Over Sexualisation In Media
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During the lectures I found that many of the philosophical theories discussed made little sense to me but after doing some further reading I found them making a lot for sense. The main person I looked at during my research was Laura Mulvey, and her essay ‘visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, someone who’s work I was partially familiar with. I found she referenced Freud a bit more than I would have liked and can be a bit long winded in her statements, but she makes some valid points about femininity and the male gaze that I couldn’t ignore. While researching Mulvey I found some people who had commented on similar things and made use of them. Reading the work of Butler proved damn near impossible as she used so many big words and concepts I lost track of whether she was even speaking English.
During my research on Mulvey I also found people who disagreed with her work seeing the male gaze as too restricted and suggesting that a female gaze or homosexual gaze may exist. I decided to devote a section of my portfolio to this opposing view.
In some cases I found it easier to tie philosophical theories to images from TV or movies as this is an area I’m better at analysing. This can be particularly seen when analysing the over the shoulder look as I go rather in depth on an advertisement for a TV show more than the perfume adverts.
A major problem I found while writing this portfolio is that I seem to have difficulty spelling the word ‘femininity’, constantly spelling it ‘feminity’ which was just annoying. I found it hard to know how much to write for some sections and discovered I could have written a whole portfolio on the backlash to Mulvey’s work. I had to constrain what I was writing to ensure that the idea of the female or gay gaze didn’t totally take over at times. Additionally knowing in what order to place some of my sections in proved an issue, with me changing the order multiple times.
A bit of casual sexism
I thought I’d get this portfolio started with an example of just how casually sexist modern society can be. The company Wonderbra originally aimed it’s products at women wanting to look more attractive towards men. Now it takes the approach of appealing directly to men. The caption ‘I can’t cook. Who cares?’ suggests that sexiness is more important than intelligence. A feminist seeing this advert would have a field day.
The Diesel advert gives off similar ideas but is far more obvious, suggesting that stupidness is far more desirable in a women. This is only part of Diesel’s ‘be stupid’ campaign which all carry the same caption ‘smart may have the brains, but stupid has the balls’. This whole campaign is overtly sexist and several of the images (including the one above) have faced complaints from the public.
Sex sells
If you look at these examples you can see how sex is used to sell essentially everything nowadays.
This Burger King advert uses sexual imagery to draw attention to the new burger it’s trying to sell. The tagline ‘it’ll blow your mind away’ and the image are clearly designed to express a sexual act and on first class it’d be possible to confuse it for porn. The burger is named ‘the super seven incher’ if the image wasn’t enough to make you realise what the adverts going for. If you look at the woman you can see is almost doll like in nature with pale skin, red lipstick and a wide open mouth. Unlike many modern adverts where women appear to have power through their sexuality this advert suggests the woman is powerless to resist a man’s sexuality.
This Diesel advert pokes fun at the idea that ‘sex sells’ by stating that ‘sex sells *unfortunately we sell jeans’. The advert uses images of people mostly just wearing the jeans staring into the camera looking sexy. This advert both makes use of the male and female gaze to make the people shown into sex objects. As argued by Mulvey (1975, p4) ‘in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female’ and it can be seen that the men are far more active than the woman in this advert. The woman is sitting back not directly looking at the camera giving in to the looks whereas the men are more active. looking straight at the camera. They still scream ‘look at me’ but the faces and body language of the men suggest they are less passive.
The ‘over the shoulder’ look
This set of images uses a classic advertising image: a woman either partially or totally naked looking over her shoulder staring at the camera looking sexy. These images make use of the male gaze, presenting an attractive woman for straight to ogle. As described by Schroeder (1998, p208) ‘ Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view' The woman is generally fairly passive in these images. As argued by Berger (1972, p45) ‘Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object [...] a sight’.
In this Guerlain image the female is topless and her breast are slightly shown. Her make-up brings attention to her eyes and her come hither stare. Her facial expression is a look of satisfaction giving off a air of sexuality. The name of the perfume ‘idylle’ gives a suggestion of either idol or ideal both suggesting that this a perfect woman. The coy look over the shoulder is important in that it’s hard to desertion who has the power, man or woman due to her ‘come hither stare’.
The image of Halle Berry gives off similar connotations but is slightly less sexualised. She shows less skin than the woman in the previous image with only her back being seen. However she still retains the coy look and is portrayed as a sexual object. The advertisement reads ‘reveal the woman within’ which has sexual connotations of showing men who you really are. As outlined by Mulvey (1975, p4) ‘Woman displayed as sexual object is the leit-motif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to striptease [...] she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire.’
