The Male Gaze and Western Art

Mark Richardson, over at Oz Conservative (who is part of Jim Kalb's bloggers' group, of which I am also a member) writes about the Male Gaze, and one feminist woman's negative reaction to it. He quotes "An older Canadian woman":

Men don’t look at me the way they used to. In general, they don’t look at me at all. This is what happens when a woman turns 40 (50, 60 etc.). It’s a fact of life.

In theory, this is supposed to be an exhilarating passage in the life of a woman...

...In reality, it sucks. I’d give a lot for men to look at me like that again.

...on the whole, being gazed on was not at all demeaning. It was empowering. I was the one in charge, because the choice of how to handle any given male’s response was entirely mine. No matter how sexist or unfair it seems, no one in the world has more erotic power than a 20-year-old girl.

Richardson ends his column with:

(Final thought: it's a pity to have to discuss relationships in terms of power - that's me capitulating a bit to liberal thought patterns. It ought to be the case that young men and women seek love and find the highest expression of this love in a faithful relationship.)

I understand his position. Yet, without the male gaze, and the female erotic/feminine power, there wouldn't be Western art.

The feminist woman whom Richardson quotes, whose movement coined the term, is somewhat subdued in her later years, and even acknowledges that she misses this male gaze in her old age. As Richardson says, she spent her younger years rejecting her femininity, at a time when she did have all the power. And this power would have had staying power, when she had only her wrinkled face to offer.

At its best, the "male gaze" does not seek power, nor subjugate woman, nor reduce her just to her biology and sexuality. It is a demonstration of supreme admiration and love for woman. It manifests itself in some of the best art in Western culture.

Margaret Wente is the "older Canadian woman" that Richardson quotes. She is a relatively well-know columnist for Canada's Globe and Mail (here is her full article, which Richardson links to). Her biography at Wikipedia says that she is sixty-two years old, and her spouse is Ian McLeod. As women like Wente get older, they start to realize what they missed, and missed out on. Here is a post I did on the awful The View panelist Joy Behar (I call her heinous in my post), who finally married her "partner" in her sixties after decades of "living together."

Here is what this site says about Wente's "partnership":

Last year [1998] Wente finally married her long-time partner, Ian McLeod, executive producer of CTV's W5. For years the two kept their separate houses, living together in each house for a year at a time.

"...separate houses, living together in each house for a year at a time." This means that Wente was basically on some kind of adolescent sleep-over, and could pack her overnight bag and leave whenever she felt like it. I suppose a sixty-year-old wimp of a "husband" would let her do whatever she wanted, including playing at marriage. I doubt Wente's life changed that much when she signed the contract with McLeod. For one, she didn't change her name.

What kind of man would allow such a way of life? Once upon a time, women would have been worried that if a man agreed to such an arrangement, he must have something else going on. But does the post-modern, feminist-pecked McLeod resemble a real man?

The Gazes of McLeod and Wente