The Male Gaze Research

1. THE MALE GAZE
RESEARCH

2. What is the male gaze?
The male gaze theory is how women in media and popular culture are portrayed through the lens of a man.
Through this lens, women are sexualised and portrayed as objects that appeal to male desire. The male gaze in film
puts women in secondary roles, where they are portrayed as lesser than men. The male gaze has three
perspectives, one being from the man behind the camera, the male characters and the male spectators.The
influence of the male gaze in media naturally ends up being mirrored in everyday life, warping female self-esteem
and how they perceive themselves. It can also normalise toxic masculinity. Overall, the male gaze creates a world
where objectifying women is the norm, it discourages female empowerment while also encouraging toxic
masculinity and the patriarchy.

3. History of the male gaze theory.
In 1973, film theorist Laura Mulvey was the first to explain this concept in her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema’. In this essay, she explains the way mainstream media objectifies women, and how females are shown
through a heterosexual male lens as a secondary character to the male characters. This is where the term ’the male
gaze’ originates from.

4. Sources
Anon. (2021). Understanding the Male Gaze: Hot or Hurtful. Available: https://www.modernintimacy.com/podcasts/understanding-the-male-gaze-hot-or-
hurtful-episode-2/. Last accessed 17th Sept 2021.
“This lens sexualizes women and paints them as objects.”
“Many women struggle with their self-esteem because of their
subjugation by the male gaze,”
“The male gaze is destructive to feminism and female
empowerment as a whole.”
“Creating media from a male point of view for male viewers cuts
women out of the picture entirely,”

5. Sources
SarahVanbuskirk. (2021). What Is the MaleGaze?.Available: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-male-gaze-5118422. Last
accessed 17th Sept 2021.
"The influence of the male gaze is not limited to movies. Rather, it
extends the experience of being seen this way."
"Naturally, the influence of the male gaze seeps into female self-
perception and self-esteem"
"It's as much about the impact of seeing other women relegated to
these supporting roles as it is about the way women are conditioned
to fill them in real life."
“In essence, the male gaze discourages female empowerment and
self-advocacy while encouraging self- objectification and deference
to men about the patriarchy at large.”

6. Sources
Janice Loreck. (2016). Explainer: what does the 'male gaze' mean, and what about a female gaze?. Available: https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-
does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486. Last accessed 17th Sept 2021.
"In the male gaze, woman is visually positioned as an “object” of
heterosexual male desire."
"Visual media that respond to masculine voyeurism tends to
sexualise women for a male viewer."
"Mulvey wrote, women are characterised by their “to-be-looked-
at-ness” in cinema.Woman is “spectacle”, and man is “the bearer
of the look”."

7. Sources
Kim Leonard. (2021). What is the Male Gaze? Definitions and Examples in Film. Available: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-the-male-gaze-
definition/. Last accessed 17th Sept 2021.
“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has
been split between active/male and passive/female.”
"Men are considered the “active” do-ers of the world, while
women are expected to take a more “passive” role supporting
the men and/or men’s goals."
“The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female
figure… with [her] appearance coded for strong visual and erotic
impact.”
"Men writing the films, men making the films, men being the
protagonists, and men being the target audience all combine
into a unified — heterosexual male — perspective of female
characters."

8. Research 1: Hearst
Hearst Communications is a worldwide media company that are
based in New York City.They own a wide variety of popular
magazines in different genres from health, beauty, lifestyle, fitness
and home magazines. Some magazines owned by this company is
Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Women and Men's Health
Magazine and Good Housekeeping and, according to IFM, are the
oldest media company in the world. Hearst Communications was
founded byWilliam Randolph Hearst in 1887 in San Francisco. The
magazines owned by this company often feature women on the
cover that are presented in a way that caters to the male gaze and
had their magazine cater to these standards throughout history.

9. Research 2: Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan magazine is an American fashion, health and lifestyle magazine.
Their target audience is women ages 18-49 and have a total of 13 million monthly
readers. Cosmopolitan originally started in 1886 as a family magazine, it then
joined Hearst Communications in 1905. In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown became
their first female editor, giving the magazine a fresh new makeover and gaining
the new motto, 'fun, fearless, female'. Although this magazine was rebranded to
cater to females, throughout the years Cosmopolitan continuously designs their
magazines to cater to the male gaze, as well as promoting toxic beauty standards
to this day. When the magazine was rebranded in 1965, the editor replaced the
cover images with models in minimal clothing, along with suggestive cover lines.
Sales increased after this. Cosmopolitan Magazine is one of the popular
magazines that so blatantly caters to the male gaze.Their front covers and
articles has followed the trends of beauty standards throughout history
consistently catering to the male gaze despite claiming to be empowering to
women.

