When discussing the concept of gaze in media studies a certain Margaret Atwood quote comes to mind. The quote is from her book The Robber Bride and is thought provoking and perhaps in some ways self-aware. It reads as follows,
“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
This quote speaks to the pervasive nature of, in this case, the heterosexual male gaze in which a woman must continually exist as an object of male desire. It also speaks to the concept of an internalized male gaze. In which a woman spends so much time surrounded by these narrow depictions of women wherein the woman always exists to some degree as an object of desire, that she begins to internalize it. The following blog post goes into greater detail on the concept as well as including a reference to the above quote. I recommend reading it to better understand the concept as it articulates it a bit better than I am able to.
https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/opinion/womens-greatest-performance-the-internalised-male-gaze
The section of your included quote, “Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else” stood out to me specifically because it truly makes one rethink their perspectives toward gaze and purpose. If one must go out of their way to escape the male gaze, is there truly any way out of it? I think that the only way to rewrite the narrative of the male gaze is to reinvent it completely. While it is unlikely to fully escape it in today’s generation, if perspectives are retaught for new generations and agency is shifted, then there may be a time when the concept of the objective male gaze may not need to be avoided, and instead erased and rewritten.
I also immediately thought of this quote when I read the keyword text. The article you linked mentions how women can attempt to reject this pervasive internalization of the male gaze. While it is important to acknowledge the role and impact of this gaze, it is frustrating and ridiculous that women have to go through and reflect upon their actions several times in order to reprogram the way they think. I think we should place more focus on removing this sexualizing, objectifying, reductive male gaze from as much media as possible in order to allow future generations of women and girls to be free from the phenomenon that Margaret Atwood explains.