When analysing the over the shoulder imagery it’s fascinating to look at this image advertising the TV show ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’. This is a show clearly aimed at straight men and the poster features the main male draw of the show, Summer Glau a sexy looking cyborg with limited understanding of humans. She looks over her shoulder fairly sensually and shows a little skin, but also shown is her metal skeleton giving the image different connotations. By showing her as a robot the idea of women as objects goes even further making them into appliances of sorts. Her character is inspired by old fashioned science fiction ideas of finding a robot or alien who doesn’t understand human emotion and teaching her about love. Also interesting is the mirror image of her in which she looks like a perfectly normal girl suggesting she is hiding something. As stated by Mulvey in a lecture on the blonde in Hitchcock films (2010) ‘the masquerade of perfection hints that behind it their is a secret. Behind the beauty there is a deception’. The positioning of the gun suggests she is also a little bit masculine, possessing some power as well as showing her as a dangerous killing machine.
Pornification
The image across the page shows an advertisement asking men to vote for the 100 sexiest women of 2011, which is voted for annually by the public. The lists are constructed out of the 100 sexiest women from movies, TV, music or modelling - with Megan Fox and Cheryl Cole proving incredibly popular over the last few years. These women are obviously the most beautiful women for being skinny and having large breasts, when in fact the images they see of them are heavily airbrushed and they’re plastered with make-up. FHM in general is indicative of how sexualised modern society is and stands with more recent magazines like Zoo and Nuts which portray mostly soft-core porn images. Levy (2006, p196) argued:
‘[Strippers] are merely sexual personae, erotic dollies from the land of make-believe. In their performances, which is the only capacity in which we see these women we so fetishize, they don’t even speak … they have no ideas, no feelings, no political beliefs, no relationships, no past, no future, no humanity’
The effects of magazines of this kind were investigated in a independent review by Dr Papadopoulos (The Home Office, 2010). She states that: ‘Children and young people today are not only exposed to increasing amounts of hyper-sexualised images, they are also sold the idea that they have to look 'sexy' and 'hot'’. As such magazines that portray women as sexualised objects affect people from a young age making people believe they must conform to the gender roles they put forth. She goes on to state that ‘When girls evaluate themselves against unrealistic airbrushed images it cultivates a feeling of falling short, of not being ‘good enough’. This then leads to appearance anxiety – a process labelled by some theorists as ‘normative discontent’. Hyper-sexualised, value- laden images and messages that girls are exposed to are having a profound impact not only on their body image but on their sense of self.’ Because of magazines of this style girls take in unrealistic and unachievable ideas of beauty making them lose value in themselves.
The female/gay gaze
In the images presented across the page you can see examples of males being presented as objects. These images are in opposition to the idea of the male gaze, presenting a female or gay male gaze. Silverman (1980) argued that the gaze could be adopted by both male and female subjects: the male is not always the controlling subject nor is the female always the passive object. Stacey (1992, p245) asks: ‘Do women necessarily take up a feminine and men a masculine spectator position?’
The first image of Daniel Craig from Casino Royale plays on a image from the very first Bond film ‘Dr No’ (1962), in which a Bond-girl rose out of the water wearing only a bikini. His muscular chest is in plain view and he wears quite tight fighting boxer shorts allowing his male form to be clearly seen. The scene is almost shot for shot of the original which featured Ursula Andress. From this it can be seen how far society has come in the last 40 years where now a male can be objectified just as clearly as a female. Chapman (1988) in reference to the emergence of a female gaze stated ‘the new man is all around us - rising like Venus from the Venus from the waves or Adonis from the shaving foam’. This can be seen as a literal interpretation of that as Daniel Craig’s Bond is far more sensitive and supposedly realistic than the Bonds that have come before him, he is a modern man.
