Gender Roles, Subject and Power

During the Middle Ages in Europe, women and men were expected to fill separate spheres of society. Women were usually expected to be housewives. They were responsible for taking care of cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. They were also the provider of their homes. So they held other positions including peasant, artisan, and nun. Other women held some other leadership roles such as queen regnant. Women were “the virtual prisoners of the men in their lives” (Guerrilla Girls, 19). They were perceived as being inferior to men. Moreover, Chadwick emphasized that "women's social roles remained circumscribed by a Christian ethic that stressed obedience and chastity…maternal and domestic responsibility... feudal legal system...[and] control of property" (Chadwick, 44). They were denied the right for education, freedom of speech, the right to vote and the right to inherit properties. According to the Guerrilla Girls, women were “required to be faithful to her husband and adultery could be punished by flogging or being buried alive” (P.22). In general, women were entirely shut out of the public sphere of 19th-century society. Though, most men were drafted as soldiers during the war so women were given the right to take on their jobs at home such as managing a property. According to Chadwick, "the eleventh and twelfth centuries encouraged large numbers of women to take up religious lives" (P.53). Women were seeking to escape harsh treatment and their only way was to become nuns. In the portrait below, Hortus Deliciarum (Gardens of Delight) was a medieval manuscript that was put together by Herrad of Landsberg to “praise the Christ and the Church, (Chadwick, 56)

Moving forward into the Renaissance, it was a better period for women compared to the middle ages period. Women’s roles have changed though they were still secondary to men’s roles. Most of the women remained uneducated housewives. However, “one of the few ways a woman could work as an artist was to be born into a family of artists that needed assistance in the family workshop” (Guerrilla Girls, 29). The Renaissance allowed women to become independent artists. Moreover, women could be educated if they were born into artistic families. So some women artists were taught in their father’s workshop. They were able to learn advanced ways to paint. For example, they painted other women in a way that gave them power and freedom. Chadwick also mentioned that “Bologna was unique among Italian cities for having both a University which had educated women since the Middle Ages” (87). For example, the school of Bologna was a huge achievement for women where they learned art, law and, philosophy. Artemisia Gentileschi and Elisabetta Siriani were some of the famous women artists during that period.

Artemisia Gentileschi. Judith Slaying Holofernes

The 19th century by far was the most progressive era in the study of women in art. Chadwick stated that "Modern feminist campaigns emerged out of complex nineteenth-century reform movements in Western Europe and America. Nineteenth-century reforms movements were part of a growing middle-class response to widespread social and economic changes following the Industrial Revolution" (175). Women in the period of time enjoyed more freedom and various opportunities, especially in the art field. There was a demand for women to work outside of their homes. Women were also interested in the art of photography. Rosa Bonheur was one of the women artists who “encouraged women to be rebellious."  (Guerrilla Girls, 49). She had a father who believed in the education of women and was a director of an art school. The “Horse Fair” shown below is one of her most recognized work. It depicts a horse sale that women generally were not permitted to attend. She dressed up as a man so that she could sketch horses at the fair without being bothered.

Rosa Bonheur. The Horse Fair. 1887. Oil on canvas.

Other women were trying to convey women’s power through their artwork. For example, Elizabeth Thompson showed that the struggles women faced didn’t stop them. She painted topics such as wars and fighting. One of her famous paintings is” Return from the Inkerman” which shows weak men returning from the war. Women also began doing needle and quilt work. Further, Quilting was used to highlight many of the social issues such as Women's Rights Movement and the Abolition of Slavery. For instance, Harriet Powers was one of the most famous women to have her quilts in a museum. She used the applique style in her quilting. Also, Edmonia Lewis was very famous for her marble sculptures. Overall, all of these women had to step out of their comfort zones to overcome all the barriers and become successful.

Harriet Powers Quilt

These roles influenced women in many ways. For instance, during the middle ages, women were perceived as inferior to men. Their roles were limited to being housewives. Though the possible way to change this was to become nuns. Further, men and women worked together in guilds but women weren’t allowed to put their names on that work. Through the Renaissance era, women had few more rights. However, their roles were still secondary to men’s roles. Moreover, education was more convenient for the wealthy and high-class families. The 19^th century was a great leap for women artists. They enjoyed more rights such as freedom, education, some equality and slavery abolition. So from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance until today, women in art have been fighting for their rights. Many women have become successful artists and created famous pieces of art and sculptures that are well known in today’s culture. For instance, Florence Freeman who created the “Stonewall Jackson” which was the first Confederate Civil War monument in America. Also, Vinnie Hoxie who created the Abraham Lincoln statue which can be found in Statuary Hall in the Capitol in Washington. 

