You know that feeling when you are just minding your own business and then suddenly you see a man staring right at your chest. Be it gym, public transport or the workplace. Why do they do that???
As a women," this small harmless action from a man" has the power to give me a trauma for my entire life!
Not just in real life but in movies and sports as well ,women have been objectified to suit the male gaze.
I want to share with you guys how the male gaze has impacted the perception of women in sport marketing specifically .
Take a recent look at the magazine cover of Alex Morgan,
Almost 80% of people when exposed to this picture thought that she looked attractive in the picture.
Over 60% said that she looked sexy.
However, compared to the above data only 30% said that she looked active( most necessary thing for a sportsperson)
Now take a look at the second picture,
Even though she appears to comparatively happier in the second picture, " Happy girl are the prettiest falls right off the bat." Sorry Audrey !
97% people said that she looked active.
less than 30% people thought she looked attractive.
Let's us now quickly limit this hack to the male gaze in terms of the gender ratio.
Overall 16% of the responses were objectifying terms from males.
However 13% were from females.
Suggesting that the male gaze is no longer applicable in modern times, a man and a women both are equally contributing to the sexualization of a women.
Are we women objectifying our own gender ?
We have seen that happening in movies from Marilyn Monroe famous Skirt-blowing shot to the recent Priyanka Chopra as a femme fatale in the recent Baywatch. It's no new to the movies. Be it as legendary as Rita Hayworth in 'Gilda' or as dangerously objectified as Megan Fox in 'The Transformers.'
Take a look at the picture below: WTF is he looking at her like that? And why is it shown that she is enjoying her objectification just because a wind blew fast ? And that guy, boy get some manners!! Does this reminds of the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai scene where SRK looks at Kajol when the pallu of her saree is fluttering in the air? I don't see that as '"romantic."
Even with movies like "Jism 2" directed by a women Pooja Bhatt, the main actress Sunny Leones's face is barely considered. It's just her body that can be visible in the motion picture. That tells a lot! A lot!
We women take this as sexual liberalization having been able to wear whatever that makes us feel more confident. But then, these women are villainized in the movie as they bad guy, questioning the morality of her character and be taken as someone not to be trusted or reliable. Even Quentin Tarantino also has the similar take on it. Sigh!
All I can conclude is that there have been numerous times when women have been just used as nothing but sex objects to make the movie more visually appealing but as they say times are changing and we have seen significant growth in women oriented cinema and hopefully we can improve our " male gaze" phenomenon in movies.
But as a marketing fanatic one thing we can talk here is about the failure of 'Jennifer's body". he film is about female friendships and if the film was marketed towards women, it would have been a box office success, but the marketed towards women audience ranging from the age 12-25, but when they decided to cater towards young men as their target audience, Megan Fox killing men brutally took a toll on their ego and now at present it is nothing but a cult classic. Ouch!
WRONG PR DECISIONS AND YOU MESS UP!!
Hire a Marketing and PR experts carefully!
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