Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) was a groundbreaking commentary on mainstream gender and media structures throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood. The theory suggests that three “looks” – the camera, the characters, and the audience – encompass the male gaze in film, though this logic can be applied far beyond Hollywood. Mulvey’s essay speaks to an objectification and erasure of women that is present in virtually all media production, a longstanding phenomenon at which new-wave feminists have taken aim.
Earlier this month, a New York Times article by Ross Douthat originally titled, “Did Women Ruin The Workplace?” was quietly changed to “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin The Workplace?” after being called out as a cheap, misogynistic cry for clicks. While its publication incited a great deal of social controversy online, few were commenting on the media implications of the article. A debate like this one makes you wonder how this work was even allowed to be published, and how often media exactly like this piece – or worse – influences public perception of feminism without being caught. Even in our contemporary age, headlines and journalism written, edited, and published through the male gaze still go unchecked and unnoticed. After all, the New York Times was only called out on such a massive scale this time because a writer went viral on X for catching the headline switch.
The scandal is a contemporary representation of the very media patterns which inspired Mulvey’s work some 50 years ago. Women are manipulated, taken advantage of, and objectified through the lens of a male gaze (Mulvey argues that the outcome is not dependent on the audience actually being male dominated, but rather that the systems we operate within are inherently male-centric), and so it has become the filter through which we create and consume media.
Mulvey’s theory is also reminiscent of the Bechdel test, which evaluates female representation in film according to basic criteria: that a work features at least two women who speak to each other about something other than a man. The fact that there is even a test for this may seem dramatic to some, but a shocking number of acclaimed films – both classics and newer releases – don’t pass this simple test: Casablanca, Star Wars, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, even kid’s movies like Toy Story and Ratatouille, to name a few. The point is not that these are bad films or that they’re intentionally dismissive of women, but that media is produced by an industry steeped in the male gaze to be received by an audience which will perpetuate it.
Thanks to the fourth wave of feminism we are currently experiencing (often characterized by an emphasis on digital empowerment), Mulvey’s work is once again excruciatingly relevant. It calls on us to evaluate not just the lens through which media is produced, but also the lens through which we, the audience, perceive it. People are no longer accepting media that so glaringly paints women in this insignificant, peripheral light, and are rightfully calling out both historic indiscretions and modern faux pas, like the NYT article.
This piece ties Laura Mulvey’s old “male gaze” theory to current stuff so smoothly! Take that New York Times headline example: it switched from “Did Women Ruin The Workplace” to “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin The Workplace” super relatable. Turns out the male gaze isn’t just old Hollywood camera work; now media writing also hides this “blame women” vibe, and it takes netizens to call it out. That example makes “the male gaze is a built in system filter” click right away.
Then the Bechdel Test bit: it uses familiar flicks like Casablanca and Toy Story even these classics fail the test. You instantly tell it’s not that the movies are bad; the whole industry’s rooted in male-centric inertia. That part hits hard.Finally, it mentions fourth wave feminism: now people don’t passively go along with this they call out issues, which is so relatable. That NYT article getting roasted into changing its headline? That’s people waking up.
This piece ties Laura Mulvey’s old “male gaze” theory to current stuff so smoothly! Take that New York Times headline example: it switched from “Did Women Ruin The Workplace” to “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin The Workplace” super relatable. Turns out the male gaze isn’t just old Hollywood camera work; now media writing also hides this “blame women” vibe, and it takes netizens to call it out. That example makes “the male gaze is a built in system filter” click right away.
Then the Bechdel Test bit: it uses familiar flicks like Casablanca and Toy Story even these classics fail the test. You instantly tell it’s not that the movies are bad; the whole industry’s rooted in male centric inertia. That part hits hard.Finally, it mentions fourth wave feminism: now people don’t passively go along with this they call out issues, which is so relatable. That NYT article getting roasted into changing its headline? That’s people waking up.
This is such an important analysis. What the NYT headline scandal really shows is how deeply the male gaze is embedded not just in film, as Mulvey argued, but in the very infrastructure of journalism. The issue isn’t one careless title — it’s the institutional habit of framing women as problems to be explained rather than agents in their own right.
Your link to the Bechdel test is spot on: it’s not about judging art, but exposing how limited our cultural imagination becomes when media is produced through male-centric norms. The fact that the headline slipped through multiple editorial layers proves that these norms remain largely invisible to the people who uphold them.
In that sense, fourth-wave feminism isn’t overreacting — it’s finally naming the gaze that has shaped public discourse for decades. And once a gaze becomes visible, it becomes possible to challenge it.
This is such an important analysis. What the NYT headline scandal really shows is how deeply the male gaze is embedded not just in film, as Mulvey argued, but in the very infrastructure of journalism. The issue isn’t one careless title – it’s the institutional habit of framing women as problems to be explained rather than agents in their own right.
Your link to the Bechdel test is spot on: it’s not about judging art, but exposing how limited our cultural imagination becomes when media is produced through male-centric norms. The fact that the headline slipped through multiple editorial layers proves that these norms remain largely invisible to the people who uphold them.
In that sense, fourth-wave feminism isn’t overreacting – it’s finally naming the gaze that has shaped public discourse for decades. And once a gaze becomes visible, it becomes possible to challenge it.