In the links below illustrate how women artists struggled through the 19th century have.
https://france-amerique.com/en/the-struggle-of-19th-century-women-artists-in-paris/

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history-basics/tools-understanding-art/a/a-brief-history-of-women-in-art

Work cited:
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.

gender role subject and power

Nikki Ford

Gender Roles, Subject and Power

          Throughout history women have lived their lives in enslavement to men, regarded as second class citizens. Throughout the centuries a woman’s role in society had traditionally been taking care of her family and home. A women’s scope was the domestic setting. From  the early 1800’s to the early 1900’s women struggled for equality and  to move out of the domestic setting, however their role of slavery was reiterated by political leaders and writers of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. One of the notable reform in 19^th century that changed the history and face of America was the women rights movement.  The movement was started at 19^th century and it became one of the largest organized group in the following years. Even though it had many objectives during its initial stages, it later concentrated solely on securing the franchise for women.

“Nineteenth- century reform movements were part of a growing middle-class response to widespread social and economic changes following the Industrial Revolution. As aristocratic and mercantile capitalism evolved into industrial capitalism, the middle class emerged as the dominant political political and social force.” (Chadwick, 175) As at 19^th century, some women took effort to fight for their rights. Some of these rights included ownership of property that were left behind by their husbands who had passed on. As the movement grew bigger enormous changes was noticed throughout the United States, which transformed the lives of women at all levels of the society. The changes were also noted in the way slavery was carried out. Slavery would later be outlawed in the United States. “The 19^th Century saw the war to abolish slavery in the United States and the beginning of women’s long struggle for equality. At the same time, male painters began to obsess over and objectify the naked female body as never before.” (Girls, 47).  “Women artists existed in a contradictory relationship to the prevailing middle class ideals of femininity. They were caught between a social ideology that prohibited the individual competition and public visibility necessary for success in the arts, and the educational and social reform movements that made the nineteenth century the greatest period of female social progress in history.” (Chadwick, 176-177) Adding on to that, women were not only criticized by art critics but by their significant others. It is completely unjust for the women to have to limit themselves not only to other artists but that even when creating this limitation for themselves, it still did not necessarily work out because of the male artist’s ego hurting due to feelings of inferiority to their women counterparts. In a way this could have been a deterrent for many women artist throughout history. The Guerrilla Girls have been fighting back against the Patriarchal system by using art as an expressive form to get their message across regarding female under representation in the art world. The Guerrilla Girls and Whitney Chadwick used their canvases and other art forms to express themselves and push back against society. All these forms have been forms of women continuously advocating for the same recognition that male artists earn, and quite easily by comparison.

            Women were striped from the leading academy and could not participate. Furthermore, there were moral and social humiliations that prevented women from total participation in the artistic circles. There were taboos that limited the participation of women in public without being accompanied by a chaperone. This narrowed the range of subjects they could depict in their artworks. These social and institutional obstacles prevented women from developing careers in the arts. However, a group of women artistes emerged during the impressionism movement of the 1980's and prevailed the social and institutional obstacles to change the perception of art history. These women artist will show how social and institutional challenges that women faced during the impressionism art of the nineteenth-century and how they overcame these challenges and changed the perception of art history. During the nineteenth-century there were gender based social restrictions that limited women’s opportunities and potential. Women were supposed to stay at home and could only venture out in few public spaces accompanies by a male chaperone. Due to these restrictions, women artists’ had few experiences to use in their art as compared to their male equals. Women had a narrower range of ideas to draw from in their artworks because they had little access to artistic ideas due to restricted mobility. “Elizabeth Thompson was the best known woman producing historical paintings on a grand scale, a number of other women turned to the writings of women and to history’s heroic women for subjects that would enable them to enter the field of history painting. While women artists were seldom, if ever given public commissions for history paintings, they nevertheless produced large and important works which proposed new readings of historical events.” (Chadwick, 203)

