What is the Male Gaze?

The concept of gaze refers to how an audience is supposed to view the people presented decided by the director. The types of gaze are mostly based on who is doing the looking and who is controlling the gaze. This could either be the director, camera, or lead actor, but they are known as mostly being male. 
Jonathan Schroeder (1998) said 'to gaze implies more than to look at - it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze.'
Features of the 'male gaze' include:

•  voyeuristic - pleasure in 'watching' where the camera lingers on the curves of a female) 
• relegates women to the status of objects
• male active/ female passive - where the female viewer experiences the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male. 

From a feminist perspective, the 'Male Gaze' can be reduced to:

• How men look at women
• How women look at other women
• How women look at themselves