The Male Gaze
Often in
these pages I have written of the male gaze. Particularly now in this 21st
century I have grown tired of all those videos and photographs of women wearing
almost no clothing holding a wireless mike to their mouth while moving their
lower extremities up and down and sideways. I am turned off
by the videos of female volleyball players and gymnasts.
It would seem that I define that expression, “a man is not asold as he looks old but when
he stops looking.”
In my oficina I have a complete filing cabinet with
about 600 women that posed for me not wearing much or anything at all. I was
called often by women who told me, “Alex
I want some different photographs.” Different was the key word they used
when they wanted to pose sans clothing.
All those women that posed differently eventually gave
me an edge in my editorial portraiture in being able to pose clothed subjects
and to make them look graceful and comfortable.
Because I have this 28inch wide Acer monitor now I
luxuriate in choosing browse instead of open when I go to any of my files. The
little pictures are across that monitor and I notice pictures I may have
overlooked in the past.
Many would not pass that horrible Meta term –
community standards. But then how does one explain the proliferation of all
those pictures in social media of women opening their legs to show either that
they are wearing underwear or not?
The two photographs here might pass muster that
community standard. Why? They are of a woman who had had a double mastectomy.
She told me how once when she went to a community pool and was wearing no top
she was told to put something on. Is that a double standard that a man in a
bathing suit can show nipples but a woman without them cannot show a bare chest?
