It’s a real chore sometimes, attempting to sound smart through posting original content.
Much better then, to deceive by association, by letting you know about any intelligent-sounding books, podcasts, and films I encounter.
The problem with that method however, is that too ultimately entails actually engaging with new material. Otherwise, the very next stranger I try to impress may challenge my recommendations, embarrassing me in front of the entire cocktail party. There’s also the small matter of providing genuinely useful information to my readers too, as well as not wasting their time.
But when it’s worth the time investment, it’s worth it. So, without any further ado, allow me to present a recent podcast interview of Andrea Karnes, Chief Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, about her ongoing exhibition there (and accompanyingbook) titled Women Painting Women. As interviewer Dan Hill of EQ Spotlight explains:
The book documents a wide-ranging exhibit inclusive of women as both the makers and subjects of paintings. The artists hail from around the world, and over the past half-century. Our conversation took several directions. One was to discuss the power of the gaze; who’s looking, who’s being seen, and the poses evident more a matter of self-agency or passivity. Another angle was the body itself, with these female images being more realistic and often far less glamorous than commercial popular culture allows for. Third, what subject matter tropes are being overturned – from Christianity to pornography, and points in between. As the exhibit strived to accomplish, there should be something here for everyone – women especially.
It’s a genuinely enjoyable and informative interview, critically engaging with the (evil, objectifying, brutish) male gaze and (sweet, butterflies and puppies, emotionally-based) female gaze while also being refreshingly absent of jargon and dogma. It’s only a very doable 30 minutes in length too, unlike most other New Books Network interviews.
And yet, the subject is art. While it remains entirely possible to enjoy and learn a great deal from the interview as is, it was frustrating not being able to see the art being discussed as I listened (some of which, jumping ahead, was very different to how I’d imagined it). The book is priced a littleprohibitively for me too, let alone a plane ticket to Texas.
So, for your sake and mine, I’ve collected all of the artworks mentioned in the interview below in order when they’re mentioned, for you to follow along as you listen yourself. Being very wary of avoiding potential copyright claims though, I can only allow myself to post these small thumbnails sorry. But, if you do click on those, they’ll take you to far bigger versions, many of which are located in equally interesting articles about the artist and/or exhibition. Enjoy!
(7:50-8:30) “A Precious Blessing with a Poodle Up-doo,” 2019, by Somaya Critchlow (right).
Preceded by a discussion from 6:40 on the central importance of the subject meeting the viewer’s gaze instead of looking away (although I disagree with Andrea Karnes that the pink wig hiding her eyes doesn’t significantly diminish it in this piece). See also the recently published “Photographer Renée Jacobs Sees Her Female Nudes As Activism” (NSFW) at AnOther, for Jacob’s argument that “terms such as male gaze and female gaze are fraught. If it was up to me, I would replace them with the empowered gaze and disempowered gaze” (italics in original), as well as “The Painter [Joan Semmel] Who Directed Her Resolute Gaze at Herself” at HyperAllergic.
(8:30-9:30) “A Little Taste Outside of Love,” 2007, by Mickalene Thomas (left).
A connection not mentioned in the interview, now that I can see the work for myself it’s obvious it’s channeling—indeed, challenging—Amedeo Modigliani’s “Nu couché (sur le côté gauche).”
(9:30-11:20) “Self-Portrait Naked with My Mother II,” 2020, by Chantal Joffe (right).
(12:55-17:30) “Strategy (North Face, Front Face, South Face),”1994, by Jenny Saville (left).
Please see also Dallas Voice and GlassTire for photos of the artwork at the exhibition itself, for a sense of how the artwork looms over visitors and seems to ask questions of them.
(14:35, in passing) “Pregnant Woman,” 1971, by Alice Neel (right).
Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to confirm if this is precisely the (unnamed) work referred to in the interview. However, Andrea Karnes does mention that the subject looks extremely awkward and uncomfortable in it, which is certainly the case here!
(17:30-20:20) “The Turkish Bath,” 1973, by Sylvia Sleigh (left).
Andrea Karnes acknowledges the irony and contradiction of having a painting of men in an exhibition of women by women, but includes it to highlight the restrictions on depictions of female sexuality by cishet female artists in the 1970s, who were regularly censored or had exhibitions closed down for depicting men the same way women routinely were (and still are).
(21:30-22:20) “Yellow Studio,” 2021, by Lisa Yuskavage (right).
Again, my apologies for being unable to confirm if this is the (unnamed) work referred to.
(22:20-23:50) “Yayoi,” 2021, by Christiane Lyons (left).
(23:50-26:10) “Weenie Roast Wrestlers,” 2019, by Jenna Gribbon (right).
Not going to lie—I need to fill this space to deal with some formatting issues I’m having in this post. Will doing so with a link to Gribbon’s Instagram suffice? ;)
(26:10-28:00) “Crucifixion I,” 1969, by Eunice Golden (left).
I appreciate the notion of bodies as landscapes Andrea Karnes explores in her final discussion about this piece. But for the life of me, I just can’t find the disembodied penis she mentions. Can you?
…Science says she’d be foolish not to take advantage of them.
“Eyebrows have a huge impact on the impression you make”? Estimated reading and viewing time: 5 minutes
This image is from the back of a beauty parlor’s standee. The front, which I saw first, likewise featured an attractive woman. But that woman? I didn’t give her a second thought as I approached the parlor. There was nothing to make her stand out from the hundred or so other attractive women in ads I’d already seen on my walk that night. Whereas the woman on the back, who seemed to return my interest rather than avert her eyes? Of course that would elevate her above her rivals. But did you know that dopamine was the reason why? Which attractive women will trigger in cishet men’s brains only if they stare back?
All is explained in this one minute video from the Psychology TikToks channel, part of a 2010 lecture on human sexual behavior by Stanford University biology and neurology professor Robert Morris Sapolsky. But I encourage you to click on the video of the full lecture below that instead, which I’ve timed to start at 43:55 to help give you some quick context before that clip begins at 45:10:
Granted, no source is mentioned, maybe because it was in the syllabus (but see here for a student’s extensive notes), and I’ve been unable to find any possible candidates; I’ll keep looking. Another issue is that Sapolsky didn’t immediately follow his point with how cishet women reacted to attractive and ugly men returning their gaze (let alone anyone else on the LGBTQ spectrum), as I’m sure that’s what everyone in his audience was wondering. Or was that actually covered by a later comment about switching the genders?
Also granted, whatever your gender and sexual orientation, you too may prefer the back picture, for reasons that have nothing to do with dopamine. If so, having some additional chemical motivation isn’t mutually exclusive with sharing them. For instance, from an advertiser’s perspective, that picture surely ties in with the parlor’s various eyebrow-related services much better than the essentially random one on the front does. Noteworthy too is how, in discussions about the male gaze, examples of women staring back are frequently praised by women for having agency by “being aware of,” “controlling,” and “challenging” that gaze. In fact, as you can see from the links at the bottom of the post, I’ve written tens of thousands of words doing so myself, and wince at the memory of how much caffeine—not dopamine—was involved.
It’s also in those posts that I’ve expressed my anger and frustration with commentators on the female gaze who take it as a given that myself and all other cishet men actually prefer passive, compliant women we can lord over. Say, because that’s the image of women the male-dominated mainstream pornography industry, well known to be a bastion of feminist representation, overwhelmingly provides us with.
And I’m still angry and frustrated, frankly. Imagine if I likewise gave a one hour talk on what, say, cishet women want in men, without providing any evidence whatsoever that I’d asked a single one of them. It would be classic mansplaining.
It brings a certain satisfaction then, to learn that if some commenters won’t apply the same standards to themselves, there is at least now (potential) scientific proof that cishet men aren’t necessarily the domineering brutes that they describe them as ;)
Tell me Korea has a huge gender pay gap, without telling me Korea has a huge gender pay gap
“Would you like to dance with me?” Estimated reading time: 7 minutes.
Most gendered marketing, I get. Obviously, when it’s for products or services related to physical differences, like bras or medicines. So too when, assuming equal access, it’s primarily one sex that purchases them, whatever the combination of nature and nurture responsibility for that. But it’s a risky strategy for companies. Only focusing on one sex can easily lead to an overreliance on crude stereotypes in advertisements. As the example of “boobs and burgers” Carl’s Jr. in the US suggests, any company that willingly alienates half its potential market deserves intense scrutiny of how its male leadership and managers treat women behind the camera. And don’t get me started on what anyone in favor of “pinking and shrinking” thinks of them.
About the staff behind Korean travel-app Tripbtoz, I reserve making any judgements for the moment. Because I confess, I like—no, love—their commercial for Westin Josun Seoul. The background track alone, Summer of Our Lives by Waykap (ft. Emmi), is legitimately sensual in its own right. In combination with model Chae Yu-jin‘s dancing and sultry stares, mesmerizing.
But of course I would think that. The commercial is so squarely aimed at cishet men, to describe it merely as a classic example of the male gaze feels insufficient:
Just prior to watching, by coincidence I’d been reading “Privileging the Male Gaze: Gendered tourism landscapes” in Annals of Tourism Research (October 2000),* in which authors Annette Pritchard and Nigel Morgan persuasively argue that “the language and imagery of [tourism] promotion privilege the male, heterosexual gaze above all others.” While it’s not an empirical study, so not definitive “proof” as such, making the radical assumption for the moment that that bias does exist helps us formulate several uncomfortable, revealing questions we could ask of the commercial.
First, we could ponder how difficult it would be to find a commercial with a male model in place of Chae. Certainly, in keeping with the theme of Pritchard and Morgan’s focus on transnational tourism imagery, catering to the foreignhetero female gaze has become a significant element of the Korean Wave. But specifically, a commercial featuring a young man strutting his stuff in a hotel for his female partner? Whatever the nationalities of the intended audience?
I suspect the world yet awaits. Yet even if enterprising, lusty readers do find an example, that exception would prove the rule: that no-one’s wanting for videos of scantily clad young women in luxurious surroundings appealing to the fantasies of middle aged businessmen. That in contrast to how awkward an equivalent video with a male model might feel due to its rarity, ones with women are so normalized and routine as to be boring.
In fact, I only clicked on this otherwise unwelcome YouTube ad break at all due to the background music.
Next, could it be not in fact be aimed at women? The idea being that, through showing Chae’s enjoyment of the many luxurious services the five-star hotel has to offer, many women would now just love to be in her shoes? (This may even be the advertisers’ genuine intention, a point I’ll return to a moment.)
If so, it’s strange how we never actually see what those services would look like from a female guest’s perspective. Instead, through the exclusion of anybody but Chae in our field of view, we’re only given that of her besotted paramour as she leads him into their shared room and bed, or acknowledges his admiring glance in the bathroom or corridor.
Should what she’s expecting of him from those glances isn’t already obvious enough, background lyrics like “Give it to me like you know you should now baby” help further clarify.
Is he necessarily a businessman? It’s true I have no figures on the sex ratio of business travelers, who would surely make up the bulk of guests at Korean 5-star hotels during a pandemic. But given that only 5.2 percent of Korean executives are women, only 3.6 percent of Korean CEOs are, and that Korea had the highest gender wage gap in the OECD prior to it (and only widened since), then it’s a safe assumption. It’s further reinforced by the use of the honorific language of “시” (as in “저랑 춤 추실래요?” instead of the more equal but still polite “나랑 춤 출래요”) in the “Would you like to dance with me?” of the opening image. While it is simply a polite way to ask, it’s much more likely to used by a younger woman to an older man than vice versa (make of that what you will), and also the level of politeness older businesspeople would be accustomed to.
