The Male Gaze

A sexually objectifying way of portraying women in media from a masculine perspective meant to pleasure straight men. This can be conveyed through a man behind the camera, as a character in the story, and/or as an audience member. The male gaze empowers men and diminishes women by emphasizing aspects considered interesting, pleasing, or titillating to the assumed straight male viewer (e.g., zooming in or focusing on women’s breasts or butt, especially when failing to do the same to male characters). The term was coined by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."