“I was born into a world that does not know what my body means.” ~ Ollie Renee Schminkey
This quote by nonbinary transgender poet, Ollie Renee Schminkey, was originally about the mistreatment and misconceptions of trans people in our society, but this message can also be applied to the plight of women who have to suffer under an "imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" (bell hooks) and live with the male gaze. This feeling of being “trapped in other people’s perceptions of [their] body” is a common sentiment among both women and the LGBT community. These outsiders do not feel safe expressing their authentic selves within a society that refuses to look past their exteriors (and many times when it comes to women, no one cares about what is within.)
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| Jenna Dewan, Women's Health July 2018 |
Why are these models posing nude on a magazine for women?
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| Vogue Magazine |
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| Vogue Magazine |
“Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own” (Berger 55).
John Berger opened up a discussion about women and their bodies which is still relevant (and arguably more relevant now), especially in an era engrossed in social media. Platforms, such as instagram and visco, that only focus on pictures, and even magazines, reveal a dichotomic relationship between the fixation of sexualizing a woman's body and disgust of its biological processes. Berger demystified and articulated the ways women were objectified in high art and it led to the larger conversation of how we still exploit women’s bodies to this day.
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| The Judgement of Paris by Lucas Cranach the Elder | The Met Museum Victoria's Secret branding image, 2012 |
The male gaze, according to Berger, is a sexualized depiction of women as erotic objects for pleasure as seen through a masculine, heterosexual lens.
Women have always been seen as lesser. For a lot of history, they were thought of as property and kept oppressed by keeping them illiterate. Art of nude women, then, subjugates them because it was displayed for the pleasure of men. And although, its easy to look back and be disgusted at this pieces of high art which have fully clothed men and naked women, but such visual-hungry culture still exists.
Maybe this is why there are so many people against breast feeding in public. When women bodies are seen doing what they are biologically supposed to, those breasts can no longe be sexualized.
Women have always been seen as lesser. For a lot of history, they were thought of as property and kept oppressed by keeping them illiterate. Art of nude women, then, subjugates them because it was displayed for the pleasure of men. And although, its easy to look back and be disgusted at this pieces of high art which have fully clothed men and naked women, but such visual-hungry culture still exists.
Maybe this is why there are so many people against breast feeding in public. When women bodies are seen doing what they are biologically supposed to, those breasts can no longe be sexualized.
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| The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) |
This above scene introduces Cora, the female protagonist who drives the plot by being attractive. The main attention of this scene is how attractive Cora is, exemplified by how Cora is introduced in the film.
The western patriarchal society enforces ideas of women needing to constantly keep up and critique her appearance, not for herself but for the pleasure of the viewer. For women, there is a constant struggle of having to measure yourself up, not even for your own pleasure.
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| How the Avengers might look if the male gaze was also applied to them, according to The Hawkeye Initiative. |
"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 and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence" (bell hooks 18).
These images of women, whether they are models on magazines or medieval painting, feature women who are perfect in every physical sense. With magazines, we think about how photoshopped some of these women, who are already naturally stunning, are: their breasts are augmented, their stomaches are tucked in, and their skin smoothened. We see all of these qualities in paintings as well where these women are buxom, hairless, and have snow white skin.
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| Musée d'Orsay: Edouard Manet Luncheon on the Grass | http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/luncheon-on-the-grass-7201.html |
These images of women, whether they are models on magazines or medieval painting, feature women who are perfect in every physical sense. With magazines, we think about how photoshopped some of these women, who are already naturally stunning, are: their breasts are augmented, their stomaches are tucked in, and their skin smoothened. We see all of these qualities in paintings as well where these women are buxom, hairless, and have snow white skin.
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| http://unityandstruggle.org/2016/12/26/patriarchyontheleftpart3/ |
In Understanding Patriarchy, bell hooks relays how patriarchal beliefs are learned and reinforced by religion, family, and school. She uses the anecdote of an incident in her family to exemplify how both of her parents carried out the patriarchy in different ways. Her father's beating after her actions and her mother's compliance.
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| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4303538/Megan-Fox-s-son-Noah-dons-Frozen-dress-family-lunch.html |
"Patriarchy as a system has denied males access to full emotional well-being" (hooks 31).
hooks notes the role women play and does not solely blame men for the patriarchy. In fact, she urges everyone to work to unravel the patriarchy. While the patriarchy most obviously harms women, hooks implores women to acknowledge the damage the patriarchy has on men.
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| Steam Room 1988 |
Artists work to bring attention to the patriarchy so that everyone can work to dismantle it. For example, Joan Semmel, who painted real nude women.
Art works to deconstruct the male gaze. Artists can do this in many ways from taking back their bodies and redrawing artwork the exploits women under the male gaze to creating art work that protests the male gaze.
Art works to deconstruct the male gaze. Artists can do this in many ways from taking back their bodies and redrawing artwork the exploits women under the male gaze to creating art work that protests the male gaze.
Works Cited
Beauvoir, Simone de. “The Second Sex.” In A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Antony Easthope and Kate McGowan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 51-54. Print.
Berger, John, and Michael Dibb. Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC Television Series Directed by Michael Dibb. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2008.
Fridge, Adrian. “Male Gaze and How It Limits Creativity – Adrian Fridge – Medium.” Medium, Medium, 13 July 2015, medium.com/@adrianfridge/male-gaze-and-how-it-limits-creativity-a32ae901835f.
Hooks, Bell. Understanding Patriarchy. Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2010.
PAOLI, JULIA. “3. Deconstructing ‘Woman.’” Western University, www.uwo.ca/visarts/research/2008-09/bon_a_tirer/Julia%20Paoli.html.
Schminkey, Ollie Renee. “Boobs (Ollie Renee Schminkey).” Outspoken Word Poetry, outspokenwordpoetry.blogspot.com/2015/11/boobs-ollie-renee-schminkey.html.
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