Male Gaze

Oh? What's in her pocket? ^* Solid Snake is memorizing Meryl's gait to identify her in disguise, though he certainly has no complaints about the view.

Meryl: I'll go on ahead, look at my ass.
Snake: Okay. Cool.

— Metal Gear Awesome

The Male Gaze is a form of Gaze that arises from the assumption that the audience is mostly comprised of straight males, which in turn means female fanservice will appear in some form to appeal to or appease said male audience.

The usual result of Male Gaze is the way a (usually male) director and/or cameraman's interest in women shapes his shots, leading to a focus on breasts, legs, buttocks, and other jiggly bits even when the film isn't necessarily supposed to be a feast for eyes of their admirers (though most of the time this can indeed be intentional). For example, a sex scene between a man and a woman may show more of her body than it does of his, or focus more on her reactions than his (see Right Through His Pants). Alternatively, it could appear in shows that aren't overtly sexual - for example, scenes of bikini-clad female characters talking that emphasize their bodies rather than showing just their heads. This trope can be used as a legitimate cinematic effect, especially when combined with Point of View. (At that point it may become Eating the Eye Candy, though not necessarily.)

The term also applies in other media, such as video games and comic books. During the Dark Age, comic books were (and often still are) perfect examples of the male gaze, with scenes being framed to show off a female character's curves over everything else. It can occur in non-visual media too - when a female character is introduced, the narration will often spend a disproportionate amount of words on describing her appearance.

Male Gaze does sometimes focus on male attributes, focusing on big pumping biceps and perfect abs, but, crucially, in a way that is sexless and aspirational. The presumed male audience is intended to relate to the character being objectified in this way and wish they had that body themselves, rather than desire the character.

The Distaff Counterpart of the Male Gaze is the Female Gaze - where the same rules as above apply except the focus is on more traditionally masculine qualities in a character.

If the woman in question is aware of the Fourth Wall, she'll likely snap "Ahem, eyes are up here!" at the camera/artist/character.

The concept was popularized in Laura Mulvey's 1973 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."

See also Fanservice, Jiggle Physics, Eating the Eye Candy, Boobs-and-Butt Pose, Head-and-Hip Pose. Contrast Longing Look, and compare with Female Gaze.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Films — Live-Action
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Web Original
  • The Nostalgia Critic

Other examples:

Advertising

• A Coke commercial featured a trio of guys at a party with a trio of girls. The viewer does not see any of the girls' faces, and the camera focuses solely on their tight clothing.
• The Brazilian Butt Lift Commercials are full of Male Gaze. Admittedly, this is a service that would be difficult to sell without use of Male Gaze.
• Evony's banner ads feature little more than a pair of gigantic boobs accompanied by the words "Play now, my lord!" or "Save your lover the Queen!" or "One click for a Roman Orgy!". Evony is a Civilization-esque strategy game.
• The ad for Rappelz starts with a close up of a female upper chest with the caption 'like what you see?'. Even when it zooms out a little, the focus is still there. The fact that she's wearing a Breast Plate doesn't help its cause.
• The banner ads for Claymore on this very wiki. The vertical one is, well, ok, showing a full body shot of one of the female characters decked out for battle. What does the horizontal view do? It starts out showing only her chest. It then moves further up her body as the ad continues, but the shot of her breasts does its job at catching your eye. Feel free to make the comparison yourself.
• Similarly for the Dragonaut: The Resonance ad. It doesn't seem to focus on anything, but the text makes it clear what you're supposed to be looking at 'Real dragons have curves'. Ironically they chose the least noticeable female dragon to portray.
  • The ads for "Part 2" are similar; the vertical one is okay, but the horizontal one starts out with a shameless buttocks shot. Funi certainly knows how to attract the show's target audience.
• This commercial for Corona light beer.
• This commercial for Reebok EasyTone shoes, designed to "make your legs and butt look good". The ad is a pleasantly-constructed young woman in short shorts expounding on the virtues of the shoes in question, and the cameraman taking notice of the effect the shoes have on her legs and butt. Naturally, her response is an unamused "eyes up here" gesture.
  • Their ads are ostensibly aimed at women. Maybe gay/bi women are a huge target audience for Reebok?
• An advertisement for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia played with this trope, showing the male gaze until the camera pans up revealing the woman in question to be the hideous (under the makeup, the actress is rather attractive) Margaret McPoyle.
• Played with in a Jean-Paul Gautier perfume campaign. The ad for the male perfume is typical male-gaze: a sailor leaves a woman after a night of passion; she's shown half naked, writhing in the sheets. The ad for the female perfume is exactly the same, except it's the woman leaving and the sailor writhing half naked in the sheets.
• In Killing Us Softly: Advertising's View of Women, her major lecture series, Jean Kilbourne argues that the male gaze is so pervasive in modern culture, particularly advertising, that it has changed the way that women look at each other - that even heterosexual women look at other women in the way that a heterosexual man would.
• Done with a surprising amount of subtlety for an Axe hair gel commercial: A walking messy mop of hair is trying to get the attention of a pair of breasts that works with him. It's not until he uses the product in question that both he and woman see each other as complete people. This is followed by the caption: "Hair, it's what women see first" So what does that say about men?
• An advert for a South African fast food chain stated that they could tell where you'd be looking at and prove it by showing a video. Cue the first part of the advert showing a X going onto woman's breasts and the like and the second part showing it going more onto the burger video on the other side than onto the girls (although it tried to cut back to them).
• Averted in one commercial^note Maybe Snickers or Klondike where a guy keeps his eyes focused on the woman before him and doesn't even pass a glance at Ms. Fanservice walking by. Result, he should get what the commercial was advertising.
• The very first shot of the inspirational women's fitness ad "This Girl Can" is of a woman's backside in a two-piece bathing suit as she walks towards a swimming pool, slides her fingers into her bikini bottoms, and snaps them across her behind. In a subversion, the ad is explicitly aimed at women, and opening shot isn't intended as fanservice—it's intended to encourage women to exercise without being ashamed of their bodies.
• Many men (most infamously Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper) fell back on this to complain about Dove's Real Beauty Campaign ads that dared to—gasp!—portray women of various ethnicities and body sizes rather than the typical stick-thin Caucasian blonde model. The idea that the ads were targeted at women rather than at men looking for something to ogle apparently never occurred to them.
• The NSFW Juiced teaser has this as soon as the men decide to test out the extent of their controller's power by drastically shortening the skirt of a nearby woman, exposing most of her legs in the process as she meekly places her hands over her groin and looks around. Once the woman gets a breast expansion the camera lingering on her chest as her breasts bounce around, much to her confusion and the delight of the men. It only escalates from there as the men quickly remove what's left of her skirt, leaving her in just a g-string as the traffic begins to pick up around her. This trope reaches its climax once the men become even more excited and start giggling at the woman's plight. As the commercial gets closer to the end with the woman spinning in place and leaving her entire body exposed for everybody to see before her arms are raised behind her head in order to expose her entire figure. As her spinning starts to end, the camera cuts to showing just the woman's scantly clad pelvis as she's turned around a few more times, making sure that the audience is looking at the exact things that the men are focused on at this point, while the Juiced logo gets branded onto her butt. And then they remotely smack her rear with their controllers. And if what this article has to say on the matter is taken at face value, the men eventually strip the woman of her last article of clothing after the ad ends.