            In conclusion, women reforms in the society in 19^th century made a positive impact as seen above. It is through the efforts of few women who took the initial stages to go against the odds to come up with these rights. In today's’ society, these rights are celebrated annually in remembrance of their devotion. Women now enjoy worldwide freedom to lead, to vote, to choose for themselves who to marry and even the religion they wish to attend. In the United States for example, women now allowed to show their art work freely and express how they feel.

was not included in essay

Harriet Powers, Pictorial Quilt 1895

was not included in essay

Anne Lea Merrit 1844

was not included in essay

Margaretta Burr interior 19th century

work cited
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print. 
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print

links that relate to the artwork

https://www.google.com/search?q=Harriet+Powers+in+pictorial&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi70t-B_NzgAhUpU98KHZopBuIQ_AUIDigB&biw=1440&bih=771#imgrc=6157YmyWmhVnvM:

https://www.google.com/search?q=margaretta+burr+interior+of+a+harem&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzkLzb-9zgAhWBNd8KHR8pDKQQ_AUIDigB&biw=1440&bih=771#imgrc=jbfDmGch5D7MMM:

https://www.google.com/search?q=anna+lea+merritt+war&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjsgqGz-9zgAhVLm-AKHdhMDogQ_AUIDigB&biw=1440&bih=771#imgrc=qXmwLcTX9r8qPM:

Midterm Exam Study Guide

STUDY GUIDE 
NOTE: small changes may still be made until 2/21-they will appear in pink

Midterm Exam 
10 - Identifications (Artist, Title, Date)
2 - Short essays/Side by side: Identification (Artists, Titles, Dates) and Compare and Contrast two works in a short essay

The Gaze and the Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls, Advantages of Being a Woman Artist, 1986/89
Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into The Met?, 2005
bell hooks' definition of Patriarchy (~1 paragraph)
John Berger's definition of Male Gaze (~1 paragraph)

Middle Ages
Herrad of Landsberg, Hortus Deliciarum, after 1170
Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias c1142-52
Christine De Piz(s)an,  Christine De Piz(s)an in her Study, from The City of Ladies, 1405

Renaissance
Sofonisba Anguissola, Self Portrait, 1561
Sofonisba Anguissola, Queen Anne of Austria, 1570
Sofonisba Anguissola, Boy Bitten By a Crayfish, before 1559
Elisabetta Siriani, Portia Wounding Her Thigh, 1664
*Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, 1610
*male artist Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders, 1555
*male artist Orazio Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant, 1610
*Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant, 1618
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1618
Artemisia Gentileschi, Self Portrait, 1630

17th & 18th Century Painting
Judith Leyster, The Proposition, 1631
*Judith Leyster, A Woman Sewing by Candlelight, 1633
*male artist Vermeer, The Lacemaker, 1665-68
Anna Maria Sybilla Merian, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium 1705
Rachel Ruysch, Flowerpiece, after 1700
Angelica Kauffman, Zeuxis Selecting Models for His Picture of Helen of Troy, c. 1764
Angelica Kauffman, Vendor of Love, c. 1780
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of Marie Antoinette with Her Children, 1787

Victorian England
*Edith Haylar, Feeding the Swans, 1889
*Alice Walker, Wounded Feelings, 1861
Anna Blunden, The Seamstress, 1854
*Rebecca Solomon, The Governess, 1853
*Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless, 1857
Rosa Bonheur, Plowing in the Nivernais, 1848
Rosa Bonheur, The Horse Fair, 1853-55
Elizabeth Thompson, Calling the Roll After an Engagement, Crimea, 1874

19C American Craft 
Harriet Powers, Pictorial Quilt 1895
Lilly Martin Spencer, We Both Must Fade, 1869
Lilly Martin Spencer, War Spirit at Home, 1866

Harriet Hosmer, Zenobia in Chains, 1859
Harriet Hosmer, Beatrice Cenci, 1857
Edmonia Lewis, Old Arrow Maker, 1866-72
Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free, 1867

Impressionism
Alice Barber Stephens, The Female Life Class, 1879
Susan MacDowel Eakins, Portrait of Thomas Eakins, 1889
Berthe Morisot, Mother and Sister of the Artist,1870
Eva Gonzales, Pink Morning, 1874
Mary Cassatt, A Cup of Tea, c 1880
Mary Cassatt, Woman in Black at the Opera, 1880
Berthe Morisot, Psyche, 1876

*Works marked with an asterisk are possible works for the essay questions. Please note the comparisons and contrasts that were made in class for these works (side-by-side).

