So I was feeling super deep and decided to broach a subject a bit more serious than usual... But still - don't expect anything academic or intellectual (my academic writing is for no eyes other than my professors! :P) - this is just my personal experience relating to a topic of great interest and importance to me, the objectification of woman. So here goes...
I first heard this dubious term "the Male Gaze" 5
years ago in my first year at uni in a Sociology class. Now I don’t want to get
too far into the academics of it all, but what it basically is, in layman's terms, is that omnipotent
presence of judgement women experience everyday – that feeling of constantly
being under surveillance, of being on display, of being judged (by members of
the opposite sex around you) and the way in which this objectification results
in the woman’s loss of a degree of her autonomy. The resultant effects of the
male gaze on the female psyche, cause most to feel a (most often sub-conscious)
constant need to adjust our appearance and behaviour to meet the standards of
the gaze, an ever present sense of anxiety and insecurity at living up to its’
expectations – not to mention the effects of being reduced to nothing more than
an object for appraisal and consumption by all men around us on our sense of
self-worth, our capabilities and our possibilities. The male gaze exists all
around us, in many forms of voyeurism enjoyed by men in private and in public
and is demonstrated most obviously in advertising, and as argued by feminist
thinker (pictured below), Laura Mulvey, in film.
Now all these years after that
fateful Sociology class, having been a political philosophy scholar with a keen
interest in gender studies issues (and now proudly calling myself a feminist,
however complex and often misunderstood that term is), I have, in my university
career, covered a fair amount of theory relating to this subject. And while
small instances in my life could most certainly be related to it, I found that
it wasn’t until I had left uni and taken up a temporary job waitressing to try
and save up money for my working gap year, that I really felt the full force of
this oppressive force weighing down on me in my own personal life in terms of the
people around me.
As a waitress it is quite
literally your job, naturally, to wait on people, to serve them and attend to
all their needs while they are in your care in the restaurant. Little did I
know that this being the nature of the job, would put me in the most compromising
of positions when I encountered what would become the many ‘romantic advances’
from the male patrons. At first, of course, it’s sorta flattering when
strangers off the street give you compliments, or (as was most common) asked
how much you’d like for lobola (the traditional form of dowry paid by the
husband to the wife’s family ‘in exchange’ for marrying her, in many of the local
cultures within South Africa, where I live). But that wore off incredibly
quickly, let me tell you. Now I don’t wanna be one of those annoying girls who
sit around complaining about how guys are just absolutely fawning over them and
its “oh so terrible,” while loving every minute of it – to whom most people
roll their eyes and respond with something like “Sure, sure – awful to be loved,
hey!” And I actually did get this highly annoying response from some people to
whom I tried to express my dismay. But seriously, it really is not fun. And it
did a lot more, psychologically, than give me even more reason to hate wearing
skinny jeans. (Being much more of a floral summer dress kinda gal to begin
with, I wasn’t a big fan of pants in general, but this job made absolutely
loathe the required uniform item of jeans, which hugged and highlighted what
became my most appreciated body part by said male customers.)
Imagine a man, in about his late
40’s say (I’m 22 by the way), walking into the restaurant, spotting you
bustling back and forth serving your tables, and asking HIS waitress to call
you over. He initiates a conversation about how he just HAS to get your
number/take you out sometime/MARRY YOU etc. etc. You need to be serving your
customers, are exhausted, and quite frankly pretty grossed out by this guy and
his advances. But, the mere fact that you are in this position of service, forces
you to have to smile coyly, and desperately try to turn down his advances while
still appearing cheerful and flattered by them – often having to make up
excuses like imaginary boyfriends or restaurant policies, just to try and get
said guy off your back. And all the while you are just thinking: “Firstly, you
don’t stand a chance in hell and what I really mean to say when I say ‘aw, that’s
so sweet’ is that is so damn objectifying, please could you just stuff right
off, thank you very much.” Which of course, you can’t show.
And now imagine this is actually one of your customers! Once you have turned down the repeated advances,
painfully trying to maintain a convincing smile through it all, you have to
constantly return to the table another 10 or 20 times while they persist with
them. And imagine that this happens ALL DAY LONG. And when especially explicit
comments have been made about your appearance (most often to the other waitresses
in Zulu, which they in turn relay to me, and most often involving my bigger-than-most-white-girls’
butt) I have to then literally feel their piercing gaze every time I am forced
to walk back and forth past their table, simply trying to get on with my
frikken exhausting job. All the time never forgetting to flash that award
winning smile but still trying to strike that balance between being a nice,
polite waitress, and desperately not wanting to encourage any more attention. Such
attention even coming from people as “high profile” as one of the president’s
sons, a notorious business man often mentioned in the news, whose first words
to me were that “I had the body of an African woman” and that it was for this
reason that he just “HAD to take me
out.” And who, when I did my usual trick of stating the obstacle of the
imaginary boyfriend, responded with “Well, he doesn’t have to know.” So sleazy,
right?
