The male gaze is the way in which the visual arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure. The phrase male gaze was coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in 1975. The “male gaze” invokes the sexual politics of the gaze and suggests a sexualised way of looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, woman is visually positioned as an “object” of heterosexual male desire. Her feelings, thoughts and her own sexual drives are less important than her being “framed” by male desire. Nowadays, there are many different forms of 'gazes' in media, such as the female gaze and homosexual gaze, which visually objectifies males much to the visual pleasure of the opposite sex. 
The 'male gaze' can be traced back centuries, most famously to the 'Mona Lisa' by Leonardo Da Vinci. This is the renaissance version of objectifying women through visual arts if you really want to read deep in-between the lines. A clear example of the male gaze in renaissance times are the naked paintings/depictions of women. This is as clear as daylight that those were the pornography of the renaissance era, objectifying women for the pleasure of males.
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