Monkey Grip + Moving Away from the Male Gaze

  

Isla Purse

    A couple of days ago, I finished reading Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip. Garner has been long hailed         as one of Australia’s leading second-wave feminist writers. The movement centred around the                 liberation of women’s bodies and selves, redefining their ‘purpose’ from simply serving men to             holding  their own sense of womanhood and autonomy. Monkey Grip's honest depiction of this             progression really captured me, particularly in her acknowledgement that, despite wanting to be             free, patriarchal expectations are still hugely impactful on the ways we perceive ourselves.

The Male Gaze

The theory of the male gaze, first explored by Laura Mulvey in her 1973 essay, highlights the ways the view of a typical straight man objectifies women. The soft, sweet, ‘seen and not heard’ mentality of traditional femininity is held as the ‘ideal woman’ – a concept created by, you guessed it, men! In a nutshell, womanhood is portrayed through media as existing only to please the male viewer, conditioning both male and female consumers to value a woman only for her body and service to a man.

The male gaze is projected onto women constantly in every-day life. This day-to-day objectification is authentically discussed in Monkey Grip – Rita openly tells Nora about the time her boyfriend-of-sorts told her she couldn’t buy pairs of more comfortable AirFlex underwear, instead telling her to put on the “cute sexy ones.” He didn’t care about her own comfort in living in her own body; only about his use for her as an object of desire.  Women are never seen as inherently worthy when existing in their natural state. It is only once they participate in men’s commodification of their identity and desires that they are seen as having value.

Women are not only sexualised in many relationships, but also made to feel downright useless. We’ve all had a guy mansplain to us before, and Paddy’s frustrated discussion of her date not allowing her to drive her own car with him in it, thinking her incompetent, really hits home. This perceived incompetence and inferiority of women is especially pervasive in male-dominated work environments, particularly obvious in group meetings. I for one felt Nora’s frustration at this mindset when her boss for a play she was working on brought her along to a meeting as merely an “appendage,” something to “show off to his friends.” This trophy mentality, along with the discussed objectification is endemic in society even today (there's a reason male CEOs outnumber female CEOs 17 to 1), and the portrayal of women as reduced to passive figures unfortunately still strikes home.

The Shift

Second wave feminist writers throughout the 60s-80s have underscored western society’s redefinition of what it means to ‘be a woman,’ supporting shifts from viewing womanhood only in its relationship to men. This ideology centred around women’s bodily rights and the – god forbid – humanisation of women, actually beginning with protests against the 1968 Miss America pageant, calling the categorisation of women’s beauty – clearly – misogynistic.

 

Within these second-wave texts, I have noticed a much more ‘unfiltered’ approach to our bodies, normalising things like periods. The familiarity of the scene of Nora talking to an unknown party-goer about her fear of having “bled all up the back of her dress” reminds me of days of standing up from lunch in high-school and being met with a chorus of “can you check me?,” girls all turning around and smoothing skirts, triple checking they hadn’t bled through. At another point, Nora is lying in the bed of one of her many lovers, free-bleeding onto the white sheets. Although I question the sanitary logistics of this act of rebellion, I admire the ease with which Garner (and other feminist authors of the time) write about menstruation. Periods had been demonised and made taboo for centuries - their ability to subvert the time period’s (haha) overt repulsion toward natural bodily functions through open discussion, and better yet, representation in literature, has greatly contributed to our gradual cultural shift to more openness about the subject. 

Furthermore, second-wave feminist literature shows women viewing their bodies and appearance not through the eyes of a man – instead reclaiming it and defining their own beauty. After a long beach walk, Nora sees a reflection of herself. Instead of fitting into the traditional sense of beauty trained to the male gaze – daintiness, cleanliness, quietness – Nora finds joy in her “dirty skin,” and hair “wild” and “stiff with salt.” She “likes herself,” revelling in the fact that she looks “strong and healthy.”

These reclamations of the body – in appearance and function – document and support the social shift in how women view ourselves. We move away from pandering to the patriarchy, garnering self-value from fitting traditional ideals of attractiveness, instead finding our own senses of self in our womanhood.

However…

Nora manages to largely break out of the Male Gaze.
But not fully.
She may be confident in her appearance and unbothered by society’s view of her period as “gross” – but she still largely defines her self-worth in accordance with the attention she receives from the men in her life. Her entire relationship with Javo is an addiction upon which her stability depends, her highs found during sex – when he, a man, sees her as an object of desire – and her lows occurring when he pulls away and she desperately tries to win him back. Indeed, she admits at the very beginning of the book that she “can’t help” falling in love all the time, that she can’t be alone. She doesn’t seem to know who she is outside of how she is perceived by men.

I feel that the scene after Nora shaves her head really sums up the struggles of breaking out of this cycle of the male gaze. Hair is a symbol of traditional femininity - and so her decision to shave it all off after her ‘breakup’ with Javo becomes a sort of middle-finger to her reliance on his attention. She is attempting to liberate herself from this need for male validation by removing a feature that makes her “desirable,” breaking her way into a more authentic expression of womanhood. Nora’s female friends call her “delicious,” “amazing” – they support her and her boldness, a sense of sisterhood and pride in herself is found with other women. However, the second she sees Javo, she flips. She puts herself into his mind, and immediately feels stupid, regretting it. Although she has all this sense of self within her, all this female pride, exposure to how she assumes the men around her will view her instil insecurity. This detachment from oneself to view your body through the eyes of men is something I have experienced in my own life, and seen those around me experience as we have grown older. 

Although we have begun to recognise the effects of the male gaze on our own self-perception as women, it still massively impacts us. Nora’s struggle with identity is relatable to many of us, unsure how to disconnect our own sense of value from the desires of men. Second wave feminism began the shift to self-actualisation, with books like Monkey Grip documenting it – however its continued difficulty today makes the book a pertinent read for the current woman.