Male Gaze and Patriarchy

Nathaniel Saint-Germain

Professor Caçoilo

Art and Women

12 February 2019

Since the beginning of time, women have mostly been seen as inferior to men. Whether it be through skill, physical or emotional strength, et cetera, the female population has been seen as lesser when compared to the rest of the population. There has always been this negative connotation, which society allows, that the idea of women being submissive or accepting the idea that their different viewpoints are based on their actions. These gender roles and stereotypes have arisen as a byproduct of the overwhelming patriarchal influence experienced in western society throughout the last few centuries.  We see this in John Berger’s “Way of Seeing,” where he explains the image and expectations they had to deal with in relation to the male gaze. According to Berger, the male gaze is the way a man can have the right to judge how feminine a women is due to the way she presents herself to the world. Moreover, the male gaze is seen as a way of looking at women in such a way that it empowers the ego of men and objectifies women as sexual beings.



“From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually” (Berger 46), which explicitly explains how it is instilled in women to start thinking and behaving in a specific manner so that men will one day be able to accept as beautiful, attractive, or sexy. They begin to conform and compete to sometimes unattainable standards of beauty and gender roles in order to be perceived as the ideal woman. Our society today does nothing to destabilize or dismantle this issue. Women are seen on television and social media portraying sometimes unrealistic body goals where if you have the biggest assets and the smallest waist, you will be vixen--more attractive to others based on the socialized norm. The extent to which some women go to achieve these “body goals” become dangerous to their health at a certain extent and in some cases causes psychological harm. Women have been known to starve themselves, workout to the point where their muscles deteriorate and even go through surgical procedures in order to conform. The magazines, movies, and even most of the modeling agency makes it a requirement that you look a certain way to be beautiful. Then, they put you on a pedestal not for your intelligence or the various talents you may be able to portray, but to showcase looks that fit into the male gaze.



This idea became evident in early art when the women in paintings began holding mirrors. “The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight” (Berger 51). Mirrors were being used as a way for the women to validate themselves for the male population. They would not be trying to impress themselves, but focused on men’s view of them. This again highlights the fact that women should be highlighted for their capabilities rather their appearance.



Nowadays, more women, and some men, are looking for change. People are finally voicing their opinions on the female life. Feminists are fighting for increased equality between men and women, liberty of sexuality, and other ideas that go against gender notions. Ultimately, they are fighting patriarchy--”a social system that consists of males inherently dominating” (Hooks 18). A great example of this is written in Bell Hooks “Understanding Patriarchy” where she identifies the issues of genders learning at a young age and having set roles. “We force them [boys] to feel pain and deny feelings (Hooks 22) which is an epidemic that we instilled in our new generations time and time again. Men are raised to be stoic, strong leaders of their families. They are not to show emotions and the only emotion it is acceptable to let out is anger. It is seen as being “soft or sensitive if that is the case. Within the female gaze, men are to be seen in this aspect and shows true character.



Apps, such as Instagram, Snapchat, and many more, have adapted to be the new mainstream form to attract the male gaze. Instagram updates ever so often to add features and filters to help females make the ‘right’ photo all based on the society’s standards of looking attractive. The filters range in terms of adjustment. They can adjust the shape and size of a woman’s eyes, extend her eyelashes and even sharpen her jawline. Although the tactics for celebrating the the ideal female have become more subtle, they are still major influences on the male gaze just as much as the female psyche. As long as society remains patriarchal the male gaze will motivate the action of women whether it is conscious or subconscious. As unrealistic as some of these ideologies may be, they will still continue to thrive. 

Works Cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books. 1972. Print.

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

Male Gaze and Patriarchy

Raoudah Samir

Professor Cacoilo

Art & Women

7 February 2019

Male Gaze & Patriarchy

 In 1975, the term “male gaze” was first introduced by Laura Mulvey in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Mulvey explains that art involving women is solely for the satisfaction of the audience (heterosexual men). She describes how women in films are usually the objects rather than the possessors, because society has a general assumption that by default, hetersosexual men are the targeted audience for most film genres. In John Berger’s “Way of Seeing”, he notes that the cultural presence of the woman is still very much different than that of a man and that “a woman must continuously watch herself. She is almost continuously accompanied by her own image of herself”. Meaning, a woman is always subconsciously thinking if she appears presentable to the male whether it is publicly or in a photo or image.

 Although many people may not realize it, but the Disney princesses such as Cinderella, Jasmine, Ariel, etc., are examples of the Male Gaze. What makes this an example of the male gaze is that these princesses were created to satisfy the male eye. Jasmine, the princess from Aladdin for example, wears a revealing crop top which exposes her breasts, stomach, and her unrealistically slim waist. Also, in Cinderella, the step- sisters who were not as pretty as Cinderella were not chosen by the prince because they were not as pretty as Cinderella. This makes girls feel like they want to look and aspire to be like these princesses and may make children question their worth and societal view of their race.

 The Male Gaze is pervasive in art and popular culture because it is largely a accepted answer to why women portray themselves the way they do and why they were painted a specific way. Why else would women pose and or be painted looking completely available, seductive, and nude?

In the piece “Understanding Patriarchy,” Bell Hooks defines patriarchy as 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) The idea of patriarchy can be a major contribution as to why sexism and the male gaze continue so casually in this day and age. For instance, I myself have been affected by patriarchy growing up in a middle eastern family. My brother (only a year apart from me) is allowed to come and go as he pleases and can even stay several days as he pleases and can even stay out several days without being questioned. God forbid I stay out past 10. This is all because society has an idea that men can be free and dominant while girls should stay confined and “protected”.



Citations and Links

https://i2.wp.com/www.filminquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Disney-Princesses.jpg?ssl=1

 Berger,John “Ways of Seeing”



Hooks, Bell "Understanding Patriarchy"

Mini Post: Amrita Sher- Gil

Amrita Sher- Gil was a Hungarian- Indian painter who specialized as a pioneer of modern Indian art and is known to be one of the most prestigious female artists of all history. Sher- Gil was born on January 30, 1931 in Budapest, Hungary. Sher- Gil really pursued art when Indologist Ervin Batkay (Sher- Gil's uncle), noticed her artistic talent during his visit to Sher- Gil's family. Batkay then pushed Sher- Gil to pursue art and guided her by critiquing her work and provided her with an academic back- bone to grow on. Amrita's early career was heavily influneced by European artists such as Paul Cezanne and Paul Gaugin.

Sher- Gil's works mainly focused on people living in poverty and Indian Women. Most of the women Sher- Gil painted seemed to look full of sorrow. This was a choice made because she wanted to deeply "interpret the lives of Indians and particularly of the poor Indians pictorially, to paint the silent images of infinite submission and patience , to depict the angular brown bodies strangely beautiful in their ugliness, to reproduce on canvas the impression their sad eyes created on me." In general, most Amrita Sher- Gil's subjects portrayed the melancholy reflection of Indian women because of the harsh conditions of poverty. 

http://www.howtotalkaboutarthistory.com/artist-feature/artist-feature-amrita-sher-gil/

Biki Aly

Art and Women

Professor Caçoilo

The male look is the demonstration of portraying ladies and the world, in the visual expressions and in writing, from a manly, hetero viewpoint that presents and speaks to ladies as sexual articles for the joy of the male watcher. In other words the male gaze explains the idea that when a women is in a art piece who are used as a satisfaction for the male watcher. This allocation started during the renaissance period and till this day is still going on. The male gaze was coined by feminist Laura Mulvey in 1975. The Male Gaze is influential in craftsmanship and pop culture since it is to a great extent a coherent response to why ladies photo the manner in which they do and why they were painted a specific way. In John Berger’s reading “Ways of Seeing”, he says, “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself” (16). By saying this, it shows that while a woman is being looked at unconsciously she is thinking about how she looks to the person “the male gaze” who is looking at her. Down below shows a picture from the Daily Art Magazine that was published by Alina Nevskaya which shows an example of this matter.

