Post-Feminism, Hypersexuality, and the Male Gaze in Media

Introduction

In the wake of the Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo movement — which recognized women who speak out about sexual assault as Time's Person of the Year in 2017 — a reassessment of the values displayed in contemporary media regarding sex and sexuality is warranted. In the 20th century, the Women's Movement launched the feminist ideal, which argued that women had the right to be independent, to be treated as equals to men, to work alongside men, and not to be viewed as slavish homemakers or as sexualized fantasies for what Laura Mulvey called "the male gaze" (6). In the 21st century, the feminist generation appears to have been replaced by a post-feminist generation that, rather than resisting the male gaze, actively seeks to attract it and use it to its own advantage.

For instance, the arrival of Britney Spears in the 1990s ushered in an era of sirens in the video and music industry that continues today, growing more and more erotic — and often aggressively so — with every passing year. Britney was followed by Christina, Beyoncé, J-Lo, Miley, and a host of other female performance artists, as well as actresses, who have used sexuality to sell their image. How does this aggressive use of sex and sexuality square with the feminist ideals and doctrines supposedly still promoted and upheld in the modern era? This paper examines what cultural anthropologists have had to say about this idiosyncrasy in the history of feminism and what it means in today's culture.

Literature Review

The sources reviewed below address the contradictions embedded in post-feminist media culture from multiple disciplinary angles — from cultural studies and film theory to journalism and popular music scholarship. Together, they form a framework for understanding why hypersexuality and feminist empowerment coexist so uneasily in contemporary media.

The Male Gaze and Postfeminist Media Culture

The article by Rosalind Gill entitled "Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility" examines the meaning of post-feminism and how the term itself means different and often contradictory things to different people. Gill looks at how media interpretations of strong womanhood range from women who are politically active and in public or corporate leadership positions — such as Hillary Clinton or Angelina Jolie — to women who are sexually empowered and use sex and sexuality to dominate and control the male-female relationship, such as Britney Spears or Beyoncé. The article discusses the inherent contradiction in fitting both of these descriptions under the same label, especially as the latter depiction of feminism seems to undermine the former's seriousness.

The latter, after all, appears not to be a repudiation of the male gaze and the "phallocentric" social order that gave rise to it — as identified by Mulvey in the 1970s — but rather an indulgence of it. The implicit argument is that the hypersexualized women in the media who use sex to control the narrative are the ones actually in power.

The article by Laura Mulvey from 1975 entitled "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" attempted to answer some of these questions decades before they reached their current cultural prominence by identifying the culprit for hypersexualization: the phallocentric social order that deliberately invited male audiences to indulge their male gaze by viewing women in various states of undress in the cinema. Women were reduced to eye candy and objectified in order to satisfy — or at least inspire — male lust. However, if that was the aim in 1975, what is the aim today? Rather than condemning the objectification of women, many women now promote it, viewing provocative dances and videos by artists like Miley Cyrus and CL as empowering, liberating, and inspiring. Mulvey condemned the objectification of women in the cinema as a tool of female oppression. In the 21st century, the reverse appears to be the case: women objectify themselves in order to control the narrative of the male-female relationship in media.

Conclusion

Gill's article helped to underscore the hypocrisy of media representations of men, women, sex, feminism, and post-feminism in the modern era. On the one hand, men like Louis C.K. and Harvey Weinstein are condemned for exposing themselves to women in private, while in public women are encouraged to expose themselves to men and women alike in advertising, films, television shows, music videos, and so on. In these cases, men who might prefer not to see so much exposure of the female anatomy — on their way to work, for instance, when a billboard or magazine cover featuring a hypersexualized female model is used to sell a product — have no voice or say in the matter.

It is assumed that every man is "phallocentric" and uses the male gaze to pursue his own pleasure, when the reality is that many men would just as soon prefer women not to expose so much of themselves as women would prefer men to keep their private parts hidden. A double standard does appear to exist: women are celebrated for using sex and sexuality in public to build their confidence (Holson), while men are condemned for becoming lustful in response to that same sex and sexuality in private.

Miley Cyrus was portrayed as taking a step forward for women in the post-feminist media landscape when she twerked on Robin Thicke — himself in the midst of a cheating scandal at the time — on stage at a major performance event. He was dressed in a suit; she wore little more than her underwear (Holson). Thicke's fortunes tumbled as the story of his infidelity unfolded in the media, while Miley's fortunes soared, her name becoming celebrated as she became a momentary symbol of strong, independent womanhood.

While Gill's article — and Holson's — did help to illuminate this hypocrisy in how the media interprets men's and women's roles in projecting sex and sexuality in the modern era, the question of why this projection occurs in the first place remains unanswered. Why does the media support this apparent double standard? Is it genuinely good for young women to have role models like Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez performing hypersexualized acts on stage and on camera, acts imitated by young girls who then post their own erotically charged dances to the internet via social media?

What of the men who enjoy these publicly shared videos and who then seek private satisfaction of their desires? Is this not to be expected — or is that precisely the point? In the post-feminist model of womanhood projected by the media, is control the only thing that matters? Whereas feminism in the 20th century postulated that men and women should be treated equally, 21st-century post-feminism seems to suggest that equality between the sexes is good for women who seek the conventional route, but that for women who want to control and dominate, sexuality is a useful instrument as well.

In other words, nothing is off limits for women: they have been oppressed by patriarchy; the patriarchal system is unjust; women must assume power in any way they can — even if it means exploiting the male gaze in public while condemning men who seek more than to gaze in private. Undoubtedly, rape, harassment, and assault are to be condemned. What is being examined here, however, is the broader cultural context in which sexual aggression in one form is condemned while sexual aggression and exploitation in another form is celebrated.