The Gaze II - Scopic Violence

From The Politics of Mean

For a brief period, feminists talked about a 'scopic violence', a way in which men looking at women was harmful. I never liked this concept. Although it conveys how uncomfortable being looked at can make us feel, I didn't like how it equated Gaze with physical force. 

Nowadays I realise I also dislike this term because it equates effect with intention. When someone is physically violent, there is intention to harm as well as effect. When someone is staring at us, they may not mean to be threatening, but we feel it that way. Sometimes staring does get too much, it's rude. Sometimes, though, we are uncomfortable with it because we lack confidence. We can't believe a man is admiring us so we get anxious and fearful, not knowing why he is staring.

Bad Boys Make You Feel So Good

From the LOtR wiki.

"Too long have you watched my sister, too long have you haunted her steps." (Oooh! tee hee hee, delicious shiver.) 

From Fanpop

I'm going to write here about two interesting minor film characters who haunt the steps of the beautiful heroines: Eowyn, daughter of the Kings of Rohan, and Hermione, Harry Potter's intelligent bookish best friend.

The Gaze I - Exhibitionism

(I borrowed this picture from Raani York's blog.)

This is the first of a series of posts I'm going to write about the Gaze. I'm going to start with the pleasures of the Gaze. It can be exciting, it can make us feel special, to lie back and reveal our secret parts to someone who makes no secret of liking what s/he sees.