The Calvin Klein advert does something similar showcasing attractive muscular men in only underwear. The televised adverts for the ‘X’ brand of underwear make extensive use of the idea ‘do you wanna see my [bleep]’ and the posters make the same point encouraging you to look at the men as sex objects. By having only the boxers in colour it draws attention towards the crotch. The man is very clearly objectified as an object of lust, and the suggestion is that by buying the clothing advertised you will be too. In attempting to make men into consumers it can be said that they use many techniques usely reserved for adverts depicting women. The Marc Jacobs advert also uses a big muscular guy and encourages you to stare in the direction of his crouch which is covered by a large aftershave bottle. Everything in the image is shiny, including the model, and your eye is drawn to the aftershave bottle which is reflecting light. These adverts encourage you to look in the direction of the man’s crouch in a similar way to how adverts with women encourage you to look at their breasts. All these adverts are most likely aimed at women buying clothes for their boyfriends or gay men who will be interested in looking at what is displayed. As argued by Modleski (1991) while male subjectivity may be "in crisis", male power is actually consolidated through cycles of crisis and resolution, whereby men deal with the threat of female power by absorbing, appropriating, or incorporating it. This suggests that to combat the ideas of feminism men have become objects to make their objectifying of women seem less global.
‘Le Male’ which heavily portray men as objects. Most adverts showcasing male sexuality are almost a parody of the ones with females as objects. These ones seriously portray men as sexual objects and are quite clearly aimed at a gay audience. The TV commercials are far more obvious in the way they portray a man stripping naked and lying on a bed, selling the idea of a lifestyle with a sexy male if you use ‘Le Male’.
Pranger (1993, p235) states that : Gay men are able to subtly communicate their shared worldview by a special gaze that seems to be unique to them... Most gay men develop a canny ability to instantly discern from the returned look of another man whether or not he is gay. The gay gaze is not only lingering, but also a visual probing... Almost everyone I interviewed said that they could tell who was gay by the presence or absence of this look.
From this it can be seen that the works of Mulvey and other feminists aren’t totally accurate as men are portrayed as objects as well as women. Additionally it takes into account ideas of a female gaze or gay male gaze which people like Mulvey seemingly ignore.
Conclusion
Mulvey (1975, p4) is at least partially right when she states that ‘pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female’. However the ratio has changed slightly in the last 35 years so that her statement isn’t always accurate, sometimes men can be passive and women active. She doesn’t take into account the ideas of a female/gay gaze which subvert traditional roles and make men into objects. Overall it can be seen that in modern society advertisements are incredibly sexualised especially in relation to women. These images clearly have an effect on people from a young age. Many images are overtly sexist often suggesting that it doesn’t matter if a women is intelligent as long as she’s attractive. Women are still seen as an object of male desire no matter how much they are seen as wanting this desire in modern adverts. There are very few advertisements featuring women that don’t portray them as objects. Although increasingly men are also being portrayed as objects it is still not to the same extent as women who have been portrayed by the media as objects for decades. This is probably because it’s been occurring for so long that its simply ingrained in our culture. Does this mean there is no hope for the future if society is so inherently sexist? Mitchell (1975) used psychoanalysis to explain why women have accepted ideas and institutions that oppress them for centuries. She argues that idea about femininity are so ingrained in our subconscious that we automatically accept them as correct.
Bibliography
- Abercrombie & Longhurst (2007), ‘Dictionary of Media Studies’. London: Penguin
- Berger (1972), ‘Ways of Seeing’ . London: Penguin
- Butler (1990), ‘Gender Trouble’. London: Routledge
- Chapman (1988), ‘The Great Pretender’ in Chapman and Rutherford (eds) (1988) Male Order, London: Lawrence and Wishart. pp 225-248.
- Gallagher (1992), ‘Women and men in the media’, Commercial Research Trends 12 (1)
- The Home Office (2010): Sexualisation of Young People. An Independent Review led by Linda Papadopoulous. London: Home Office.
- Levy (2006), ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and Raunch Culture’. London: Pocket Books.
- Mitchell (1975), ‘Psychoanalysis and Feminism’. London: Harmondsworth
- Modleski (1991), Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a Postfeminist Age. New York: Routledge.
- Mulvey (1975), ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in ‘Visual and Other Pleasures’ , Laura Mulvey (ed.), Basingstoke: Macmillan.
- Mulvey (2010), Laura Mulvey on the Blonde. [Lecture as part of Blonde Crazy season for the BFI] . 8 March.
- Pranger, Brian (1990), ‘The Arena of Masculinity’. London: GMP
- Schroeder (1998), 'Consuming Representation: A Visual Approach to Consumer Research'. In Barbara B Stern (Ed.): Representing Consumers: Voices, Views and Visions. London: Routledge, pp. 193-230
- Silverman (1980), ‘Masochism and Subjectivity’, Framework 12: (2-9)
- Stacey (1992), ‘Desperately Seeking Audience’. In Caughie et al. (Eds.) op. cit., pp. 244-57
- Williams (2003), ‘Understanding Media Theory’, London: Arnold
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