Fan Works

• Advice and Trust: Shinji has a hard time not gawking openly at Asuka's body. After getting together, it is even harder for him. He stares at her the whole time, but he still tries to be discreet about it since they are trying to keep a Secret Relationship. For example, in chapter 3, Asuka is (pretending) lecturing him about the water being too hot, but Shinji is barely keeping track of the conversation since he is too busy staring at her bare legs.
  A small part of his brain was concentrating on not dropping the hot pot on his feet, because most of it was trying not to drool helplessly over the way Asuka's long, smooth legs disappeared up under the hem of the towel, mixed in with memories of last night that said sight triggered.
• In Cinema Snob Reviews Frozen, there is a closeup of Elsa's chest when Snob asks what Frozen had in common when exploitation films (the stuff he usually reviews).
• Crimson and Emerald: Shouto soothes himself from his family drama by staring at Izuku's butt.
• A Crown of Stars: Shinji is constantly looking at Asuka (incidentally, she demands that he does so). For example, in chapter 48, Shinji is so distracted staring at Asuka's butt that he bumps against her.
  Asuka: Ow! Watch it, Third!
  Shinji: I'm sorr—
  Asuka: I bet I could fling you off this spot hard enough to hit the roof of that truck, Third Child. What gives?
  Shinji: Um... I wasn't watching where I was going?
  Asuka: ....you were staring at my ass again, weren't you?
  Shinji: .........yes?
  Asuka: [smirking wickedly] Good.
• Navarone regularly does this in Diaries of a Madman and openly admits it in his narration, particularly later on in the story as he becomes more depraved.
• Doing It Right This Time:
  • Shinji is constantly staring at Asuka and Rei.
  • Chapter 2 gave an example that amusingly combined this with Female Gaze: the three pilots go to buy new clothes, Rei tries a new dress... and Shinji and Asuka cannot take their eyes off her, noticing how the dress clings to her body and shows her curves.
• In Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus, Harry Potter has often caught himself staring at Raynare's shapely arse, and not only when she's wearing her Stripperific battle outfit.
• Evangelion 303's female characters provide plenty of eye candy, especially Asuka.
• In chapter 2 of Last Child of Krypton, Kaji and Shinji walk behind Misato and Asuka. Kaji advises Shinji to let them walk in front in order to enjoy the "sight".
• Loki: Agent of Doomgard has an in-universe example: Mini!Thunderstrike met Story!Loki as a woman first, so he planned to spend the time on the assignment with ogling her ass... who at that point decided to change gender to male, to Thunderstrike's great disappointment. Loki pointing out that he can still do the ogling "somehow" didn't make him feel any better.
• The Myth of Link & Zelda: Breath of the Wild: While Zelda is enjoying her view of the shirtless muscular Link, Link himself is stealing himself some glances at Zelda's curvaceous body. Oh, and he's fully aware of how much Zelda's enjoying her view of him.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, the point of view often focuses on Asuka's body and how Shinji reacts to it.
• A New Life Era: Bertha flirts with Moe with her chest in this story. Amy Jr. is not pleased.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines:
  • In the main story, at the beginning of the Mewtwo Strikes Back arc, Ash and his female companions are enjoying a day off at the beach. At one point Misty comes out of the water after some diving, and Ash stares at her bikini-clad body, with the narration even mentioning how he follows a droplet as it rolls down her cleavage and then her stomach.
  • In the Holiday Special 2017, a snippet stars a boy named Vermell who keeps staring at Hilda's shorts, prompting her to say "My eyes are 44.7º up, boy."
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: The narration notes several times that Asuka's costumes inevitably draw the eye to her bosom cause the "boob window" of the first outfit and the "S" emblem of the second.
  Her tight blue shirt made her not inconsiderable curves very apparent, and the yellow and red shield emblem with the "S" inside it on her chest only served to draw the eye to that area.

