E32 The Female Gaze (Part 2): Complication and Expansion

This is the second episode of our two part discussion on the Female Gaze. Since we laid some groundwork and gave some context in part one, this time around, we dive right in. In thinking through “the female gaze,” we ask questions of whom we presume is looking and who is being looked at. We also think about how the gaze becomes more complicated in our modern media context, especially when we move beyond binary, heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality.

We definitely recommend checking out "E31 The Female Gaze (Part 1): The Origins of the Gaze" before listening to this one.

As two people who study, analyze, and have a literal podcast about media, we stand in solidarity with the WAG and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike–along with their counterparts in other industries/countries, who also deserve fair wages and labor protections– none of the works we discuss here or in other episodes would exist.

Lit discussed this episode: Get Up EP by NewJeans, Spicy by Aespa, Her Private Life, See You in My 19th Life, My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Level 999; The Song of the Lioness Quartet, The Immortals Quartet, The Lunar Chronicles, A League of Their Own (TV Series),

Bonus reading (aka works cited & consulted):

Bowers, Susan R. “Medusa and the Female Gaze.” NWSA Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, 1990, pp. 217-235. <⁠https://www.jstor.org/stable/4316018⁠> 

Benson-Allott, Caetlin. “No Such Think Not Yet: Questioning Television’s Female Gaze.” Film Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 2, 2017, pp. 65-71. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2017.71.2.65.

Forster, Stefani. “Yes, there’s such a thing as a ‘female gaze.’ But it’s not what you think.” Medium. !2 Jun 2018. Accessed 13 February 2020. https://medium.com/truly-social/yes-theres-such-a-thing-as-a-female-gaze-but-it-s-not-what-you-think-d27be6fc2fed.

Dyhouse, Carol. Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Hemmann, Kathryn. "Queering the Media Mix: The Female Gaze in Japanese Fan Comics." Transformative Works and Cultures, no 20, 2015. ⁠https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0628⁠.

hooks, bell. "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators." Black Looks: Race and Representation, Routledge, 2014.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Visual and Other Pleasures, Indiana University Press, 1989.

Phillips, Leah. Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.

Wilton, Tamsin. Sexual (Dis)Orientation: Gender, Sex, Desire and Self-Fashioning, Palgrave Macmillian UK, 2004.

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