John Berger's "Male Gaze" and Bell Hooks' "Patriarchy"

Georg Beshay

Professor Rosa

Art and Women 

September 15, 2019

Understanding Male Gaze and Patriarchy 

Based on my knowledge from reading John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”  and Bell Hooks’ ‘Understanding Patriarchy’ both novels describe a problem with men and their actions. In ‘Ways of Seeing’ John Berger had defined a problem that is still a major issue in today’s world. John Beger’s Male Gaze is basically the way a man looks at a women and depicting her while knowing how he will treat her based on his judgment of her appearances. Also, men are too quick to judge women based on their actions, their first impression on a woman is what men only think about and figure how they would like to be treated and basically put a label on a woman as if she’s some type of an object. “If a woman makes a good joke this is an example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she as a joker woman would like to be treated by others. Only a man can make a good joke for its own sake” (John Berger, 47). If a woman is feeling confident about her body and wants to dress nice and wear clothing that’s nicely fitted and a bit revealing to show that she is satisfied with how her body looks, it’s not an invitation for men to “holler” at her or for men to assume that she wants sex based off just looking at her appearance. Men believe that they are superior to women and that they could treat and say whatever they would like to them because they believe there won’t be any repercussions for their acts. “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” (John Berger, 47). This quote made me feel uncomfortable putting myself in women's shoes and having a man look at me basically trying to read my story by the way I appear or look, him judging me, thinking that he knows by a few glances is truly disgusting. A contemporary argument of male gaze is intersectional feminism, which refers that gender equality is just an equal problem as racism, nationality, sexual orientation, etc. Laura Joe wrote an article “Feminism 101” basically describing the basics of Intersectional Feminism. Laura wrote “Intersectionality as a term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Crenshaw, a law professor at UCLA and Columbia, saw black women as being “legally invisible”: the legal system saw sexism as being injustice to all women and racism as being injustice to all people of color. It ignored the unique position of those who faced both."

Birgit Jürgenssen, Hausfrauen – Küchenschürze / Housewives’ Kitchen Apron, 1975 Estate Birgit Jürgenssen. Courtesy Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003)
Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971)

"The Viennese artist was a key figure of the Austrian feminist avant-garde movement in the 1970s and instrumental in the formation of the female artists’ group Die Damen (The Ladies) in 1988. Reacting to the repression of women and their prescribed roles, Jürgenssen was not afraid to subvert social stereotypes. Her work explored bodily existence and tackled social clichés of women existing solely within the limits of domesticity as well as being portrayed as objects in art. In one of her famous performative works, Housewives’ Kitchen Apron (1975), Jürgenssen wore a sculpture of an apron that doubled as an oven, morphing the artist into a domestic appliance." (Freire Barns)

Secondly, reading Bell Hooks’ “Understanding Patriarchy” she starts off by saying “Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation” (Bell Hooks, 17). In other words, patriarchy is a threat to society and it targets men. Still, it just doesn’t target men it was created to put females below men. The basic definition of patriarchy is that male is the head of the household and hold all the power while females are excluded from it. Bell Hook’s tells her story of living in a patriarchy family household which affected her and her brother but it bothered her more because it left her out of many things that she wanted to be apart of. Eventually, she tried to put a stop to it by not listening to her father which ended up with him hitting her for doing something that was not ladylike. In the novel, it explicitly shows how patriarchy affected Bell Hooks but not much her brother but growing up a boy in a patriarchal family you’re not allowed to show your emotions unless it was anger because anger supposedly shows your strength of a man, other than that it is frustrating to build up all your emotions and not letting it out which is mentally not healthy. To feel like you can’t talk to anyone about something that bothers you makes you feel trapped and that you’re all alone. Patriarchy is a disaster in art as women’s artwork is belittled compared to men’s work. In “Woman’s Art as Servant of Patriarchy: the Vision of Aurora Leigh” it states “If women writers have worked within the context of male-dominated systems of discourse, then how is women’s discourse to be defined? Is it, for example, to be discovered in symbolic forms which betray, even in the texts most consciously propitiative of male authority, an unconscious and angry subversion of dominant linguistic modes? These are large, and at this developed point in feminist literary criticism, rather obvious questions” (Aurora Leigh, 143). Aurora stresses the point of if a woman was to speak out on patriarchy in the forms art or literature it’s only an act out of anger then rather a serious question. It is unusual that if a man breaks out of anger is just him being violent letting off some steam but if a female is to act out of anger she’s viewed as crazy.

Mickalene Thomas, Qusuquzah Lounging with Pink + Black Flower, 2016 Courtesy of Mickalene Thomas LLC

"Mickalene Thomas’s rhinestone-encrusted paintings and collages question how female identity, especially that of black women, has been portrayed throughout art history. With vivid colors and patterns inspired by her vibrant childhood homes, Thomas’s work is electric and arresting. She rose to prominence for her work which appropriates iconic and provocative art-historical works by male artists like Courbet, Manet, and Picasso, replacing the white female nude with black, African women. In doing so, Thomas reclaims ownership over the portrayal of feminine sexuality, celebrates female beauty and power and reflects on the importance of the female figure in contemporary art." (Freire Barns)

Work Cited

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-18792-8_9https://femmagazine.com/feminism-101-what-is-intersectional-feminism/
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/articles/the-female-gaze-the-contemporary-artists-who-took-back-female-identity-in-art/