In the reading of Bell Hooks “Understanding Patriarchy” he says, "Patriarchy is a political system that insists that males are inherently domineering, 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). By saying this, Hooks is saying that patriarchy can be a very valid reason as to why the male gaze is still happening until today.

Sexism can be an example of the male gaze. Society has the idea that men need to be dominant and strong at all times. When men engage in an act of sexism it makes them feel like they are dominant. An example of this is, in the movie “Fifty Shades of Grey” one of the main characters, Christian Grey is an example of patriarchy because he has this sexual abusive relationship with the second main character Anastasia. In the movie Christian gives Anastasia these paper that list all these sexual things that he can do to her whenever he wants to. In his home he has this secret room that no one was allowed to enter except for him and her but she was not allowed to enter it herself. He would take Anastasia in there and blindfold her so that she cannot see what he is going to do to her. In other words Christian is the dominant character and Anastasia is the submissive character which means Christian can do anything he wants to her. In the photo below it will show you how Anastasia is blindfolded having no idea what is going to be done next while Christian who is dominant is behind her taking control.

Another example is one of my own personal examples. Growing up in an Egyption family household my family was very strict on me and all my girl cousins. My male cousins were only 5-6 years older than me. When I ask to go out the following statement after that is that I have to be home by 10pm and while I am out my parents call me 3-4 times just to check up on me. On the other hand when my male cousins go out they do not have to be home by a certain time and they don’t have to be checked up on. To continue on, another personal example is when I go to Egypt with my family the one thing I can be sure of that will happen as soon as I leave my house is a man whispering at me, or calling me a “working machine” which is a phrase in Egypt that means a women with a good body for sex. Some man would even go out there and follow you with their friends just so they can seem like their cool.

After talking about the male gaze and patriarchy in class and looking more into it it really showed me how much they actually happen. Now a days a lot of men look at women for not who they are but more of how their body is shaped. A woman can be intelligent, wise and more but if she does not have a good body than she is looked upon because she is considered to not fit in the picture that man create for us. This is an embarrassment for society because a woman having a good body is not what it should be all about. It is very heartbreaking knowing that when I have kids one day they are going to have to live in a world as cruel as this.

Male Gaze / Patriarchy

A camera moves gradually over the bends of a lady's body — and each lady in the gathering of people rolls their eyes in annoyance. That erotic, kinda pornograph-y point of view? It's our old companion, the male gaze, a hypothetical term authored in 1975 by the film faultfinder Laura Mulvey that is practically precisely what it sounds like. In film, the male gaze looks while the female body is taken a look at; the look can emerge out of the crowd, from a male character inside the film, or from the camera itself. The "male gaze" conjures the sexual legislative issues of the look and proposes a sexualised method for looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, women is outwardly situated as an "object" of hetero male want. Her sentiments, musings and her own sexual drives are less critical than her being "encircled" by what men want. Power, for men, is extrinsic (is defined by some object outside and beyond their body/mind) while power, for women, is intrinsic (is based upon their conceptions of their own body/mind). “To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men.” (Berger, 46)

“The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”

Painting: Woman with a Mirror (1885) by Florent Joseph Marie Willems

“Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation. Yet most men do not use the word “patriarchy” in everyday life. Most men never think about patriarchy—what it means, how it is created and sustained. Many men in our nation would not be able to spell the word or pronounce it correctly.” (Hooks, 2) Women's activist scholars have extended the meaning of male centric culture to depict a foundational inclination against women. As second-wave feminists analyzed society amid the 1960s, they observed families headed by ladies and female pioneers. They were, obviously, worried about whether this was exceptional. Progressively noteworthy, notwithstanding, was the manner in which society saw ladies in power as an exemption to an all in all held perspective of ladies' "job" in the public eye.

According to John Berger, unlike men, women have their object of power within themselves (or, it can be said that women themselves are objects of power). They assume their “powerful” identity because they want to actively transcend their initially subordinate social position. Thus transforming and creating the idea of the “female gaze”.

