How does the gaze affect young people? A small discussion of Little Miss Sunshine

In this blogpost I would like to talk about how the gaze affects young people, in this case  young girls. I will be doing this by discussing  one of my favourite films: Little Miss Sunshine (2006). I think this is very relevant as it gives insight in how norms about gender and beauty are imposed on young people.

In the opening scene, we see Olive (played by Abigail Breslin), a very ordinary girl, watching TV. She is watching a beauty-pageant show. Through the reflection of her glasses we see miss Louisiana winning the race. Olive rewinds the show, imagines she is the one who won the race and mimics the contestants’ reactions. The movie then tells the story of how Olive and her family are making a road-trip so she can participate in a beauty-pageant contest called Little Miss Sunshine.

I think this is a very strong opening shot which tells us a lot about Olive and the way we learn about social norms. Though the lenses of her glasses (see first picture) she can now clearly see what she wants to become. In the close up of her eyes we see that she wants to see Miss Louisiana in herself. To the viewer it is clear that Olive can never win the race because she does not look like the other girls, who are all very skinny, wear a lot of makeup and basically look like Barbie dolls. Olive however is not aware of this, she just wants to participate because the race looks like fun. She is full of dreams.

During a few different moments in the movie, Olive is confronted with the fact that she likes food a lot and is a bit chubby. She realizes that this makes her very different from the other girls. One time when she is alone in a room full of mirrors, she looks at herself from all sides and tries to suck in her belly.  I would argue that at this moment, Olive us beginning to be subjected to the male gaze. She is alone in the room, the camera is the only spectator. She slowly becomes  aware of the idea that other people should derive pleasure from looking at her, especially when being a pageant. Thus she starts to objectify herself. This puts her in a very vulnerable position. Whereas in the beginning of the movie Olive seemed okay with who she was and saw no obstacles in participating in the race, she is now becoming aware of the fact that she might not look conventionally beautiful  and starts to doubt her looks and ability to do well in the contest.

“And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.” This quote by Berger in Ways of Seeing fits well with the scene. Who Olive is as a person, now depends on how other people see her. Next to being aware of who she is, she also has to be aware of how others perceive her, as that will become part of her identity too.