Since Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of the male gaze in her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, the term has become essential for understanding how mainstream media shapes the way we look at gender, power, and bodies. The male gaze describes a visual perspective—often embedded unconsciously—where women are portrayed as objects of heterosexual male desire. Rather than being active narrators of their own stories, they become passive images designed to be looked at, judged, or consumed.
Although coined in the context of film theory, the male gaze appears across many forms of media. Below are three real-world examples that help illustrate how deeply embedded this framework remains in popular culture.
1. Hollywood Camera Language and “Fragmented Bodies”
One of the most cited examples of the male gaze comes from mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. In many action films, the camera frequently dwells on women’s body parts—legs, waist, lips—rather than their actions or emotions. A famous case is Michael Bay’s Transformers (2007), where Megan Fox’s character is introduced through a slow, lingering shot of her bending over a car engine. The narrative moment becomes secondary; what dominates is how her body is presented for visual consumption.
This kind of “fragmentation” sends a subtle but powerful message: female characters exist primarily as visual pleasure, not as fully developed agents in the storyline. The camera itself becomes an extension of male desire, shaping how audiences are encouraged to see women.
2. Advertising and the Sexualization of Everyday Products
The advertising industry also frequently deploys the male gaze, turning women’s bodies into marketing tools—even when the product is unrelated. Classic perfume, fashion, and alcohol ads often pose women in hyper-sexualized positions, dressed provocatively, or looking submissively toward the viewer.
Such imagery shapes how society views femininity: as something that must be constantly performed, sexualized, and presented for evaluation.
3. Social Media Influencer Culture and Self-Surveillance
The male gaze has evolved in the age of Instagram and TikTok. Instead of men—or male-dominated media industries—controlling the visual narrative, many women now produce the images themselves. Yet, the aesthetic standards they follow often trace back to the same gaze: smooth skin, slim waist, arched back, exaggerated femininity.
For example, the popularity of the “Instagram face”—big eyes, full lips, contoured cheekbones—reflects a beauty ideal shaped partly by media histories of what is considered attractive to men. Even when images are created by women for women, they often reproduce a gaze formed by decades of patriarchal visual conditioning. This is sometimes called the internalized male gaze, where women feel pressure to curate themselves according to external expectations.
Why the Male Gaze Still Matters
Understanding the male gaze is not about blaming individual creators; it’s about recognizing structural patterns. When media repeatedly positions women as visual objects rather than narrative agents, it reinforces unequal power dynamics. By identifying and challenging these patterns, creators and audiences can push toward a visual culture that represents women as subjects—not spectacles.
If you’d like, I can also create a Chinese translation, a shorter/longer version, or a version tailored for academic writing.
