 |
| Zendaya Coleman on the cover of Variety magazine; This is an example of how the male gaze has manifested itself in modern day media such as magazine covers. |
 |
Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Self Portrait as St Catherine of Alexandria” If we were to compare this to Zendaya's magazine cover, we can see obvious similarities between body position, facial expression, and the sultry look in their eyes. |
The male gaze: an action, used by anyone, that sexualizes women and portrays them as nothing more than an object. In order to fully grasp the concept of the male gaze, John Berger, writer of Ways of Seeing, dives into the male gaze itself in addition to the damaging effects it has on our social structure. The insidious gaze has painted women as vulnerable and serving to please. Unfortunately, it is easy to identify it in past and present records of society (e.g paintings, sculptures, portraits, etc). Not only is the male gaze adapted in older art pieces, it is manifested in modern day media including magazine ads and tooth paste commercials. The male gaze is a frequent entity within our society today because as a community, we have allowed women to be objectified on a daily basis. John Berger explains that, "Men act, women appear" (47), and as opposed to women being creatures of action they have become empty vessels with no larger purpose than to sit pretty and remain silent. The male gaze is heavily dependent on a woman's subconscious submissiveness to the world around her which leads us to take a closer look at the power imbalance between male and female. Essentially, the male gaze is a notch on the patriarchal belt society has worn for centuries.
The Will to Change, written by Bell Hooks, is an insightful book that takes patriarchal values and places them under a microscope; however, Hooks looks beyond the stereotypical idea of patriarchy and gifts her readers with a new perspective. Hooks defines patriarchy as, "... 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" (18). Typically, women are considered the victims of patriarchy but Bell Hooks introduces men as victims to patriarchy as well. In the chapter "Understanding Patriarchy", Hooks details the horrid abuse both she and her brother suffered at the hands of their patriarchal father. Hooks states, "In reality I was stronger and more violent than my brother, which we quickly learned was bad. And he was a gentle, peaceful boy which we learned was really bad" (19). Patriarchy is not solely a device against women but a device used against society to keep distribution of power painfully imbalanced. An example of this would be a woman being shamed for solving an issue with aggression while a man gets praised for doing the same exact thing.
Fortunately for myself, I have not suffered greatly from crippling patriarchal values because both of my parents have taught my siblings and I that everyone is created equally and gender roles are not a real construct. With that being said, outside of our household safe haven, my siblings and I quickly learned that a seemingly simple concept of equality is not as simple as we thought. School is a great example of the toxic sexism my brother and I were exposed to. Similar to Hooks and her brother, I was the more eccentric one whereas my brother was more reserved. Of course he had his fair share of friends but one day her began to come home after school and stopped hang out with his friend group. My mom and I asked him where his friends were and he claimed that they were busy. Again and again we would as him and he would give us the same response: "They are busy". Later we found out that the reason for his isolation from his friends is because they were making fun of him for not participating in what they were doing. They were catcalling girls, calling them crude names, and bragging about their bodies they had gotten pictures of without the girl's consent. Despite feeling proud and happy that my brother removed himself from a bad crowd of people, it saddened us to know that he was made fun of for being a decent human. Situations like this are not uncommon, they do not only occur in our small little town in New Jersey. Patriarchy is a perverse entity in all of our lives and all people are effected by it: negative and positive effects. With social media being our primary connection to the world away from us, patriarchy oozes out of the corners and seeps into developing brains of our impressionable children. Tweets on Twitter degrading women for fixing cars and men for indulging in make-up is the reason why the patriarchal views in the world are hostile and constant. Patriarchy has changed my view on the world in a negative way because people are made equal and should be equal. It is upsetting to know that society has failed in creating a perfect balance in all things but nothing is ever really perfect is it?
The Will to Change, written by Bell Hooks, is an insightful book that takes patriarchal values and places them under a microscope; however, Hooks looks beyond the stereotypical idea of patriarchy and gifts her readers with a new perspective. Hooks defines patriarchy as, "... 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" (18). Typically, women are considered the victims of patriarchy but Bell Hooks introduces men as victims to patriarchy as well. In the chapter "Understanding Patriarchy", Hooks details the horrid abuse both she and her brother suffered at the hands of their patriarchal father. Hooks states, "In reality I was stronger and more violent than my brother, which we quickly learned was bad. And he was a gentle, peaceful boy which we learned was really bad" (19). Patriarchy is not solely a device against women but a device used against society to keep distribution of power painfully imbalanced. An example of this would be a woman being shamed for solving an issue with aggression while a man gets praised for doing the same exact thing.
Fortunately for myself, I have not suffered greatly from crippling patriarchal values because both of my parents have taught my siblings and I that everyone is created equally and gender roles are not a real construct. With that being said, outside of our household safe haven, my siblings and I quickly learned that a seemingly simple concept of equality is not as simple as we thought. School is a great example of the toxic sexism my brother and I were exposed to. Similar to Hooks and her brother, I was the more eccentric one whereas my brother was more reserved. Of course he had his fair share of friends but one day her began to come home after school and stopped hang out with his friend group. My mom and I asked him where his friends were and he claimed that they were busy. Again and again we would as him and he would give us the same response: "They are busy". Later we found out that the reason for his isolation from his friends is because they were making fun of him for not participating in what they were doing. They were catcalling girls, calling them crude names, and bragging about their bodies they had gotten pictures of without the girl's consent. Despite feeling proud and happy that my brother removed himself from a bad crowd of people, it saddened us to know that he was made fun of for being a decent human. Situations like this are not uncommon, they do not only occur in our small little town in New Jersey. Patriarchy is a perverse entity in all of our lives and all people are effected by it: negative and positive effects. With social media being our primary connection to the world away from us, patriarchy oozes out of the corners and seeps into developing brains of our impressionable children. Tweets on Twitter degrading women for fixing cars and men for indulging in make-up is the reason why the patriarchal views in the world are hostile and constant. Patriarchy has changed my view on the world in a negative way because people are made equal and should be equal. It is upsetting to know that society has failed in creating a perfect balance in all things but nothing is ever really perfect is it?
Work Cited:
Hooks, Bell. Understanding Patriarchy. Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2010.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment