One of the major complaints women have is that of being seen as objects to be watched knowingly or voyeuristically but always on display. It is a well known and accepted societal norm that women are looked at by men and other women but for varying reasons. Men admire the beauty of women where as women look at the beauty of another in comparison to themselves. The act of women looking at other women in this way does not position the looking and the women doing it as lesbian because of the purpose and intent of the act. Interestingly enough the comparison arises out of the need to look good for the external gaze and hence the performance of maintaining aesthetic appearance reproduces itself not only through men but through women themselves. Females have appropriated the male gaze and in a way regulate themselves with the same tool they vehemently object when used by men.
However, this is not the only instance when women take up the act of looking from men as a study reveals through the consumption of Anime Manga. In this case the gaze is subverted and women are the voyeurs of men or boys in the animated sexual films. The film genre is one where there often is no real story line and the entire thing is just an excuse for the viewing of animated sex. The twist is that the sexual acts are not heterosexual which is why the films are appropriately nick named boy love essentially male same sex intimacy. The films work on the fringes of three societal deviances or ethical principles, the first being that often the characters involved in the sexual acts are children or at least one is under age, secondly it can be viewed as porn and the lastly is that of the same sex sexual intercourse. The predominant consumers of the material are surprisingly Western females so the question is why? Why are non pedophile non lesbian women interested in watching same sex children having sex? It has been theorized as being a subversion of the male voyeuristic gaze and narrows down to the relations of power.
There exist several contradictions in this theory because of the nature of the relationships between the animated protagonists. The first one is that although the romantic or sexual relations are same sex and there is a clear masculine identity in the one character and a clear feminization of the other character. Additionally the masculine character is the dominant character and the one who ‘does’ the sex to the other who has the sex ‘done’ to him. This reflects the heteronormative relations of pursuer seme and pursued uke “It is not merely the unlikely superimposition of a heterosexual model onto a same-sex relationship” (Zanghellini, 285:2009). This statement is contradictory because the uke is given characteristics that are associated with femininity “Display traits traditionally associated with femininity” (Zanghellini, 256:2009). It is said that the film genre arouse as a result of frustration that women felt with conventional romance stories where women were portrayed as weaklings existing purely to be pursued by men. Women wanted to see a female character that was strong and independent. Ironically the only way such a woman could exist was as a male because seemingly women are incapable of existing independently of male strength and perusal “Young female fans feel more able to imagine and depict idealized strong free characters if they are male” (Zanghellini, 279:2009). What does this say about who the female fans are identifying with? To be strong and free they feel you need to be male but at the same time the act of voyeurism is an act of rebellion to male gazing and authority. The same strong free male character they identify with is feminized and is a being that embodies both male and female but is neither. This feeds into Freud’s theory of penis envy, the women envy the freedom and strength that is afforded to men but detest them for imprisoning them in roles of dependency and subordination. At the same time in order to identify with the uke certain characteristics of femininity need to be ascribed to the uke in order for the female fans to identify themselves in the uke. The uke is performing gender bending androgyny in order for the matrix to be successful but that also points to the wider notion that all gender is performed. The other contradiction is that fans of BL claim that what draws them in is the fact that the voyeurism is about them but then the findings show that women watch because the stories semiotic core is about the ideal male lover, which centers the entire practice on the very thing it sought to escape.
The Exhibition: L’Orient des femmes vu par Christian Lacroix is a good example of voyeuristic subjugation of women that BL fans seek to escape. The Orient women exhibition was centered on the dress of the women of those societies. The dress represented them and symbolized femininity. In my opinion the dresses were repetitive which is clear even in the introductory presentation of the exhibit with a dress shaped like a colorful “T”. In fact all the dresses had the same shape the difference being the patterns on the T’s. This to me felt as though the women did not have very much more to them but the dresses. I also thought they had lots of time on their hands because of the intricacy of the designs on the dresses which meant that they did not have much to do in the society as a whole which afforded them this time. It also signified to me the importance of external appearance of women even then. Representations of the women themselves were absent except in the televised films of the society of the time. The film only depicted them in the dresses and head garments dancing and singing reducing them to mere entertainers there to be watched. These kinds of relations are the very ones that BL fans strive to detach themselves from but end up reproducing them in the ways in which they need a relationship to be present between a powerful and powerless individual.
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