FeMale Gayze

Why the Male Gaze is futile in its ability to see creativity

Bianca Lopes

“Obviously the artist makes art and the woman makes babies, but the word create is commonly used to describe both processes.”

Wayne, June. “The Male Artist as a Stereotypical Female.” Art Journal, vol. 32, no. 4, 1973, pp. 414–416. www.jstor.org/stable/775691.

“Nonetheless, women artists still found themselves in a difficult position with regard to ideas about creativity. Renaissance notions of genius pictured a great artist as one who can transcend reason by a kind of madness, breaking away temporarily from ordinary human limitations.”

Korsmeyer, Carolyn. “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 49, no. 4, 1991, pp. 383–384. 
www.jstor.org/stable/431042.

Lynn Hershman Leeson

Cleveland, Ohio (b. 1941)

“During the eighteenth century, moreover, the mere exclusion of the female from the idea of genius was transformed into something even more insidious. About this time, traits traditionally associated with femininity-the capacity to give birth and nurture, to be receptive, and so on-began to be transferred to male artists. Battersby speculates that social changes, including rapid industrialization that generally fostered the rise of romanticism were responsible for this shift of description of the spirit of genius. "Now, gradually, with the fundamental changes in values that industrialization brought about, males began to covet the stock descriptions of femininity ... and began to appropriate that vocabulary to refer to themselves" (p. 73). Thus begins the appropriation of feminine and masculine characteristics for the character of the genius. The language of the feminine that sometimes surfaces in romantic disquisitions about genius, Battersby points out, has served sometimes to confuse the record and to present a false appearance of equality possible within the idea of genius. She argues convincingly and vigorously that while the feminine comes to be incorporated into genius, females themselves are emphatically excluded. The romantic genius is biologically male, though his soul is androgynous. This is borne out by numerous quotes describing the conundrum of actual women of genius, the most famous case being George Sand, whose admirers were forced to laud her remarkable abilities as "masculine."”

Korsmeyer, Carolyn. “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 49, no. 4, 1991, pp. 383–384. www.jstor.org/stable/431042.

Female geniuses in the world of Great Art are never recognized as androgynous in their spirit because they are limited by the reinforcement of patriarchal structures. The Romantic era produced a vast corpus of literature and art that spoke towards individualism and freedom of expression. The religious imprint left on society is still present today, though its residual moral standards are quickly fading. Beautiful women are still subject to being damsels in distress and figures of sexuality in primarily male art forms – i.e. comic books, superhero movies

“Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence…”

(Bell Hooks)

Page 24 (Bell Hooks): “Clearly we cannot dismantle a system as long as we engage in collective denial about its impact on our lives. Patriarchy requires male dominance by any means necessary; hence it supports, promotes, and condones sexist violence. We hear the most about sexist violence in public discourses about rape and abuse by domestic partners. But the most common forms of patriarchal violence are those that take place in the home between patriarchal parents and children. The point of such violence is usually to reinforce a dominator model, in which the authority figure is deemed ruler over those without power and given the right to maintain that rule through practices of subjugation, subordination, and submission.”

For a man to admit that he is a social, political, and emotional slave to a system that he blindly identifies and relates his every decision to would be close to impossible. Men fear being emasculated because of patriarchy and all that it promotes. Women do not have the power to subjugate men in the same ways because patriarchy has existed for centuries across all social class systems.

MXGM Definitions: Sexism: “Sexism is more than a matter of individual prejudice and scattered episodes of discrimination. There is no female sexism because there is no centuries - old system of sexualized subordination and discrimination designed by women to exclude men from full participation in rights, privileges, and benefits of this society. Female sexism would require not only a widely accepted sexist ideology directed at men, but also the power to systematically exclude men from opportunities and rewards in major economic, cultural, and political institutions.”

Women are easier to objectify due to the traditional power dynamic practiced by both sexes for centuries. Bell Hooks wants to emphasize that patriarchy is an all-encompassing, institutionalized concept that affects every individual in our global society - male or female. The male gaze has shown me the significance of feminist artwork because it challenges the expectations of both males and females when they view any media or artwork.

Ewa Partum
Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Poland (b. 1945)

My Experience with sexism and the male gaze: 

Being a female athlete, you become exposed to sexism on all fronts. I’ve played soccer my whole life. I recently joined an 8 versus 8 co-ed league with some of my friends. We had 6 guys and 4 girls on our team. The rules of the league went as follows:

1.     Minimum of 2 girls (on the team and on the field at all times)

2.     A point scored by a male was worth 1 point, and 2 points behind the halfway line

3.     A point scored by a female counted for 2 points, and 3 points behind the halfway line

4.     Males could not score more than 3 consecutive goals/points because until a female scored, any goals after 3 would be discounted

I reflected on what these rules mean and how they might reinforce the inequality already present in the minds of male athletes. Physical equality has always been a subject of debate in granting women the same rights as men. They have always been considered as worthy of one role, that does not exceed the mental or physical opportunities of a male. i.e. Physical strength, education opportunities, right to vote. I wanted to believe that the rules were in place so that the guys would be forced to maintain equality throughout the game, though I had a hard time with accepting the different point values. The 2 female player minimum frankly, just sounds wrong. It’s supposed to be a league designed to share an androgynous spirit of athleticism and yet, it still reinforces an imbalance. The rules of fútbol should never discriminate based on gender and it has consequentially been done over and over. i.e. Equal Pay for U.S Women’s Soccer team 

U.S Women's Soccer Team Pay Equity (more info in article - link)

“To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order for it to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguise…the nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.” (Berger)

Leah Schrager

“The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure. The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as first and foremost, a sight.” (Page 51, Berger)

Vanity was used as a tool to reinforce the sinful desires of the man over a woman’s temptation. It was to allow women to turn a blind eye towards objectifying themselves. John Berger defines the male gaze in the following sentence: “Men look, women appear.” The woman is never truly seen through the eyes of subjectivity, but objectivity. The main point of his essay is to illustrate the difference between nudity and nakedness from the scope of European oil paintings. The male gaze was used to fulfill a man’s desires associated with the aesthetic of the female anatomy. It is important to note that advertisements reinforce comical, social, and political norms in order to relate to the largest demographic possible. They take the body of the woman and place it alongside specialized interests of males (i.e. beer, sports) to support the patriarchal structures molding these interests.

Elizabeth Taylor

Intricacies of the gaze – “ The figures in the paintings are at odds with reflections and ghosts of themselves. This is why there is a blur between the body and background. They are both indeterminate fields. A body aiming to see itself rather than to be seen…trying to follow the synapse of feeling from the mind through the arm to the hand. It’s the shortest possible fiction. Short enough to summon a sense of time, a possible past or possible future self. ” Grace Banks, 

6 Female Artists on What the Male Gaze Means to Them (Link to article) 

Modern day feminist artists have reclaimed nudity and refocused the male gaze by eliminating its initial expectations of art entirely. They have redefined nakedness to suit a purely artistic representation - still using nudity as a disguise, but one that is controlled by the artist. 

Dismantling the Male Gaze (Link to radical feminist artwork, HuffPost)

                                       

Karin Mack

Vienna, Austria (b. 1940)

      Mary Beth Edelson

East Chicago, Ind. (b. 1933)