Male and Female Gaze

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The male gaze is the way in which the visual arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure. The phrase male gaze was coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in 1975.
 This is what we see in mainstream media as a huge majority of the media is run by men. This is common in music videos, especially with pop songs.



The Female Gaze is a Feminist film theoretical term representing the gaze of the female viewer. It is a response to Laura Mulvey's term, "the male gaze," which represents not only the gaze of the male viewer but also the gaze of the male character and the male creator of the film.
This is a like a role reversal of the male gaze. This can be seen in videos such as "Call Me Maybe" and other music videos



Female Gaze
The roles of each gaze are to appeal to the audience, primarily the male audience since it is mostly men with high up roles in the media. Some female artists try to balance it out with the female gaze and try to create opposite kinds of music videos. For example, we see the female gaze used in "Call Me Maybe" where the main focus of the video is an attractive man shown in revealing ways with the use of (or lack thereof) mise en scene and camera shots. But it's also what the actor does. In this video, the male subject is shown mowing the lawn and fixing a car while being attractive at the same time. These are very manual, labour intensive jobs and link them with the male gender.
The gaze clearly affects the representation of men in the music video. 
Other examples of this include D'Angelo's "Untitled (How Does It Feel" where D'Angelo performs his song as the camera focuses very closely on parts of his (sweaty) body. P!ATD's "Girls/Girls/Boys" pays homage to D'Angelo's video.

Sum 41's "In Too Deep" sort of mocks the male gaze in a way. Having professional divers with ripped bodies performing well in a diving competition with the band mocking them and then contrasting that with fans cheering for the band, while not being anywhere near as strong as the divers. The videos concludes with the judges favouring the band, this could be interpreted as a metaphor for the way the band sees men in society







Male Gaze
Examples of the male gaze are more common in music videos and media in general. Even with female artist's music videos as many conform to western society's gender roles and often exacerbate expectations of women.
The White Stripes' "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" is literally just a model in a bikini dancing on a stripper pole. However, with some lens flares, high contrast lighting and shaky camera shots The White Stripes have created a quite artistic video. Especially considering the model showcases her talent for dancing. This is an untraditional view through the male gaze.

More examples can be seen in "November Rain" where the main woman is incredibly skinny and the mise en scene is a very short wedding dress. Also Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" and "Shake It Off" where the cameras linger on certain parts of women's bodies. The iconic video "Stacy's Mom" also relies heavily on the male gaze.

Andrew Goodwin
Goodwin has made points on music videos, stating different theories applying to representations in music videos.
Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics, videos of certain genres have traits of the genre. For example, Metal videos will feature horror