Despite appearances however, women may actually have been the target. That the overwhelming majority of media is produced through the perspective of a supposed “average” cishet (usually white) man’s point of view, to the extent that it’s widely assumed to be an objective neutral, is painfully clear to anyone familiar with the concept of the male gaze. So, it’s entirely possible that the—very likely—men at Tripbtoz and Westin Josun Seoul responsible for the commercial may genuinely have been aiming it at women, and had no idea of how seeped in their own vision of luxury their notion of what women really wanted was. (The evidence from Tripbtoz’s YouTube channel is mixed.)
But whomever it was aimed at, the commercial is primarily about conveying a sense of luxury, and further questions could be asked about how gendered and sexualized life for the one-percenters is portrayed in Korean advertising as a whole. Specifically, I’m thinking of the eerily similar messages provided by Korean Air’s “Color of Perfection” campaign from 2007:
Designed to showcase “a refreshed image of a sophisticated, modern and creative airline,” complete with a specially-composed background track that likewise got people’s attention in its own right, unfortunately for Korean Air it was overshadowed by the image below in its print ad. Which, while unremarkable in East Asian markets, was wildly misinterpreted in Europe and North America:
Ironically for all the fellatio jokes however, perhaps that overshadowing is also why so few people noticed that in the accompanying commercial, cringingly unsubtle ejaculation imagery was provided by a champagne cork popping from a man’s crotch:
(NSFW image appearing in a moment.)
I’m no prude, and am all for fellatio and ejaculation when done well. What’s at issue is how the women are portrayed compared to the men. Of the three men you see, all of them are fully clothed. Of the seven women you see, two are virtually half-naked, one is on her back in (potentially nothing but) ultra-feminine high heels, another shows off her luscious red lips as the camera lingers on them, and another is the flight attendant waiting upon a male passenger. Of the two that remain, the first stands in front of a sculpture of a disembodied female torso—as if it wasn’t already clear enough that to Korean Air, “luxury” means ready access to women’s bodies, available to serve a wide variety of men’s needs.
I’ll let Pritchard and Morgan explain this conception of it is crucial (my emphases):
Kinnaird and Hall (1994:214) comment that tourism advertising and the myths and fantasies promoted by marketers are dependent upon shared conceptions of gender, sexuality and gender relations and that women are often used to promote the exoticized nature of destinations:
Sexual imagery, when used to depict the desirability of places in such a way, says a great deal about the gendered nature of the marketing agents and their fantasies…the sexual myths and fantasies extolled in the tourism promotion lead to the construction of these ideas in the hearts and minds of tourists (Kinnaird and Hall 1994:214).
Again, in themselves, these two cherry-picked commercials provide no proof of anything. But there are many more examples to choose from Korean tourist imagery for those who care to look, let alone from other areas of advertising. Sexualized imagery of haenyeo in the 1970s used to promote sex tours to Jeju to Japanese businessmen for instance. Or colonial-era postcardsdepicting kisaeng for the purposes of promoting the gigantean sex industry for the world-biggest number of colonial officials in Korea then. Segueing into my favorite musical genre, Korea is no stranger to electronic dance music’s notoriously sexualized aesthetics either, peddling only very narrowly-defined cishet male fantasy that is part and parcel of a deeplysexistindustry—and which in Korea also has an additional Occidentalist element through its widespread theft of pictures of non-Korean models, who are unlikely to sue Korean nightclubs for copyright infringement from overseas. And so on.
Are any of the above examples offensive, or sexist? That’s not for me to decide for anybody. But in my experience, cases like them rarely generate any outrage. Most likely, because feminist activists generally have far more pressing concerns than a hotel gently indulging middle-aged businessmen’s fantasies. Possibly, also because it would be counterproductive to scream “sexism” about things most men would consider inoffensive, and maybe even like.
You tell me.
I feel on more certain ground though, in lamenting that were it not already bad enough that Korean women are so financially disempowered that luxury hotels might not even bother advertising to them. Or, when they do, that in the process their advertisements would so actively perpetuate the gender and sexual stereotypes underpinning that status quo.
I am not naïve about how companies perceive their social responsibilities. But in Korea in fact, they hold them more dearly than most. So perhaps appealing to that sense of duty could result in change? Combined with demonstrating the financial benefits to be gained from adding more women’s and sexual minorities’ voices to advertising campaigns?
If queer women say they love the MV to Anda’s Touch, this cishet man is going to listen. Not to self-appointed gatekeepers who insist women are only about the feels.
Estimated reading time: 20 minutes. Source, all screenshots: YouTube
Face-sitting. A woman’s point-of-view shot as Anda kneels in front of her crotch. Women making out in the background. Anda admiring another woman’s vagina, beaming at the viewer in anticipation. The complete absence of any men. Anda lying in bed as another woman appears on top of her. Spinning the bottle. Anda loving all of it, as the MV to Touch relentlessly serves-up its women to its sensual, strikingly objectifying queer female gaze.*
Yet as any lesbian perusing heterosexual porn can attest, simply replacing the sex of an objectifier does not necessarily a queer female anthem make. To many seekers of queer content, authenticity is more important, and in this respect the MV seems lacking. The lyrics are gender-neutral. Live performances lacked any sapphic elements. Before it came out, none of Anda’s other songs or MVs had any queer themes, nor have any since. If she is queer, then she’s yet to come out publicly, nor given any other indication of that beyond this MV.
In short, it may have been nothing more than a gimmick, aimed at drawing attention to a catchy but otherwise lackluster song.
I can appreciate that desire for authenticity. In spite of that, Touch is still for queer women’s gazes.
Why? Because queer women said so.
Touch would be no hit. But the reaction from queer women, of which the above represents just the tip of the iceberg, was overwhelmingly positive. Whereas any haters were remarkably silent for the internet.
That doesn’t mean queer women seeing it for the first time have to like it. It’s sweaty, it’s crude, it’s bush league compared to guaranteed queer female film classics like Carol and A Portrait of a Lady on Fire. But as a cishet man, I don’t need to think twice about prioritizing the feelings and reactions of the queer women who have actually opined on it. So, no matter however shallow it may be, it is still on the same spectrum as those. It’s there.
I wasn’t content with simply relying on fan reactions to determine if any future queer-looking media text spoke to the queer female gaze or not though. I wanted some sort of framework anyone could apply, or a list of questions to ask. So, I googled.
I wasn’t completely naive when I did that. I did expect there to be much less out there than for the heterosexual male gaze (henceforth, “male gaze”).
I definitely didn’t expect that discussions about the heterosexual female gaze (henceforth, “female gaze”) had only really taken off in the lastfew years though, not that on the queer female gaze (or lesbian gaze) still barely at all. That over forty years after Laura Mulvey got the ball rolling with the men, that writer and director Jill Solowaycould plausibly claim that “[M]edia that operates from the nexus of a woman’s desire is still so rare. We’re essentially inventing the female gaze right now” (my emphasis). And especially not that, during that process of invention, Soloway and just about every other commentator on the female gazes would be so concerned about stressing that women are all about the feels, that they would forget that women do also like looking too, whether at men or at women. Let alone that men who look at women can also have feelings too.
If only I was exaggerating. Ultimately, I had to come up with those questions myself. (Skip to the end if you’d like to read them now.)
*Update: It’s been pointed out to me that my notion of the term ‘queer female gaze’ perhaps has some issues. To clarify then, my specific meaning by it is “the gaze of all people who identify as women, who are (not necessarily exclusively) sexually attracted to people who also identify as women.” I hope that clears up those issues, but am happy to be educated as to if any remain, or if my clarification has inadvertently raised new ones.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I’ll provide truckloads throughout this series. But what am I claiming exactly? So that there’s no confusion, let me devote this opening post to outlining the gist of my arguments, and provide some definitions.
In so doing, I repeatedly accuse commentators on the female gazes for making sweeping generalizations…only to lay myself wide open to the charge that I’m doing exactly the same about them. So, I will provide some examples here as I go along, which may mean some some repetition in later posts. But that’s no biggie: I encourage readers to take absolutely nothing of what I say at face value, and I am happy to provide dozens of links in the comments now for anyone who doesn’t want to wait for them until later posts.
First, it can be a surprise to learn that commentators on the female gazes often devote a lot of time to the male gaze first. But it makes sense: the male gaze is much better known, and it helps in forming a contrast. Unfortunately, that also means there’s already a natural tendency to stress differences rather than similarities.
Next, it turns out there’s actually two male gazes evident in many of those discussions.
First, there’s the literal male gaze, which refers to how cishet men look sexually at women, and the perspective which is prioritized to the exclusion of almost all others in the media. In my experience, this is what the overwhelming majority of people think of as the male gaze, unless they’re educators or writers, and is the definition of male gaze I’ll overwhelmingly be using too.
Next, there’s the abstract, academic male gaze (henceforth, “Male Gaze”). To explain what it means, consider the source: Mulvey’s book chapter “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in 1975, which I’m sure you’re all of aware of and many of you may even have read too.
But, if you are one of those who’ve read it, then I’ll wager…only once or twice perhaps? As a freshman, many years ago?
Because even if I’m really only just projecting, please do check out it again now, and admit it—it’s dense. Despite what it’s best known for, it’s mostly devoted to extremely esoteric, psychological topics like ‘phallocentricism’ and ‘fetishistic scopophilia.’ Colleagues of mine, who’ve assigned it as tutorial readings at the beginnings of their careers, have learned the hard way from their student evaluations to avoid it later.
Frankly, most of it is entirely above my head, as is much of the voluminous scholarship it’s given rise to.
That is not necessarily a criticism, or even a problem—we all use many concepts to understand the world without understanding all their nuts and bolts. As Lindsay Ellis diplomatically puts it below (2:44), the chapter really shouldn’t be considered “so much as a holy text as a jumping-off point.”
However, it does mean there’s a very abstract, academic Male Gaze of all that scholarship out there. And in my experience, one that’s frequently used interchangeably with the literal male gaze by non-academic writers. This leads to a lot of confusion, and, given the authority with which the Male Gaze comes, can easily come to dominate our understanding of the former.
Or, in other words, something about the abstract concept that may sound—and indeed be—perfectly reasonable in a Film or Gender Studies journal, but absurd if it was spoken of in a non-academic context about living, breathing, flesh and blood cishet men, nonetheless easily can and often does get done so anyway.
Take queer feminist critic Rowan Ellis‘s very first line on the subject in Bitch Flicks for instance, that it means “(t)he sexual objectification of passive female characters.” She doesn’t follow my m/M convention, so which gaze was she referring to? If her comment is about the Male Gaze, then that sounds very plausible—it sounds very much like something a Gender Studies scholar would say, and which I’m not knowledgeable enough to critique. But was that the type of gaze Ellis was referring to? Only by specifically asking ourselves that question and looking can we determine, indirectly through her saying the concept under discussion “can be seen literally as a gaze,” can we resolve that she was indeed referring to the Male Gaze—and realize just how easy it would be to take away from her original comment that men’s literal sexual gaze is inherently objectifying.
