Research - Gender Representation

Laura Mulvey’s ideas of the representation of gender are as follows. In a society of stereotypes and sexism, males and females are divided in their representation. The male is portrayed as dominant, whilst females are sexualised. ‘The male gaze’ projects fantasies onto the female body, and females in turn dress to fit those fantasies.

Keeping this idea in mind, you would expect sexual representations of females in videos through revealing clothes and suggestive body language. I can imagine this being specific to genres such as pop, r&b, and hip-hop, although in this day and age I wouldn’t be surprised if it cropped up in other genres too. However, there are still artists out there challenging this, a significant example being Adele, who has recently achieved worldwide fame for her voice and music alone. Other less mainstream female artists, such as Laura Marling and Bat For Lashes, also continue to make music without sacrificing their female integrity, so it is fair to say that genre plays an integral part in the way an artist is portrayed.

Clockwise from top left: Florence Welch (Florence + The Machine), Ellie Goulding, Natasha Khan (Bat For Lashes), Laura Marling

I feel Mulvey’s opinion is definitely still relevant to today’s society, maybe now more than ever. Female artists seem to continuously push the envelope in terms of sexual and provocative videos to the point where it’s become mainstream and almost normal to see women represented as mere objects of desire.

Mulvey further explores the idea of the female being ‘dismembered’ in the media, i.e. the fact that there is a focus on specific body parts (such as breasts, legs, etc), instead of the woman as a whole. This in turn affects the public and can influence women into obsessing over wanting certain parts of their body to be a certain way. On the other hand, Mulvey argues that men are portrayed ‘whole’. This is very much evident in many popular music videos today. With pop music arguably becoming more ‘manufactured’, every aspect from the styling of the artist to the narrative of a music video is carefully planned. As these representations become ‘the norm’ for music videos, the public becomes familiar with particular depictions of gender in certain genres of music and artists.



In the video for ‘Sweat’ by Snoop Dogg vs David Guetta, females are portrayed in a derogatory way, with the camera emphasizing different parts of their bodies, and nearly never showing them as ‘a whole’, except in a few establishing shots. Furthermore, the males in the video admire their bodies and are very much seen as ‘in control’, whilst the females have no problem with getting into sexual poses. Therefore, we can tell that this video fulfils the fantasies of the ‘male gaze’.



In contrast, the roles are reversed in the video for ‘Super Bass’ by Nicki Minaj, where focus is placed on men’s muscular bodies. However, the video still plays into stereotypes in terms of the artist’s suggestive body language and clothing. If we compare countless videos like these to say, Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’, where, for the most part, it is just the artist sitting in a chair and singing, we can see two very different types of music videos.