My overall topic deals with how the male gaze has transformed, and keeps transforming, over time and I focus on women looking at images of other women and are trying to perform her roles that they must do in order to get men’s attention. It foregrounds an alternative vision of the “ideal” young woman outside the stereotypical hypersexualized, powerless woman. This ideal woman is challenging, angry, sexy, confident and above all edgy.
There were two articles I found that relate and expand to the overall topic. The first is Lana Rakow’s “Feminist Approaches to Popular Culture: Giving Patriarch Its Due”. It takes about the male gaze, which is the view of the world as men see it (their point of view through the dominant). This article also talks about four areas of feminist approaches to popular culture and one of the areas is through images. An example they give is during post World War II, women in advertisements were seen as the good “house wife” and does all the stuff around the house and stays with the kids while the men go off to war, work, etc. This image extended and is not the way women (especially feminist) don’t want to be seen. The second is from Juliet Schor called “The New Politics of Consumption” which talks about how as a society, we think consumptions make our identity and we want to keep up with society. It is an illusion rather than reality because, in reality, the “middle class” can’t really afford all the things to keep the luxury lifestyle. In this image above, it is telling the women looking at this ad that if you buy Gucci products (which are very expensive), you will have this lifestyle with a good looking husband and looking great.
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