"Men look at Women. Women watch themselves being looked at. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object-and most particularly an object of vision: a sight (Berger,46)."
When I think of the quote "Men look at Women" and tie that to American pop culture the first thought that springs into my mind is Playboy magazine. Females growing up learned how to see themselves as objects to be looked at through magazines such as Playboy, which sexualized the female form. The female learns to view herself under the male gaze and altering her image according to its dictates. The male gaze is both cultural and social. Adherence to it differs according to the place and time. The following Playboy covers are examples of females adhering to the ‘American’ male gaze. Playboy was the first mainstream American magazine to feature female nudity. The typical All-American girl or bombshell is expected to be white, blonde, young, and big breasted. Both cover girls feature these attributes. Anna’s cover is a throwback to Marilyn Monroe’s look in the “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” song. Marilyn Monroe was the first Playboy cover girl. Pamela’s which is more recent taps into her image as the blonde beach bunny, her hair is windswept and her tan is glistening. Both of these females are tapping into common assumptions made of them. They are acquiescing to the male gaze and in the process turning themselves into sexual objects for their commercial profit.
Anna Nicole Smith (2001)
Pamela Anderson (2007)
This magazine was one of my earliest introductions the nude female body. I use to marvel at how smooth their skin was and how long their hair was. In high school when I revisited the magazine I noticed that the pictorials are always done in soft lighting, and the women are NEVER older than 25 unless they are a guest celebrity. Typically they are depicted with a blank or passive expression, so the viewer can project their own fantasies onto that flat image.
