feminist theories

• The Male Gaze (Laura Mulvey)


  describes the way in which women become objects of sexual objects in films and other media; to look at and judge someone's appearance is active, and therefore masculine, but to be the object of that gaze and judgement is passive, and therefore feminine
• Voyeurism (Mulvey)

  
  

  • The pleasure of looking at others whilst remaining anonymous.
  • This is often associated with the idea of looking to gain an illicit pleasure from media products
  • more covert sexualisation
• Patriarchy


  A form of social organization in which males dominate females
• Sexualisation


  making someone or something sexual
• levey - Raunch Culture

  • Highly sexualized American culture in which women are objectified, objectify one another, and are encouraged to objectify themselves
  • overt sexualisation of females e.g Charlie xcx in GQ article, Zendaya
• Post-feminism


  • The belief that we have transcended gender inequalities
  • adaptations to earlier waves of feminism
  • focuses on perceived contradictions, absences or limitations of early waves of feminism
• Female Gaze


  how women see and deconstruct media, presenting men and the male body as objects of female pleasure through emotion and character identification
• Van Zoonen


  gender and power

  gender as discourse
• van zoonen - gender and power

  • Advocates that the presentation of women's bodies as objects to be looked at is a core element of patriarchal culture.
  • In mainstream culture, the visual and narrative codes that are used to construct the male body are different from those used to objectivity the female body.
  • argues women often objectified due to the fact we live in patriarchal society
• Van Zoonen - gender as discourse 


  • Gender is constructed through discourse, and that its meaning varies according to cultural and historical context.
  • believes we get our ideas of gender through the media
  • our ideas about gender change based on historical and cultural contexts in which it is produced
  • looked as liberal, radical and marxist feminist views of gender representations in media
• bell hooks - intersectionality and feminism 


  • argued that other factors such as race and class, as well as sex, determine the extent to which individuals are exploited.
  • The idea of feminism is a political commitment rather than a lifestyle choice, feminism is a struggle to end sexist/patriarchal oppression and the whole ideology of domination
• van zoonen stated masculinity was often defined as individualistic, ruthless and combative  
• lipstick feminism

  • third wave of feminism that allows women to portray themselves as equal to men in terms of their sexuality by expressing it in anyway they choose
  • seeks to embrace traditional concepts of femininity, including the sexual power of women, alongside traditional feminist ideas.