In this clip the women appear elegant and feminine with their neatly pinned and curled hair, rouged lips and delicate eye make up. This shows that the women conform to the Male Gaze because men would have wanted the women to have dainty faces, without hint of aggression or dominance which, at the time, would have appeared un 'ladylike'. Despite this the women are wearing slick black dresses, Mildreds character especially looks dominant with her padded shouldered blazer which gives her a broad and powerful appearance. The dresses are not skin tight or suggestive but are rather boxy, connoting strength rather then stereotypical female grace. This contradicts the idea of men wanting women to seem yeildable under their power.
The idea of giving a women a masculine guise could perhaps be fetishistic, a man may find it exciting and attractive for a women to appear dominant whilst still having threads of feminity in her character. This certainly applies to the women in the clip as despite the clothing Veda still wears a white flower signifying innocence and purity. Moreover, in their argument they are ascerting strength through words as well as appearance, whilst still maintaining ladylike compositions because they do not have a full on brawl. If this were men having a hostile argument we could assume they'd be physically fighting each other but these two women do not and the only physical act is a slap, this again is associated with women and is seen as quite a 'soft' act of aggression. Men would think less of another man if he slapt his offender rather then punched and so even this act of violence is subject to the male gaze because it is confined to maintaining an aspect of womenly 'classiness' as if anything more then a slap would be too messy and too untasteful. This perpetuating of the male "ideal women" draws from the book, The Feminine Mystique that speaks of how women are ultimately tunnelled in to a certain framework that, despite wanting to break out, will still be presented as inherently female within a media text or in society.
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