Visual pleasure from motherhood: Alyssa Milano challenging the male gaze

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1281-1291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raeann Ritland

Using male and female gaze theories as frameworks, this article analyzes the visual design and composition of four distinct breastfeeding (BF) photographs posted by Alyssa Milano to her Instagram in order to better understand the public’s mixed responses of support and criticism. I argue that Milano borrows visual elements from the male gaze and combines them with feminine content in an attempt to (1) challenge the dominant, patriarchal norm of deriving pleasure from viewing sexualized women and (2) instead encourage an understanding of the maternal woman as visually pleasing. In turn, Milano’s message supports the normalization of public BF. Milano’s position as firmly entrenched in the male-dominated world of television and film is key: it enables her to speak and promote change from within the system, for external oppositions often remain on the outside, as counterpoint. Using Instagram promotes this as well. Rather than dilute their power, intermingling BF images with those representing the dominant culture may prove more successful for its gradual progression to normalization. The end goal, of course, is to encourage not just acceptance but a sense of pleasure in seeing feminine representations of women, including those focused on aspects of motherhood, like BF.

K ta Kita ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-172
Author(s):  
Dita Berlian

Japanese animations (anime) are worldwide known. They are targeted to various kinds of audience. A drama-sport anime entitled Free! is rarely found as the targeted audience is female audience. Because Free! targets female audience, the definition of the ideal men is defined from the point of view of the female audience. Therefore, the gaze which is used to identify the male protagonists is female gaze. By using the theory of male gaze and traditional male sex role themes, I found that there is a combination of masculinity and femininity in the male protagonists in Free!. The combined characteristics are shown in the physical appearance, personality traits, and roles. The appearance of this type of an ideal man leads to a new concept in Japan which is called bishōnen. Keywords: Anime, ideal man, masculinity, femininity, female gaze, bishōnen.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-123
Author(s):  
Desideria Ristiani ◽  
Banung Grahita ◽  
Achmad Syarief

 This study on the interactional experience of people who have visual impairments or disabilities in using Go-jek and GrabAndroid applications employs usability testing using mixed approach. It is an explanatory sequential design research;quantitative data were measured in time, number of errors, Single Ease Question (SEQ) questionnaire score and SystemUsability Scale (SUS) score. They were used to evaluate the usability level of the application, and finger mapping dataand participant comments were used to find more specific problems in the design or look for user patterns. Usabilityevaluation was carried out on 6 sub-applications from Go-jek and Grab companies. Good grouping of visual elementsand the completion of a small task makes usability perceptions increase. Yet, the design problems that make usabilityperception decrease are touch targets that are too small in size, bad visual element grouping, too many items in one page, and unfamiliar operational gestures. This research has also found that high usability score is not always determinedby visual elements. Navigation behavior has an important role in making good usability perception in users with visualimpairment. A problematic visual design could be considered a problem in one navigation method, but not in another.


Virittäjä ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 125 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leena Immonen

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan verbaalisen ja visuaalisen kielen yhteistyötä audiovisuaalisessa multisemioottisessa tekstissä. Tarkastelun kohteena on 40 haastattelu-uutista, jotka on lähetetty Yleisradion puoli yhdeksän uutisissa. Haastattelu-uutisesta analysoidaan tarkemmin uutistoimittajan puhumaa selostusta ja sen oheista kuvaa – jaksoa, joka edeltää haastateltavan puhetta kuvatilassa. Aihetta lähestytään teoreettisesti ja metodologisesti systeemis-funktionaalisen (SF) kieliteorian ja siihen läheisesti liittyvän visuaalisen suunnittelun kieliopin keinoin. Artikkelissa keskitytään SF­teorian metafunktioista tekstuaalisuuteen ja vastaavasti visuaalisen suunnittelun kieliopin sommitteluun. Analyysi osoittaa, että televisiouutisten verbaalinen ja visuaalinen kieli toimivat saumattomassa yhteistyössä siten, että molemmilla on omat tehtävänsä. Verbaalinen kieli välittää pääosin informaation, mutta kohtauksen kuvalla on merkityksenannossa keskeinen asema. Informaationkulussa verbaalisen informaatioyksikön teema–reema-rakenteen vaihtelu lankeaa yksiin visuaalisen informaatioyksikön tutun ja uuden kanssa, kun kuvassa havainnollistetaan viestiä käyttämällä sommittelun rajausta. Jos selostuksen teema–reema-rakenteen aikana kuvassa esiintyy kohde, jolla on visuaalista huomioarvoa, kuvan elementit korostavat sitä toistamalla mainitun teeman aihetta, mutta reeman sanomaa ei erikseen visualisoida. Multisemioottisessa, audio­visuaalisessa tekstissä voidaan verbaalisen kielen leksikaalisen koheesion ohella puhua visuaalisesta koheesiosta. Kuvan sommittelussa käytetään toistoa fokusoimalla samoja kuvaelementtejä ja rajataan eri osia kokonaisuuksista. Yhdeksi haastattelu­uutisen erityispiirteeksi osoittautuu demonstratiivipronomini tämä, erityisesti paikallis­sijaiset muodot tässä ja tästä. Demonstratiivin korrelaatti voi audiovisuaalisen tekstin sisällä sijaita paitsi verbaalisessa selostuksessa myös suoraan kuvan elementissä tai toiminnossa, jota korostetaan rajauksella. Artikkeli osoittaa, että television haastattelu-uutinen on konventionaalinen ja professionaalinen teksti, joka on rakenteeltaan vakiintunut. Sen välttämättömiä rakenne­osia ovat uutistenlukijan ingressistä ja toimittajan puheen sanan ja liikkuvan kuvan yhteistyössä muodostuvat jaksot, jotka päättyvät studion ulkopuolisessa tilassa toteutettuun haastatteluun. Jaksot rakentuvat pienistä yksityiskohdista, joilla jokaisella on merkityksensä ja funktionsa uutiskokonaisuudessa.   Forming the structure of a multisemiotic text: analysis of televised news interviews This article deals with the fusion of verbal and visual language in audiovisual and multisemiotic texts. The analysis focuses on forty news interviews broadcast during the eight-thirty evening news on Yleisradio (the Finnish Broadcasting Company). The reporter’s speech and its enclosed frame, i.e. the sequence which precedes the interviewer’s speech, are here analysed in close detail. The subject is approached theoretically and methodically using the principles of of systemic-functional grammar (SF) and of the closely related theory of visual design grammar. This article focuses on the textuality of SF theory’s metafunctions and on the design of visual design grammar respectively. The analysis shows that both the verbal and visual language of a news broadcast function in collaboration, both having their own unique roles. The verbal language is mainly responsible for transmitting information, whereas the associated visual scenes also play a major part in providing meaning. Within the flow of information, the interplay of the theme and rheme is also manifested on screen, whereby new information presented verbally is subsequently represented visually as new elements that can be highlighted and topicalised through the judicious use of framing and cropping. If a visually noteworthy element appears during the theme-and-rheme structure of the narrative, the elements of the enclosed frame indicate the subject of a given theme by repeating it. The rheme message is not separately visualised. When discussing the audiovisual text, we can talk not only about the lexical cohesion of verbal language but also about visual cohesion. In composing enclosed frames, for instance, repetition can be used in focusing the same visual elements or cropping out certain parts of a wider picture. A specific characteristic of the verbal language in news interviews seems to be the use the demonstrative pronoun tämä (‘this’) and especially the use of its local cases tässä (‘here’) and tästä (‘from here/about this’). In an audiovisual text, the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun can be located not only in the narrative but also directly within the elements of the enclosed frame or in functions highlighted in the enclosed frame by framing. The article shows that television news interviews form a conventional and professional text with an established structure. Their essential parts are the periods that consist of the newsreader’s introduction, the sequences consisting of the reporter’s words, and the moving images that end up in an interview outside the studio.