Films — Animation

• Intentionally used and justified in Animalympics. Marathon runner Kit Mambo explains her strategy to win the gold medal over her rival René Fromage thusly — she'll take a quick lead, and then "break his concentration". The interview footage spells it out by focusing on Kit's butt as she runs.
• In One Stormy Night, Gabu has a tendency to stare at Mei's arse, which the POV camera delightedly shows off. It's a rather unusual example given that Gabu is a wolf, Mei is a goat, and that he's staring because he wants to eat him. (apparently, anyway...)
• Elastigirl in The Incredibles. There's even one scene where she sighs after seeing the size of her behind in a mirror.◊
• Played for Laughs with a good dose of Squick in The Little Mermaid (1989): of all female characters who could have a chance to show their curves, Ursula the sea witch is the one who spends a good part of her screentime shaking her chest and buttocks in front of the camera.
• Madagascar had Gloria the hippo, whose big butt is shown on screen several times throughout each movie, video game, and animated short.
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs has Scratte's big butt shown.
• In Scooby-Doo: Camp Scare, when Daphne and Velma were disrobing into their swimsuits while getting ready to go swimming, the camera moved slowly to show their whole bodies.
• Parodied in Antz when Weaver meets Azteca. The camera switches to his perspective as Weaver checks out her legs… which are four completely alien-looking limbs that don’t even look remotely attractive to humans. She then directs his attention back to her eyes.
• Ratatouille: After Linguini and Colette get together, there's a slow pan-up of Colette as they work in the kitchen, presumably from Linguini's perspective.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Peach gets a fair amount of gaze moments thanks to all of them being from Mario's point-of-view. One notable moment is done as the heroes get into karts and drive past some nice scenery, with the camera following Mario's eyes as Peach revs in front of him, her biker suit putting her rear on full display.
• Zootopia: Some scenes focus on Judy Hopps's butt, especially when she tries to get on a chair.
• Luck (2022): Some scenes focus on Sam Greenfield's butt, even when she tries to position herself above the toilet.
• Boys Night Out: EVERYWHERE. There are many shots focusing on the strippers' legs, butts, and breasts.