What is the female gaze, at that point? It's enthusiastic and close. It considers individuals to be individuals. It tries to identify than to externalize. (Or on the other hand not.) It's aware, it's specialized, it hasn't gotten an opportunity to create, it comes clean, it includes physical work, it's ladylike and unashamed, it's a piece of an antiquated sex double, it ought to be contemplated and created, it ought to be pulverized, it will spare us, it will keep us down. The female cinematographers engaged with the venture have the same number of sentiments on the female look and its accommodation (or scarcity in that department) as you may anticipate from a gathering of gifted, attentive, profoundly prepared individuals who are more than simply "female cinematographers."

Fronted by model and activist Adwoa Aboah and shot solely by female photographers, open The Female Gaze Issue to find a celebration of the visionary women shaping the fashion industry and beyond. Who run the world? Girls.

The Female Gaze Issue of i-D Magazine

In The Female Gaze Issue of i-D, they create this to shed some light on the brilliant and inspiring women in our world today. For the first time in i-D's 36-year history, they celebrate the power of the female lens, working with female photographers only from front to back. “The situation London's women and girls have created for themselves is special and exceptional," The girl pictured in the above photo is  “smart, brave, and she possesses the wisdom and mental resilience of someone twice her age.” Be that as it may, in particular of all, her passion is change. Adwoa Aboah is that young lady. The 24-year-old British brought into the world model and performing artist is the author of Gurls Talk; the women's activist activity standing up on habit, sexuality, self-perception and psychological wellness in the plan to get young ladies talking.

Works Cited

Fuller, Peter. Seeing Berger: a Revaluation of Ways of Seeing. Writers and Readers, 1981.

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

Telfer, Tori. “How Do We Define the Female Gaze in 2018?” Vulture, Vulture, 2 Aug. 2018, www.vulture.com/2018/08/how-do-we-define-the-female-gaze-in-2018.html.

A Beginner's Guide to Male Gaze and Patriarchy

In his work Ways of Seeing, English artist and art critic John Berger deconstructs the oft-misunderstood term “male gaze”. The male gaze, coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey, refers to the way women must present themselves and operate under the assumption that men are always watching and scrutinizing them for appeal, attraction, and any threat to their own power. “To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men,” Berger writes. “A woman must continually watch herself…She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life” (Berger 46). In simpler terms, men look at women, who watch themselves being looked at as if they themselves are males looking at women.

This concept is derived from visual media, particularly paintings and film. Historically, the female nude painting has been a staple of fine art and cultural significance. Beginning with the depiction of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, mostly male painters have created naked portraits for largely male viewership and consumption. As society and the art world grew more secular, “other themes also offered the opportunity of painting nudes. But in them all there remains the implication that the subject (a woman) is aware of being seen by a spectator. She is not naked as she is. She is naked as the spectator sees her” (Berger 49-50). Through art, women and their bodies are offered as objects to admire and therefore exploit for male benefit.

These mindsets and behaviors extend also to other media, such as film and advertisement. Much like the nude, these forms of content hypersexualize women for male consumption, as well as female judgment and comparison. The kicker is that ads especially aim to sell products to the demographic they alienate; women become upset at the marketing, but also at the fact that they do not look like the model in the ad, so they become inclined to buy said product to grow closer to this male ideal.

A Bebe ad demonstrating the modern male gaze

What allows this sort of behavior is another thrown-around term known as “patriarchy”. In her work Understanding Patriarchy, author and activist bell hooks defines patriarchy as 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). 

Though to some this may seem like an outdated system, patriarchy is still alive and well in modern day society, everywhere from expectations about what a “traditional” family should look like to the way men are given preferential treatment in most every field. These dynamics teach young people to act, present, and treat others in particular ways that--at best--are unsettling. And even though times have changed and grown more progressive, there is such a road ahead to combat and perhaps end the patriarchy and male gaze.

There are several things to address that persist in contemporary culture. Firstly, as bell hooks points out, "many female-headed households endorse and promote patriarchal thinking with far greater passion than two-parent households" because, as she continues, "women in such households are far more likely to idealize the patriarchal male role and patriarchal men than are women who live with patriarchal men every day" (hooks 24). It is pivotal for parents to teach children not to repress their emotions or establish dominance through violence, not to act in total submission or think of everyone else as competition for affection and praise.