Or take the panel above from M.Slade‘s cartoon in Everyday Feminism entitled “Am I a Queer Woman Looking Through the Male Gaze?”. Again, I think it’s the Male Gaze, but it’s much more unclear this time.
Either way, it’s true that perhaps most readers wouldn’t need reminding of Suzannah Weiss‘s rare caveat, also in Everyday Feminism, that the Male Gaze “is not necessarily the perspective of most men, but rather, society’s notion of a ‘normal’ man’s perspective” (my emphases), and it’s patronizing of me to imply they would. I hope so. Given my professed ignorance, I’m not going to claim that Ellis or Slade are necessarily wrong about the Male Gaze either, or that a hell of a lot of men do indeed negatively objectify women. And yet somehow, a hell of a lot of commentators on the female gazes genuinely do seem to believe that cishet male desire is nothing but that overwhelming urge to objectify. The Male Gaze is the male gaze as it were. And again, because as I’ll demonstrate, I’m only confident in making that accusation because they literally say so. And/or, indirectly by outright denying that women can objectify too.
Perhaps they arrive at that position because, as Alina Cohen explains in The Nation, much like ‘white privilege’ and ‘heteronormative,’ the term ‘male gaze’ is “utilized mostly by those who seek to destroy the phenomenon it identifies.” I’d put it even stronger: absolutely no-one reading this has ever used it in a positive or even neutral sense until now, myself included. Indeed, it comes across as so utterly tainted in my readings, that I completely understand why commentators would feel compelled to distance female desire from it—and to ignore, dismiss, or vilify those women who exhibit the “male” traits they associate with it, as I’ll give an example of a little later below.
Absolutely Everything a Woman Creates is the Female Gaze
À la The Onion’sclassic article about “empowerment,” further adding to all the confusion is that the female gaze has recently become somewhat of a catch-all buzzword. As Cohen puts it, the term “simply functions according to its users’ needs,” to the extent “when women direct films, take photographs, make sculpture, and even write books or articles, they’re often said to be harnessing [it].”
Just about every link in this post leads to many examples of the many fruits of all the discussions now being had about what difference the sex of the person behind the lens makes. Important and overdue questions are being raised about what it means to be a male artist of the female nude in the #MeToo era too. But all these conversations are diminished by numerous touteddefinitive female gazephoto collections sharing no more commonality than having been taken by women, and with few obvious differences with how men would have approached their subjects either.
Even photo collections by men have been exhibited as examples of the female gaze too. Which actually isn’t as absurd as it sounds—another topic to be raised in this series is to what extent men, with sufficient input from women, can create content for the female gaze, as well as cishet people for queer content—but it does go to show how the term can mean just about anything.
On top of that, in the last two years especially, it seems that every other commentator on the female gazes—and almost every reviewer of Lady on Fire(!)—uses the terms not just in a literal sense, but also to describe the movement to challenge the aforementioned erasure of women in general, WOC, queer women, and so on in popular culture, and especially their under-representation in its production. (The “Female Gaze,” I’ll call it.) I’m 100 percent on board with that, but it doesn’t help when that meaning is used interchangeably with its literal one.
To better understand why commentators on the female gazes (and hence male gaze) make the calls they do, I’ve really tried hard to place myself in their shoes. I’ve noticed over 99 out of 100 of them identify as women (prove me wrong). That they’re justifiably outraged about the under-representation of women, their stories, and their ways of seeing the world in popular culture. That they’re sick and tired of the camera encouraging both men and women to look at the latter through an objectifying, domineering, leering lens.
But now, they have a chance to do something about that by writing or talking about the female gazes, or even by making their own media texts themselves.
Sources left and below: unknown. Source right: @maryneelahaye.
They have very limited time or space to do so though. People will surely understand if they make some necessary generalizations about men in the process, who are not even their focus.
Unfortunately, sometimes those generalizations really do go too far. Time and time again, confident, matter-of-fact declarations about all cishet men and male desire get provided that are often no more than caricatures.
To complain about that may seem like I’m just making a typical, unhelpful “not all men” retort. But I’m really not. Its not deflecting the conversation, because the women themselves are already talking about men. Also, it’s not missing the point, because like them, I only talk about men with the aim of better understanding the female gazes. For if those are defined largely in opposition to stereotypes of men, then those of women are surely going to be just as crude and useless, utterly failing to account for the likes of awkward, lascivious Touch fans.
It’s time to start pointing fingers.
The Burden of Proof
Re-enter Soloway, whose keynote address on the female gaze at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival occupied the top spot in google searches until articles about Lady on Fire recently displaced it. Soloway, who “now identifies as a gender non-conforming queer person,” and is the award-winning creator of the immensely popular Transparent TV series, which has been “a major force in bringing discussions of trans rights to the mainstream,” was clearly a well-liked, very motivating speaker at the festival. This, despite shitting on so many women so quickly into her address (5:15-6:55):
The opposite of the male gaze, if taken literally, would mean visual arts and literature depicting the world and men from a feminine point of view, presenting men as objects of female pleasure.
So, okay, I guess in it’s most simple that would be like, Magic Mike if it were written, directed and produced by a woman.
I remember when they tried to sell us that, thirty years ago culture was all WOMEN! HERE’S PLAYGIRL AND CHIPPENDALES!!!???
And so many women were so happy to have anything, something, that they dutifully bought Playgirl—hairy man laying across the centerfold, soft penis, ooooooh.
Groups of women, going to Chippendales, screaming, laughing hooting….
Anyway okay that’s one version of the female gaze that we have been offered:
“Hey ladies! Here’s your fuckin’ fireman calendar!” But it’s kinda –- naaaahhh. Pass. We don’t want that. NOT BUYING IT.
Unfortunately for Soloway’s breezy narrative, at one point 2 million women were buying Playgirl every month, and readership only dropped in the wake of the conservatism of the 1980s (as did that of men’s adult magazines). If she was so quick to just write them all off as desperate, as well as fans of Magic Mike and the Chippendales, I don’t need to ask what she would make of Touch fans.
Was she unaware? Unlikely, given her expertise. Why then, would she make such insulting claims? Why did no-one in the Q&A call her out on them?
K-pop can be pretty bawdy sometimes, and that’s precisely why some fans like it. But ogling isn’t mutually exclusive with enjoying it for more ‘noble’ reasons, nor does it preclude other fans genuinely only liking it for the music. Source: lalalalyssaa
As a sometime guest lecturer myself (invite me to your campus!), I’m painfully aware of how presentations encourage overgeneralizations and hyperbole that speakers may regret later. Also, with the benefit of hindsight, her talk—much of which actually consists of the reading of a poem—is very much an example of the call to arms-type Female Gaze. So, I can completely understand the emotional reaction of the audience, and normally I’d very much give her the benefit of the doubt.
Not Soloway. Again, there’s her prominence to consider, and her ensuing position as the very first person many people listen to about the subject. There’s her own invitation to scrutinize her, by virtue of how earlier in that keynote address, she wasn’t shy about her hope that it would anchor her name to the female gazes, like Laura Mulvey’s is to the men’s. There’s the stream of consciousness-like feel to her talk that emerges from such scrutiny, so replete is it with bizarre, dubious claims, including such sophistry as “I mean, what is gang rape? It is men wanting to have sex in the same room as one another, but using [a slut] so they don’t have to name and own their own desire for each other.” But most of all, and ultimately the only reason I’m so focused on her instead of ignoring her entirely, there’s the fact that most other commentators on the female gazes generally agree with her that women don’t ogle or objectify—and share the utter bullshit she spouts about men’s gazes and sexuality that’s required to take that position.
I realize that’s quite a statement to leave you hanging on. My apologies. Those commentators will be covered in later posts. For now, I invite you to watch Soloway’s talk for yourself (or even better and quicker, the stark transcript), and ask you what actual evidence she presents for her many confident comments about “chismales.” Or, what proof Ellis provides for this one:
As a queer woman it might seem to any men who are attracted to women, that I would love images of half naked oiled up women, because they do. But while they may just see the object of their desire, I have to also see myself. So when I see sexualized women on screen who are given no agency, plot or power, I don’t get anything positive from that. It feels unbelievably naive and worrying that someone who is for all intents and purposes a pliant sexual object could be genuinely and maturely desirable.
Er…I don’t love images of half-naked oiled-up women. I didn’t when I was still a virgin. Alas, since then I’ve actually never encountered any half-naked, oiled-up women to help change my mind. (Sigh.) But my experience has taught me that a good grip is needed for most positions. That lotions, cosmetics, perfumes, and (within reason!) even showers can be a turn-off too, because they stop women feeling and smelling like women (yes, perish the thought—smell and touch can be important to men too). So, I’m going to take a wild guess that oiling women up wouldn’t help with either.
Image: ‘Effy in Beijing (for American Apparel),’ 2014, by Monika Mogi. Another example of the female gaze from Girl on Girl, but which inexplicably aligns exactly with my own tastes. Source: Maiden Noir.
Nor do I get anything positive from sexualized women on screen who are given no agency, plot, or power—my fetish is for the exact opposite. For sure, if I was single, and encountered a nubile and willing “pliant sexual object,” then I probably wouldn’t kick her out of bed. But I’d much prefer an assertive and confident woman who took some initiative—which is why I married one.
Do all cishet men share my tastes? Absolutely not. But I’d venture I know a hell of lot more about their desires than Ellis does. Because I’m a cishet man? Yes, of course, but absolutely not only. Rather, because I’ve actually asked other men about their tastes too. A lot. Whereas Ellis gives no indication of having asked so much as one.
Can you imagine what social media would do to me if I said something so crude and stereotypical? That fat wallets say, turned absolutely all women on—and without having asked even a single one of them?
I may have said a lot of controversial stuff so far, but nothing remotely as absurd or disingenuous. All I’ve said about women’s tastes specifically is that they like looking too, and even that—which shouldn’t even be controversial—has been based only on what women have said themselves. I’ve been very careful about that.
Why do Ellis and her colleagues not realize their own hypocrisy? Where does their confidence and certainly about what men want come from? Where, for that matter, does yours?
To make the revolutionary claim that women do ogle men and/or each other however, doesn’t necessarily mean they do so in the same ways as cishet men, or to the same degrees. For example, in 2015 Esther Yu, Editor in Chief of the feminist site Arco Collective, wrote in one of the rare more nuanced takes on the female gazes out there, that:
“…there are no ‘tits or ass’ for hetero women—no single feature on the male body that concentrates desire with as much intensity and density as the woman’s breast does for the hetero man. There are, of course, lots of sexually charged zones on men’s bodies, but it’s nearly impossible to point to a part of the anatomy that both excites desire and stands in as a marker of that desire as efficiently as the breast. Its presence means sex, even if any given instance of its image does not itself incite desire. It is culturally iconic—an icon of sex and of male sexual pleasure.
What women find sexy about men’s bodies is more diffuse. The hands, the naked back and chest, the eyes, and the forearm are all usual suspects. But men’s bodies don’t seem to be accessible for female desire in the same way. Even the penis doesn’t signify properly as a locus for female desire because it is at least as iconic of men’s sexual aggression as it is of the possibility for female pleasure.”
Indeed, in this series I’ll also discuss transmen’s and transwomen’s experiences of changing libidos, sexualities, and desires in their new bodies, which strongly suggest that these differences are fundamental. Still, let me say it again for those in the back—that there are differences between women and men, possibly big differences, that still doesn’t mean that women don’t ogle, a lot. Or wouldn’t ogle, were they not socially sanctioned for doing do.