Literature

• Roman Kendar's POV scenes in City of No End have a few Male Gaze moments, particularly when he meets Sibyla Leibowitz and when the Norns bring out singers to entertain him on his diplomatic mission. This doesn't happen in scenes from the POV of other characters, however.
• The Elenium: Empress Elysoun is a female example of the Walking Shirtless Scene, and during a banquet, a handful of characters could not help but notice how big her naked breasts are.
• In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when Esmeralda is being taken to the gallows, Victor Hugo spends an inordinate amount of page space describing her "long black hair... more lustrous than the raven's wing," her "half-naked shoulders" and "bare legs," and her desperate attempts to hold her garment closed with her teeth.
• In a lot of Lin Carter's works, (particularly Zanthodon) he'll often spend a paragraph repeating descriptions of all the naked or scantily-clad female characters' attributes every couple of pages. You could make a drinking game out of all the times he uses the phrases like "flawless breasts", "supple body", "luscious mouth". Doesn't help that they are often threatened with rape by pirates or savages every few chapters as well.
• A short story by French author Anna Gavalda centers around the Male Gaze. The protagonist, a single woman, goes to the bar in search of some fun. A man starts talking to her boobs, but she refuses to acknowledge him. He even switches language from French to English, before he thinks to look two decimeters higher. "Fancy that! I have a face, too!" she thinks, before telling him off.
• Milton's frequent descriptions of the beautiful, graceful Eve in Paradise Lost.
• Most of the female characters in the entirety of The Dresden Files, especially the many fairies and White Court vampires.
  Harry (narrating): One thing Spenser fails to mention is that the Faerie Queen has a great ass.
  • Although it might not immediately be obvious, this tends to be much more blatant when Harry (the first person narrator for the entire series) is single and particularly when he's sexually frustrated, and is considerably toned down when he's in a relationship.
• Elizabeth George is guilty of this in her book Careless in Red, where everyone, including the women make assessments of the women's looks by zooming in on their body type and clothing. This is where we get women doing almost pornographic descriptions of other women "as if to check out the competition", as George puts it although there is no man around. For some reason all the characters also seems to have the same standards of beauty, and write off women who are too fat or too skinny as impossible love interests for the victim, since "she could never be the subject of a young man's lustful gaze".
• John Carter of Mars is an officer and a gentleman. Except for a reference to Dejah Thoris' 'perfectly symmetrical figure' and an occasional 'bare shoulder' you would never guess he is surrounded by pulchritudinous damsels clad in nothing more than leather straps and jewelry.
• In Lee Child's Without Fail, Jack Reacher's partner Frances Neagley has buttocks which regularly get noted approvingly (even by the book's other main female character). This actually proves to be plot-relevant. When they have a word with the man handling Secret Service surveillance tapes - who tampered with them as part of the plot to assassinate the Vice-President-elect because the people responsible kidnapped his wife - he's so nervous he never even notices Neagley's behind, which he would certainly have done otherwise.
• Knaves on Waves directly subverts this. At one point, Sheridan strips naked in front of Trigger, who is solely interested in her countless tattoos. Sheridan even remarks that this make him an anomaly.
• Pool of Radiance: The female tailoress has to remind Tarl to stop looking at Shal while the young mage has to get new clothes made for her.
• Gammla, the Shallow Love Interest of Quest for Fire is framed almost entirely though this lens unfortunately. Interestingly though, because this is specifically a male neanderthal gaze, it often lingers on parts of the body not traditionally considered beautiful by modern man such as her hairy arms and round belly.
• In The Wheel of Time, so many of the main cast are implausibly beautiful, this happens a lot in-universe.
  • Happens to Min a fair amount. Other important female characters frequently call her breeches indecent, while themselves showing off vast ... tracts of land.
  • Elayne and Nynaeve roller-coastered this trope during their adventures. To the point of being unreliable narrators about it.
  • As usual for them, the Aiel completely ignore this trope, except in shaming "Wetlanders". Their sweat tents are co-ed.
  • Special mention to Birgitte, who wears high heels and wears pants in an era of corsets. After Birgitte ranted about how all of the Elayne's allies' houses sent children to help fight, Elayne's advisor points out that they have to work with what they have, others (including her) have survived similar circumstances, and then serves Birgitte:
  "... If you can't keep him reined in as Captain-General, I suggest you try walking for him. The way he was eyeing those breeches of yours, he'll follow anywhere you lead."
• At one point in War of the Dreaming, Wendy and Galen enter the dream-world to consult with Prometheus. On "waking" up, Wendy demands to know why, if they are climbing a mountain, she is dressed in high heels and fishnet stockings. Galen starts to explain that it's his dream they are in, and this is how he always thought of-- uh, that it's symbolic.
• In Shadowboy, the narrator is a Hormone-Addled Teenager, leading to moments of distraction, in particular when he first meets Pam.
• The Honorverse is actually very good about avoiding this.... except when it comes to Eloise Pritchart, one of the later series' anchor characters. This is less "Male Gaze" and more "Everyone's Gaze", though, as she really is apparently just that gorgeous — something which every character who personally meets her for the first time will invariably dwell upon for a paragraph or two before moving on with the plotline. To the author's credit, this does not in any way diminish her well-rounded characterization or her many moments of badass.
• In the western series of William Johnstone and his niece, J.A. Johnstone this is fairly common. One notable example comes from the book Sidewinders:Bleeding Texas, when The Dragon is watching the daughter of the family he works for walking away and thinking about how nice her jeans fit. Unfortunately for him, he isn't too discreet about it and his boss notices.
  Nick Fontaine: Stop leering at my sister's behind and get in here.
• The titular character in the Ciaphas Cain ^note HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!! series likes to check out ladies' butts. In Duty Calls, this actually saves his life, as craning his neck to see the butt of a female just a little bit longer lets him see assassin drones coming down from the ceiling before they attack him.
• We Can Remember It For You Wholesale: In every scene Shirley, the topless Rekall receptionist, appears in, the narrator describes how shapely her melony breasts are and have a tendency to bounce.
• When Zachary Beaver Came To Town: Toby often admires the height and tightness of Scarlet's jeans, not to mention her bikini top.
• Yumi and the Nightmare Painter: Between Design's human form being very curvy and her not being very careful when she leans over, Painter spends a significant amount of time trying very hard to look her in the face.
  Hoid: Granted, he did overdo it—his eyes lingered on her the entire time she worked. But don't judge him too harshly. He was nineteen, and I'm a uniquely talented artist.

