CNN Declares That 'the Male Gaze is Back' and Here to Destroy Us All or Something

[Editorial note: If you're looking for a way to introduce a blog about "the male gaze," it helps if your pop culture radar covers a broad enough search area to be aware of this moment from a foreign language film you've never even seen. Any excuse to include Monica Bellucci, the most beautiful woman to exist in my lifetime will do. But this scene perfectly captures the subject matter. That's the Old Balls Difference at work.]

It's been about 2 1/2 months since America went to war with itself over a clothing company choosing to market its products to young women by putting their jeans on an objectively beautiful young woman. Even though that decision was a wildly successful one in every respect:

But just because American Eagle's collaboration with Sydney Sweeney sort of got left in the dust of a few dozen other culture war battles like late night talk shows and foreign comedy festivals, it still resonates with some people, who are still suffering from PTSD over it. Notably, someone who writes for CNN:

CNN (paywall) -  As a child of the '90s and early 2000s, I grew up with my mother's and grandmother's generations' fight for legal and workplace equality helping shed social misogyny.

In the past decade in particular, I saw the evidence of progress in my media diet. [B]ody positivity entered the fashion world. Stories about a woman stealing your man were traded for celebration of the 'girl's girl' who resisted the competition for men's attention. …

Whatever the catalyst, a change in the political environment seemed to connect with a social change that brought back narrow, and at times constrictive, ideas of womanhood depicted in media.

The recent rise of weight loss medications coincided with social media influencers sharing ways to get smaller and no longer celebrating bodies of all sizes. Advertisements followed suit, making men’s desire once again a dominating factor in how stories are told, and how women are portrayed.

How had these discarded ideas made their way back into circulation? Didn’t we all agree we were through with them?

The culprit, I have learned, is the male gaze. It was always there, but now it has stepped back into the spotlight. …

The male gaze came roaring back this summer. American Eagle … ran a controversial ad campaign starting in July. The ads sell jeans to women featuring actor Sydney Sweeney, who many men see as a sex symbol, insinuating the clothing would make men find them more attractive. …

“Most typically, the male gaze is about representing women in media solely to satisfy heterosexual men,” said Dr. Linda Tuncay Zayer, professor of marketing and John F. Smith, Jr. Chair in Business Administration at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

If you are observing women in movies, TV, fashion, social media and marketing and they don’t feel as fully materialized as their male counterparts, that is the male gaze.

Let me see if I can shorthand this for Madeline Holcomb, who wrote the text, Jason Lancaster who provided the photo illustration that includes five males unlikely to gaze at the female model in the image, and the good Dr. Linda Tuncay Zayer, and John F. Smith (if that's your real name). To strip away all the academic sounding rhetoric and put this in the simplest possible terms. So simple that even one of the many men who see Sydney Sweeney as a sex symbol can understand.

All of you, and millions like you, have spent a couple of generations trying to deny human nature. Trying and failing. Miserably. You hoped you could convince us all we don't actually desire that which we find desirable. Then swap it out for that which you wish people liked instead. It was a noble effort. You gave it your best shot. But you were going up against the mating habits of your entire species. Which was like trying to convince a bird not to be attracted to the female with the most colorful plumage, or a baboon not to want to make babies with the female with the reddest ass. Even though we're more than just highly evolved animals and have souls, it's embedded in our hardwiring to be attracted by attractiveness. Bishop Fulton Sheen was a celibate man of the cloth, and even he talked about appreciating female beauty. 

But I get it. Very few people can live up to a standard set by Sweeney or the models Holcomb, Zayer and Smith grew up with in the '90s. Those Kathy Ireland posters on every teenage boy's wall:

Harry Langdon. Getty Images.

… and Cindy Crawford during every NFL timeout:

… and Stacey Keibler's crossover superstardom:

… were an impossible bar to reach. Not to mention that was during the height of the Maxim era and the Golden Age of the SI Swimsuit Issue.

But you can't deny the impulses of every man and a huge percentage of women who like looking at beautiful women. You can't simply wish that away. Any more than you can make people not admire a beautiful landscape, a sunset, or the ocean. Beauty is encoded in our DNA. Anthropologists attribute that need to explain why the oldest man-made structure we're aware of, Göbekli Tepe, includes sculptures of animals. Because we're built to appreciate beauty. 

I understand a woman might resent not looking like Sydney Sweeney. I wish I was built like Rob Gronkowski. But I never went around demanding women stop being attracted to him or claiming it's offensive every time he declared it's Shirtless O'Clock. And insisting that you declare that the new standard of male desirability to be me in my Big Trouble in Little China t-shirt and cargo shorts. 

I'm sure the women who wrote or are quoted in this article resented the impossible beauty standards of Barbie dolls when they were kids. I had Superman and Hulk action figures. The generation that came after me had a guy literally named He-Man. It didn't stop any of us from going to Schwarzengger and Stallone movies and cheering every time they took off their shirts and mowed bad guys down with a machine gun. And we didn't mind when the ladies enjoyed the show, either. 

So anyway, nice try. Now cut it out and let all males get back to gazing as nature intended, without getting nagged by a bunch of angry, judgmental, puritannical scolds. And be glad things have returned to normal, depite their worst efforts.