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| Titian by Venus of Urbino - representing a women to be beautiful because she is nude. |
The male gaze is an
expression used towards women’s’ femininity that is offered to a man. “Men act
and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation
of women to themselves.” (Berger 47) The male gaze is proving women to be an
object of a sight or a vision. We learn that a women’s presence was everything
and that there is nothing she can do that can’t contribute to her presence.
Everything “she” does matters and adds to her image. Nudity was a big form of
art, especially in portraying women. Nakedness in art is a positive visual
value according to Berger and a women’s’ scale of nudity would only be
determined by what the spectator sees her as. Nakedness provokes a very strong
sense of relief hence why a lot of art in history was consisted of naked woman
and that was seen as the truest form of art. The painting “Titian” by Venus of Urbino is portraying a naked woman stating that there is something divine about
her beauty but all there truly is the nakedness.
Furthermore, the male gaze
is really pervasive in art and popular culture because a picture is made to
appeal to “his” sexuality. A woman is only relevant through her image because
it brings in the audience or in simpler terms, gives us something to look at. It’s
interesting to talk about the best analogy described for why the male gaze is pervasive
in art or pop culture which is “Women are there to feed an appetite, not to
have any of their own.” (Berger 55) That is why society promotes items that
help enhance the appearance of women always or how they should look. If a woman
dare isn’t perfect she is doomed or to be judge. Even today, in the Metropolitan Musuem the art posted of females is majority nude women. Luckily, there are groups
like the Guerrilla Girls being a voice for women and actively seeking to end
this corrupt sexist view of women being seen only certain ways.
Men in general have
always been seen to overpower women, but the topic of patriarchy is also
something to be discussed. Patriarchy is a “social disease” which assaults the
male body and spirit. Hooks describes patriarchy to be a “…political-social
system that insists that males are inherently dominated, superior to everything
and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to
dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various
forms of psychological terrorism and violence.” (Hooks 18) This male dominance
is a constant ongoing battle in the world we live in because women still
struggle to receive the same treatment as men. Woman are still deemed to be
weak figures in society which is really degrading but it is true that we are
making a comeback. As standardizing patriarchy is to women, it is also to men
because it leaves them to be emotionally crippled. It also brainwashes men to
believe their domination of woman is beneficial when it is actually not. As we
read in Hooks chapters, the only way to stop patriarchy is to challenge its psychological
and its concrete manifestation in the daily life. Patriarchy does not only harm
women, but men as well because it limits them to their sentiments and how to
act in society. Women can be just as masculine as men, and men can be just as
emotional as women – this statement needs to be enforced because at the end of
the say we are human, not assigned to a gender role.
Overall, women were given
the idea to be always different from men, however, that is because society set
the rules to be that way. Coming to understand the terms of social and
behavioral standards was hard when society exposes you to it from a younger
age. For example, patriarchy has lived throughout my childhood when I would
watch Disney Movies about princesses or other female roles who
would always need to be saved by a father figure or a prince or any other male
figure. Furthermore, in literature, the oppression of women is always
reinforced in characters and different roles played, allowing them to appear as
very stereotypical women. This only educated the vast population of kids
growing up about gender roles and limits in the sexes. Now, being older, I understand
how discriminative society is but know better than to let it define me and what
I am capable of. I know I am just as capable as a man, just as any man is
capable of a woman. Today, I not only see our generation being a voice to these
thoughts but even society slowly drifting away from these narrow minded sexist
beliefs. Although growing up I was only exposed to rules of a gender to be a
certain way, I see younger children growing up being exposed to out of norm
gender roles than I was. For example, newer Disney movies and TV Shows depict
roles of women who are not reliant on male figures and just as powerful as
them. This is hope for our future that we are improving not just as a society,
but as a world.
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| A woman's natural hair wasn't even pretty enough in the 50s-70s where ads for hair dye was made to be famous like these. promoting the well-being of a women to be more perfect. |
References:
- Berger, John. Ways of Seeing; a Book Made by John Berger.
British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972.
- Hooks, bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and
Love. Simon & Schuster, 2005.
By: Hena Rana
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