Questions to Ask if Something Qualifies for the Female Gaze(s)
For understanding the female gazes, all these issues raised would seem to present quite the conundrum. They don’t, really. Queer fans of Touch, or other MVs like it, aren’t going to stop loving them simply because gatekeepers think they can’t or shouldn’t. That said, this series is about finding the female gazes. It’s about being proactive, not simply waiting around to hear whatever Twitter has to say about any given media text. Specifically, it’s about formulating a series of questions with which to judge if something is aimed at cishet women, queer women, or neither. By all means, if anyone who is neither a cishet woman or a queer woman makes a determination based on those questions, but members of those groups overwhelmingly decide otherwise, then that person should do a major rethink. But the point remains that anyone can ask those questions.
If that accessibility sounds like the height of cishet male privilege, then, again, I feel that’s more than a little hypocritical: over 99 percent of commenters on something being male-gazey identify as women, and no-one seems to have a problem with that. No, I’m not being defensive, you’re being defensive. And yes, there’s a lot more uncomfortable truths like that to come in this series. All for the sake of challenging what you and I thought we knew about male and female desire.
Did I say “finding” the female gazes though? I lie. I think I’ve already found the necessary questions, which really aren’t that complicated:
Does the text present (wo)men in a sexualized manner?
Does it present an authentic, believable (queer) relationship between characters, and/or “humanize” them?
Is it produced by and/or explicitly for (queer) women?
I know—many of you may be already be ROTFL at the first. So let me clarify:
The brackets are for the queer female gaze; without them they’re for the female gaze.
The questions are in order of importance.
The first question is a necessary condition to qualify for the female gazes. Certainly, as discussed, some commentators argue that the terms can just refer to sorely underrepresented, female ways of seeing the world in general (the Female Gaze) not just of other men or women in a sexual sense, and I greatly respect that. But consider that most people familiar with the term “male gaze” consider it to be nothing but sexual. So, not to also include a sexual component in the equivalent female concepts would be unnecessarily confusing and hypocritical. (And again, it is very telling about their notions of male and female sexuality that so many commentators are just fine with that.)
“Sexualization” is a broad, amorphous term, and its manifestations are hardly confined to tight clothes, sexual poses, shirtless guys, and gratuitous skin. Any situation, body part, or object can be sexualized. This glance at 0:21 is. The reading of this note in Atonement was too. The smell of my wife. (You get the idea.) Touch, meanwhile, is sexualized in a “traditional” sense. But the infamous armpit scene in Lady on Fire is hardly subtle either, no matter how deep and meaningful is the relationship of the characters involved.
But to claim sexualization is a necessary component of the gaze is not to claim that all those texts are equally queer. Nor that—let me nip this asinine notion in the bud immediately—pornography aimed at heterosexual men say, is somehow queer simply by virtue of sexualizing women. (Which is not to say that some lesbians can’t or don’t like some male-gazey heterosexual pornography.)
These questions are only a guide!!
This series is about justifying those questions, exploring their implications, and finally applying them to Touch and other texts in the future. Part Two, which will hopefully up next week (but probably not frankly, considering this one took me two years!), will be about those many more claims that men are all about looks and women are all about feels, and why they’re wrong.
Until then, if I’m wrong about anything above, which is entirely possible for a cishet man writing about these subjects, then please do let me know!
If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)
It’s a dirty job, publicly shaming yourself into finally writing about a subject that you’re passionate about and have been working on for years. But someone has to do it!
The MV for Touch by Anda, released in 2015, is as queer and objectifying as they come. Naturally, I fell in love at first sight, and just had to review it.
I’m not a woman though—neither a lesbian, a heterosexual, nor any other on the glorious spectrum. So, before I got started, I needed to hit the books. But no sweat, I reasoned. The concept of the male gaze has been around since 1975. It’s well-known enough that no-one who’s already woke has to explain it to another. Surely over forty years later, I thought, there would be just as extensive a literature on what women want? With helpful lists of clear criteria to guide even the most hapless of cishet male reviewers?
You can already guess the answers. But, absorbing what was out there proved addictive. And, as some of you may recall, I did eventually feel that I had enough of a handle on it to write a review.
Only to delete it in consternation as I realized the queer female gaze was a much broader, much more contentious subject than I’d first imagined. In fact, one requiring an epic series to do it justice. Humbled, I resolved to keep researching and gathering all the information that would be necessary, not putting pen to paper again until I was absolutely certain I’d covered all my bases. I duly created a second “Anda + Queer Female Gaze” folder on my Firefox toolbar, and set to work.
That was over two years ago.
That folder now has three hundred bookmarks in it, with thirty more bookmarks added today in the wake of the recent release of Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
All of a sudden, adding to that morass finally made me realize what a fool I’ve been. All this time, the effortless collecting and reading of articles has been an albatross around my neck, providing an easy out from the harder work of actually writing.
And, if I wasn’t going to start just as soon as I had that epiphany, then when? And if making such a public commitment wasn’t motivation enough to actually see it through too, then what would be?
I admit, a strange post. But if it gets the job done. I also felt it would be more helpful to explain than just ghosting you until the 27th, chosen for when I’ll hopefully no longer be teaching from home.
Thank you very much for indulging me then, and I’ll be back here soon. And please stay safe!
(p.s. If you can’t wait, you can still catch me on Twitter or Facebook!)
Update 1, Monday, April 27: All completed, but it needs some ruthless editing after a good night’s sleep, so I’ve postponed publication until Wednesday. Sorry for the slight delay!
Update 2, Wednesday, April 29: Arrrgh! Sorry *again*, but real life has intervened in the form of sudden urgent editing projects from my boss, and my post still needs a *lot* more work than I thought it did on Monday.
TBH, I think it’s going to be controversial—I really want to challenge people’s assumptions about the male & female gazes—so I really want to make sure I get it right. Let me just call it for *next* Mon then, with my promise to do my best to make it worth the wait. Thanks!
If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)
The #MeToo era may be the first time that older models and actors have ever been able to open up about their own experiences. When they do, the media should listen.
Sometimes you have to state the obvious to show just how absurd and unfair an everyday situation is.
One such is the constant stream of movie posters featuring women with no heads. So, comedian Marcia Belsky countered that with the ‘Headless Women Of Hollywood’ project, pointing out that heads are “first and foremost the thinking part of the human body, where our motivations and feelings are located.” It naturally follows that the headless images of women “we are bombarded with on a daily basis, tell us persistently that [their] thoughts, feelings and personal agency either don’t exist or are of no interest. Further, facial features are the way we recognize other people. It’s the face that makes us individuals. That too is taken away.”
Smiling faces then, and the consent implied within, seem obvious counters to charges of objectification. Again, it naturally follows that the world would be a better place if everyone bore that in mind in their production and consumption of popular culture.
Yet ultimately they can only be a guide too. And one which often falls under the weight of its numerous exceptions.
I’ve covered many ofthoseexceptions elsewhere, as well as US philosopher and law and ethics professor Martha Nussbaum’s argument for necessarydistinctions between ‘positive’ and ‘negative objectification.’ And yet another is the reality that actors’ and models’ smiles are often plastic, belying their unpleasant experiences with the photoshoots themselves.
No-one reading this would suppose otherwise. But again, it’s sometimes necessary to be reminded of the obvious. Because without the giveaway of the title, no-one would have ever suspected there’d been anything untoward about the following, utterly innocuous-looking commercial:
Featuring now well-known drama star Jeon In-hwa (54), it was her first for Julia Cosmetics’ ‘two-way cake,’ way back when she was 21. I only read about it at all, because first, a few days earlier I’d learned what happened to then 22 year-old Japanese actor and model Kiko Mizuhara in 2013:
And next, only because that prompted a double-take when I stumbled across the following segment of the January 20, 2020 episode of Naturally, in which Jeon In-hwa explains her own similar negative experience with that commercial, when she was about the same age:
Specifically, from the 1:00 mark, Jeon In-hwa, Han Ji-hye, and So Yoo-jin begin talking about the former’s commercials in her youth:
And from 1:20, her issues with the one of her wearing a swimsuit (my emphases):
지난 20일 방송된 MBN ‘자연스럽게’에는 전인화가 출연해 처음이자 마지막 수영복 차림 광고에 대한 이야기를 언급했다.
…전인화는 “저 광고 때문에 울었다”며 “그 때는 절대 방송에서 파인 옷이나 수영복을 안 입으려고 했는데 현장에 가니 수영복이 준비돼 있었다”고 말했다. 이어 “너무 안 하고 싶어서 울었지만 결국 설득돼서 찍었다”고 덧붙였다.
On [yesterday’s] episode of Naturally, Jeon In-hwa’s ad was mentioned, her first and last appearance in a swimsuit.
…”I cried because of that commercial,” Jeon In-hwa said. “I had absolutely no intention of ever wearing revealing clothes or a swimsuit on TV then. But once we got to the shooting location, [I saw that] a swimsuit had been prepared [for me].” She added “I cried that I really didn’t want to do it, but in the end I was persuaded to, and the shooting went ahead.”
All over in a few seconds, I admit I lay myself open to charges that I’m blowing things out of proportion. My title—maybe a little clickbaity. Jeon In-hwa doesn’t seem particularly wrought over the memory. She humorously—but explicitly—doesn’t want to talk about it (much) either. And the potential downer is quickly passed over by her costars.
“Persuasion” potentially covers a wide range of sins too, but doesn’t automatically mean “coercion.” What point then, is there in dwelling further on a young, inexperienced actor and model overcoming their nerves 34 years ago?
Alternatively, even if something more sinister did occur, there would be little possibility of legal recourse after all this time. Moreover, Korea has draconian libel anddefamation laws, which are regularly usedto silence sexual harassment and rape victims—and both Julia Cosmetics and Korea’s largest advertising agency Cheil Worldwide are very much still around.
I would tend to agree with letting it go then, if Jeon had gone on to do more commercials in swimsuits and/or revealing clothes. But she didn’t. For a young, attractive female model and actor destined to become a huge drama star, ultimately with 24 more years of endorsement deals ahead of her, that avoidance borders on remarkable.
Unless her first experience was genuinely traumatic?
Jeon In-hwa in 2016, reminiscing about being a reporter at 20 before she got her break as an actor and model. Source: Seoul Economic Daily.
The possibility means she at least deserves to be (gently) asked what happened in 1986 exactly. Yet not a single media outlet has followed up on her unburdening. Believe me, I’ve looked.
Yes, legal issues remain a concern. But if it’s not possible to talk about her experience in the #MeToo era, then when?
Without asking the questions, her costars, the producers of Naturally, and/or the media missed a golden opportunity. At the very least, for encouraging others to come forward, and for fostering a small moment of solidarity with different generations of victims.
Instead, their collective nonchalance perpetuates the absurdity and unfairness of another everyday occurrence. That crying your eyes out and then being forced to smile as you wear revealing clothes in front of strangers? It’s just what women have always needed to do, and always will need to do to secure that modelling gig, right? It’s certainly not something newsworthy.
I’m just saying I think maybe it should be.
What do you think?
If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)
Trick question: I’ve raved about it many times. Who wouldn’t, when after yearsspent looking for quality, accessible Korean-language commentary on feminism and sexuality, now they’re inundated with it?
