If you have watched any sort of action movie where the guy always gets the girl, you’ve probably noticed the highlighted features of the woman he claims as his prize at the end of the story. She wears revealing clothing, high heels, dramatic makeup and has no real personality to fit in with the rest of the plot besides being the romantic interest, of course.
The reality is that the male gaze has taken over the big screen, leaving female characters in the dark and reduced to nothing more than an object. That may not be the case for every movie, but there is a definite and noticeable truth to the fact that the heterosexual male gaze has altered the way we perceive media and television.
We see in the 2005 adaption of “Sin City,” strong, powerful men who are fit and filled with lustful rage. Clive Owen and Bruce Willis portray characters who are dark and mysterious, with personalities and a deep past. Then, we see Alexis Bledel who plays the character named Becky, whose main purpose is to be eye candy throughout the majority of the movie.
Even when a woman takes on a strong female role there are still signs of sexualization throughout certain films.
This trend is pretentious in many action films where men usually take the lead but when women do they are still sexualized. Bérénice Marlohe in “Skyfall 007,” Angelina Jolie in “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” with her dominatrix outfit, the movie “Spring Breakers,” Amy Adams in “American Hustle” or Alice Eve in “Star Trek,” parading around in her underwear, all follow this trend.
When women take the lead you still tend to see highlighted sexualization such as in the movie “Black Widow” with Scarlett Johansson. Her suit strongly accentuates her body features, and because of this men in interviews would ask her crass questions such as what type of underwear she wore with the suit.
Early on in the film industry as Hollywood started to grow, objectification was portrayed which implemented the idea that women are trophy objects.
The man must win over, and, essentially, “get the girl” and that objectification is the premise of the whole movie. It has been going on for years. Almost every Elvis Presley movie includes a moment where he wins over the women with his voice. In the 1933 film “King Kong,” Kong holds the woman in his arms as the men aid her rescue.
These examples from early Hollywood may seem archaic, but the sad thing is, this hasn’t died out.
You can see it in movie franchises such as “Star Wars” and Princess Leia’s outfit of desire, the movie “Sex Sells” or “Wolf of Wall Street.” It’s in each and every “007” movie, and all of the characters I listed before. It continues to progress, even in the ad campaigns.
Kim Leonards, a journalist who researched the origins of male gaze in film, describes how movies portray women by saying “Film has become a mirror of society’s view of the female body.”
Long and observable studies have been done to further prove this point at the University of Southern California. The research provided by University of Southern California states that “they found that females are more likely than males to be shown in sexy attire (25.8% vs. 4.7%), with some exposed skin (23.6% vs. 7.4%).”
This same study performed by University of Southern California shows that women from the ages of 13-20 years old may be just as likely to be portrayed in this sexualized, objectified light as older women, and maybe even more so.
What effect does this exactly have on women today?
Women start to either feel the need to objectify and portray themselves like these women, or they feel down about the way they look because they may not meet the “ideal body standards” set up by Hollywood culture. Some women partake in immense dieting or try to alter their physical features to look like these women.
Additionally, there is an overall aggression over why women can’t have a simple role in movies without that character becoming a sex object.
We continue to see the objectification and sexualization of different body types, age, race and ethnicity within women. And it is a growing problem.
Women deserve to feel respected and not objectified for their bodies. They deserve to live without societal pressure shining down on them by the media and the movie industry emphasized by appeasing the male gaze. This problem is continuously expanding and it is something that Hollywood refuses to fix, they can create an object of desire without creating oversexualization.