Dwarfed By The Gaze, Rose Festival, Portland, Oregon
The title for this image comes from psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan’s essays on The Gaze, which address the social and psychological impact of ‘being viewed.’ The phrase has been popularized as one that primarily concerns how men view women (in both a social and graphic sense), and how women are influenced and controlled by ‘being seen.’
The image above is an illustration of the overwhelming power assigned to the current standard of ‘beauty.’ It towers over all of us, demanding homage. Demanding sacrifice. Demanding that women, in particular, adapt and obey, if they wish to be seen at all. Diet. Starve. Dress up. Dress up sexy-if you want to exist in the eyes of others. If you want to be acknowledged, valued ... promoted at work.
I’ve set ‘beauty’ off in quotes because the term is nebulous. I believe a majority of people use it to mean ‘the degree to which a person incites sexual arousal.’ To initially see someone and say, “He’s beautiful,” or “she’s beautiful,” could not possibly apply, of course, to character traits, to what it means to be in a relationship with that person, to pass judgment on the merits of the individual’s personality. Those can only be known through a relationship (and we can still misjudge, or be misled). 
If we ‘look’ at beauty in this way, then we’d have to conclude (I believe) that beauty is not something seen. It’s something earned. And it’s only earned by making oneself known.
Art critic John Berger offers a brilliant analysis of The Gaze in his book Ways of Seeing: “[A]ccording to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome—men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at ...”
It’s not particularly difficult to see (in a very superficial sense) this passivity and control in the interplay between men and women, and in the dominant role that sexuality plays within the media (and culture as a whole). It’s pervasive. First on the list of “Secrets & Advice” for this month’s feature stories in Cosmopolitan magazine? “6 Ways You Can Turn Heads.”
Second top billing for this “modern woman’s” mag? “Want to Look Hot in Lingerie? Here’s How!”
That’s a pretty small sample—one magazine cover. But I think it shouldn’t too hard to compare the current covers (and contents) of Elle, Vogue, Glamour (and others), compared them to GQ, George and popular men’s fashion magazines) and admit that the former are selling advice on how to best compete in a beauty pageant for indentured servants.
We might say this squamous view of ‘beauty’ has metastasized. But how it inculcates a sense of powerlessness in women is more insidious. The University of Vermont illustrates the absurdity of commercial representation of women on its Semiotics & Advertising website. 
The site mimics ‘standard’ female poses from fashion advertising, using men as stand ins. If it doesn’t hit you in the eye, and the gut, congratulations, you’re not as blind as I (the impact it had on me worries me, because as a photographer I should be more aware of how I see, and represent, the people in my images).
To makes things even more complicated, even the term ‘sexuality’ is suspect. Gloria Steinem and others have argued that commercial representations of women are about power, not sexuality. If what we find provocative is entirely controlled by external influences, can we really be said to be ‘aroused’ at all? Has something that yearns for affinity, for affection, for intimacy truly been awakened? If we look only to iconic representations of each other for guidance, for instruction on what and who to value, how can it be said that we have values? (Or that there is, other than a purely corporeal sense, a we? A you? If there are none of these things, except as mediated by the media, then there is no us. If we see only in a manner that divides us, we have no hope of connection, of intimacy, of being, of being with.) 
I’ll finish by noting that the most prominent critics of the commercial representation of women in imagery ... seem to be men. Or are they? I can’t pass off the prominence of the male voice in this debate as merely ‘ironic.’ I wonder if this apotheosis is just another function of the assignment of higher value to a male voice. (And I have to wonder if I’m not seeing it as ‘more prominent’ because I’m a man.)
I would not argue that there’s no beauty in sexuality. Or that there’s no goodness in arousal. But I think that I like Riane Eisler’s conception of it best. Eisler is a social scientist and the author of The Chalice & The Blade. She writes about a period of time in human history in which the archeological record illustrates a female-centered conception of the universe. Excavations of the city of Catal Huyuk (occupied from roughly 6500 - 5500 B.C. in what is now the region of Anatolia, Turkey) reveal (she argues) a culturally advanced, peaceful, productive society whose imagery (on vessels, figurines, etc.) present no weaponry, no glorification of war, no domination, no submission ... and yet there is decidedly sexual imagery.
The difference, she writes, is that the culture (destroyed by nomadic warriors) presented sexuality as joyful, as spiritual. Something that’s clearly missing in this ‘advanced,’ high-gloss, scratch-and-sniff society we’ve subscribed to.
Recommended Reading:
Erving Goffman’s essay Gender Advertisements. “Women, more than men, are pictured using their fingers and hands to trace the outlines of an object or to cradle it or to caress its surface (the latter sometimes under the guise of guiding it), or to effect a “just barely touching” of the kind that might be significant between two electrically charged bodies. This ritualistic touching is to be distinguished from the utilitarian kind that grasps, manipulates or holds ... Self-touching can also be involved, readable as conveying a sense of one’s body being a delicate and precious thing.”
Photographer Thomas Cummins presents an excellent overview of Lacan’s redefinition of The Gaze (derived from Jean Paul Sartre’s essays).
Eisler has also written Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth and the Power of the Body (I haven’t read it, but it’s on the list).