10. Research 3: Good Housekeeping
Good Housekeeping is an American lifestyle magazine with articles about
recipes, diet, health, beauty and product testing. Its target audience is women
ages 35-70 but their readers median age is 53. It was founded in May 1885 by
Clark W Bryan as a fortnightly magazine. By 1911, it was bought by Hearst and
had gathered 300,000 readers. From 2020, they now have a brand reach of 3.9
million.However, it wasn't until October 1994 that the magazine gained its first
female editor Ellen Levine who now works as a consultant to Hearst since
2017.Throughout the years and most recent front covers and articles, their
content is catered to a more mature audience. Cover lines consist of health
advice, fashion trends for ages 30+, recipes and more. However, this does not
exclude them from ensuring their content caters towards the male gaze.Their
magazines contain content that creates an image of society’s traditional
expectations of women, or a “housewife”. A magazine with articles about
recipes, home decorating, fashion, health and love advice is directly targeted
to a mature audience that often still follow the stereotypical traditional
standards that are set for women about being the perfect woman and
housewife for their husband.

11. Research 4:Women's Health
Women’s Health Magazine is a lifestyle magazine based in NewYork City. Its
main focus is about health, fitness and lifestyle. It’s target audience, as
shown in the title, is women.Their median readers age is 33, but overall, they
cater their magazine to the 18-45 age group.This magazine was founded in
2005 to serve as a sister publication to Mens Health Magazine but instead
geared towards women. According to theWomens Health website, they
currently have over 36 million readers a month.They describe their readers
as women that are ‘ready to make positive, healthy changes to their lives’
and claim to ‘provide the inspiration and tools to help them actually make it
happen’. Overall, Womens Health magazine covers and articles throughout
promotes an ‘ideal body image’ for women that can be achieved through
exercise and diet tips that are included within the magazine.This is
insinuating that this typical body shape that is similarly promoted
throughout this magazine over the years is the only desirable body type.
Instead of serving as an empowering fitness magazine for women, their
articles often promote toxic body standards and eating behaviours in order
to ‘achieve’ this look, instead keeping women focused on their body,
appearance and looking desirable to the male gaze.This is shown with cover
lines on various covers such as ‘178 ways to look great’, ‘look great naked’ and
‘power foods, so yummy, so slimming’.

12. Research 5: Elle Magazine
Elle Magazine is an international lifestyle magazine about fashion, health and
beauty. It’s target audience are young women in the 16-30 age category. Elle
originated in Paris, France in 1945 by husband Pierre Lazareff and wife Hélène
Gordon. It was purchased by Hearst in 2011, extending their reach to
publishing in fifteen countries. Their front covers usually feature the hottest
singers, actors or models at the time of publishing, and they are used to
promote the magazine. As this is magazine focuses on fashion, these models
are often photographed in the latest trends or designer brands in long shots
to showcase the clothing. However, the models are often wearing tight fitted
clothing that is
flattering to their body shape, showing that the editors are also using their
body to promote the magazine, which would appeal to the male gaze.
Women are still sexualised and used as objects in order to promote these
magazines, whether it be through showing their bodies, or from suggestive
cover lines, or both. Some cover lines from different covers are ‘sexy wonder
body’, or ‘how to get sexy eyes'. Suggesting that the model on that particular
cover is the ‘standard’ or ‘ideal body type’, or that you have to have a
particular look, or ‘sexy eyes’ to be desirable. Once again, feeding into
unrealistic beauty standards and catering to the male gaze.

13. Research 6: Seventeen Magazine
Seventeen Magazine is an American teen magazine based in NewYork City. It focuses
on topics such as health, beauty, fashion, dating advice and celeb news. It’s target
audience is teenage girls ages 13-19. Seventeen was founded in 1944 by Helen
Valentine. Although it was not the sole teen magazine, it became known as the first
successful modern teen magazine, with all 400,000 printed copies sold out within six
days. It was sold to Hearst in 2003 and remains a popular source for teens for advice and
information on a variation of the topics this magazine focuses on. According to their
media kit, they currently have an audience of 21 million teens, they claim the mission of
their content is ‘laser focused on delivering guidance for teens as they navigate the
tricky milestones, changes and challenges they experience’. However, their magazine
covers and articles throughout the years feature heavily airbrushed and photoshopped
images of models accompanied by harmful cover lines such as ‘look hot inYOUR jeans’,
‘get your hottest body’, or ‘perfect hair, skin and makeup’.These messages promote
unrealistic health and beauty expectations to young adolescents at the most influential
time of their lives.They also came under fire for this in 2012, when 14-year-old Julia
Bluhm created a petition advocating for Seventeen to print a photoshop free monthly
spread.The petition was named ‘Seventeen Magazine: Give Girls Images of Real Girls!’
leading Seventeen to respond with an article of a ‘body peace treaty’ which showed a
before and after comparison of an edited image and vowed to ‘always feature real girls
and models who are healthy’.

