Male Gaze Critical Lens

Everyday women are judged for how they look, act, or say. No matter where a woman goes she must always worry about someone looking at her as nothing more than an object of pleasure. Because of this some women try to escape this reality by watching movies, but cinema itself is judging women. We live in such a male gaze driven society that women are now body shaming themselves because of how self-conscious they have become because they always believe they are being judged on their appearance. Male gaze follows the idea that cinema is structured for the male viewer because of how it depicts women on screen usually as second class people which results the women who watch movies to believe that all they need in life is to find a man, make …show more content…
By following Freud’s theory of ego we are able to see that we have an instinct that gives us pleasure by looking at another person as an object. There are even extremes of this happening where people only get satisfaction from watching an objectified person who is usually female. Cinema is able to satisfy our desire to watch and the theatres are darkened and all facing a direction in an uphill fashion to make it give you the impression of being alone. Since we watch all of these scenes happen before us with all kinds of people we being to fascinate about their face, body, and charisma that we soon being to judge ourselves. This was a huge factor for women in the theatres because in traditional female roles the woman are looked at and displayed at the same time, and “their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be …show more content…
Calogero shows in “A Test of Objectification Theory: The Effect of The Male Gaze on Appearance Concerns in College Women” that women have begun to trigger self-objectification in themselves. Rachel Calogero begins with “trying on a swimsuit primed a sense of being on display even though no actual observers were present.” (16) Rachel Calogero continues “univariate tests revealed no significant differences between the male gaze and no gaze condition for body shame” (19) however, the study points out that there was a large drop in body shame when the women thought they were being watched by other women instead of men This proves that the male gaze has become so ingrained into our society that women now unconsciously believe that they are being judged for their appearance because when a woman in the study was asked what she thought about herself she would mostly exclaim positive remarks until the study began. In Eyes Wide Shut Alice puts on this fake persona that was not too sexual, calm, obedient, and quite so she can impress the men in Dr. Harford’s life. Alice does reveal who she really is when she feels more relaxed after consuming an alcoholic beverage or drug. While Alice is smoking marijuana with Dr. Harford she starts to get louder, acts less composed, starts walking around more “masculine,” and she even tells the truth about her affair. The persona that Alice puts on during the party scene, sexual intercourse scenes with Dr. Harford, and Naval Officer