P.J. Gladnick spent an Oct. 13 Media Research Center post freaking out that someone called out the male gaze:
For those of you wondering how CNN’s brand has fallen so deep into the toilet, the strange attitudes divorced from reality of many who work at that network might offer one of the significant reasons.
An example comes in the form of CNN’s Science and Wellness writer, Madeline Holcombe, who wrote an overlong boring rant about her neurotic hangup with the ‘male gaze’ on Saturday, “After years of progress on gender, the male gaze is back.”
The “male gaze” is back? If you even knew it ever existed as a major problem in the first place, then YOU are probably the one with the problem for even noticing. And one who has definitely noticed and can’t stop thinking about it is Holcombe who one could argue causes the male (and female) glaze — as in their eyes glazing over in utter boredom while attempting to read a rant that seems like entering an unending wormhole into an alternate universe obsessively concerned about something that never appears as a problem on the radar screens of normal people.
Actually, Gladnick clearly knows more about the male gaze than he’s letting on — if he didn’t, why would he freak oiuit about it so much? And why would we assume that a single article by itself ruined PBS’ ratings? It’s more like he feels seen more than he’s engaging in legitimate media criticism. Indeed, Gladnick plodded on:
Holcombe goes on and on and on with her male gaze obsession for thousands of more words and ends up pretty much nowhere. The one upside is that the male gaze tale of woe provided lots of entertainment on X (known as Twitter long before anyone even worried about “male gaze”) in the form of hilarious mockery.
[…]If you need a distinctly unbrief diversion from reality, check out more of Holcombe’s treatise without end on the evils of the “male gaze.” And say hello to Rod Serling on the way down that rabbit hole.
Again, this sounds more like a P.J. problem. Perhaps he should address that soon.