'In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly.'
And she totally had a point, the representation of women in music videos is something that hasn't changed and women are still represented as being passive and only there as objects for men to look at. Women are continually objectified in all genres of music videos but especially in hip hop and R&B music videos. Male artists will often have videos featuring themselves and other men fully dressed while scantily clad women walk around being stared at/giving lap dances to the men.
Female artists are no exception and themselves generally do very little to break this gender imbalance as even powerful female artists at the top of the industry like Beyonce, Rihanna and Lady Gaga still choose to present themselves in the same way.
Here are two music videos that Mulvey would hate and show the general representation of women in music videos:
The three fully clothed men surrounded by the scantily clad women along with the fairly creepy lyrics and the way the men act towards them makes this video a good example of the representation of gender and the 'male gaze'. There is another official release of this video on Youtube which is the same but the girls have no tops on. I didn't want to post it on this blog but it says enough about the attitudes towards women in modern music videos.
To prove female artists are no better, this video features the exact same type of dismembered shots of female body parts and also features Nicki Minaj standing dancing in a bikini while a fully clothed man looks on.
An example of an artist who challenges this representation of women is Missy Elliott who, as you can see in the video below, prefers to actually wear clothes in her music videos.
However the video does feature some unrealistic expectations for women:
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