Arthur and I got into a conversation about makeup. Specifically, “should” women wear makeup. And that morphed into a conversation about the male gaze.
Understanding the male gaze is probably the most abstract and hard to grasp part of feminism. Equal rights, equal wages; everyone gets that. Double standards about sexuality and sexual freedom, about social freedom, outspokenness and aggression; not hard to define and explore. But how we look at things, how we display or do not display ourselves, how we use our eyes and images to create subject and object; these are pretty highfalutin.
I am not opposed to the idea that the male gaze is hard-wired. We certainly know other species in which one gender draws the gaze of the other; peacocks are prettier than peahens. On the other hand, male and female gorillas and chimps look more or less alike, and I’d wager I’m more a chimp than a peahen. (Remind me to tell the story about the lesbian peahen someday.)
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