Research | Laura Mulvey's theory

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist, her theory is that all forms of media interpret that the person behind the camera is always male and the women onscreen must always appeal and attract the masculine figure behind the camera. This is more commonly known as "the male gaze" and what it means is the way when a woman is in front of the camera they must always "show off" and appeal to any male audiences behind it. Mulvey despised this as it suggested that women were just an object of desire and not shown the same way as a man would be in front of camera.

Features of the male gaze;

• The camera shows continuous close ups of the women, normally when biting her lips or playing with her hair
• It shows off the women's body purely to show visual pleasure towards the audience
• The female character will be dressed to appeal to the audience, normally with as little clothing as possible
• Relegates women to more so objects of attraction and desire rather than people

Music video showing the male gaze:

Robin Thicke - Blurred Lines ft. T.I., Pharrell

There is an explicit video of this, however I don't think that's needed to show off the male gaze within this video, as you can see all girls are practically unclothed wearing absolutely the bare minimum to what is needed, in addition to the actions the women do within the video also show off the male gaze, they constantly are flicking the hair, winking, biting or licking their lips to appeal to this masculine figure behind the figure which society has placed there according to Laura Mulvey.