The Media Controls Our Brains

It's a funny thing, the male gaze and the stronghold it maintains on the general public. It seems to me that, although this male gaze was created by people, it is so ingrained into people's minds that it seems to have taken on a life of its own and slops itself onto all the ways that humankind shares media with each other. Yet it seems to me that the male gaze cannot be blamed on anyone because its so sneaky that most people, when they view media, don't even realize that women are being portrayed in this objectified, unrealistic manner. As a white man, who knows that women are constantly being objectified in almost all forms of media and who tries to make it a point to recognize the fact, I find myself forgetting that this male gaze exists and going about my own business as a viewer. But its there, and it seems to me to be ever pervasive in pop culture for the sheer fact that even at a young age, people in this country are taught that sex sells, and that over the years the image of what women, and men, should be and look like has slowly molded and formed in such a subliminal way that it makes it difficult to eradicate from the general consciousness.

One example of the male gaze the applies to every aspect of the project is found in the upcoming movie Surrogates. The plot itself is about replacing your body with what is supposed to be perfect beauty by transplanting your consciousness into a surrogate body. If this idea isn't the definition of the male gaze, then I don't know what is. But also the movie goes further to display the male gaze with its advertisements. When passing by ads for this movie, I also see more advertising the women surrogates then male ones, and they are always half naked basically yelling out that I'm a sexbot, a total object for a man's desires.