Laura Mulvey's ideas on representation explained reference with a music video

"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly! (Laura Mulvey,1992)

In that quote, Mulvey expresses how in today's society, appearance has been separated between the male and female. With man implying their imagination of the female figure to look a specific way. The power between the two sexes, are sexually imbalanced with the male having more power than the woman. Over the years, it has become more important to viewers , and even artists, to prioritise how a female looks in a music video and they are (at the end of the day) dressing for men to look at them.

In most videos, I would expect to see women looking flawless, toned, slim and effortlessly stylish. The representation of women is that they 'seem' to look beautiful every minute of their day from head to toe.

Particular genres, that do specify this form of representation are hip-hop and R&B, the majority of women that are in the videos, have long straight or wavy hair, a curved body with little excess flesh (unless their body shapes are thick), little skin concealed and always dressed up.

However, nowadays, their are some females that challenge this quote like Lady Gaga,Madonna and (maybe) lil kim. As female artists that inspire most of the female and male population in the world, these artists, especially Lady Gaga and Madonna, they reverse the passive role and become the active. They show how they are in charge of their sexuality and how they look, and choose how they are to be looked upon.

I think that Mulvey's opinion is still relevant in today's society as most videos still do everything that she stated in her quote and most video directors even take it a step further and just dismember the female and just focus on her body parts.

For example :

Dizzee Rascal- Holiday

If you watch this video, you will see how it is visual proof of everything that is stated above. Within the video, the main focuses are tanned body, toned females, a focus of how they walk to show off their hips, the females are slim, they have long straight/wavy hair. All of the females skin complexion look perfect (kind of odd, nobody has a slight sun burn)and their are not a lot of dark women within the video. All of the males are full clothed whilst the women gallivant around in a two-piece and a pair of heels with sunglasses. The camera focuses on the chest area, their bottom, hips and face. About 70% of the video is based on that and only focuses on the main artist for a little while.