> Basically, men looking at women harms them, and we should avert our eyes
This is not what "male gaze" means. The idea of a male gaze, broadly speaking, is that the way women are portrayed in visual media (films, painting, photography, video games) caters to a male, heterosexual audience over other audiences, even at the expense of other aspects of the art. I think Lindsay Ellis does a good job of explaining this with examples [1]; particularly striking is the way Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes in Transformers is shot to maximise her sex appeal (to a straight male audience), so that even though the script ostensibly establishes Mikaela as savvy and competent, all that most viewers remember is that she's eye candy [2].
Heck just pick up any book about portrait photography and you will see the same thing: male postures are typically steadfast, female postures tend towards vulnerability (geometrically weak, camera looking down to subject, shoulders not square with frame) and sideboob.
Male bust portraits tend to cut off at the shoulders, female bust portraits cut off at the cleavage.
It’s just the way it’s done and nobody questions it.
This is not what "male gaze" means. The idea of a male gaze, broadly speaking, is that the way women are portrayed in visual media (films, painting, photography, video games) caters to a male, heterosexual audience over other audiences, even at the expense of other aspects of the art. I think Lindsay Ellis does a good job of explaining this with examples [1]; particularly striking is the way Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes in Transformers is shot to maximise her sex appeal (to a straight male audience), so that even though the script ostensibly establishes Mikaela as savvy and competent, all that most viewers remember is that she's eye candy [2].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNkTeHpHj_I [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKyrUMUervU&t=1m05s