Coping With The Female Gaze - The Prologue

The Male Gaze - Not the friendliest of sights

A few years back, in an attempt to preserve and exercise some of my few remaining grey cells,  I decided to do some evening classes on psychoanalytic psychology. This was partly because the first session was on sex and gender, which I thought might be fun, but mainly because my wife had already opted for the stained glass classes and there wasn't a great deal else on offer. As it turned out my ten week, one-off course ended up as a three year diploma covering a range of topics which not only kept the grey matter exercised but was actually quite enjoyable as well. One of the most stimulating  of these topics (and I don't mean that sort of stimulating either) was the"Psychoanalysis and Film"  module where we were able to watch and analyse movies for any lurking  psychoanalytic traits. Not surprisingly Hitchcock movies were a particularly fertile area but there were others. One of these was "Peeping Tom" an excellent film directed by Michael Powell and released in 1960. Apparently it was so shocking at the time that it promptly sank from sight only being 

Well I did warn you...

recognised for its qualities in the late 1980s!

 Without spoiling too much of the plot, I think it's safe to reveal that the main character is fascinated by capturing fear and death on film, and manages to do this by picking up female prostitutes and then filming them in close-up as they first realise that things are not quite right and then rapidly realise the danger they are in. He then captures the moment of their demise for later enjoyment. It's quite intense stuff but a fascinating movie and well worth seeing if you get the chance. Anyway it was during this class that I first heard about The Male Glance which is neatly explored in this particular film. OK. so this is a very roundabout way of getting to the real cross-dressing nub of this post (and we are still only in the prologue after all) so I'd best get a move on with trying to sum up exactly what it is  

Well, according to Wikipedia 

"The male gaze is a concept coined by feminist film critic  Laura Mulvey. It refers to the way visual arts are structured around a masculine viewer. It describes the tendency in visual culture to depict the world and women from a masculine point of view and in terms of men's attitudes. 

The male gaze consists of three different gazes:

• that of the person behind the camera (the camera as it records the actual events of the film)

• that of the characters within the representation or film itself (the characters that interact with one another throughout the film)

• that of the spectator (the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as one engages in watching the film) 

The main idea that seems to bring these actions together is that "looking" is generally seen as an active male role, while the passive role of being looked at is immediately adopted as a female characteristic. It is under the construction of patriarchy that Mulvey argues that women in film are tied to desire and that female characters hold an "appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact".The female actor is never meant to represent a character that directly affects the outcome of a plot or keep the story line going, but is inserted into the film as a way of supporting the male role and "bearing the burden of sexual objectification" that he cannot."

Honey Ryder apparently un-conch-ious
 of Bonds gaze

And this pretty much holds for all the visual arts - painting, photography, sculpture etc. It's usually the male looking and the female being looked at and on top of that it's also usually, for some 'inexplicable' reason, an older man looking at a younger woman. For another obvious illustration of this phenomena all viewers, male and female, see Bond girls through James Bond's eyes. The camera lingers over their bodies as they emerge unsuspecting from the sea (or however else they turn up) and they are there to be coveted, touched, won and eventually discarded in time for the next movie. Now there's a lot more to this Male Gaze thing which I'm sure you will all explore at leisure but the reason I've had such a long explanatory pre-amble is that I've recently had the opportunity to actually reverse this process. In effect I've been in a position where I might well have been the subject of The Female Gaze! 

At this point I want to admit that I'm not really sure if there is such a thing as the Female Gaze, and if there is, what it actually consists of. A Wiki search told me that The page "Female gaze" does not exist. Well, suffice to say that I'm giving it my best shot here and if feminist film critics pull me up on that, well so be it. 

So what did I do.

Basically I recently had the opportunity to 'model' for two very different female photographers both of whom are interested in exploring and examining the world of the cross-dressing male. I use the term 'model' in its loosest term of course because when you have the facial expression of a plank and the physical dexterity of a stalactite then it's less about modelling and more about the increasingly desperate photographer trying to capture  a certain 'something'. Anything probably... One of the aspects that appealed to me though was the fact that I'd be the object under scrutiny. I'd be dressed as a woman wearing all those imposed masculine fetish clothing items like stockings, corsets and heels but still very obviously masculine. I'd be posing in a public place and available for public scrutiny and comment. I'd be taking direction from a female photographer behind the lens who would have an idea of what they wanted from the shots and they would then have the power of selection, image adjustment, commentary, context and the format in which the photo was presented to the public - online, in a book, exhibition etc.  If there was ever an opportunity both to see if there is any difference between the Male and Female Gaze then this was it!

However, as this is going on a bit I'll save the details of the two very different sessions for further posts

Not quite as scrutinised as Caitlyn though...