Kianna Dorino
Art and Women
February 7, 2017
The Male Gaze
What is the male
gaze?
Many have heard of it
yet few know what it actually is. For starters, let’s start off by defining
what a gaze is. A gaze is a concept used in the analysis of visual culture in
which it is how a given person and/or audience views the people or person that
is/are being presented. To understand the male gaze it may be easier be first
given and example and then explain the male gaze. Have you ever been watching a
commercial and you see a beautiful woman, half naked, with sexual music in the
background, and you’ve been watching it for about a good ten –fifteen seconds
and you still don’t know what exactly the attractive woman is selling and then
at the very end of the commercial you find out that the woman is advertising a
cologne. . . That my friends is the epitome of the male gaze. The male gaze is
a specific lens through which we view the visual culture more specifically,
it’s the idea that films and advertisements were created and molded around the
pleasing of a heterosexual male audience.
John Berger and The
Male Gaze
An artist by the name
of John Berger gives one of the best analysis and in detail work of the male
gaze. John Berger says. “One might simplify this by saying: 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. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed
female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object
of vision: a sight” (page 47).
omen.
Women are the appearing object that men are viewing. Women are simply there to
please men, nothing more than an object. In other words Berger believes that men act, in
acting they view women. Women are the appearing object that men are viewing.
Women are simply there to please men, nothing more than an object.
Here in one of Berger’s pieces of work one can
see a woman looking at herself in what appears to be a mirror and a male
looking from behind a wall. Once again the woman appears and the male is acting
by looking at the appearing woman.
Male Gaze
Pervasiveness in Art and Popular Culture
Women are known to be
a work of art. Is this expression good or bad? Is this expression a branch of
the male gaze? Some women in fact may take offense to this expression and I’ll
tell you why. Yes, art is beautiful and some pieces of art may take your breath
away from its beauty but, what else is art? A drawing, sculpture, painting is
art but it is also an object. A work of art or a piece of art is considered art
but it is also an object. Once again, women are being considered objects. Many
pieces of art illustrate a naked woman, whether she be laying down, sitting up,
looking at the person viewing the art directly or simply looking away in the
piece of art but almost all pieces involve women. The typical viewer of a piece
of artwork was male.
Today, you can’t see a
commercial, tv show, or even a movie without seeing a woman being effected by
the male gaze. A simple add for a razor involves glamorous women, with long
golden legs, dancing with the camera focused on either their face or legs.
A Carl’s Jr commercial involving advertising a
burger included Paris Hilton all over a wet car eating the burger in a
very “sexy” manner.
The male gaze has
literally taken over not only art but also the popular culture.
What is Patriarchy?
According to Bell Hooks, “Patriarchy is a
political-social system that insist 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 and to maintain that
dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.”
Ex1. Politics:
-
Men are
considered to be experts in politics and it is known to be a man’s subject,
dating hundreds of years ago leading up to today.
-
Ex2.
Sports:
Women
are perceived to know nothing about sports. Not the sport itself, how it’s
played, rules, objective, nothing, they aren’t even supposed to attempt to play
unless they want to get laughed at by men.
Understanding the Structures
As a young woman I have come to understand the
structures that patriarchy has put amongst us. I feel that society makes a lot
of things harder on women. Everyday I feel that I am being judged in almost
everything that I do. How do I look? How’s my hair? Am I walking right? Does this
outfit make me look fat? These are just some questions I may ask myself or even
a close friend, because I feel like I am always under someone’s scope. I am
aware that women are objectified and I am aware that it has been going on for
some time now and I know that women get the most shit (sorry for the language)
but I also know that women are powerful and beautiful. I know that some women
have conquered the most patriarchal men. I know that I can overcome the
structures and the patriarchy as a woman.
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