Music

• Dead Prez's music video to Hip Hop started with a shot of a woman's buttocks, which was then captioned with the words: "Now that we got your attention". Then raps about social warfare.
• This is pretty much what Roy Orbison's big hit "Oh, Pretty Woman" is all about.
• Male-to-male example: The album art◊ for the VENUS song "Wow Wow VENUS" shows DJ Yoshitaka facing Sota Fujimori and looking down at his crotch.
• Surprisingly averted in Juvenile's video for Rodeo. It goes behind the scenes at a strip club, showing the difficult lives of the strippers. While there are scenes showing them dancing, the camera focuses on their faces, showing how many of them are sad, bored, worried or stressed.
• Three words. BABY GOT BACK.
• Ingrid Michaelson's music video for "Girls Chase Boys" is a frame-by-frame homage to Robert Palmer's music video for "Simply Irresistible" with herself playing Robert Palmer and the genders of the backup dancers randomized.
• Played every which way with ''Because Boobs."
  Girl: Um, excuse me, my eyes are up here!
  Guy: Yeah, but... your boobs are down there.
• The Stranglers' "Peaches" may or may not combine this with Dirty Old Man.
• The Zolas's EP Wino Oracle has a track that is literally called this.
• Deliberately over-invoked in Chilly Gonzolas's video for "You Can Dance." The camera stays locked on the female dancers' butts, bosoms and crotches (all clothed), occasionally intercut with shots of Chilly getting slapped across the face in time with the hand-claps, implying that the whole thing is from his perspective.
• Johnny Tillotson's "Poetry in Motion" talks about how his girlfriend's graceful Supermodel Strut keeps him mesmerized and is the visual equivalent of poetry with Curves in All the Right Places.
  Poetry in motion
  Dancing close to me
  A flower of devotion
  A swaying gracefully

Music Videos

• Miserable invokes male gaze and uses it as a tool to trick the audience. Aside from the Giant Woman wearing nothing but a bikini and high-heeled shoes, the band also specifically plays on places like her butt, her thighs, and her breasts while the camera pans over her body seductively. Combined with her occasional flirtatious smiles and giggles directed towards the band, this makes it seem like she's just there to be eye candy. So it comes as a suprise when the last 17% of the video is dedicated to her gleefully devouring the terrified male band members.

Pinball

• In Eight Ball Deluxe, one of the playfield images is a woman in tight jeans with her back to the viewer, leaning over the pool table...
• The playfield for Bally's Xenon shows a woman with her back to the player, arms upraised.
• Evel Knievel features several female fans with large breasts and wearing tight T-shirts.
• The sides of the Baywatch cabinet prominently feature the backsides of three female lifeguards, complete with skimpy swimsuits.

Professional Wrestling

• Turn on any WWE show later than 1995. Find a woman wrestling and chances are the cameras are focusing on her breasts falling out of her top, jiggling as she moves, or competing for who can get the most buttocks shots. Even more so if she is in any competition that is not wrestling, WWE tending to have "bikini contests" and such seemingly just to facilitate this, though they seem to be on their way out since the return to the PG rating.
• Played straight during Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling's "sports entertainment" era, where what was once among the most fearsome women's divisions on the planet was phased out for valets with little wrestling or garbage wrestling skills whom the cameras would zoom in on while they attempted to fight one another, often to the point of missing the actual wrestling moves and violence the promotion was built on. However, what was left of the women's division was still fearsome enough to convince the cameramen not to apply this trope when they were wrestling.
• During a Full Impact Pro falls count anywhere match between Homicide and CM Punk, the camera man, to commentator Prazak's annoyance, became more interested in two nearby strippers performing. Homicide himself soon became more interested in them than Punk too.
• "Extreme Expose": The segment being the part in the show where three scantily clad women - one just barely over the age of 18 - dance to club music in the ring. It started as the 18-year-old's way to show off how much of an "exhibitionist" she was.
  • Even though Brooke Adams considered her buttocks her best assets (no pun intended), one of the cameras that followed her seemed more obsessed with them than her.
• Subverted and Justified in OVW during a Leid Tapa vs Blossom Twin match, as the camera was being held by Eddy Valiant, whose girlfriend Epiphany was later seen demanding him to stop filming.
• Allysin Kay curtsying before her matches creates a lot of opportunities for this.
• Ivory. Oh yeah. Her fans loved looking at and talking about her butt. Google "Ivory's ass" for proof. On April 5, 2002, Steve D. Perkins posted "TOP 100 DUMBEST RSPW GAGS" to the Usenet newsgroup rec.sport.pro-wrestling. "Tributes to Molly's or Ivory's ass" came in at #61.
• Holidead made her Ring of Honor debut in a loss to Sumie Sakai in a dark match from ROH/NJPW Global Wars 2017 Night III, October 14, 2017. One of the commenters said she was "thicc as hell," and another said, "That zombie's got a nice ass."
  • She acknowledges this in this post, which shows her lying face down on the mat and features the words "Fans Be Like Dat Ass Tho." Raised to funny because of how she quotes the GEICO "Hump Day" ad, asking "Guess what day it is?"

Radio

• In one episode of Jack and Millie, Millie's friend Shirley says Millie doesn't dress for the male gaze. Millie isn't sure the male gays would be interested if she did.

