Making sense of the male gaze

Irrespective of cultures, male gaze exists everywhere. But how women make sense of it differs depending on their age, experience and physical status. Here’s some interesting insights:

It was Ira Singhal who got me thinking about the male gaze last year. The 2015 batch UPSC topper was making headlines then and over a leisurely three-hour interview – more like chat – for a story, she shared perspective about her life and the journey.

By any yardstick, Singhal has had an impressive journey. She suffers from scoliosis or curvature of the spine. With a hunched back, very short stature and a delicate construct, she walks with an awkward gait. But dare you pity her. She exudes confidence like hell. A topper throughout and a brilliant student, throughout her school she was that bright, well-behaved, almost-perfect girl that other parents wanted their children to emulate. So despite her disability, she said she had a very normal and almost perfect childhood.

But there was something i wanted to ask her. And i did. Despite the normal childhood, didn’t she miss something? With physical disabilities, what was growing up like for a teenaged girl when attention from the opposite sex is so important? Singhal was candid. She said she figured out early in life that that was a track she had no future. And with that brutal acceptance, she said, life became easier for her. An age when girls rivalled each other competing for boys’ attention, she was everybody’s best friend and confidant who was not in the race and hence not a threat to anyone.

But there was another kind of gaze that unsettled her. She would walk on the street and strangers would stare at her. Her odd physical construct would draw gaze of a very different kind. But soon she learnt how to deal with that too. Often just a ‘hi’ or a ‘good morning’ with a smile – even to a stranger – would disarm or unsettle them.

Irrespective of cultures and societies, most women have experienced the male gaze at different points of time, in different contexts and at multiple levels. I thought about Singhal and reflected on my experience with the male gaze as i read few pieces analysing the male gaze early this week.

There’s a piece that Jennifer Bartlett wrote for NYTimes.  Bartlett has cerebral palsy. She recalls how in her early 30s she would walk with two friends for their yoga class to a studio in New York. Sometimes they would reach there separately. Her friends would often complain about being harassed or catcalled by construction workers on their way. But Bartlett would often pass that site without any incident. “I was never hit on or sexually harassed by my professors in college, or later, by my co-workers or superiors,” she says in her piece. “I watch men on the street. I will watch a man visually or verbally harass women who pass him. I am invisible enough to do this. Sometimes men look at me, but the reaction is different…. does this mean that I am lucky?…It certainly does not feel that way.”

Bartlett gets the attention in other difficult ways. “On one hand, I know that I am “lucky” not to be sexually harassed…..But I am harassed in other ways that feel much more damaging. People stare….People feel most comfortable speaking about me in the third person rather than addressing me directly. It is not uncommon that I will be in a situation where a stranger will talk to the nearest able-bodied person, whether it be a friend or a complete stranger, about me to avoid speaking to me.”

But here’s what really caught my attention and pushed me to think deeper about the male gaze. She says she understands what it feels like getting the attention from the wrong man. “Its gross,” she says. But then she adds: “But I still would much rather have a man make an inappropriate sexual comment than be referred to in the third person…”

However, Emily Sullivan Sanford offers a counter view in her piece. Sanford was born with achondroplasia, a type of dwarfism. As a teenager she was once asked by a reporter on national television: “So do you think the fact that you haven’t had a boyfriend yet is because of your dwarfism?” In her piece she weighs in on the male gaze and says: “Being told you’re beautiful can feel fantastic. I’ve heard it from both lovers and strangers on the street. But the street version is at best a cheap high compared to the profound and lasting joy generated by someone who’s come to love you more the more they’ve gotten to know you….And is the cheap high from strangers worth the fall that will invariably come from being ignored — or insulted — on a day that you look heavier, older or more disabled? Is the possibility of feeling praised worth the risk of feeling threatened?”

Clearly, women with disabilities offer very different spin to how they make sense of the male gaze.

But how do women at large look at it? Jessica Valenti offers a perspective in a piece she wrote last year . She says when she was younger she would get attention, comments and lascivious stares from men. She says in her piece: “It was miserable. But still, as much as I wish it didn’t, the thought of not being worth men’s notice bothers me. To my great shame, I assume I must look particularly good on the rarer days that I do get catcalled.” As she is getting older she is becoming more and more invisible to men. “To my great shame, the thought of not being worth men’s notice bothers me, even though I’m a seasoned feminist and I know better.”

Do men have a view on the man’s gaze? Dustin Hoffman threw some light on it in this 2012 interview to American Film Institute  on his performance as a woman in the film “Tootsie”.

He says: “I thought I should be beautiful. If was going to be a woman, I wanted to be as beautiful as possible. And [the makeup artists] said to me, “That’s as good as it gets. That’s as beautiful as we can get ya, Charlie.” And it was at that moment that I had an epiphany. And I went home and started crying. Talking to my wife… I said, “I think that I’m an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen. And I know that if met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill physically the demands that we’re brought up to think women have to have for us to ask them out.” She says, “What are you saying?” I said, “There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.”

As a woman, my experiences with the male gaze has evolved with time. When i was in my pre-teens i was naive and innocent. Careless and carefree, it often didn’t even register. I remember one incident around monsoon. The young playful me (may be around 11-12 years of age), who loved getting drenched in the rain, made excuses for some urgent work at home to just step out and enjoy the rain. Clearly oblivious, i was in my own world splashing water when a man (looked like in his 20s), perhaps watching me from the corner paan shop for some time, began to walk alongside and suddenly wanted to hold my hand. I shrieked and was very scared.

By the time I reached college, things changed. Attention from young men on the campus had a positive spin. It was something to be desired. In my 40s, it is different now. Experience and maturity teaches you well how to turn totally blind or ignore the male gaze one does not desire. Age also brings with it enough confidence to take control of the situation if need be. I recall a cab ride where the driver was staring at me through the rear view mirror at a traffic light. All it took a stern “Kuch problem hai kya” (Do you have any problem?) to deal with it.

Source : Economic Times , 26th Sep 2016