It feels so energizing to discover all the fresh perspectives, events, trends, and activists that I’ve been overlooking these past 17 years in Korea. And to think about where learning about them will take me (and this blog) in the future.
It also explains why I haven’t been writing much recently sorry: when you have so much material to work with, it’s difficult to settle on just one thing at a time. Other reasons include preparing my upcoming Gender in South Korea course this summer, my wife starting an exciting and glamorous new job which keeps taking her on long business trips overseas, and my angst over my blog’s 10 year anniversary coming up in a couple of weeks.
This female artist painted a masterpiece of female nudity.
In particular, the model has no interest whatsoever in the viewer’s gaze—indeed, she seems to be ignoring it almost entirely. Instead, she has an unaffected air about her, her eyes closed and sporting an ever so slight smile with her lips turned up. Rather than simply being the object of the gaze, she’s revealed to be the master of her own body.
Any more old or newfound fans of Gentileschi out there, please say hi in the comments. Also, does anyone know of any paintings with similar motifs by different artists, especially Korean ones? Thanks!
Tonight is a strikingly sensuous MV about a time of freedom and female friendship. But to what extent is it undermined or enhanced by its many erotic moments? To what extent are those just plain sexual objectification?
Time to answer the big questions that have been on your mind since Part 1 and Part 2:
“Wait…is that Lee Hyo-ri? Or is THAT Lee Hyo-ri?”
Tonight may be a great song, but it’s a real headache keeping track of who’s who in the MV, and the one guide I found had two big mistakes. So, let’s clear up the five Spica members’ names first:
Partially, the difficulty is because many sites use Park Si-hyun’s old name of Park Ju-hyun (박주현; she legally changed it). Partially, it’s because Park Na-rae (L) and Park Bo-hyung (R) look so similar in it:
(1:12)
But mainly, it’s because there’s so many different costume, hairstyle, and hair color changes throughout, and much throwing of colored chalk dust. Also, it’s because there’s actually six people in the MV: Lee Hyo-ri features in many scenes in the first half especially, and looks a lot like Na-rae (or rather, Na-rae looked a lot like her then, but doesn’t in 2016):
(0:01)
(0:37)
Adding to that confusion, it doesn’t help that Na-rae was wearing that same white mesh cardigan just a little earlier (or that Yang Ji-won was wearing a very similar one at 0:47):
(0:23)
The giveaway is Hyo-ri’s tattoo though:
(0:38)
(2:28)
Compare this picture from Netizen Buzz last month:
As for what she’s doing in the MV, I’ll let Zander Stachniak of Critical Kpop explain (with the tweet and video inserted by me):
In 2013, B2M organized a mentorship between labelmates Lee Hyori and Spcia, the latter benefiting tremendously. The single, “Tonight,” was a return to vocally powerful music, and their first top ten song on the Gaon chart. Hyori and husband collaborated and produced the song, and Spica also seemed to take a page out of Hyori’s book with more of a “sexy” concept…
…It seemed as though B2M saw the Lee Hyori connection as the way forward. Finally they were getting somewhere. In 2014, Spica realeased “You Don’t Love Me,” a ‘60s style jazz number unlike anything they had ever done before, but very much like Hyori’s most recent album. An extension, almost. The song was brilliant, quirky, a joy to listen to. But Spica’s identity was becoming harder and harder to locate. Which might explain why their best song since debuting only reached 16 on the Gaon charts. Somehow, Spica had slid backwards. (End.)
I’m a huge fanof Hyo-ri’s: hearing about her role is what motivated me to check out Tonight in the first place, and the MV’s sensuality is very characteristic of her. But appearing in it herself was surely too much. Let alone being the very first person the viewer sees:
And by coincidence, that was the first time I’ve seen the MV myself for several weeks. Seeing it with fresh eyes, now I realize I may have given the wrong impression in Part 1 and Part 2 sorry: it is not just an endless parade of female flesh. It is very much a sweet, sentimental memory of close female friends on some kind of trip, told in a non-linear, dream-like fashion. It feels almost churlish of me to critique it, when so many women have responded so positively to its charms.
Then I take another look at the following scenes, and don’t feel guilty at all.
The “Passive and Unthreatening Recipients of the Male Gaze” in Tonight
(0:17)
If all you knew of Tonight was girl-power hipster road-trip, then this might be the first scene that made you suspect there was a little more to it than that.
Not that I’m going to criticize it mind you. That teddy Yang Ji-won is wearing is supposed to be very form fitting. She does happen to have the largest bust of all the Spica members, but so what? If we start tut-tutting just because she’s in the scene, but wouldn’t if it featured a different member with smaller breasts, then that’s just body-shaming.
Instead, let me point out that you can’t unsee the ejaculation imagery in the suddenly rising balloon. (You’re welcome.) And, that although we get very brief glimpses of Kim Bo-a also wearing a teddy at the slumber party shown much later, it’s only Ji-won that we get to see like this there:
(1:40)
Thinking about why that was the case, and why the other three members were wearing such loose-fitting clothing at that party, I suddenly realized something obvious.
You know all those lying down scenes I made such a big deal of in Part 1 and 2? It turns out, it’s only Ji-won in most of them. And it’s her chest that we get to see the most of too.
I can’t believe I only just noticed. This is what staring at breasts for 10 weeks does to you…
(0:24)
(0:31)
(0:34)
(0:36)
(0:47)
(1:00; for a change, this time it’s Bo-a.)
(1:03)
Of this shot of Ji-won falling back into the pool, I’m thinking that on the one hand it’s a great metaphor for the viewer abandoning themself to their dream. But on the other that…boy, those are some great boobs. And you’ve got to appreciate the shots of her body too.
I’m not normally so crass. But however sensual, this element of the MV isn’t exactly subtle. Sometimes you’ve just got to call it.
As indeed with this next, very awkward scene with Si-hyun on her back, in which she’s wearing completely normal summer attire for a young Korean woman…if she were almost anywhere except in a swimming pool that is. And whose idea was it to bring a surfboard to a pool anyway, if not to give Si-hyun something to lie on for me to better admire her legs?
(1:17)
Yet for all its flaws, it was only through working out this scene that I realized the MV is supposed to be a dream. (Although I acknowledge that was already mentioned by other reviewers.) It was tough, because I took it very literally at first. Who the hell are the five of them supposed to be looking at, I wondered. How could that person be floating several meters above the pool? It only makes any sense if that person is the dreamer, who isn’t really there at all.
Should that context change our interpretation and/or criticism of any of the above scenes? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I do wonder and worry though, how accurately my screenshots are conveying that context, because of something I read recently:
My Women’s Studies class were watching Not a Love Story armed with Ruby Rich’s attack on the film. [It] is a documentary about pornography directed by Bonnie Klein which includes interviews with porn stars and feminist critics…Because Klein deployed traditional cinematic practices, Rich claims that the film cannot be feminist since it uses a camera ‘gaze’ which simulates, through intimate zooms, the typical vantage point of a male consumer of pornography. Rich deplores Klein’s use of a male cameraman and shots which turn the ‘viewer into a male customer normally occupying that vantage point’ (p. 408)…
My class largely rejected Rich’s reading, not because they disagreed with her technical deconstruction, but because, for them, the film’s meaning was lodged in the moving stories told by the women interviewed as much as in the camera movements. A purely visual reading, in other words, did not satisfy these women students. The voices of fascinating and independent women (however problematically presented) won out over the visual construction of spectator relations. The problem, then, for feminist criticism is that cinema identifications are not so easily and simply defined. Any attempt simply to deny that viewers are moved by what they hear, as well as by what they see, will create an imbalance.
Which I didn’t provide just to sound lurn-ed, but also because it’s a reminder that context is crucial for judging sexual objectification. Which there’s a lot more of to come in the MV.
According to Nussbaum, then: “In the matter of objectification context is everything. … in many if not all cases, the difference between an objectionable and a benign use of objectification will be made by the overall context of the human relationship” (Nussbaum 1995, 271) …Objectification is negative, when it takes place in a context where equality, respect and consent are absent…And it is benign/positive, when it is compatible with equality, respect and consent…
Nussbaum believes that ‘Lawrentian objectification’ (objectification occurring between the lovers in D. H. Lawrence’s novels) is a clear example of positive objectification. The passage from Lady Chatterley’s Lover that she quotes in her article describes a sex scene between two lovers. Connie and Mellor, in a context characterised by rough social equality and respect, identify each other with their body parts, they “… put aside their individuality and become identified with their bodily organs. They see one another in terms of those organs” (Nussbaum 1995, 275). Consequently, the two lovers deny each other’s autonomy and subjectivity, when engaging in the sex act.
However, Nussbaum explains, “when there is loss of autonomy in sex, the context is… one in which on the whole, autonomy is respected and promoted. … Again, when there is loss of subjectivity in the moment of lovemaking, this can be and frequently is accompanied by an intense concern for the subjectivity of the partner at other moments…” (Nussbaum 1995, 274–6) …Furthermore, Connie and Mellor do not treat each other merely as means for their purposes, according to Nussbaum. Even though they treat each other as tools for sexual pleasure, they generally regard each other as more than that. The two lovers, then, are equal and they treat one another as objects in a way that is consistent with respecting each other as human beings.
(Papadaki, Evangelia (Lina), “Feminist Perspectives on Objectification”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition, available online)).
Of course, gratuitous, disembodied jiggly body parts are lecture one of sexual objectification 101; by all means, we can discuss Nussbaum’s perspective on that in the comments, or in that earlier post. But my main intention in quoting her is not quite so lofty.
Rather, it’s to explain why my initial reaction to the MV was so visceral. Nussbaum speaks to how, when I’m in the mood, I almost can’t help but stare at certain body parts of my wife’s. Yet far from feeling objectified, my wife mostly finds it amusing, and relishes the exclusive attention and focus given to those body parts later. Seeing Ji-won lying down in that tent in the MV, the camera gaze lingers on her body very much like I would on my wife’s, as I luxuriate in the feel of her skin and savor her scent. Say, on a rare lazy Sunday afternoon, before we both suddenly realize the kids will be in the playground for—OMG—a whole half hour.
I imagine something similar explains why some lesbian commentators’ appreciation of the MV is so strong too. It’s what makes it so evocative, and explains how what would otherwise strikingly sensuous MV—arousing the senses without the sexual connotation—is really much more of a sensual one, “gratifying the carnal, especially sexual, senses“.
And that’s great. I applaud the sensuality. I scoff at the notion that because men may be more visual creatures than women, that context and atmosphere and—heaven forbid—our actual relationships with the objects of our desire somehow aren’t important too.* Which is not to say I don’t also appreciate me some T&A of course, but then that’s all there seems to be to most “sexy concepts” in K-pop these days, which is why they tend to be quickly forgotten. Unlike, say, Bloom, which we’ll still be talking about 30 years from now.
(*Update: Further corroboration of that is demonstrated by users’ reactions to VR porn, which transforms them “from being a voyeur to a participant”, and tricks them “into experiencing something like intimacy.”)
Working definition of the erotic: that which you cannot ignore
But wait. With great difficulty, let me tear my eyes from away those screenshots with Ji-won for a moment, and start thinking properly again.
Because while Tonight does have romantic lyrics, the MV itself was about a girl-power hipster road-trip, right? If so, what are those scenes with Ji-won doing there? Why almost only her? And what about all these headless shots coming up too?