Sports

• NFL cheerleaders and NBA dancers.
• Thanks to Erin Andrews, it has become for common for sideline and courtside reporters to be female.
• Very common in the Super Bowl, where most of the national anthem singers are women.
• Spotting pretty women in the crowds of sporting events has become such an obvious trope that it has it's own name among cameramen, the "Honey Shot." This article details how it was essentially the brainchild of Andy Sidaris, the director for ABC football broadcasts. Note that some women (Jenn Sterger, Pamela Anderson) have even gained careers from being spotted in sports crowds.
• During the 2012 Olympic Games, NBC had to pull an online video called "Bodies in Motion" because its depiction of female athletes was considered objectifying and demeaning. It didn't help that during the women's volleyball matches, the cameramen would occasionally get...distracted.

Tabletop Games

• In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, it was common to see published modules describe any female characters (if they existed at all) in detail, usually with terms like "voluptuous" or "svelte", while neglecting to give important male NPCs so much as a hair color.
  • The illustrations in the D&D books of the 80s and 90s often depicted sexily designed and dressed female characters. Clyde Caldwell, one of the most prolific (and, in other respects, one of the best) D&D artists of this time, is particularly infamous for this.

Webcomics

• Addressed in this strip of Cinema Bums in reference to the portrayal of Catwoman in Batman: Arkham City.
• Discussed in the context of Satan playing video games in this strip of Dinosaur Comics.
• Shown in this Loserz strip.
• Several cases of Male Gaze occur in Misfile, for example here. Notable because the breast focus is from Ash's perspective, who is the result of a male-to-female Gender Bender, while still keeping the male mind.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • Pete likes to draw Oasis doing gymnastic moves that highlight her figure as a whole. She also seems to get more chest/butt closeups than anyone else during the big "Dangerous Days Ahead" battle. Like, for example, this strip.
  • Parodied later in the series when Sasha dresses up as the supervillainess Monicruel. While another female supervillain can see through the Paper-Thin Disguise, none of the male supervilains can because all they noticed about Monicruel's appearance was that she had big boobs and wore a monocle. Long as Sasha's got those, they can't tell the two women apart, even when they're right next to each other, having a catfight.
    P-man-4: Boobs and monocle! That's her!
    Supervillainess: It's a different face! And totally different hairstyle!
    Gennaro: She had hair?
• Ronin Galaxy: During the beginning chapter two conflict, Leona’s breasts manage to make it into every frame of every. Single. Page.
• There is a huge amount of buttocks shots in Better Days. This was lampshaded fairly early on.
• Silent Hill: Promise The comic often gives a nice view of Vanessa's large chest or butt. Additionally, her character portrait is never shown wearing the heavy jacket she always has on.
• Ciem Webcomic Series. Candi gets naked a lot more than anyone else.
• Page 192 of Las Lindas has Miles give Sarah's feminine curves a lingering gaze when he finds out shes turning 18. He quickly learns not to do it again.
• Parodied in Hark! A Vagrant. The Strong Female Characters are horrible people in outrageously Stripperific outfits and poses who insist that because they can inflict random violence on men that "sexism is over." Sexy Batman is just Batman done like a stereotypical female comic book character, making cartoonishly seductive comments towards Catwoman, using Fanservice and constantly posed to show his butt. It's stupid, the implication being that it looks just as stupid when done to girl characters.
• Illustrated by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, along with Female Gaze, here.
• While not overt in Surprising Octeal, the comic seems to pay a lot of attention to Suzanne's backside.
• Issue #0.1 of Unit-M is very guilty of this. Subverted in Issue #0.2 when the gaze is dropped as Shield is harassed over her appearance.
• In El Goonish Shive, several forms have been designed by Tedd with this in mind mostly by having huge breasts.
• In Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, Hella Jeff takes the opportunity to stare at Sweet Bro's mother's ass twice.
  Hella Jeff: dufe, are you SCOPING this bipches CHOICE ASS..

Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • Francine is often subject to this with major focus during her Supermodel Strut in "My Morning Straitjacket" and "Rubberneckers" where she wear skimpy outfit and catches the eye of many men. Also, Bullock (Stan's superior) likes to focus on her bust.
  • In "The Life Aquatic With Steve Smith" when Steve meets Amy, a girl that works on the school newspaper, he doesn't even bother trying to make eye contact with her.
• Animaniacs doesn't have this as a rule - until Hello Nurse is on screen, at which point the trope is carried to parody levels. The handful of Minerva Mink shorts tended to use the trope straight (as a set-up for the Wild Take reactions of various male characters.)
• A.T.O.M: The suiting up shots of the team show the guys putting on helmets and gloves, buckling seatbelts. Lioness? We get a worm's eye view shot from behind of her straddling her motorcycle or a close shot of her zipping her battle outfit over her bust.
• Ty Lee in the Beach Episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
  • The eponymous Korra gets this◊ in the earlier seasons of the Sequel Series, but it got toned down later.
• In the original Biker Mice from Mars, one scene in the episode "Seeds of Victory" has Carbine standing in the foreground, resulting in a brief closeup of her hindquarters.
• Interestingly on Captain Planet and the Planeteers, both the first shot of Linka in the first episode and the first shot of her in the opening of every episode is a pan up her legs...
• In Castlevania Season 3 episode “The Harvest” there’s lingering shots of Sumi and Lenore’s bare breasts and nipples along with other shots of their nubile bodies while having sex with Alucard/Hector.
• Probably unintentional, but at one point in the Danger Mouse reboot episode "Megahurtz Attacks" the camera seems to focus on Professor Squawkencluck's shapely backside (the context was that DM noticed a screwdriver in her back pocket that he needed).
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • Cameras don't hesitate to get as many shots from the back of Dexter's mom as they can; "Better Off Wet" in particular features her in a bikini.
  • Another memorable example is in the episode "Nuclear Confusion" where Dexter has to follow the clues for Dee Dee's treasure hunt. The next clue at the home of Dexter's "touchy-feely neighbor lady", who sports some very noticeable hips. The neighbor offers him cookies, but drops one and bends to pick it up, showing the next clue is painted on the seat of her pants.
• In My Life as a Teenage Robot the camera focuses on Jenny's behind after Tuck gets thrown a frisbee in "It Came from Next Door".
• Constantly spoofed and played straight with Foxxy on Drawn Together, especially when she's been soaked with liquid.
• Edward: In a Beach Episode, Edward stares at a buxom woman wearing a two-piece zebra-striped bikini. This doesn't go unnoticed by his wife.
• Futurama veers into Male Gaze mode fairly often. The two female Planet Express employees - Amy and Leela - are both very shapely and often wear revealing outfits. It makes sense for Amy's character, but Leela's wardrobe is blatantly just there for Fanservice. The creators acknowledged in a commentary at one point that Amy was a sex symbol to the fans, joking that there was a fansite called Can't Get Enough Amy.
• In the opening theme of Generator Rex, Dr. Holiday shows up after the camera pulls away from...you guessed it, her chest.
• In an episode of Inspector Gadget Gadget meets his favorite actress Lana Lamore he begins to examine her with gadget goggles he noticeably stops on her bust at one point and shouts his catchphrase "Wowzers!".
• In the music video to "Ain't Nobody Better" in Jem, Pizzazz shakes her butt and the 'camera' zooms in on it.
• The Jungle Show features some shots focusing on the curvaceous Jessica Cat's butt during her second song "Shining Knight".
• Kim Possible has her fair amount of close-up buttocks shots and sometimes lingers on Shego.
• In Loonatics Unleashed, the camera focuses on Lexi's behind as she walks after the commercial break in "A Creep in the Deep".
• The "Spider-Baby" skit on MAD featured infant Peter Parker meeting his new babysitter, a full-grown Mary Jane. The camera (assumingly from Peter's POV) slowly closes in on her chest for two seconds as she asks "is somebody hungry?"
• My Little Pony:
  • (Probably) Not in a sexual manner, but Razzaroo had many pictures involving shots of her friends' buttocks in the first My Little Pony (G3) special.
  • Also (probably) not intended in a sexual matter, but My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a surprisingly high amount of pony buttocks (referred to by the Periphery Demographic as "plot"). Some of the animators may have become aware of this phenomena over the course of the series.
• Spoofed in The Powerpuff Girls (1998). We never see Ms. Bellum's face, so when she speaks, the camera cuts to her chest. When Blossom switches bodies with her in "Criss Cross Crisis", the camera continues to obscure Ms. Bellum's face despite her now having the body of a kindergarten student. This trope was apparently why she was removed in the reboot; the writers didn't like the joke.
• In the Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja episode "Let Them Eat Cake Fries", we get a close-up shot of the French Teacher's rather shapely butt from behind the desk. The focus on her butt was important enough to warrant smoother animation.
• During the Regular Show episode "Slam Dunk", Margaret rides by the boys, and we are treated to a lingering gaze of her buttocks, complete with appropriate male gaze music.
• Sanjay and Craig parodies this trope in the first episode, after Noodman gets his butt transplant
• Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo:
  • At the beginning, the camera focused more on the butt of the birdwatcher's girlfriend than the monster that attacked her and her boyfriend.
  • When Velma finds Daphne practicing ballet, the camera really focus on Daphne's back.
• The Action-Hogging Opening of SilverHawks features a pan up the body of team Smurfette Steel Heart, with a fully detailed drawing of her cybernetic Amazonian Beauty.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • Padmé Amidala tends to get subjected to camera shots that focus on her very shapely rear end whenever she wears a very form fitting white bodysuit or some other outfits.
  • In the episode "Heroes on Both Sides", Ahsoka asks a Separatist boy around her age if she looks bad (as in the good/evil sense) to him. Cue the slow pan from legs to head and the obviously flirtatious response of "not bad at all." Ahsoka lampshades it on the spot.
  • In the Zygerian arc, Ahsoka dresses up in a rather fanservicey slave outfit that leaves her flat, glorious stomach and very nice legs exposed. Quite a few camera shots focus on her bare legs, with one giving an extremely close view of her thigh.
• Steven Universe:
  • There are several moments where the camera pulls this on Pearl's backside, which is drawn a lot more shapelier than usual in those particular shots. Examples include the final act of "Laser Light Cannon" and, more blatantly, Amethyst's taunting in "Cat Fingers", where she morphs into Pearl, sticks out her rear and begins slapping it while going "Womp! Womp!".
  • The duet between Rose Quartz and her boyfriend Greg "What Can I Do For You?" contains several shots from Greg's POV that focus on Rose's lips.
• Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures has the resident pop-idol's music video, and it really says something about this trope when the object of the camera's attention is a doll-like girl with no curves, but the camera still focuses on her chest, rear end, and lips for most of the song, often the point of leaving her face out of the frame.
• Who could forget the infamous "Shake It, Bake It, Booty Quake It" scene from Sym-Bionic Titan? The scene shows as much ass shaking, pole dancing, and bouncing as though giving a crazy-ass lap dance as you possibly can without being burned at the stake by soccer moms.
• In the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles April and, sometimes, Karai are subject to this.
• Tex Avery often played this for laughs (same as everything else). In Who Killed Who?, a flashlight spot scans a wall full of hanging pictures, including one of a scantily clad woman with a fur coat, but when the spot returns to the picture, the woman is covered up. Similarly, in The Shooting of Dan McGoo, the camera follows a mug of beer past a nude painting covered up by the bartender, who, when the camera comes back, states that he doesn't move for the rest of the picture. (When he does, however, the covered portion only has a sign saying "I ain't got no body.")
• Total Drama has a lot of this, but the most noticeable is Courtney. Courtney gets a bunch of butt shots for no other reason besides Fanservice in every season in which she participates. It's especially noticeable when she does her Cheerleader bit. Heather and Zoey (in All-Stars) also.
• In Totally Spies! about half the camera shots are focused on the girls' busts as they are about to speak or when they crash into each other. In the other half, the camera is often focused on their butts as they are lying on the floor or fighting.
• In The Transformers episode "War Dawn", the camera focuses on Ariel's bottom when she charges at Megatron.
• Arcee gets occasional aft shots in Transformers: Prime, most notably in the episodes "Predatory" and "Out of the Past".
• T.U.F.F. Puppy has a close-up on Kitty Katswell's behind near the start of the episode "Puppy Unplugged".
• In one episode of Winx Club, one scene cuts from a close up of a supporting character to a shot of Stella's rear as she is trying out a skirt. The transformations are full of these, especially the newest ones.

