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| La Grande Odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1814. The painting is showing a woman staring out of the picture, depicting the male gaze. |
When most people look at a photograph of a woman or admire a painting that has a woman in it, they don’t notice the long held tradition of gender role mistreatment trapped in these images. In the book, Ways of Seeing by John Berger, and the chapter, “Understanding Patriarchy” from the book, The Will to Change by Bell Hooks, both authors paint a clear image of women’s role in society. John Berger explains the concept of the male gaze, and how that exhibits women in art and media as a sight of pleasure for men. Bell Hooks further expands on the mistreatment of women past art and media, and describes how women are victims of the patriarchal society from the moment they are born into this world. The male gaze and patriarchy play a vital role in how women in the past until today are still being taken advantage of and are still being viewed as inferior to men.
John Berger describes the male gaze as the tendency of men to view women as objects that are looked at primarily for pleasure and to fulfill a man’s sexual fantasies. From all the way in the beginning of the female nude depicted in European oil paintings, Berger illustrates how females are painted in such a way that turns the female from a human being into a thing that fulfills the male viewer’s “appetite” of satisfaction. Even today, whenever a model poses for a picture or when a model is put on the front cover of a magazine, she is shown looking out into the eyes of the spectator to give the viewer the illusion that she is “falling” for him, and that she only belongs to him. This essentially turns women “into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight” (Berger 47). Berger demonstrates that the male gaze takes the humanity out of females, and instead, turns them into a subject of delight. As a result, when a man looks at a painting of a nude woman or stares back into the eyes of a model posing in a photograph, he can’t help himself from fantasizing about that woman, ultimately turning the woman into an imaginary trophy that he won for himself. Consequently, “a woman’s self being [is] split into two” (Berger 46) in today’s society. Starting from a woman’s early childhood, she is always taught to always watch herself, and to make sure she is “presentable” for today’s cultural norms and standards. On top of that, a woman also has to watch other men look at her. These two factors that women have to deal with constantly lock them into a cage where men are always looking at them like an animal in a zoo. The male gaze highly degrades women, and I believe that men unconsciously fall into the trap of finding themselves looking at a woman or viewing a picture of a woman, and they can’t help themselves to view her as a sexual object.
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| 1950's Schlitz beer advertisement showing the gender role of women in society as housewives. |
Patriarchy, as defined by Bell Hooks, is a male dominated system that makes women feel inferior by acts of violence and unequal treatment. In this system, a woman is looked at as weak, and as unable to survive on her own without the masculine man to take care of her. Hooks goes on to highlight that the dominating man tends to “maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence” (18). Since childhood, women are taught the ideal rules to follow to be a female living in a patriarchal society. Sometimes these rules are enforced by fear as in the case of Hook’s father. As Hooks was a child, she liked to play with marbles, a “boy’s toy” instead of dolls like “normal” girls her age. Eventually, to teach Hooks to act as an ideal female, her father beat her with such rage and violence in front of her whole family to discipline her. Clearly, this horrific memory that Hooks shared is an example of the kind of “psychological terrorism and violence” she tries to explain to the readers. To be beaten by your father is one thing, but to be beaten by your father, while everyone watches in your family is a different level of torment that took a huge toll on Hooks. Even as a grown woman, Hooks still remembers this event so well, because of how traumatizing it was for her. Furthermore, a common mistake that people make is that they think that patriarchy only affects women. This is simply not true. Both men and women suffer from this empowered male dominated system. As women are taught to hide their feelings since childhood, men are taught to show rage, and violence to demonstrate their masculinity. Patriarchy doesn’t allow a man to be emotional like a woman; it doesn’t allow him to choose the color pink, because that would somehow tear his manhood from him. Although, today we are starting to slowly move away from the norms and ideals that constitute how women and men should act, gender roles could still be conveyed in today’s society. You look at a man who speaks in a soft voice, and who is not afraid to be emotional, and you subconsciously single him out as different. As a male who grew up in a patriarchal household, I never show my emotional side, because that’s how I was taught by my parents. This illustrates to me that if parents would let their children choose their own gender roles, then slowly, future generations will grow up to be blind to these “rules” that I couldn’t get away from, because of the way I was raised.
The male gaze and patriarchy depict women as instruments that are controlled by men, and hence, men are viewed as the superior beings. In fact, the male gaze is one of the many examples that fall under the patriarchal umbrella. The way men look at women as mere sexual objects when they look at them in paintings or photographs really portray how society objectifies women. Both John Berger and Bell Hooks demonstrate how women are always suppressed to be lesser human beings than men, whether it’s through how women are conveyed in art or how they are raised with specific gender roles from childhood.
--Peter Shafeek
Works Cited:
- Berger, John. Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC Television Series with John Berger. British Broadcasting Corp., 2012.
-Hooks, Bell. The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Simon & Schuster, 2004.
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