Can‘t Take My Eyes off of You: Women‘s Self-objectification and the Internalized Male Gaze as Mechanisms for the Maintenance of Patriarchal Power

In this paper I explore women’s self-objectification and the internalized male gaze as mechanisms for the maintenance of patriarchal power. I do so through a series of close readings of four key works: Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish; Sandra Lee Bartky’s “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power”; John Berger’s Ways of Seeing; and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. I begin by looking at the disciplinary regime described by Foucault, which utilizes the instrument of sight to police subjects using an internalized gaze. After that I explore Sandra Lee Bartky’s transferal of Foucault’s Panoptic framework onto what she calls the disciplinary project of femininity, and its effect on the appearance and behavior of women subjected to it. Third, I introduce John Berger’s ideas about the objectification of the female body, and how an implicit male perspective in art has come to be internalized as the unconscious perspective for men and women alike. Finally, I explore Simone de Beauvoir’s ethical account of the effect of male dominance on woman’s subjectivity. I end by formulating a description of female self-objectification that draws on elements of all four of the philosophical models discussed, before opening up to considerations for further research. This paper demonstrates how the male gaze, as a disciplinary tool within a system of patriarchal power, obstructs the subjective development of women and, therefore, their existential flourishing