The feeling of literally being
reduced to nothing but my ample behind by so many men walking into the
restaurant really started getting to me after a while (and not a very long one).
I mean, not one of them actually tried to ask any real questions about me, or
try and ascertain if I was a nice person, if I was smart, if I had any ambition
or even any personality to speak of. Maybe if any of them really seemed
interested in any of that I wouldn’t have felt so bad. But that’s just it. Who
I actually was didn’t matter. And you would think that for a girl who has been
plagued all her life by crippling self-esteem and body issues, who most, I am
sure in describing me would put me in the smart-nice-sweet-pretty-face girl
category (rather than the oh-my-goodness-she’s-so-drop-dead-gorgeous one) –
would appreciate some good unadulterated appreciation of nothing but her looks.
But, you’d be wrong. It really did make me feel like shit (excuse my French).
The fact that man after man who walked into the place simply felt they had the
right to give me such an unrequested appraisal on my appearance right off the
bat, the right to look me up and down, to very obviously nudge their colleagues
with a creepy smile on their face and discuss my “assets” with them over their
meal, the right to so explicitly make their interests known – was mind boggling
to me. And that fact that all these pot-bellied, balding old dudes would
actually think that I would, what, simply fall into their arms, that they actually
stood a chance, was even a little insulting.
All my discomfort at these
constant advances, at this quite literal male gaze I was exposed to for hours
on end while at work, culminated in a really rather nasty experience with one
customer in particular. This time it was with a younger guy, probably in his
late 20’s by the looks of it, who strolled with what could only be described as
some attempt at white-boy swagger on a Sunday morning, and while I was serving
him innocently slips me a completely inappropriate and lewd note (the contents
of which I won’t repeat here), after not even having said more to me than
pointing out which breakfast he’d like. Having been handed this note and
instructed to read it in private, I walked back to the kitchen, I expected it
to simply be his number or something (having had numbers handed to me countless
times before) – but oh boy, was I wrong. I was so shocked and taken aback by it
that I immediately tore it in half and threw it in the bin, not knowing what to
do next. Should I go and tell the manager? Should I throw the coffee I was
about to take back to his table in his face?
While I certainly would have
liked to do the latter, accompanied with some choice words on what an awful pig
he was, I was literally paralysed inside. I took him his coffee and then asked
one of the male waiters to finish the table for me, ‘cause I didn’t know how to
react when I went back. I didn’t tell my manager until much later when he’d
already gone. And I didn’t show anyone the actual note. The shock just took
over me. And while a little scribble on a piece of paper from some low life
should really be something I could easily shrug off, I had the strangest
reaction to it. I was in a haze all day, feeling gross, and strangely violated
by it – even though nothing really happened. And I even felt quite ashamed.
Like somehow this was a reflection on me. I didn’t want to tell people because
I felt they’d somehow make assumptions about me based on it – “maybe she had
been flirting with him, somehow indicating such an advance would be appropriate.”
Now obviously this is utterly ridiculous, I know, but is very obviously, in
hindsight, a reaction stemming very clearly from the victim-blaming culture of
gender-based violence today (even though this was such a minor little case of harassment).
It really affected me. And the powerlessness I felt (as someone who has been
known to speak her mind quite openly, even when it was unpopular or unwanted) to
deal with this situation was crippling.
I quit that job a few weeks ago (not
because of this constant objectification, although it certainly contributed to
making this work environment really unsuitable for me). And the relief of not
having to deal with this on a daily basis, at least not at that concentrated
level, is immense, I must say. But the experience did really open my eyes to just
how much our mere presence, our physical being, is quite literally owned in
spaces filled with men like these. We are walking objects to be examined,
judged, consumed, acquired. And to downplay the significance of the effect of
this objectification on one’s sense of self really cannot be underestimated –
most importantly by men. I think most guys really struggle to understand how
these daily encounters make us feel like (whether they are themselves sexist or
misogynistic, or not). Even my own big brother, when I tried to explain it to
him, nonchalantly said “Well don’t think about it like that, just don’t let it
affect you.” But what people don’t understand is that the emotional effect that
this male gaze has on us simply is NOT our choice. We cannot control how we
feel about it just like we can’t control when we’re going to encounter it and
from whom it is going to come. It is all around us, it is pervasive, it is
present in all forms of media and in all our encounters with people in all
situations. And because of its omnipresent external existence it is imbued upon
our being and becomes unconsciously and uncontrollably self-imposed from the
inside out. It is not our choice. And that is the whole point. We, as women,
are once again thrust into a space of choice-less-ness. And this space is our
whole world.
Whew... Enough intense-ness for now! :P
Here's wishing peace and love and better times ahead to all you lovelies out there <3
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