The effects of the male gaze on the mental wellbeing of women

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Major essay Introduction Since the beginning of the golden age of capitalism (the 1950s), men and women were devised in gender norm roles that distinctly made the men have the power of the house an... d the women the caretaker of his home. In this era man were mostly the breadwinner of the homes and women were not to work in the same fields as men, with the exception of being their subordinates, such examples include secretaries. Although the switch from the industrial revolution paved for the modern luxuries that many have or achieve to have at the moment, there are also many disadvantages that arose from it. The nuclear family has been the foundation of all of the family’s around westernized culture, and in that nuclear family, dynamic came many titles that women were able to uphold such as mother., wife, and caretaker of all needs. With the rise of technology and films, they were given new titles such as damsels, maids, pretty blonds, and sex symbols. With the rise and popularity of the film, the sexualization of women in these films become abundantly clear that they were trying to captivate male attention. “The male gaze has produced and continues to reproduce 'a univocal model for the female body” (Glapka, E, 2018). Television was the main source of entertainment other than radio, and women were the focal point, which meant that they had to be portrayed in a light that eases the male ego and provides the sexual desire that man seeks in women. This meant reaching for hard to achieve and sometimes unattainable ideal standards of beauty that just didn’t coincide with the regularlooking women. With how new television was, it was impossible for many women who did not look or have their life as put together as the highly skilled trained actresses to feel comfortable or have healthy self-esteem. Many saw those women on tv as idols and the picture-perfect ideal women that they must reach to become, not knowing that it is through the male directors’ standards of what a woman should be and most importantly look like [Show More]

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