“It’s a world of gender inequality, and within the pleasure of ‘watching,’ the ‘active/masculine and ‘passive/feminine’ a split occurs.” So noted Laura Mulvey, a leading feminist film theorist.

   The gaze on women has been one of the most common topics in the discipline of gender studies. On a social level, it is impossible to ignore the vast differences between women and men. In the art of film and television, women have even become the object of the gaze, leading to a crisis of fragmentation of the female subject of existence. How, then, do we resolve the situation of the living woman as a passive object of gaze?

John Berger begins his book, Ways of Seeing, by writing, “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.”

Very often, social norms imply that “a man’s existence is made up of his actions, and a woman’s existence is made up of how others perceive her [actions].”

We live under the gaze all the time, or there is always someone who gets a voyeuristic pleasure in women, as determined by a patriarchal society where men have the superiority of dominating the vast majority of the discourse. Regardless of class, the male gaze as a gendered viewing force can, in most cases, serve as a collective norm or collective identity.

Film critic Laura Mulvey first introduced the concept of the Male Gaze in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, where Laura argued that in cinema, men are often the dominant power and subject of the gaze. At the same time, women are the object of the eye, and most famous films are overwhelmingly male voyeuristic (e.g., Hollywood films).

Although the concept of the male gaze first originated in cinema, it has had a profound impact on advertising.

In his book, Wykes writes that “the woman in advertising is not just an object to be gazed at, but an object to be bought and sold.” The message is always the same: buy the product, and you get the girl or buy the product, and you become like the girl in the ad and get your man, in other words, buy the ‘image,’ ‘get the girl.’ “.

We need to think about that when advertising treats women as objects of the gaze, advertising as a form of promotion, does it turn women into promotional commodities? Does it mean that women’s bodies are being used as commodities for the sex trade?

The male gaze is becoming pervasive in all aspects of life, whether in television programs, music videos, or advertisements. Women have been immersed in this environment for so long that they are subconsciously accustomed to seeing from a male perspective and have inadvertently lost their sensitivity to self-examination and the uniqueness of women as individuals.

There is no doubt that society’s aesthetic standards for women are often higher than those of men. Everyone scrutinizes women’s subjectivity. Any deviation from traditional norms will be met with a different look. This aesthetic standard is often a social internalization of male expectations, and women begin to unconsciously and subconsciously conform to the social norms of the male gaze, such as “good wife and mother,” “white skin and beautiful,” “good figure. “They begin to construct themselves by observing the male perspective, which becomes a mirror image for women to reflect on themselves. They begin to use this stereotypical view impression to adjust themselves, using external means, make-up, and cosmetic surgery to create a new, single image that meets the requirements of men. Women become more and more dependent on this external scrutiny to the extent that they gradually lose their sense of self-identity. Men, as monitors, become the yardstick by which they judge themselves.

We all inevitably fall into the vortex of the male gaze. From adolescence onwards, great attention is paid to the outward appearance that one presents to the public. If the question is thrown out, “If you were the only person left in the world, would you still be so concerned with your outside? Or how would you treat yourself when you lost the reflection of objects in external conditions, the artificial evaluation?”

When the ‘reflection’ disappears from the world when you can’t see yourself, are you still you?

John Berger writes: “Women see themselves as they are seen. This not only defines most men’s relationships with women but also women’s relationships with themselves.”

Women are increasingly internalizing male powers of observation.

Are women submitting to the controlling power of the male gaze in the face of burgeoning consumerism?

In this gaze of watching and being watched

How can women find their true colors to combat this encroachment on women’s rights?