Hosted at the University of Vermont, this Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose has a nice discussion of the issues in advertising portrayals of female beauty with a combination of scholarly references and good imagery. Worth checking out – it may not be Killing Us Softly, but it’s an interesting read. I particularly like the photoshop job they do in the first few slides.
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Because, of course, men are never shown in awkward, unnatural , unusual, or impractical poses in major mens’ magazines, such as GQ.
Obviously, they are. But, what is the *range* of poses and norms of “beauty” (for lack of a better term) that are shown? Why do those poses stand out as unusual, awkward, or unnatural, whereas similar poses do not as immediately strike the viewer as odd when they are struck by women?
I didn’t react to them as being unusual in the context of magazine pictures. I linked to them because they were similar examples of behavior that is normal in ads or fashion photos but would be odd to see in a normal environment.
Photos are taken of people posed in unusual positions in order to exaggerate things: a physical feature, an attitude, an emotional state, etc. I do not expect to see realism in them.
The presentation puts forward the theory that men are seen as laughable in poses that seem normal for women. Women, however, can also use the poses that men can use while seeming normal. How is that not women having more options in how they present themselves than men? If women have more legitimate choices than men, isn’t that female empowerment?
This presentation appears to have a fundamental assumption that if men and women are treated differently, it must be bad for women. It never justifies why the unequal relationship is detrimental to women or beneficial to men.
As for the discussion of “the gaze” I’d love to see what sort of study could prove the claims made.
And consider this line, “Women are acculturated to look at themselves through the eyes of an imagined man because the ideal spectator is always assumed to be male.”
Am I therefore to conclude that these photos here from Men’s Health were not taken with the idea that men should imagine how women would react to them? This photo here of Lost’s Matthew Fox soaking wet, that’s for male viewers as well?
So, is the argument only that photos of women are intended to be viewed from the male perspective, while photos of men can be intended to be viewed from the female perspective? How is that interesting? How is that anything but obvious and trivial, given that heterosexuality is the norm? In particular, how does that say anything interesting about gender relations in our culture, if the situation is symmetrical?
You are arguing specific sentences of the essay, but you are ignoring the big picture, which is that the essay is a claim about what advertising protrayals of female beauty look like, compared to advertising portrayals of male beauty. If I take the images you present as being examples of male beauty, this point still stands. They show men in action, being physically strong, assertive, and in control of themselves. They face the camera straight on. And these strike me as typical examples. Contrast these to the images of women in the essay – also images that seem fairly representative to me. Female attractiveness does not show that degree of power or self-assurance; instead, there are cues of submissiveness.
Returing to your specific arguments, I disagree that women in typically masculine poses are accepted as non-exceptional or normal. The final image in the essay tries to make that point.
With regards to the statement that the ideal spectator is always assumed to be male, universal statements are dangerous, because of course you can find an example where the ideal observer seems to be female. But, this is a complaint with the writing of the article, and it seems that you are fixating on writing choices rather than considering the question of whether the ideal spectator, in the majority of cases, is assumed to be male. Is it more common to find an image of a man who does not seem concerned with how the image will play to women than it is to find an image of a woman who does not seem concerned with how the image will play to men?
I disagree that the women’s poses are submissive. Nearly all the photos of women in the presentation show extremely good eye contact on the part of the subject, and eye contact is usually the first thing to go when someone is being defensive.
I would argue that most of the female poses shown in the presentation show considerable self-assurance. What they don’t show is physical strength, and that’s because, like it or not, physical strength is not associated with femininity due to the biological reality of physical strength differences. It is not sexism or enculturation that is responsible for men tending to have more muscle mass, it’s human biology. It may be disappointing for the feminist movement that some of the biological distinctions between the sexes relate directly to physical power, but it would be naive to assume that human sexuality would ignore such a notable distinction.
As for your final paragraph, I’d say the disparity is much less severe than you might be indicating, and the percentages are going to vary wildly based upon the context. The percentages are hurt by the fact that for a large chunk of our population, the women are comfortable with sexualized images of women while the men aren’t comfortable with sexualized images of men.