Real Life

• Science has proven it, therefore it must be real. It's actually one of the expressions of the reproductive instinct - big ass and big tits = a child born and nurtured healthily. This applies vice-versa too - females look at muscles because muscular, well-built male = safety and protection for the family.
• A New York magazine article discussing flash mobs and other public pranks showed a picture of one of them, where a group of people all simultaneously took the Subway wearing no pants. Even though there are at least a half-dozen men in the picture, the camera is looking up the subway stairs at the one woman in lacy lingerie, naturally centered and in-focus.
• According to this interview, Inoue Meimy has a Male Gaze. She says she likes females, but specifically through a Male Gaze and not a Female Gaze despite being female.
• This footage of The Runaways begins with a five-second close-up of Cherie Currie's backside.
• Happened to Peggy Bunker on The Daily Buzz while she was reading a story on breast implants, with some Tempting Fate beforehand and exasperated reaction afterward.
• A Slate.com article about Alien chose as the header picture a shot of Ellen Ripley bending over in her panties. Amusingly, the text of the article notes how the film is over-analyzed as a piece of feminist art.
• A particularly egregious example occurs in some of the 'Dolphina Belly-Dance' tutorial films. They're supposedly videos to instruct in the basics of belly-dance for fun and fitness, and the instructions are clearly pitched at women. The trouble is that they are filmed in this trope, so quite frequently Dolphina is instructing the viewer to do such-and-such with their feet, but the camera is too busy panning over her abs to show what the step is actually supposed to look like.
• The infamous photo of Barack Obama and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy supposedly checking out a curvy Brazilian intern. It turns out Obama was actually in the middle of helping the girl behind him down the steep flight of stairs. Sarkozy, on the other hand...
• A verbal example appeared in the 2013 Academy Awards, where host Seth MacFarlane sang a song called "We Saw Your Boobs," highlighting the nude scenes of many of the actresses in the audience. Unfortunately, three or four of the scenes he mentioned were rape scenes. Also qualifies as Dude, Not Funny! (and as a Harsher in Hindsight, since one of the lyrics went "we haven't seen Jennifer Lawrence's boobs at all." That would change after Labor Day 2014, when the people who stole private pictures of her and many other female celebrities released them online).
• This video, perhaps, has said EVERYTHING all men in the entire world want to say why they have this tendency, and why this trope even exists. Yes. Everything.
• Ruth Orkin's 1951 photograph, American Girl in Italy, captured the moment when numerous Italian men flirted at Ninalee Craig (then known as Jinx Allen) while she visited Florence.

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