Patriarchy and the male gaze

Male gaze is something so common that the thought of it is rarely in any one's head until something happens and a person gets concerned or offended, and I think that's something that has to be changed considering it's been this way for the longest time. John Berger uses his book Ways of Seeing to describe to us in what ways the male gaze is perceived throughout the art industry opening our eyes to a way we haven’t been seeing it. To me, when I would look at art, I never paid much attention to the details that are so obvious now which are the men are clothed and barely any women are and that’s because I just didn’t think to realize how somethings change over time and clearly some things don’t.

By that last sentence I’m referencing how women are treated. In this art years ago and today, women are treated and handled based on their looks. “Every one of her actions – whatever its direct purpose or motivation – is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated” (Berger, 47).  The surveyed as Berger called it was painted naked because they were enjoyable to look at initiating the idea that women are to do, say, and dress however they do simply for the male population not because they feel pretty wearing certain clothes or confident in some make up. Bringing this up in the art industry I think was extremely important for other people to read this book of Berger’s and realize what was actually happening so that other artists, men and women, were able to make art making fun of the male gaze and being able to begin their careers by using the emotion built up from the occurances. 

What were you wearing? Exhibit at University of Kansas

In a Huffpost article the author Alanna Vagianos shed light on an exhibit that was taking place at the University of Kansas that had to do with what people, male and female, were wearing when they had gotten raped which shows how pervasive the male gaze is because once one person comes out and has the confidence to come out about what happened to them and the partiarchy behind it, more and more people feel comfortable and gain the confidence to do the same thing which is why the #MeToo hashtag would trend on twitter. Stuff like that allows people to come together to stand up against the male gaze and the patriarchy as much as they can but unfortunately there is only so much they could do. 

Speaking of patriarchy, that is something that kind of goes hand in hand with the male gaze because the men are asserting their dominance in a way that puts women down so they make sure they're aware of their position, so to say. Author Bell Hooks used her platform of publishing a book to explain how she went against the patriarchy in her household growing up and sort of sending out the message that it's okay to do that. Although this was once something that was normalized, the men going out to work and the women staying home to take care of the children are gender roles that are slowly but surely changing. Hooks exposing her childhood helped the audience realize that patriarchy really 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" (Hooks, 18). 

We blame patriarchy  #MeToo movement

With patriarchy, we as women are led to believe that men are able to do whatever they want because they were the ones with the power and we were not to stop them. This is tied into the male gaze discussion because even though it's not like this so much anymore, it is a common thing for women to not speak out about things that happen to them because they think they will get beat more or the male will do something to them and that is a perfect example of patriarchy. Even Bell Hooks explains to us what happened to her for just wanting to play marbles with her brother but that was something her father didn't like and when she didn't listen to him he got mad because during the time where patriarchy was a normal thing the men got mad when they weren't being listened to because it showed they didn't have the dominance they thought they did.

There are still so many issues women face that stop them from being successful because the world isn't ready for that yet. Because of this, there are many feminist movements, more awareness is being brought to people's attention and it's even being brought to social media which is basically the backbone of this generation so more people are aware. Even the thought of women athlete's being paid the same as the men make people uncomfortable and angry even when it has absolutely nothing to do with them and most of the ones bothered by it are the men which, I think, shows how problematic men could be.





works cited:

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2008.

Hooks, Bell. Understanding Patriarchy. Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2010.

Vagianos, Alanna. “Art Exhibit Powerfully Answers The Question 'What Were You Wearing?'.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 15 Sept. 2017, www.huffpost.com/entry/powerful-art-exhibit-powerfully-answers-the-question-what-were-you-wearing_n_59baddd2e4b02da0e1405d2a.