THERE IS a difference between

• masculine: a representation of cultural traits attached to the idea of “men”, e.g. masculinity
• male: a matter of literal representation of men

and

• feminine: a representation of cultural traits attached to the idea of “women”, e.g. femininity
• female: a matter of literal representation of women

Toril Moi (1987)

Toril divided these into categories:

• feminist: a political opinion
• female: a matter of biology
• feminine: a set of culturally defined characteristics

Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

• visual pleasure, the signs of visual pleasure

• the male gaze

• women is seen as “image” and the man as “the bearer of the look”
• therefore, “looking” is a male priority, with their priority being the sexualisation of the female form
• there is a world of imbalanced power
• the pleasure in looking is split between the active male and the passive female
• there is no true female representation because female characters are designed around the male gaze
• mulvey draws on freudian psychology, the concept of scopophilia (a pleasure of looking).
• fetishism (freudian), to cut up parts and only use certain parts
• the fetishism of women is using only parts that are sexualised
• systemic sexism

*Jacques L’ecain

• there is a moment in child development where you finally understand that you are a person
• there is a moment where we see ourselves in the mirror and recognise that it is us
• L’ecain recognises that we never see ourself, only a mirror image of ourselves.

Mulvey combines L’ecain’s theory of self recognition with the media to create a theory of representation in the media. The idea of cinema for Mulvey is that you see someone on a screen and that helps you to form an idea of identity. This concretes ideas in our mind

Gender Representation

• breaking down the idea of gender

• gender roles

gender roles are the stereotypical actions assigned to gender. For example, women are “carers” and men “earn a living”

Ariel Levy: Raunch Culture

engaging with the male gaze for your own benefit for the need of your own power (reclaiming the male gaze)

• performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality
• This could be done for profit (to make a living), for example, sex workers

Third and 4th wave feminism

• 1st “we want the female vote”
• 2nd all images of female bad
• 3rd and 4th intertextuality – intersection of experience that women need to account for

Judith Butler

• gender is performed (acting that is crucial to the gender we are)
• gender is a social construct:

If male equals “having masculine traits” and female equals “having feminine traits”, what are gendered traits? if you possess feminine traits but are seen in society as male, the idea of gender breaks down. Therefore it is evident that gender is merely a social construct.

Bell Hooks: Cultural Criticism and

• popular culture has power as it serves as a popular medium for those who want to understand politics

institutional sexism

• Bombshell (accounts of women at Fox News, US News corporation owned by Rupert Murdoch, exposing Roger Ailes as a sexual harasser)

jean killbourne (TED talk)

• 1960s systematic sexism through advertising which still occurs today
• 2nd wave feminism: equality for women (in jobs for example)
• “the influence of advertising is quick, effective and subconscious”
• postcolonialism: whitewashing in women (intersectionality)
• men and women “inhabit two different worlds”: when women are objectified they are always living in a “world of danger”
• objectification of women has an add-on effect on young girls where young children are taught to sexualise at a young age
• “sex sells”, and has become more graphic today which puts more women at risk due to harmful stereotypes
• women and girls are taught to be “sexually available”, and to see themselves as “sexual objects”
• objectification leads to violence due to normalisation of dangerous attitudes
• “we must think as ourselves as consumers rather than citizens”