14. MagazineAnalysis and Comparisons
Magazines are the products that I have researched that I heavily caters to the
male gaze.The two magazine cover examples shown is 'Cosmopolitan' and
'Men's Fitness', one is catered to a more female audience whilst one is catered
to a male audience. However, they both follow the same theme in terms of
objectifying women with the cover image and cover lines. Cosmopolitan is
known as a health and beauty magazine catered to women ages 18-34.The
front cover of this issue has images and phrases that objectifies women.The
cover star is shown wearing revealing clothing, whilst the cover lines are all
themed around dating, hair and makeup or say suggestive things. Such as, the
sex move that brings you closer', or 'sexy hair and pretty makeup'.This
sexualizes women and can warp the image and self-esteem of their target
audience. Men's Fitness is a health and fitness magazine catered to ages 18+.
The model on this cover image is also wearing revealing clothing, whilst the
quote at the top says, 'your hotter sex issue', immediately sexualising the
model.There is also cover lines such as, 'she hates a gut, get the girl and keep
her satisfied'. This encourages unhealthy body image, as well as objectifying
women with the quote 'get the girl'.These two products show that magazines
often cater to the male gaze no matter what their target audience is.

15. Cosmopolitan MagazineCover
The product I will be analysing is a magazine cover from
Cosmopolitan. Although it is well known that Cosmopolitan is a
women’s beauty, health and lifestyle magazine that is target to
women ages 18-34. Its front covers and cover lines often cater to
the male gaze.This front cover (see right) is an example of how
the male gaze appears in print and magazines. Something that is
prominent throughout these covers is that the cover lines often
sound suggestive or objectifying with lines such as ‘why guys love
when you bite your lower lip’, or ‘the butt facial’, which is in a
brighter sticker to stand out amongst the magazine.The
imperative ‘flatten your belly, bikini we're coming for you'
implies that you have to have a flat stomach to wear a bikini.This
promotes toxic beauty standards and a warped body image for
the target audience.Young females that this magazine is
targeted to may feel that in order to fit these standards that the
male gaze and society sets, they should have a flat stomach, or
look a certain way to be appealing.

16. Seventeen Magazine Front Cover Analysis
Seventeen magazine, although claiming to be a magazine that delivers guidance for teens, have magazine
covers and articles that are very damaging to their target audience and promoting toxic beauty standards
that cater to society’s male gaze.Teenagers, in particular, are vulnerable to being influenced into following
standards set in media products to appeal to the male gaze and be more ‘desirable’ in society’s eyes as they
are in their most easily influential time in their lives.The cover I will be more closely analysing is a
November 2011 issue with cover star Heather Morris.
The main cover line in the centre reads ‘Look cute and confident: hair and makeup ideas that make you
INSTANTLY prettier’.This being placed in the centre right in front of the cover star means that it is intended
for the audience to read it first before the rest of the lines, it is there to draw their target audience in to
wanting to purchase the magazine.This cover line is immediately telling their young teen audience that
they have to wear their hair a certain way and do makeup in order to be ‘prettier’ and ‘look confident’ this
creates a standard for them that not only compromises their self-worth but also appeals to the male gaze,
in order for them to be ‘desirable’ they have to look a certain way, and if they buy this magazine then it will
give them all the answers as to how to be ‘instantly prettier’.The cover star is also shown to be very
airbrushed; their skin is smoothed with not a pore in sight as their hair flows perfectly in the wind.The cover
line in front of the model insinuates that if you buy this magazine, you can be ‘perfect’ just like this
airbrushed model.
The cover line, ‘perfect legs, butt and abs: no workout required’ tells their audience that there is such a thing
as a ‘perfect body’ that they should want to achieve. ‘no workout requires’ means that the article will most
likely include dieting advice instead, telling their audience that they must eat a certain food, or stop eating
certain foods in order to achieve this ‘perfect body’ that will make you fit society’s unrealistic standards of
perfection.
These cover lines and images, although small, can still be very harmful to teens, particularly teen girls with
this magazine. As these appear consistently on magazine covers and articles, statements like these can
slowly brainwash their audience into changing their appearance, food and exercise habits to look a certain
way in order to have a ‘perfect body’ or to look ‘instantly prettier’.