Abstract

I describe a series of encounters resulting from a World Wide Web hypertext project I created in a graduate course on electronic culture. Using these encounters as a frame, I discuss the implications of the operation of the mole gaze in the milieu of the Web, drawing on examples of “cyberbabe” Web sites. I point out ways that objectification of women on the Web is similar to and different from that in other media such as film and critique the sexism of male media theorists of Cyberspace. I investigate the way one Web site connected to my story. The Long Hair Site, exemplifies the complexity of gendered interactions on the Web relating my own attempts to intervene in my particular case of cybersexism and speculating about what constitutes resistance to such dynamics. I conclude that ending cybersexism would entail not only structural but psychological changes; males and females must examine the ways we are encouraged to participate in sexism and learn to make different choices. Throughout my analysis, I intersperse personal reflections and e-mail posts from men responding to my work on the Web with my theoretical examination of the virtual male gaze

Citation

Sullivan, L.L. (1997). Cyberbabes: (Self-) representation of women and the virtual male gaze. Computers and Composition, 14(2), 189-204. Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved July 7, 2022 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/204500/.

Keywords

• beauty
• cyberbabe
• cybersexism
• Feminism
• hypertext
• internalized oppression
• male gaze
• objectification of women
• Sexism
• World Wide Web