The Male Gaze

By Barbara Kruger

"The girl in the household is taking a lot longer to get ready, as usual." The class erupts into laughter. It's funny because it's just so typical of the old structures of ideology to assume that women take longer to get ready. It's so old fashioned, so, NOT post-modern. It's funny because we all assume we live in a much more progressive society, where men and women take just as long to get ready. It's funny because in this day and age women are not placed in that category. It's funny because we have triumphed over the dusty systems of the past, we are better than that.

But yet, there is an uncomfortable undertone growing in the pit of your stomach between the giggles. A certain fear to admit that you still assume women take longer to get ready. I mean, who could blame you for that assumption? You've lived with a mother at one point in time. She would always take years to primp herself to go out. Your girlfriend has to start getting for your date 2 hours in advanced because it takes her that long to shave her legs perfectly. And you realize, you are only laughing at the absurdity because you have to.

Meanwhile, one of the only women in the class is laughing too. But in her stomach a ball of concern is growing too. Little do you know that its actually panic. Her heart is racing because she believes she laughed just a little too hard at that joke. She looks around with a grin plastered to her face, luckily no one seems to be making eye-contact with her at the moment. She doesn't feel too extreme. But she still has the scars from being called that one horrible word, FEMINIST. That word is painted to her like an unforgiving adulturous A. She remembers the realization that came with that word, the realization that it was just joke to them. The moment she gained the label it's like no one listened to her anymore. It became a category within itself, "Of course a woman would be a feminist. How typical." So, she stresses daily over trying to seem moderate enough for them. Don't laugh to hard when they bring up the systems of the old, you might seem too victorious. It's easy to brush off the words of an extremist. And don't remain completely silent either, then you'll just seem like a fuddy-duddy conservative, recalling the 1950s era as the golden age. So she laughs (not too loud) in hopes of pleasing all of those around her.