The Male Gaze

The theorist Laura Mulvey came up with the theory of the male gaze through her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' in 1975. It was a way to represent how an audience views the female figure as an object of desire and through the eye of a heterosexual male.

Features of The Male Gaze:

• Camera lingering on female figure
• female represented as object/love interest
• female viewers must experience the narrative secondarily by identification with the male
• gaze suggests that women are weak and defenseless

There are three different parts to The Male Gaze-

1. Men looking at women
2. Women looking at themselves (made to look at themselves in a negative way) 
3. Women looking at women (judge and compare)

There were a few criticisms towards the theory such as 'some women enjoy being looked at' and 'the gaze is directed to same sex not always in a sexual way' i.e. I like what you're wearing

An example of The Male Gaze is Rihanna's Umbrella music video

Throughout the entire music video Rihanna's costumes are skimpy and showing off her figure, in one part she isn't wearing anything at all just silver paint. The camera is constantly panning over her body to create this sense of desire. It isn't just Rihanna that is shown as an object of desire but also the female dancers surrounding Jay-Z are all wearing short shorts to show off their legs.