Glimpse ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-171
Author(s):  
Duygu Onay-Çöker ◽  

In this paper, I focus on the representation of motherhood from a two-fold perspective by choosing the bestselling Turkish baby diapers advertisements as a case study of broadcasting in Turkish media. The first perspective analyzes the representation of motherhood by applying the concept of “Male Gaze” by Laura Mulvey, according to whom a woman is objectified by the male gaze and becomes a bearer of meaning rather than a maker of meaning. Further, the themes emerging from a careful reading of representations of women in advertisements of baby diapers are discussed. The second perspective consists of looking at discursive strategies of the term “motherhood” by problematizing the fact that baby diapers are always identified with women, thereby also reducing them to commodities in the market. The second perspective applies Julia Kristeva’s “The Semiotic Chora” to reveal the myths about motherhood created by the ruling ideology of the males, and to seek possible alternatives through that perspective.


2020 ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
Alicja Piechucka

Emma Cline’s 2016 novel The Girls, famously inspired by the Manson family and the murders committed by the group in 1969, is in fact a feminist bildungsroman. Its middle-aged protagonist-cum-narrator reflects not only on her own life and identity, but, most importantly perhaps, on what it means to grow up as a woman in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The present article centers on the ocular trope which Cline uses in her novel in order to showcase issues such as self-perception, self-worth and the shaping of young women’s identity. Focusing on the metaphorical dimensions of the act of looking, I propose to read Cline’s novel in light of Laura Mulvey’s seminal feminist theory of the male gaze and the opposite notion of the female gaze formulated by later feminist scholars. My analysis foregrounds those aspects of The Girls which make it a protest novel, denouncing the female condition in patriarchal societies and suggesting ways of opposing the objectification and indoctrination which lead to women being manipulated and victimized.


1981 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Rucker ◽  
D. Taber ◽  
A. Harrison

Male and female subjects rated a standardized, professionally drawn female in each of 12 outfits as to impressions they would make in job interview situations. The 12 jobs represented combinations of high- and low-status and male-dominated and female-dominated occupations. Formfitting outfits were rated more favorably than loose outfits, and the layered look more favorably than the nonlayered look. High necklines were seen as more appropriate than moderate or low necklines, except when seeking a low-status, male-dominated job. Regardless of outfit, the woman was seen as likely to make a more favorable impression when applying for a female-dominated rather than male-dominated job, and her relative disadvantage in the latter situation was seen as particularly pronounced by male subjects.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-193
Author(s):  
Ida Purnama Sari ◽  
Wening Udasmoro

The research discussed visual pleasure in Kawabata Yasunari’s novella “House of the Sleeping Beauties”. Women, whensubject to the male gaze, had often been the objects of sexual and visual pleasure. The novella described the nyotaimoripractice, in which sushi was served on the nude body of a woman for the object of male visual and sexual pleasure. Theresearch sought to dissect and explore visual pleasure in literary work and its central positioning. Using Laura Mulvey’stheory of male gaze and visual pleasure, and feminist literary studies, it employed content analysis as a method to uncover the phrases and paragraphs depicting visual pleasure in the novella. Firstly, the research finds that in practicing visual enjoyment, men use women as the objects of pleasure and fantasy. Secondly, men position women, their female bodies, and sexuality as markers of castration.


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