Despite female-lead films being more prevalent in Hollywood than ever, media coming out of the mainstream continues to construct women from the male gaze. Films that falsely claim to escape this gaze work against feminist equality, leaving audiences desperate for content that both promotes diverse representation and also fulfills a new gaze. This paper will first define the concepts of the male and female gaze and discuss the theorists behind them. It will then assess, using film examples, the divergence between the female gaze and Hollywood “female-lead” films. Finally, it will show how the female gaze looks when it is both genuinely understood and applied.
