Female Gaze

Lauren Turcotte
Blog Entry
March 6, 2015

Female Gaze

This week in class we talked a lot about the female gaze and its effect on both men and women. One thing that I found pretty crazy was the way women were seen in advertisements. Most products that put out ads for 'body' products always display women in fragments. Whether it's showing just their legs, boobs, or stomach, it is never the full picture. The media considers this to be sexy and sadly it's what sells. There is a difference between being sexy because you feel like you have to or being sexy because you want to. I feel like this is where the female gaze comes from. Women should not feel they have have to be sexy in order to get attention from men or anyone. There needs to be a reinvention of the word 'sexy' and we should not feel like we have to look the part. Women could be sexy in many ways and be proud of themselves. Kim Kardashian is a great example of it. The media makes her look like she's this sexy bombshell and that she always has to look sexy for the cameras. On one side I can see why she would feel she needs to, but maybe dressing the way she does gives her some confidence and there's nothing wrong with that. We then moved onto looking into the female gaze and how it effects women in the music industry, A music video in particular that I found was Beyonce's Run the World (Girls). Initially, I did get pleasure from the images when I first watched the video. All the women in the video were seen in powerful stances like they were ruling the world. The men are seen as weak and almost as if the women were controlling them, Even though there are all these positive things, the women are still barely dressed and dancing in a sexual manner. Even thought Beyonce tries to convey a positive message it is swayed by the sexual images. I think a lot of the women agree with the message of them film but I also think a lot of them just see it as a form of entertainment and don't see the underlying message. I sometimes feel like a spectator, I never really got the message that these videos were trying to make. I always just saw it a good music to dance to. I never really had a serious opinion about the topic until taking this class. By having these sort of statements and having women aware of the message there could be a feminine war starting. Women could find a way to stand up for themselves and not see themselves as just an object anymore.