The Objectification in Tonight (and THAT Lesbian Scene)
Whose body parts belong to whom? I could find out, but that laborious process would be much less fun than it sounds. Besides which, the point is I shouldn’t need to.
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Again, in an MV actually about relationships and/or sex, all those examples might be fine. Like I said, I often look at my wife that way, and at least I don’t feel evil when I do. But being so gratuitous here, they do appear to be classic examples to add to that sexual objectification 101 lecture, and strongly remind me of the recent “Headless Womenof Hollywood” meme.
미국 코미디언 벨스키는 SNS 프로젝트 ‘할리우드의 머리 없는 여성들’을 시작했다. “얼굴이 잘린 채 등장한 여성은 남성의 시선에서 수동적인 대상, 익명의 존재가 돼버리고 남성에 대한 성적 어필만으로 표현된다”https://t.co/JQKrZLibQB
If any scene can be said to be for a lesbian gaze, this is it. But it’s a terrible execution.
Among other things, Na-rae and Si-hyun are in completely different rooms. So when I first saw it, I didn’t think Na-rae’s undressing was even for Si-hyun at all, but that it was just for the heterosexual male viewer instead, with Si-hyun reacting to the audacity of Na-rae’s action. (My opinion is kind of moving back in that direction, TBH.)
Crucially, it just comes out of nowhere too. The only other one scene I can think of that hints at a romantic interest between two women—and I stress only hinting—is this one with Hyo-ri and (I think!) Na-rae:
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And for sure, Hyo-ri pushes Na-rae down in it, who tumbles onto the bed in a most delightful fashion:
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Or at least she would, were the MV not to segue into an awkward tumbling of Ji-won onto some grass instead:
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And that’s it. Yes, really, with these next, final scenes most notable for that absence. Because again, they’re very sensual, and I’d venture that lesbian viewers can certainly appreciate them, for the same reasons as heterosexual men can. (See Part 1 for more discussion of reactions by lesbian viewers.) But we see no “intra-diegetic gaze” of a woman in the MV admiring another woman’s body in the same way, despite the many titillating opportunities provided.
(Bo-hyung at 1:08)
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Conclusion
When I showed Tonight to a perceptive friend of mine two years ago, he told me it strongly reminded him of I’ve Gotta Feeling (2009) by the Black Eyed Peas. That would indeed be a very interesting comparison to make: both are great songs, and both MVs are very sensual, but with many problematic depictions of the women therein. And both, ironically, seem to have been relatively overlooked by pop-culture writers, at least in that latter respect. That’s no big surprise for Tonight of course, which wasn’t very successful as explained, but it comes as a strange oversight for I’ve Gotta Feeling, which reached #1 on numerous charts worldwide.
The main difference though, is that the MV to I’ve Gotta Feeling matches its lyrics. Perhaps Tonight would have been more successful if it too had embraced its sensuality, rather than making that feel so blatantly pervy and tacked on?
Because, ultimately, it was?
What do you think?
Either way, I’d hate to end on such a despondent note, almost as if I didn’t even like the song and MV, let alone still love both. Let me part with you instead then, by choosing from one of its many charms that I alluded to earlier. This scene, say, from 1:12, about which Laverne at Seoulbeats wrote (source, right: Yellow Slug Reviews):
The scene where Spica sway facing the wall (leaving us with a view of their backsides) is an example of a liberating and empowering direction; It’s not framed sexually at all. But the ice cream scene was and the MV would have been improved if it was eliminated.
For comparisons’ sake, a must read is I’m No Picasso’s thoughts about a similar Simone de Beauvoir nude.
And for even more fun, here’s the “male” version of the song:
And here’s the Areia trance remix. I still prefer the original, but I enjoy the slower tempo of this one too, which may be more apt for the MV:
Song Credits
Lyricists: Lee Hyori, Kim Bo-a; Composers: Nermin Harambasic, Anne Judith Wik (both worked on many songs on Lee Hyori’s Bad Girls album), Henri Jouni Kristian Lanz, William Robert Rappaport; Arrangers: 양시온, 김태현(also did Bang! by After School). (Source: Naver Music.)
Music Video Credits
Director: Yong Seok Choi; Assistant Directors: Edie Ko, Jungwoo Yoo, Oui Kim, Wonju Lee; Cinematographer: HyunWoo Nam (GDW); Art Director: Mina Jo; Cast: SPICA, Hyori Lee. (Source: LUMPENS; see here for a list of the many other MVs they’ve worked on.)
“The thing is, it’s patriarchy that says men are stupid and monolithic and unchanging and incapable. It’s patriarchy that says men have animalistic instincts and just can’t stop themselves from harassing and assaulting. It’s patriarchy that says men can only be attracted by certain qualities, can only have particular kinds of responses, can only experience the world in narrow ways. Feminism holds that men are capable of more—are more than that.”
Or as the phrase goes, “Patriarchy hurts men too.” Let’s continue that conversation started by Chally, focusing on the very narrow visions of female sexuality and body types that patriarchy deems attractive—and for women to aspire to.
But first, a quick recap. In Part 1, I mentioned being very surprised at other reviewers’ and commenters’ reactions to the MV for Spica’s Tonight. Because generally, they described it as sexually liberating, and/or with definite lesbian undertones. Whereas all I took away from it was the breasts.
And I mean lots of breasts.
I’m serious. Every other scene seemed to consist of Spica members lying in their tent, lying on some grass, or lying in a pool, the camera lingering on their chests. And that ogling continues in many of the scenes with the women on their feet too, often with no indication of who the breasts actually belong to.
Don’t get me wrong: breasts are awesome. But you do have to wonder why an MV about a girl-power road trip looks like it was filmed by a heterosexual 15 year-old boy. So too, why something so sexually liberating would feature so many languid women on their backs, when it’s so rare to see men posed like that?
Especially when, if pandering to the male gaze is the idea, I concluded in Part 1, there are many more active alternatives that are just as effective. Let’s explore some of those in this post, after which the screenshots of the MV for Tonight in Part 3 should almost speak for themselves.
The Male Gaze is NOT Monolithic
If you figured one obvious improvement would be to have women standing on their feet, then you’re in good company:
In Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising, a book written by Anthony Joseph Paul Cortese, he quotes [sociologist Erving Goffman] saying “People in charge of their own lives typically stand upright, alert and ready to meet the world. In contrast, the bending of the body conveys unpreparedness, submissiveness and appeasement”.
I’m thinking “people in charge of their own lives” don’t stand around picking their noses and looking at their watches though, wondering what to do. Probably, they stand much more like this, especially when their busy schedule suddenly includes bedding the person who just came into view:
Those images come via Body Language by Allan Pease (1981; link is to a PDF), who explains of Figure 99 that:
The aggressive-readiness [body language combinations] are used by professional models to give the impression that their clothing is for the modem, aggressive, forward-thinking woman. Occasionally the gesture may be done with only one hand on the hip and the other displaying another gesture.
pp. 79-82.
It’s this next one on the right though, that instantly came to mind when I read that quote of Goffman’s (#sociologyissexy):
Here’s Pease’s explanation of both:
Thumbs tucked into the belt or the tops of the pockets is the gesture display used to show a sexually aggressive attitude. It is one of the most common gestures used in television Westerns to show viewers the virility of their favourite gunslinger (Figure 103). The arms take the readiness position and the hands serve as central indicators, highlighting the genital region. Men use this gesture to stake their territory or to show other men that they are unafraid. When it is used in the presence of females, the gesture can be interpreted as, ‘I am virile, I can dominate you’.
This gesture, combined with expanded pupils and one foot pointing toward a female, is easily decoded by most women. It is this gesture that non-verbally gives the game away for most men, as they unwittingly tell the woman what is on their mind. This [body language combination] has always been predominantly male, but the fact that women wear jeans and trousers has allowed them to [also use it] (Figure 104), although they usually only do it when wearing pants or trousers. When wearing dresses or the like, the sexually aggressive female displays one thumb tucked into a belt or pocket (Figure 104).
pp. 83-84.
But why would “a hands on hip gesture [be] used to make clothing seem more appealing,” and why would a cowboy stance “unwittingly tell the woman what is on their mind”? Good questions:
Not only do the feet serve as pointers, indicating the direction in which a person would like to go, but they are also used to point at people who are interesting or attractive. Imagine that you are at a social function and you notice a group of three men and one very attractive woman (Figure 146). The conversation seems to be dominated by the men and the woman is just listening. Then you notice something interesting—the men all have one foot pointing towards the woman. With this simple non-verbal cue, the men are all telling the woman that they are interested in her. Subconsciously, the woman sees the foot gestures and is likely to remain with the group for as long as she is receiving this attention. In Figure 146 she is standing with both feet together in the neutral position and she may eventually point one foot toward the man whom she finds the most attractive or interesting. You will also notice that she is giving a sideways glance to the man who is using the thumbs-in-belt gesture.
p. 120.
By all means, decoding body language like this may seem very subjective, and more amusing than hard science. But things I learnt from Pease’s book helped me overcome difficulties I was having with my Taiwanese classmates at high school. Then a few years later, it was really unnerving at a meeting once when I suddenly realized I was making obvious lying gestures as I was, well, lying. Anyone with a basic knowledge of body language could have seen right through me—but my audience were none the wiser.
I’ve been a true believer ever since.
And, having read my mother’s copy at about the same time as I was discovering girls, have always been at the utter mercy of confident, sassy women with their hands on their hips. This woman in particular, because she’s been stalking me on the Busan subway for the last two years:
One NSFW image follows.
Informing the viewer of the confident, dignified, awe-inspiring beauty you can dream about by enrolling at Busan Women’s College (which sounds much more inspiring in the original Korean), it’s no less appealing to my male gaze for only being aimed at women.
And, if I’ve finally been given a legitimate excuse to post that, then I should get on a roll and also post Leena McCall’s magnificent “Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing” (2014) too. In which the model is so sure of herself, and her gaze so mesmerizing, that you almost don’t notice her brazen nakedness:
But as always, really I’m being quite serious. I include it because it was in fact removed from the Society of Women Artists’ 153rd annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in the UK. (Ironic, I know.) As Rowan Pelling at The Guardian explains, this reaction was quite telling:
When I tracked down the painting online I was so flummoxed as to the likely cause of disgust that I thought it must be the fact Ms May was depicted smoking a pipe. Few things cause more umbrage now than someone wantonly enjoying tobacco. But further investigation revealed it was the way the sitter’s short waistcoat and undone breeches framed a luxuriant dark V of pubic hair – not to mention, the “Come hither, if you dare!” expression on May’s face, as she coolly scrutinises the viewer – that seemed to be the problem. The painting smacks of Isherwood’s Berlin with its cabaret noir sensibility: Ruby May is a demi-clad femme fatale in pantomime boy’s clothing, channelling Liza Minnelli and EF Benson’s Quaint Irene – as alluring to women as she is to men. You can just about see how it might épater la bourgeoisie, without feeling for a second any outrage is justified.
Supposedly, it was removed for being unsuitable for children. Yet:
You can’t help wondering if the affronted viewers frequenting Mall Galleries have ever sauntered over to the National Gallery, where Bronzino’s erotically charged Allegory with Cupid and Venus (showing the boy archer fondling the naked goddess’s breast) is on display to visiting school parties; or whether they feel the Tate should dispose of Sir Stanley Spencer’s Double Nude Portrait, with its unsparing depiction of the artist’s flaccid penis and his wife’s hirsute mons pubis.
