"There's a preoccupation with the visual image...and anxiety about how these images measure up to a socially prescribed ideal."
"[There is] little doubt that entertainment as we know it is crucially predicated on a masculine investigation of women."
"Those fantasy women stare off the walls with a look of urgent availability."
"Looking has become a crucial aspect of sexual relationships...because it is one of the ways domination and subordination are expressed."
"The peeping tom can always determine his own meanings for what he sees."
"The saturation of society with images of women has nothing to do with mens natural appreciation of objective beauty.. and everything to do with an obsessive recording and use of women's images in ways which make men feel comfortable."
"[There is] little doubt that entertainment as we know it is crucially predicated on a masculine investigation of women."
"Those fantasy women stare off the walls with a look of urgent availability."
"Looking has become a crucial aspect of sexual relationships...because it is one of the ways domination and subordination are expressed."
"The peeping tom can always determine his own meanings for what he sees."
"The saturation of society with images of women has nothing to do with mens natural appreciation of objective beauty.. and everything to do with an obsessive recording and use of women's images in ways which make men feel comfortable."
"Where women's behaviour was previously controlled directly by state, family of church control of women is now also effected through the scrutiny of women by visual ideals."
Analysing the gaze relationship
This advert for lipstick by Dolce & Gabbana fulfils all the points that are raised in 'The Look'. The majority of the advert is focussed on the photograph of the reclining woman who is portrayed as submissive by the way she is holding her arms and the fact that she is not making any eye contact with the viewer. This lack of eye contact gives the advert a voyeuristic quality, which allows the viewer to 'take sexual pleasure by looking at rather than being close to a particular object of desire' this also gives the person doing the looking power and control over the woman as meaning can be imagined and applied to the scene, as Coward writes,'the peeping tom can always determine his own meanings for what he sees.' Coward refers to this relationship between the fantasy woman on the billboard and the person doing the looking as 'sex at a distance' and that this is 'the only secure relation men can have with women' where men are in complete control which, in reality, doesn't exist.
The neutral colours used in this image strip it of any activity or power and create a very subdued and weak atmosphere along with the use of silk which is very thin and smooth in the background reinforces the idea of having power over women and expresses domination and subordination by offering the viewer a scene that he can control.
The model used is Scarlet Johanson who serves as a figure for women to aspire to and look up to, this also links the product and brand to success and beauty that can only be achieved through purchase. Because this image will be mass produced and shown in public, women will be aware that men will be seeing this ideal of a woman which will cause 'anxiety about how [self image] measures up to the socially prescribed ideal.'
The focus in the image is on the lips which are being pointed to in a sexually suggestive way by the woman's finger which will appeal to male fantasy and, again, sets an ideal that women should embrace in order to function as a member of society. So, in one image there is an ideal of a woman's image in the eyes of a woman and a woman's image in the eyes of a man which presents a lot of pressure for how the woman should look.
This advert has been produced by men for both women and men, it reinforces male dominance over women and also sets a social and aesthetic ideal for women.
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