I’ve realized that I’ve been blogging about writing The Female Gaze without describing what the book is about. So let me talk about the book’s subject a little.
The TV Tropes definition of “gaze” is as follows: “The Gaze, a theory about filmography originating in the ’70s that has since been expanded to fit all visual media, describes the relationship between the media, especially visual media, and how it is observed and meant to be observed.”
And their definition of “female gaze” is: “The Female Gaze is a Gaze trope about the way a work is presented from a female perspective or reflects female attitudes, either because of the creator’s gender or because it is deliberately aimed at a female audience.”
The concept of gaze, then, is about how one views the world. It’s not limited to gazing at someone and being sexually attracted, though that’s the common pop culture use of the word. To me, it encompasses more than that as women’s experiences are sufficiently different from men’s experiences that our gaze is something separate and distinct from the male gaze. Our gaze is informed by our experiences as women, and since we’re often made to feel secondary in this world, we tend to devalue our gaze.
We know the male gaze already: it surrounds us every day. It’s the world we live in. The main query of the book is: what is the female gaze? And why do we need to realize that our gaze as women is important? In other words, what could it mean for culture and entertainment and even politics if we valued our outlook on the world more than we already do?
Aside from the introduction and the conclusion, the book will have three main discussion sections.
1) The differences between the male gaze and the female gaze
2) The female gaze in movies and television
3) Male/male romance stories in the forms of slash, Japanese yaoi and boy’s love, and m/m romance
“Slash” is a term that was taken from the slash mark in “K/S,” in other words, the Kirk/Spock pairing from the original Star Trek television series, which is thought to be the first instance of male/male romance fandom. Yaoi and boy’s love are Japanese male/male romance genres, and m/m romance is a subgenre of American and U.K. mainstream romance publishing.
I’ve been involved in all three. I was in the slash community in my late 20s, meeting with other fans and exchanging fan fiction. Since 2008 I’ve been a translation rewriter and editor for publishers of manga and anime-related books, including yaoi and boy’s love books. I’m also a m/m romance writer. As such, I feel I have a unique window on m/m stories as part of the female gaze.
The book won’t be an academic study or anything. It’s just my thoughts on a subject that hasn’t been discussed much that I feel deserves more attention.
So that’s what the book is about. Now, on to how Week Three went in terms of my writing process...
I had a little breakthrough this week. I’d been reluctant to organize or even read what I’d written so far, thinking that it would slow down my first-draft writing. I could tell it was pretty rough in parts and feared it might actually be unfixable (lol).
My breakthrough came a few days ago when I decided to skim through the draft to see what shape it was in. It turns out that a few sections are definitely messy and will need work, but otherwise it’s in reasonable shape for a first draft. I was relieved and my writing went much smoother after that.
And another movie came out that I’m adding to my movies and TV discussion section: The Woman King. I saw it last weekend. It’s a standout movie and I highly recommend it.
I didn’t think any more movies would be released that I'd want to discuss in the book after Emily the Criminal, but I guess it’s been a decent year for female gaze movies. ;-) I’ll update next week when I finish the first draft.
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