Mind you, the Society of Women Artists was permitted to replace McCall’s work with another less provocative nude: one where the model wasn’t tattooed and standing hand-on-hip, all unbuttoned. It seems the Mall Galleries’ clientele can cope with nudes, so long as the model is a more passive and unthreatening recipient of the wandering viewer’s gaze.
In light of that, the contrast between these recent pictures of the girl-group Sistar is interesting. On left, via Imgur, (much, much leggier in the unedited originals) is one of the teaser photos for their summer comeback; on the right, via soooo_you on Instagram, who’s on the far right and left of the pictures respectively:
Also, with these two advertisements of So-hee’s:
My fetish aside however, of course I’m not saying the solution to overthrowing the patriarchy is simply for women to stand up and point at their vaginas. Nor, that it’s a betrayal of that struggle to also like or even prefer examples where “the model is a more passive and unthreatening recipient of the wandering viewer’s gaze,” whether that liking is based on a sexual attraction, admiring their hair (à laSuzy’s contact lens ad in Part 1), or for whatever reason you like. But I do know which ones have more sass, and that they appeal to my male gaze just as much as those with women contorting themselves to sexual positions at my feet.
Surely I’m not the only guy? Surely many female readers prefer them too?
But wait, I hear you cry: there’s plenty of ads like that out there. Or is there? Maybe it’s “midriff advertising” that you’re thinking of, which has indeed become quite a trend worldwide. Especially in Korea, where there’s still taboos about breast exposure but not of legs, as is also the case in most of the Asian markets that the K-pop industry is reliant on:
Source: 숭실 총여학생회 다락 Facebook Page. The fan reads “You’re different because you’re beautiful. Don’t feel bad or uncomfortable about your precious body based on other people’s stereotypes. Because you are you, you are beautiful. The 23rd Soongsil University Female Students’ Association: we are different, and we respect you.”
It tends to exclude non-white, LGBTQ, and “non-attractive” individuals.
The considerable difficulties of obtaining and maintaining those flat midriffs are rendered invisible.
It frames women’s agency as something that is tied to their appearance, and exercised through consumerism.
It frames liberation feminism as the fulfillment of a male fantasy.
It morphs an external, male-judging gaze into a self-policing, narcissistic one.
Also, as the first image in that series above and this next one shows, I’d add that it’s disproportionately required of female models and K-pop stars. (Without disputing for a moment that young male celebrities—both WesternandKorean—are also increasingly required to have six-packs.) See Seoulbeats for a wider discussion of those points in relation to K-pop specifically.
But confidence doesn’t require any one specific body part or type. Nor even body exposure at all:
Of examples like this though, Erving Goffman notes that to an extent the women’s sass is—sigh–only possible because she is “shielded” by her much warier male companion. See “Gender Advertisements” in the Korean Context: Part 1” for more discussion of this surprisingly common motif.
I’ll also add that of course there’s much, much more to these wonderful things called sexuality and sexual attraction than whats been seen in the examples given so far in this post. For instance, consider:
Tonight has been interpreted as an uplifting, carefree song about female friendship, maybe even about a lesbian awakening. So why is the MV so male-gazey?
Released in August 2013, Tonight by Spica is the perfect short summer song. It’s fun, breezy, and simple to understand for a Korean learner too. Just take a listen for yourself:
Though most K-pop songs don’t age well for me, I do still soo love the music and vocals of this one. But its sales were poor, and it won no prizes on music shows. Itreceivedfewsubstantivereviews. Then the same happened again with You Don’t Love Me, which came out in January 2014. Crestfallen, I lost track of Spica after that, but I remember being further disappointed by their misguided US debut that summer, then the news in November 2015 that a manager of their former entertainment company was being sued for embezzlement, which derailed their planned comeback. Add that they haven’t uploaded a video to Youtube in over a year, then I started this post half-expecting they’d disband before I finished it.
Spica, it seems, have always been plagued with bad luck.
But there’s hope on the horizon. I soon learned that they’d switched entertainment companies in December, and that they’d quickly followed that with the announcement that a mini-album would be released in April, later cancelled in favor of the release of a full album in June. Also, while their Twitter,Facebook page, various Instagram accounts, and (Korean) fan cafe were only being updated every few days, they were still being updated. An hiatus on those updates since April was cause for alarm, but it was likely only because the group is very busy working on the album.
Sure enough, soon after I wrote that they’ve since resumed posting, and have just reconfirmed their comeback and released new member photos. So, I’m optimistic that they’ll announce a firm release date any day now. Which makes them a perfect choice for my own return to writing about K-pop.
Who could write a simple review after watching that MV though?
There’s only so much that can be said about the generic lyrics of the song, or added to what other reviewers have already written about the dreamy, memory-like atmosphere. Who has time for such banalities, when the MV is so sensual, but also soo blatantly aimed at heterosexual men? When the first half mostly consists of the Spica members lying on their backs in bikinis or tight clothes, the camera constantly lingering on their breasts? And much of the rest, just that lingering gaze, with only occasional shots of the actual faces of the various body parts’ owners?
I’m serious. For teaching the concept of the male gaze, and the rights and wrongs of objectification, this MV is the perfect K-pop example.
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No, I’m not a prude, I don’t think those are negatives (necessarily), and I’m not complaining. No way in hell, did I plan to spend six weeks on researching the male gaze before I got a post out either.
But I felt I had an obligation to discuss what no-one else was. Because when I first saw the MV three years ago, it was on my phone while I was on the subway; I had to stop watching, lest other commuters think of me as just another typical, sweaty uncle fan. When I showed the MV to a coworker to get a second opinion, he burst out laughing at how shameless it was; when I showed it to my wife, she just rolled her eyes. When I went online for fourth and fifth opinions though…?
Of scenes like the above, almost every other reviewer and commenter only mentions the ice cream one, if at all; instead, they talk about the strong vibe of sexual freedom they get from the MV, and/or the lesbian undertones. For instance, Alexandra Swords at Music Matters:
[The MV is] just plain fun to watch. It’s also incredibly sexy, the sensual movements, the outfits, the skinship . . . all of it contributes to a great idea of personal liberation, including sexual freedom and comfort with that sexual freedom. It’s great because very few music videos period, let alone the ones in Korea, express that not only is it okay to be a sexual creature, but that being so is not strange or special, it just is and we can just accept it with ease and comfort as an aspect of the world in which we live.
And commenters at Seoulbeats, after reviewer Laverne originally mentioned she found the sexual undertones of the ice cream scene unnecessary and distracting:
All of which is still cool of course: we’re all free to interpret the MV however we like, and a male gaze isn’t mutually exclusive with their reading of it. I should have made more of an effort to look for Korean reviews too.
But…sexual freedom? Tasteful lesbian undertones?
I’m just not seeing them. If a lesbian coming-of-age story was the intention, then it seems poorly executed at best, as I can identify only two scenes that hint at potential romantic interest between the members, and just barely at that. (Frankly, I think it’s just wishful thinking really. And, just off the top of my head, think Because of Youby After School is a much, much better K-pop example.) In the absence of that narrative though, what I’m seeing in its place is the presentation of a very passive, come-hither version of female sexuality, much like that which already overwhelmingly dominates the media.
Again, that’s not necessarily bad, in the right context. Nor, as Womantic’s and ChencingMachine’s comments demonstrate, are the resulting scenes necessarily for the exclusive pleasure of heterosexual men. Yet while a lesbian appreciation of this MV is no less valid than a male heterosexual one, I still think it’s only incidental.
But I’m not a lesbian. As you’ll see, I still have lots to learn about the (heterosexual) female and lesbian gaze too. And, whatever your sex or sexuality, I can’t and won’t presume to lecture you that any feelings of sexual empowerment to be gained from the MV are simply a form of false consciousness either. Instead, let me just present my own biases and intellectual baggage first then, to show you why I interpret the MV the way I do.
That makes for a very, very long post, almost a presentation really, which readability dictates that I split into three. Also, for an uneasy segue into a discussion of men and women in advertising next, to be continued in Part 2, and ironically not returning to the MV again until Part 3. But if that’s what it takes to demonstrate the very narrow vision of female sexuality being presented by the MV, and of male tastes in turn, then so be it.
Hopefully, you’ll be too intrigued by the hundred or so images to notice the length anyway. And, ultimately agree or disagree with my interpretations, maybe we’ll still have a fun discussion about the male gaze and/or Tonight too, and both learn a lot in the process.
Here goes…
The Male Gaze: A Gender Advertisements Perspective
Whatever your experience with analyzing advertisements, you can appreciate that the sizing and placing of people in them is a fundamental part of photographers’ and designers’ jobs. With that in mind, consider these images of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana:
Most people wouldn’t think twice about them. Unless, they already knew that Diana was actually the same height as Charles, or even slightly taller:
This effort to make Charles appear taller is a social commitment to the idea that men are taller and women shorter. When our own bodies, and our chosen mates, don’t follow this rule, sometimes we’ll go to great lengths to preserve the illusion.
Is that social commitment also operating in these Korean advertisements? You be the judge:
Now, those examples were pretty obvious. However, that social commitment to men’s greater height can be said to be part of a wider commitment to presenting conventional, in many ways unequal gender roles by the media. Which may sound like hyperbole, but literally just about any survey looking at how the sexes are portrayed can confirm.
In advertisements, that commitment is usually achieved in much more subtle ways than simply giving high stools to short men though. Fortunately for us, the late Erving Goffman outlined many of those ways in Gender Advertisements (1979), and his framework has been considerably expanded upon and modified by scholars since.
Concentrating on the two ways most relevant to the Tonight MV here, the first is by positioning men and women (and races) differently, which comes under the “Relative Size” category in Goffman’s framework. (Note that in addition to being positioned differently, they are frequently doing different things and/or have different jobs too, which comes under “Function Ranking”). For example:
None of those examples are particularly objectionable in themselves, nor is there a real case to be made that the teams behind them were deliberately or even subconsciously sexist: there could have been any number of legitimate aesthetic reasons and other considerations which came into play when they placed the men and women (and Koreans and Caucasians) the way they did. It’s also true that I deliberately selected all the advertisements in this post to make certain points, which in turn are necessary generalizations; of course you see men standing in the back sometimes, and so on. That said, do surveys of multiple advertisements, and, for whatever reasons, men tend to be front and center more often than women, and tend to have better jobs and/or take more active roles than the women behind them.
In that vein, take a look at these two:
In the left (technically only half of the advertisement), of course the mother is taller and of a higher social status than her young daughter. Also of course, there’s no implication that the teenage boy in the advertisement on the right is of a higher social status or in any other way superior to the teenage girls in any way simply because he’s standing while they’re sitting.
