Female Gaze

Hannah Dickie

3/6/15

Blog Post 6

Female Gaze

            During our discussions this week we focused primarily on the female gaze. I don’t really know if it’s possible for there to be a true female gaze because in reality many of the images we see are being influenced by a male’s perspective and what he wants to see. So my question would be is it really possible for there to be a female gaze that isn’t in some way affected by the male dominated views that are on society? Or is the female gaze really the way women see things that give them different forms of pleasure? I don’t know if I’ll ever really get a definite answer to these question because there is no real answer to the question. However when we were asked to find videos that portrayed a female gaze I found it really difficult. During my senior year my powderpuff team did our dance to the song Run the World (Girls) by Beyoncé. When I first head the song I was surprised I had never heard it before and I really liked how it was talking about women and showing their true strength. I thought the music video would be very empowering to women and show them dressed to show power because the song is so empowering to girls. When I watched the music video I was really surprised because the women were barley dressed and dancing sexualized. Beyoncé was dancing around the men and there was a women dancing in a cage. What kind of message is this sending to the girls? You can sing songs of empowerment as long as when you’re trying to sell the music video and song you still sexualize it.  Some of the other videos shown in class I thought really showed the female gaze perspective such as the J Lo one. The girls actually questioned why women always had to be sexualized and why just because she was a female singer she couldn’t have a music video on a yacht or in mansion with men barley dressed dancing around her. I think that that was a great way to get out the message that women are being overly sexualized in the music industry and why is no one saying anything about it or trying to change it. Because she is such a huge artist that music video was seen by millions around the world and it was a quick and effective way to get her message across to the target she was aiming for. The music video showed her dancing still in a kind of sexual way but the men around her gave her the power because of how they were dressed and the way they were acting. I think more videos need to show men in the sexualized way even if it is making them look absurd like in the country music video we watched because it shows how it really is crazy how women are sexualized. It opens people’s eyes to see that is the roles were reversed then they (men) really wouldn’t like it but it’s okay for women to be barley dressed dancing around. More artists and music producers should really think about starting something new were women aren’t objectified as a sex object.