Female Gaze Porn
When I first heard about this, it was in a verbal conversation with one of the other editors at sssh.com, and I heard it wrong. I thought she said “Porn For The Female Gays”. Huh? Well, she spelled the word “gaze” for me and that clarified it, but not much. What is this “Female Gaze” phenomena? It sounds a bit like a line out of some obscure Moveable Feast poet in 1920s Paris. So, some research was in order to what this might actually mean…..
As for “Porn For The Female Gaze“, let’s face it: this is one of those “coined” terms that most people, upon stumbling across it, are going to go Google it and then be thrust into the Augean Stables of Wikipedia for a heavily footnoted journey into 1930′s French psychoanalytic theory and second wave feminist philosophy. Sort of kills the sexy buzz right there, eh? (Oh, and if heard verbally, it sounds like “Porn For The Female Gays” which makes it even more confusing.)
Again, not a great deal of coherent information yet published about Porn For The Female Gaze, but it is also a phenomena in mainstream (not porn) movie making! Recently, film critic and commentary Maryann Joanson of flickfilosopher.com post up an excellent article on the topic, saying,
Even the good and great movies are still overwhelmingly from a hetero-male perspective — why are we limiting our art this way? It’s when you see a movie that embodies the female gaze that you realize how startling it is to get that new perspective. Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways is all about girls claiming and using their sexuality for their own purposes and their own needs. Jane Campion’s Bright Star looks with desire on Ben Whishaw’s John Keats from the fully engaged perspective of Abbie Cornish’s Fanny Brawne, not only with her eye but with her mind as well. Andrea Arnold’s astonishing movies Fish Tank and Red Road aren’t only female-gazy: they’re actually about women looking at men.
Again, a definition of a porn genre, one with a lot of depth rooted in 1930’s French psychoanalytic theory. Hey! Take it where you can get it when trying to define Porn For Women!
