male gaze
Camera's gendered leer
The male gaze is a way of depicting women in visual media—film, advertising, art—that positions viewers as heterosexual men, treating women as objects of sexual pleasure rather than subjects with their own perspective.
The term comes from feminist film theory: the camera lingers on women's bodies, fragments them into parts, or shows them through male characters' eyes.
The director's male gaze is evident in how the camera pans slowly up her legs.
More broadly, it describes any perspective that objectifies women for male viewing pleasure.
- sexualizationAdding erotic character
- objectificationReducing humans to things
- body shotsImpacts to the midsection
- pornographySexually explicit arousing material
- patriarchyMale-dominated social order
voyeurism · feminist critique · spectatorship · gender stereotypes · damsel in distress · eroticization · pin up girl · gender performance · gender theory · power dynamics · gender dynamics · slow pan · camera angle · gender inequality · looking · cinema · gender roles · subject
- feminismfeminism, feminist theory, gender equality, women's rights, feminist novels
- Gender Artfeminist art, gender expression, gender identity, women in art, objectification
- gender mediagender representation, gender stereotypes, gender bias, media portrayal, media stereotypes
- gender stereotypesboys will be boys, pink for girls, blue for boys, man up, strong men
- gender studiesfemininity, gender norms, gender fluidity, androgyny, womanhood
- sexismsexism, gender discrimination, sex discrimination, gender bias, chauvinism
male gazeself-representation
Portraying oneself directly
agency · interiority · humanization · self-possession · bodily autonomy
male, gaze, gazed, males, masculine, gazing, masculinity, gazes, gazer