as is all the statistical analysing of whether they offered/accepted an invitation to return with you to a ‘designated’ … ahem … ‘place of residence’.
And if, after all these shennanigans, you came to the conclusion that there is ‘a quickly-rooting dysfunction in the way that young women are and have been guided, mentored and socialized’ then that speaks volumes about your own puritannical, patriarchal baggage.
These women may simply have a healthy, pro-active attitude to their own sexuality and right to make their own choices. Maybe they are just asserting their right to a one-night stand with no strings attached – just like men have always done?
You also seem to be obsessed with the ages of your female experimental targets, yet fail to realise that, at 37, you’re really getting a bit old for this sort of thing.
I also found myself wondering what happened to all the painstakingly categorised numbers of women who accepted your equally painstakingly categorised fake-invitations, but then found themselves left high and dry as you moved onto the next stages of your ‘socio-sexual reticon’ analysing.
I sincerely hope that at least one of them tipped their glass of wine over your somewhat oversized head (as a socio-sexual experiment, of course).
Just a quick clarification … my previous was addressed to Wil Shade.
“The rest of us, male and female all have 3 distinct cones and see EXACTLY the same colours. ” (emphasis mine)
That isn’t entirely true. I have a full set of cones and can “see” colors just fine (red, yellow, blue etc…), but subtle variations in color (shades of purple vs shades of blue for example) are hard to distinguish.
This trait is far more common in men than women. It isn’t just that we aren’t trained to look at colors and care about them, it’s that we really don’t always see a difference. Maybe we sometimes have a lower proportion of one type of cone than another, who knows. The point is, one can see colors differently without being one of the rare few who are genetically color-blind. It isn’t just a myth.
I think the male gaze is real. It exists. I also believe that there is great truth in all of Ms. Mulzey’s observations.
I also think that in some instances it is possible for a man to see a woman he has never met be blown away by her beauty and inner energy (the two are sometimes connected) and subsequently have instant fantasizes about loving her. Sometimes this results in a male gaze, an eye contact a conversation being struck that is light sexy and dreamy. Sometimes the woman even immensly enjoys this appreciation from said strange man. Not because she has been abused into humiliating herself into needing the approval of a strange man but because she enjoys being the object of genuine inexplicable positive romantic affection. As crazy as it sounds sometimes “instant intimacy” and love (and/or lust) at first sight happens. Again it is rare and when it is happens it is often fleeting but it can be an amazingly beautiful thing that transcends rational gender deconstructions. A lot of times this form of mutual intimacy begins (on a certain level) with a “male gaze”. It is not always crude ogling. I think most men and women have intimacy issues and sometimes it is easy to dismiss certain forms of male and female interaction when assserting independence from patriarchy and in doing so unintentionally avoid dealing with our own intimacy issues. NO woman should be reduced to a sex object by ANYONE. Yet I also think women should be free enough to enjoy those rare moments when a man genuinely admires her beauty and sexiness. Maybe it’s not always horrible.
. Maybe women grow up with more intense pressure to conform? Maybe they’re just pushed away from the things people tend to get geeky over in the first place?
MAYBE THEY ARE MUCH MORE EASILY MANIPULATED? Like eve taking the apple from the serpent.
Your first paragraph almost gets it. Yes, there is intense pressure to conform and discouragement away from many things considered unfeminine. But none of that is “natural” in the sense of being inevitable – it’s cultural, and cultural traditions/attitudes can change (and always have, so why not change away from sexism?).
Your second paragraph however? Please don’t tell me you are quoting a religious Just-So story as any sort of valid evidence.
i think there is a lot of confusion on the part of some responders here. These theories are not about targeting, calling out, or changing specific individuals’ behaviors. These theories address the larger themes and structures of shared visual culture. You can agree or disagree that the culture is structured in these ways or that our interactions and belief systems are mediated by images in the ways these theories describe. However, individuals are not responsible for the existence of the “male gaze” nor is it possible for any of us operate entirely outside of the “gaze” according to these theories.
Also all of this talk about women coming onto men or liking male attention in no way debases these theories. In fact in many ways it bolsters and brings them up to date. one of the keys to these theories is the internalization of the gaze- the gaze subsumes or stunts any other frameworks of self perception women might have inextricably linking ocular attention to pleasure in women’s lives.
There are many strong and interesting arguments to complicate or contest theories of “the gaze”. Starting with concepts of identification with subjects of images over gazers, or arguments that take into account the readings of viewers who operate from socio-cultural positions of neither the assumed gazer or the assumed subject etc. etc.
a lot of the responses here are pretty off topic.
Theories of the gaze are not designed for establishing for moral behavioral guidelines for good feminists. They are designed to provide a frameworks for understanding visual media messages and their effects on/roles in our lives.
Also this blog article seems to be more about explicating theories of the gaze in a basic and clear way than about advocating or forwarding the theories of the gaze. Thanks to the blogger for a good basic intro from which to continue onward with our inquiries!