In year 6, I had trepidations about attending an all-girls
high school, since most of my friends in primary had been boys. At Orientation
Night for my future school, I was told that I would soon enjoy being in a
single sex school, because “you can turn up on a bad hair day without worrying
about it!” And at that problematic age twelve, all I could think was “wow,
these girls are so shallow.”
Five years on and I’m head over heels in love with being surrounded solely by girls. When asked why, the first things that come to mind are the same lines I used to hear: “You don’t have to worry about how you look, you can make a fool of yourself in PE, and there’s no competition over a boy in your class. Also you can get changed in the corridors.” And it sounds just as superficial and shallow coming from my own mouth as anyone’s. But I’ve come to realise that these “ditsy” reasons have a much deeper, more significant meaning. An all-girls school is a safe haven. It’s a unique and relieving break from living in a male dominated society, where – on some level or other – girls have no choice but to worry about their looks, their appeal to men, their position as a “girl” rather than a “person”. An all-girls school is an escape from the male gaze.
Aha, there it is: “The male gaze”. Well, what is it?
“The Male Gaze” was initially coined as a
cinematographic phrase by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey, used to describe
the sexist lens through which film was shot. It is still prevalent today, in
the way the camera will subtly-not-so-subtly include a woman’s breasts in a
“headshot” or focus on her during a sex scene far more than her male
counterpart. She also discussed how the gaze extends to include the spectator
of film; how they too objectify women in their consumption of cinema. However
the phrase now encompasses more than just a cinematographic gaze, and refers to
the hypothetical “lens” which all of society is seen through – by our
eyes. The male gaze is not only the way
the world is seen by (usually straight white) men, but that we are conditioned
to believe that’s how it’s supposed to
be seen. And so it’s not just straight-white-men objectifying women, it’s
almost everyone. Gotta love internalised oppression.
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| Laura Mulvey |
What does the male gaze look like?
Most notably, the male
gaze arrives in the form of perceiving women as sexual objects. Everyday
experiences of women who are catcalled, date raped, or vilified for refusing
sex when a guy buys them a drink are examples of men's entitlement to the female
body; an entitlement bred by the male gaze. When boys are conditioned to “get
in there”, and are celebrated for their sexual exploits, women are reduced to
“three holes and two boobs”; the object of men’s sexual subject. Of course,
this manifests in rape culture and slut shaming, but also in smaller nuances of
our lives. If we understand society only through the male gaze, women are
expected to dress and act accordingly. A woman who doesn’t enjoy makeup may
wear it because she has internalised the expectation to be attractive under the
male gaze. For the same reason, girls feel pressured to wear clothes revealing
more than they are comfortable with, or feel stressed at the prospect of sweating
too much during PE. Society is so drenched in the male gaze that even women
perpetuate it, as they have been conditioned to self-hate, and hence hate on
other women. And on the other end, men are conditioned to expect this entitlement. For every post bemoaning a story of “bitches”
who wear short skirts, accept the offer of a free drink and flirt with a guy
but then reject his offer of sex, society deepens its assumption that women
exist to give men what they “deserve”, with no regard to her autonomy over her
body and her choices. Men are taught to see through the male gaze and treat
women’s bodies as if they are owed the right to stare, comment on or touch it
by the normalisation of this behaviour that then perpetuates in a vicious
cycle. Naturally this harms men, who, under the male gaze, can only be accepted as hyper-masculine, sexually aggressive neanderthals. Men who do not display the correct image - particularly LGBTIQA+ men - are shamed for their lack of macho-ness.
It becomes an even bigger issue when looking at it intersectionally. Since the male gaze dictates sexualised beauty standards and desirability, Women of Colour are alienated from the social norm of "sexiness", and what is supposedly required to satisfy a man. This furthers the exoticism of WoC, as they are pushed into a category of "other" and hence "exotic" in order to be submitted to the gaze.
There are many solid and reasonable arguments both for and
against having single sex schools, and the one most often overlooked – and perhaps
most significant – is that all girl’s schools are an opportunity for young
women to at least sometimes avoid the male gaze. This allows them to develop into
people, rather than into sexualised girls who only understand their existence
as the object of a patriarchal lens on society. Of course, this doesn’t mean
co-educational schools are the spawn of the devil himself, but it is an
environment where harmful social norms can manifest stronger and more easily,
requiring great effort later in life to undo.
Let me know your thoughts on single-sex schools and the male
gaze in the comment below J
Hannah
