Before John Berger starts to talk about the male gaze, he discusses what the male presence and the female presence is. One might think well what is the difference but Berger outlines the strong difference between the two. He describes the male presence as what a male is capable of doing to a person or for a person. However when he describes the female presence as her own attitude to herself. Berger also states that how a woman appears determines how she’ll be treated by a man. We see evidence of this today in our society. If a woman is dressed in a outfit that bares too much skin and then gets raped , it is automatically assumed to be her fault and that she was asking for it. Society has defined the existence of a woman for the purpose of a man. The surveyor is often the male while the surveyed is the female, turning females into sexualized objects. Men are almost entitled to look at women in this sense because of the “power” they posses leaving the women to be considered as a possession. We see evidence of this in our culture and especially in art and media.
When we look at paintings that depict female nudity we always see an object that is common across many nude paintings. We see a mirror depicted in most of the nude paintings to take away from the fact that she is being looked at from a male gaze. The mirror is also used to portray the vanity of the women as to distract the women from what is to come. “ The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the women connive in treating herself , as first and foremost, a sight.” ( Berger pg. 51) Lots of the artwork we see in Berger’s Ways of Seeing is from previous centuries but the male gaze idea is still very popular today. In today's culture we see lots of advertisements that depict women as sexualized objects. Sometimes it’s women advertising lingerie where that itself is a sexualized object. But other times we see objects without any sexualized connotation become sexualized and it’s always catered towards what would interest the male or spark the male gaze. 
Here we see food being sexualized but in a way where once again the women is the sexual object, even though we always see alcohol in sexualized ads this ad can be considered as overly sexual. Companies have found that the way to sell or increase their product is to sexualize their product because sex appeals to most people. However the question is how come only females are in these sexual ads, we rarely see Men being depicted in the same positions or actions above.
In this ad we see yet another women being sexualized for the male gaze. However what's suprising about this ad in particular is the organization that's being advertised. PETA is a non profit organization that raises money and awareness for the sake of animals that are abused and mistreated. This company values the ethical treatment of animals and prides itself in that but when it comes to trying to advertise their organization it's almost ok to put all ethical ideas to the side. Not only is this a sexualized ad but her body is split into various portions like the leg, breast or shoulder. The main indirect message we see here is a woman being compared to animal.
Patriarchy often demeaning towards females. Our country is made up of a patriarchy and we see the idea of patriarchy all over in our society. From our Religions depicting God always a male to treating girls and boys differently when the only difference between them is their anatomy. Bell Hooks discusses the difference she noticed in her life between her and her brother growing up. Coming from a culture where having a son is valued over having a daughter , I can completely understand where she comes from. I don’t have a brother but I’ve seen the difference in treatment among others coming from a middle eastern background. Girls are taught to be weak and allowed to be emotional where boys are taught to be strong and also taught to never cry or display emotions that might make him seem weak. One dangerous thing abou this is that boys are taught that violence is ok. “ He was taught for a boy, enjoying violence was a good thing. He was taught that a boy should never express feelings, or at least some of them” (Hooks pg.19) From when kids are young they are being taught what they should and should not be and we are forming our children into what we want rather than what they should want to be. Our culture puts so much value into patricharty it’s no wonder why females are often mistreated or females start to think it's ok to be mistreated.
Works Cited: Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books. 1972.
Hooks, Bell. "Understanding Patriarchy." 2004. The Will to Change. New York: Atria Books, 2004. 17-33.
No comments:
Post a Comment