Emo Boy X Male Reader

[Marquez Feliciano]

Thepurpose of this study was to determine if weekly one on one conferring with male students was effective in increasing motivation in adolescent male readers. The study began by collecting data on individual reading habits by having students complete a comprehensive questionnaire on their habits and attitudes towards reading. Male students then meet with their instructor on a weekly basis to orally outline their past reading habits, discuss current reading habits, and make goals for future reading habits. The study concluded by having students take the questionnaire a second time to determine if conferring had any impact on their habits and perception of independent reading.

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In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts[2] and in literature[3] from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.[4] In the visual and aesthetic presentations of narrative cinema, the male gaze has three perspectives: that of the man behind the camera, that of the male characters within the film's cinematic representations; and that of the spectator gazing at the image.[5][6]

The beauty standards perpetuated by the male gaze have historically sexualized and fetishized the Black female nude due to an attraction to their physical characteristics, but at the same time punished Black women and excluded their bodies from what is considered desirable.[10]

As an ideological basis of patriarchy, sociopolitical inequality is realized as a value system by which male-created institutions (e.g. the movie business, advertising, fashion) unilaterally determine what is "natural and normal" in society.[19] In time, the people of a community believe that the artificial values of patriarchy, as a social system, are the "natural and normal" order of things in society because men look at women and women are looked at by men. The Western hierarchy of "inferior women" and "superior men" derives from misrepresenting men and women as sexual opponents, rather than as sexual equals.[19]

Two types of spectatorship occur while viewing a film, wherein the spectator consciously and unconsciously engages in the societally defined-and-assigned roles of men and women. Concerning phallocentrism, the spectator views a film from the perspectives of three different looks: the first look is that of the camera, which photographs and records the events of the filmed story; the second look describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as they view the film proper; and the third look, which is that of the characters who interact with each other throughout the story.[11]

The condition of woman-as-passive-object of the male gaze is the link to scopophilia, the aesthetic pleasure derived from looking at someone as an object of beauty.[11] Moreover, as an expression of human sexuality, scopophilia refers to the pleasure (sensual and sexual) derived from looking at sexual fetishes and photographs, pornography and naked bodies, etc.; sexual spectatorship is in two categories: voyeurism, wherein the viewer's pleasure is in looking at another person from a distance, and he or she projects fantasies, usually sexual, onto the gazed-upon person; and narcissism, wherein the viewer's pleasure is in self-recognition when viewing the image of another person.[11] The bases of voyeurism and narcissism are in the concepts of the object libido and of the ego libido.[20]

In the production of a work of art, the conventions of artistic representation connect the male-gaze objectification of women to Lacan's theory of social alienation: the psychological splitting that occurs from seeing oneself as one is and seeing one's self as an idealized representation. In Italian Renaissance painting, especially in the nude-woman genre, psychological splitting arises in the objectified woman from the condition of being both the spectator and the spectacle; social alienation arises from seeing herself through the gaze of the spectator.[26]

In Lisa E. Farrington's "Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude",[10] Farrington states that the European female nude has mostly been depicted as passive and complacent to a masculine gaze, or in special occasions has been depicted as sexually liberated and as a femme fatale that uses her sexuality to overpower men. In contrast, Black women have been portrayed as "deserving" sexual violence since at least the time of the Atlantic slave trade, during which many African women[b] were removed from their homes, brought across the ocean, and forced into slavery. The power dynamic between enslaved women and their captors forced women to risk death or submit to a chance of surviving till the end of the long voyage.[clarification needed] This was used to create a narrative of Black women's hypersexuality: the idea and stereotype that Black women are inherently sexual creatures with uncontrollable desires reflective of animal behavior.[10]

Farrington said that instead of perpetuating the gaze, women artists have the ability to reclaim dominance over their bodies by painting the female nude themselves. This counteracts the male artists who have traditionally painted women in the nude to assert their own sexual dominance over a woman subject. A woman painting a female nude completely flips the gaze because a female audience replaces the male audience.[10]

Western art has lacked representation in all areas and it historically fails to portray Black female bodies in the same context that European women have been depicted. While this is a race issue, it is also a gender issue and highlights the specific intersection of oppression that Black women navigate, which is called misogynoir. When Black women are shown in art, they are sexualized and put in submissive positions, like their white counterparts, but unlike their white counterparts Black women also experience racialized bigotry, which others them from their own identity groups. It also means Black women are considered undesirable because they are not seen the same as other women who were depicted as the epitome of beauty in the art world.[10] Though there is a small portion of media and art that depicts Black women in romanticized versions of femininity, this imagery still leads back to gender stereotypes that apply to all depictions of women.

In Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems (1989),[27] researcher Edward Snow states that the concept of the male gaze has evolved into a theory of patriarchy, and that being subjected to the male gaze has negative psychological consequences upon the mental health of women, especially from the emotional and mental stresses of continually being expected to perform by and for men to the unrealistic standards of phallocentric masculinity. In comparison to the feelings of a man who anticipates being subjected to the female gaze, the woman's anticipation of being subjected to the male gaze increases her internal self-objectification, which induces feelings of body-shame and anxiety about her appearance.

In "Contextualizing Feminism: Gender, Ethnic and Class Divisions" (1983 Feminist Review),[28] Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davissay detail the way that the male gaze, in terms of the Black female body, is based on class and gender divisions. To them, this concept is critical to unveiling the structure of oppression that the male gaze is built upon. Class divisions develop over time as ideologies are formed and reworked to reflect the current class system of an area. The influences of gender and racial divisions create the structure that separates different identities into separate groups. For that reason, Black women will always have to deal with the gendered divisions that white women deal with, plus the racial oppression that Black men face.[28] Ethnic divisions are an important cross section that impact gender and class divisions.

Given the prevalence of the male gaze in a patriarchal society, the social conventions of conservative traditionalism implicitly teach girls and women how they are expected to behave when scrutinized by the male gaze. These social graces for girls include postural expectations,[c] to speak politely and not coarsely, and to groom and dress themselves in consideration of the opinions of other people. Failure to meet such standards of phallocentric masculinity is considered the personal fault of the individual girl or woman for not meeting the female ideal sought by the male gaze.[27]

In A Test of Objectification Theory: The Effect of the Male Gaze on Appearance Concerns in College Women (2004), the researcher Rachel M. Calogero said that the male gaze can negatively affect the self-esteem of a woman and induce feelings of self-objectification that consequently lead to increased occurrences of feelings of body shame and poor mental health.[29] For most women, a physical interaction with a man does not cause internalized feelings of self-objectification and subsequent negative mental state, but the anticipation of being dehumanized into a sexual object, by the male gaze, does cause internalized feelings of self-hatred.[29]

In the essay, "Is the Gaze Male?" (1983), E. Kaplan said that the male gaze constructs a false, hypersexualized feminine Other in order to dismiss the sensual feminine within every person innately connected to a maternal figure.[32] That "the domination of women by the male gaze is part of men's strategy to contain the threat that the mother embodies, and to control the positive and negative impulses that memory traces of being mothered have left in the male unconsciousness."

That the mutual gaze, which seeks neither subordination nor domination of the gazer and the gazed-upon person, originates in the mother-child relationship,[32] because Western culture is deeply committed to the ideas of "the masculine" and "the feminine" to demarcate differences between the sexes based upon the complex social apparatus of the gaze; and second, that said sexual demarcations are based upon patterns of dominance and submission. Such a demarcation of difference between the representations of the sexes privileges the male gaze (voyeurism and fetishism) because men's desires include the power of action, whereas the desires of women usually do not include the power of acting upon their desires.[32]

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