Look at multiple advertisements however, and it turns there’s a lot more ads like the one on the right than vice-versa. Or, of ones that elevate the men above the women in some other way:
Alternatively, if the men themselves are sitting, then the women end up on lower furniture (remember the stools earlier?), in beds, or even on the floor or ground:
This is the part of second category of Goffman’s to bear in mind for the MV, which he termed the “Ritualization of Subordination” (but with obvious overlaps with “Relative Size”). He explained it thus:
Although less so than in some, elevation seems to be employed indicatively in our society, high physical place symbolizing high social place. (Courtrooms provide an example.) In contrived scenes in advertisements, men tend to be located higher than women, this allowing elevation to be exploited as a delineative resources. A certain amount of contortion may be required. Note, this arrangement is supported by the understanding in our society that courtesy obliges men to favor women with first claim on whatever is available by way of a seat. (p. 43)
And in particular:
Beds and floors provide places in social situations where incumbent persons will be lower than anyone sitting on a chair or standing. Floors are also associated with the less clean, less pure, less exalted parts of the room – for example, the place to keep dogs, baskets of soiled clothes, street footwear, and the like. And a recumbent position is one from which physical defense of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders very dependent on the benignness of the surround. (Of course, lying on the floor or on a sofa or bed seems also to be a conventionalized expression of sexual availability) The point here is that it appears that children and women are pictured on floors and beds more than men. (p. 41)
A note of caution. In lectures in the past, I’ve explained that Korea provides an interesting counterpoint to such interpretations. As in this part of the world, age and status trumps everything:
And indeed maybe it does. But after rereading the original book, I found that Goffman had already indirectly addressed this:
An interesting contrast is to be found in turn-of-the-century portrait poses of couple [example above], wherein the effect was often achieved of displaying the man as the central figure and the woman as backup support, somewhat in the manner of a chief lieutenant. (p. 40)
Which is to say, it’s important to bear advertisements’ contexts in mind, and not interpret them dogmatically. But whether they’re Korean or from Goffman’s native Canada, examples like these seem to be the exceptions that prove the general rule.
Another thing to bear in mind is one of the biggest changes since Goffman’s day: that fewer and fewer couples and mixed groups are depicted in advertisements. Despite that, women are still less likely to be standing in them than men:
The sides of buses, I’ve noticed, are frequently used for full-length shots of people on their sides. It’s just that those people rarely seem to be men:
And finally, some examples of women on the floor, in beds, and/or lying down. Which, like Goffman said, are considered to be expressions of sexual availability:
Sources: FM Korea; Imgur. Ironically, there was some controversy about the one on the left. But only because of its supposed resemblance to BDSM.
This next example with Bae Su-ji for Clalens contact lenses below is particularly interesting. When I showed it to a female friend, who’s very au fait with overthrowing the patriarchy, I pointed out that it looked like I was hovering over her as we lay together in some sunny, secluded glade. (Su-ji that is, not my female friend; let’s not go there.) That didn’t occur to her at all though, and instead she admired what the advertisers had done with her hair, the black lines serving to highlight the clarity of vision brought about by the contact lenses (although in hindsight, I think the intention was to highlight that they’re colorlenses):
I include it then, partially as an example of where my background is possibly clouding my judgement. Also, as a reminder that I’m not the target audience of most of the advertisements I critique.
But still: with this ad, I think my friend wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees.
Because consider the similar one in the middle below too. At that more usual scale, only a blogger with a bone to pick would notice the black lines at all. Add the slightly scared expression on her face, which seems out of place for a contact lens ad, and I’m right back to my original interpretation. Neither exactly scream “Now that I can see properly, I can finally do shit and get on with my life!” either, which is why I much prefer the one on the left. (Even Seol-hyun’s on the right is an improvement.)
Apologies for the reflection of some ugly bald guy in the picture on the right.
But okay, so what? So we see many more women than men in beds and on floors in advertisements, frequently in sexualized poses. Is that problematic?
Well, if we put aside for a moment that not every ad needs to be sexualized, and that when it is, it’s usually the sexualization of women by and for heterosexual men? Then not so long ago, I would have said no. Not necessarily.
Yes, I know I say that word a lot. But hear me out.
In my lectures, I used to point out that basic biology meant that heterosexual men found women in beds more sexually attractive than vice-versa. Whereas you have lots of time, energy, and most importantly no kids, I would wistfully explain to my 20-something audience members, so you make it a point of personal pride to try new and exciting sex positions everyday, the reality is that the missionary position is overwhelmingly the most popular male-female one. (And besides which, if we’re talking about penis-in-vagina, all those new and exciting sex positions are all just variations of the same six basic positions anyway.) Ergo, if sex sells, and, rightly or wrongly, sex is always going to be used to sell, then that sexual difference is always going to be reflected in advertising.
To reinforce that point, and get some laughs, I would show some photos of men parodying women’s typical poses:
But sometimes after the lectures, women would point out that the men above weren’t as (conventionally) attractive as the women they’re mimicking. And they had a point. So too, if they’d asked how come I’d just enthralled them with numerous images of scantily-clad women in beds or lying down, for which they were eternally grateful, yet failed to provide any examples with men to prove my original point? Like some from two Instagramcollections recently featured at Bored Panda say, which have a much wider range of guys than normal too?
Ewww, men on their backs. How unmanly and unattractive. Source: @brosbeingbasic; left, right. One NSFW image follows.
What they really should have done though, is told me to just shut the hell up. Because what the fuck would I know about what poses turn women on?
I like to think I know a little. This blog is about sexuality after all. I do have lots of books about sexuality in my bookshelves to impress guests at my cocktail parties with, and have even read some of them too. Obviously, I have no qualms about talking explicitly about sex. Obviously, I do so with my wife and did with my former partners. Probably, you can guess, that lack of inhibitions extends to conversations with my friends too. (Consider that a heads-up, if any readers want to hang out.)
But had I really talked to my female friends about what turns them on? Exactly what turns them on? Had I really talked to enough heterosexual women, or read enough about female sexual desire written by them? Could I really stand there as a cisgender, heterosexual guy and tell heterosexual women that I know they aren’t as attracted to men in beds as men are to women, which is why we don’t see men in beds so much in ads?
No.
Instead, it took the following image to make me finally realize my utter foolishness. Seen back while I was still naively expecting this post to just be a normal review, this image is a big reason for the way it developed the way it did. Because just between you and me, I can see the attraction…
Source: Paper.
I’m sure it would have been more to the point to post a picture of a eager, expectant-looking guy in bed, with a much prouder erection; alas, it’s that picture that really, really does it for me. I mean did it for me. Enlightened me I mean.
Anyyyway…
If it doesn’t enlighten you personally though, then here’s some eye-opening links I was also reading at the time, which provided the thousands of words of background that picture told me:
Explainer: what does the ‘male gaze’ mean, and what about a female gaze? (The Conversation; make sure to read the comments also)
Gaze Upon Me, and Despair!: Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, S2E2 (The Learned Fangirl)
How music videos challenged the male gaze in 2015 (Dazed)
How is this painting ‘pornographic’ and ‘disgusting’? (The Guardian)
‘Neighbors 2’ is a middle finger to anyone who thinks feminism can’t be funny (Fusion)
Hollywood Men: It’s No Longer About Your Acting, It’s About Your Abs (Jezebel)
NSFW: See Images From “Bare Men,” A New Photo Book on Male Nudity (Paper)
A New Tumblr Calls Attention to “Headless Women” in Film & TV Marketing (Bitch, Feministing)
NSFW: 10 Images That Take The Female Nude Back From The Male Gaze (Bust; my Twitter and Facebook conversations about them)
Empowered Young Women Star In These Portraits Of Chinese Girlhood (The Huffington Post)
How did ‘Playgirl’ magazine go from feminist force to flaccid failure? (Fusion)
An Earl in the Streets and a Wild Man in the Sheets: Tarzan and Women’s Sexuality (Bitch)
That said, of course there’s still many differences in what heterosexual men and women find sexually attractive in the other; it’s just that I’m no longer convinced that lying in bed (etc.) is one of them. And if I’m right, that social commitment to literally keep women in their place seems to be the biggest reason for the discrepancy in the media.
Especially when, if pandering to the male gaze is the modus operandi, there are many more active alternatives, and/or alternative body types, that are just as effective…
Which I’ll present in Part 2, before discussing the MV proper in Part 3. Thanks very much for reading this far, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. (By all means, feel free to jump ahead and talk about the MV too!)
Yeah, I eat sitting cross-legged on my kitchen bench all the time too.
Fearing they hadn’t already made things quite awkward enough for Shin Min-a (신민아) in their latest entirely unconvincing “slice of regular life” photoshoot however, Giordano decided to go one better with this next shot. But which I have to admit, did at least get my attention:
Alas, for all her efforts in keeping that smile on her face despite her right leg cramping however, So Ji-sub (소지섭) just doesn’t seem interested. But then probably I wouldn’t be either given how loose she seems to be with her affections: she’s so enraptured with Tiger JK, for instance, that’s she’s content to sit perched on a ladder to listen to him playing his guitar:
Or that she has mixed feelings about appearing in the photoshoot in the first place. Which, in hindsight, is one of the most bizarre I’ve ever seen, as her purpose in it seems not to be so much to model the clothing herself, as to be a validation of the 3 men’s own clothing choices through her sexual interest in them.
Granted, the second shot should have made that obvious, but then the 3 men are widely considered among the sexiest male celebrities in Korea, about whom some female commentators on Omona! They Didn’t, for instance, had few inhibitions describing what they would like to do with them after seeing these pictures.
Lest anyone feel I’m reading too much into the photoshoot though, then I’ll finish here by inviting readers to imagine replacing Shin Min-a with a man in the first, third, and fifth images above (and Tiger JK and Jung Woo-sung with a woman in the third and fifth respectively), and would argue that it’s so difficult to – and even harder to find actual examples – because advertisements are overwhelmingly designed for a male gaze. And which, what with seeing 500-1000 a day of them, can’t help but have socialized even the most media-savvy of us into thinking that eating spaghetti while sitting cross-legged on a kitchen bench, wedged between a gas range and toaster, is a normal and appropriate thing for women to do.
For much more on the male gaze, and many more Korean examples, see the “Erving Goffman’s ‘Gender Advertisements’ in the Korean Context” section in my sidebar, especially the following posts:
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. My tongue-in-cheek choice of photo by Andre Moura @Pexels. Photo by Andre Moura: https://www.pexels.com/photo/painting-woman-s-face-3991468/Photo by Andre Moura: https://www.pexels.com/photo/persons-eye-with-blue-and-orange-color-face-paint-3991469/
But when it’s worth the time investment, it’s worth it. So, without any further ado, allow me to present a recent podcast interview of Andrea Karnes, Chief Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, about her ongoing exhibition there (and accompanying book) titled Women Painting Women. As interviewer Dan Hill of EQ Spotlight explains:
(7:50-8:30) “A Precious Blessing with a Poodle Up-doo,” 2019, by Somaya Critchlow (right).
(8:30-9:30) “A Little Taste Outside of Love,” 2007, by Mickalene Thomas (left).
(9:30-11:20) “Self-Portrait Naked with My Mother II,” 2020, by Chantal Joffe (right).
(12:55-17:30) “Strategy (North Face, Front Face, South Face),”1994, by Jenny Saville (left).
(14:35, in passing) “Pregnant Woman,” 1971, by Alice Neel (right).
(17:30-20:20) “The Turkish Bath,” 1973, by Sylvia Sleigh (left).
(21:30-22:20) “Yellow Studio,” 2021, by Lisa Yuskavage (right).
(22:20-23:50) “Yayoi,” 2021, by Christiane Lyons (left).
(23:50-26:10) “Weenie Roast Wrestlers,” 2019, by Jenna Gribbon (right).
(26:10-28:00) “Crucifixion I,” 1969, by Eunice Golden (left).
(In 
The Grand Narrative 
