Gender and Otherness

What we perceive as normal and ordinary is a question of everyday life that has been a popular subject for over the last 70 years or so. The terms 'Otherness' and 'Gaze' are the way we look at things and people, which determine our opinions and how we see them. Otherness is how we see the differences between one group and another showing how one is superior to the other one. The Gaze is   how an individual person or group's appearance is presented and how they look is set into our opinions. Their are many stereotypes surrounding these issues such as the Male Gaze that shows a group of assumptions that seep into our mind because of the media. The Male Gaze includes the cowboy, war hero, romantic and in most cases that fill our cinema, television and books is just a general hero. In all these platforms around 80% of the time the protagonist is a male and presents a gaze to how the character is shown. For females this does not happen as much, but appears in more softer versions such as romance films ect. The female gaze was challenged in the second world war through propaganda posters such as the Rosie the Riveter poster that shows a woman working hard to keep the country going whilst the men where at war. This was then challenged again by the male gaze after the end of the war that convinced women that their essential role in life was to be a mother and a housewife. It was not only cinema and the media that expressed this but fashion and arts such as photography. Clothes shown in the 1950's and 60's present how they were designed to cover up the female body and highlight their practicality rather than usefulness. However on the other hand women were and still are represented as sexual objects to the male gaze, it is represented through porn, cinema ect. The female Gaze presents men this way also, which were not as common in the 60s as it is today. Overall 'Otherness' and 'Gaze' is exploited through media and the commercial world. Photography has been a way of doing this as presenting the interests of the world depending on the opinions of what is normal. The dominance of women over the past 70 years is shown through photography and how the Male Gaze over powered females. It has shaped our opinions over the years  to how we see things and decide how we perceive them.