You’re not going to pull sex out of media and advertising. It’s way too fundamental a human drive. If you want more neutral-observer (non-sexual) pictures of women in media, get more female businesswomen and politicians. If you want a balance on how much men and women are sexualized in the media, work to get men more comfortable with seeing men displayed as sexual objects (they don’t have to be attracted to them, but they need to be comfortable seeing it), but know you’ll be fighting the religious right tooth and nail, because they’ll associate it with the “Gay Agenda”.
And, yes, I’m aware that having more actual women in positions of power might already be a goal of the feminist movement.
I’m going to get back to the question of submissiveness, as I expect this will be a contentious point in my post. My reaction to the poses taken by the women in the advertisements is not that they are submissive, but that they are feminine. That a man in those poses would seem odd is an argument for them not being submissive, but instead feminine. Men take submissive postures regularly, and they look nothing like the photos in the presentation. The women are in assertively feminine poses that do not reflect physical strength.
“If you want more neutral-observer (non-sexual) pictures of women in media, get more female businesswomen and politicians. If you want a balance on how much men and women are sexualized in the media, work to get men more comfortable with seeing men displayed as sexual objects (they don’t have to be attracted to them, but they need to be comfortable seeing it), but know you’ll be fighting the religious right tooth and nail, because they’ll associate it with the “Gay Agenda”.”
But this is exactly the point, and why I linked to the essay – because a response to the essay is *exactly* this – a refutation of the claim that feminism is “done” and that there is nothing more to achieve. I agree that this is the important place in which to make changes, not lobbying efforts against the advertising industry or such a thing. But I think that looking at mainstream media images can be a useful way of gauging mainstream attitudes.
With regards to whether the poses are submissive, first, submissive is not the same as sheer physical power. But, you do not have to have huge muscles to stand in a firm stance – men and women can do that. You do not need to have huge muscles to be shown running or jumping or playing a sport – men and women can do that. So, I was not equating strength with muscle mass, but with an overall pose and behavior. It is not just the lack of sheer physical strength, but a lack of evidence of taking action – imposing oneself in an active as compared to a passive manner.
Submissive versus agressive stances are way more complex than keeping eye contact or not. Choosing to avoid eye contact can be very aggressive, if the person avoiding eye contact has power and is declining to engage with someone “beneath” them. And, not to draw too many parallels cross-species, but a dog can be very submissive in maintaining eye contact if they are doing so to gauge what you want them to do. But perhaps it would be easier to label the poses as “less powerful” on a continuum scale of the degree of power being expressed.
“But, you do not have to have huge muscles to stand in a firm stance – men and women can do that.”
But the man will be more physically imposing, so it’s associated with masculinity, not femininity.
“You do not need to have huge muscles to be shown running or jumping or playing a sport – men and women can do that.”
But men, on average, do so better, so it’s associated with masculinity and not femininity.
“So, I was not equating strength with muscle mass, but with an overall pose and behavior. It is not just the lack of sheer physical strength, but a lack of evidence of taking action – imposing oneself in an active as compared to a passive manner.”
I still think you’re equating physical action with action in general. Men and women have considerable physical differences, so it is not inherently biased that human sexuality is geared towards different physical traits in men and women. And visual media related to entertainment and leisure are highly connected to human sexuality.
Note, I’m not saying women shouldn’t participate in sports or engage themselves physically. I’m talking about how it will be perceived in relation to natural gender roles.
That women are equal in standing, and should be treated as such, does not mean that they are identical to men or should be treated as such.
But, you are saying that to associate women with physical activity means that women need to be the top performers in a competitive sense at physical activity. Why the focus on competition and top performance in that sort of evaluative sense? Why is it that the competitive measure of physical activity, at which men are biologically superior, become the manner in which you evaluate whether someone is physically active? For the majority of physically active people, the competitive evaluation is irrelevant as even the men will not be top performers.
Yes, there is more to activeness versus passiveness than physical activity, but within still visual imagery, physical activity is a clear analog for general activity, and it seems overly restrictive to suggest that we *only* think of men as being physically active.