Also worth noting, both as a direct counter to patriarchy/the male gaze and a generally important term, are "intersectionality" and "intersectional feminism". Defined by Merriam-Webster (through the IWDA) as “the complex, cumulative manner in which the effects of different forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect”, intersectionality is a crucial concept in understanding the different ways prejudice affects people. Coined by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, the term presents a necessary perspective on how women of all sorts---as well as men and non-binary folks--are affected by patriarchy. Though seeming straightforward, the system does not isolate its oppression, thus making it essential to examine it through an intersectional lens. 

Ultimately, in order to dismantle the system, men and women must work together. Everyone must learn about it and its ongoing and lasting effects on all people, and together unlearn the toxic mindsets encouraged by patriarchy. Learn, address, teach, criticize, act, improve.

Buzzfeed staff recreates impractical female superhero poses

Works Cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books. 1972. Print.

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

Tiven, Lucy. “What Happens When Real Women Are Photoshopped Like Female Comic Book 

Characters.” ATTN:ATTN: 2 Apr. 2016, archive.attn.com/stories/7017/women-in-comic-book character-poses.

“What Does Intersectional Feminism Actually Mean?” IWDA, International Women's Development Agency, 8 Nov. 2018, iwda.org.au/what-does-intersectional-feminism-actually-mean/.

Since the beginning of art, women artists were not praised for their work or were not able to actually study and practice art. Through women's history, they had very few rights and opportunities than the men in the society.  From there, the male gaze has been one concept that has affected the art of many artists and how it affects women in today's society. In John Berger's, "Ways of Seeing", he establishes that women are objects, in which men pay close attention to them and how they look. He states that the "surveyor", which are men, survey or check women and the way they portray themselves towards men. Berger says, "The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" (47).Women are sights that need to be watched, whether they like or not. The men are almost like cameras; they tend to focus on the woman from the bottom up or from the top down. Either way, the woman is seen as a sight, where she is the object that needs attention. In the painting below by Diego Velasquez, it is Venus that is looking at herself at mirror and admiring her own beauty and what she has to offer to a man. She looks at the mirror, but its almost as if through the mirror she is staring at the person who is looking at this painting. She is grabbing their attention and her sensual body keys the fact that she wants to have sex.

Patriarchy is one key factor that every man and woman should know about them selves. It is a political social system that is mainly dominated by males and the ideas that they have will only make them superior to their enemies, which are women. Throughout history, women have been the called the enemies, especially the ones that were outspoken and were somewhat intelligent. By keeping women from going to school and working, men were able to focus on bettering themselves and kept women at home to make everything run smoothly. In Bell Hooks, "Understanding Patriarchy", she states, "Since it is a system that denies men full access to their freedom of will, it it difficult for any man of any class to rebel against patriarchy, to be disloyal to the patriarchal parent, be that parent female or male" (27). At birth, babies are already put into this societal standard if it is a boy or girl. They are taught to play with toys that are for their gender and are not to explore what other toys are there. Patriarchy is a system that had worked for over many generations and continue to pass on the legacy of what it means to be a man in the eyes of their parents.

This photo represents one way that women did not speak or were not able to speak out the truth during these times. The bar code is used for when its needed and the same thing with women. Once they were able to speak through the agreement with a man, she was able to talk.

http://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/sex-slashing-and-suffrage-the-rokeby-venus-diego-velasquez/

male gaze and patriarchy

Prompt: What is the male gaze(as described by John Berger) and why is it pervasive in art and in popular culture? What is patriarchy (as described by Bell Hooks)? Give examples. How have you come to understand these structures and in what ways has this understanding changed your views about various art and media examples and of your own identity and role in these structures. Give illustrative examples (citations and links of pics and links in gereral.

The male gaze in a contemporary point of view generally consists of objectification of women and acting sexist towards women as well, inciting actions like violence or cat calling. In my personal experience, contemporary views of the male gaze is quite one dimensional because it issues a problem without proper context or reason why events like cat calling or sexual harassment happen. In the reading ‘Ways of Seeing’ by John Berger, he proposes an alternative of the male gaze in relation to art. He defines the male gaze as a duality of surveyor and surveyed. Berger simplifies the male gaze to being “Men act and women appear” (Berger 47). Women survey themselves as men would, however not in relation to themselves but to other men. On the man’s side, they merely survey and judge the women through eyesight and eyesight alone. The acting that men do is the male gaze, while females ‘appear’ as something to be stared at. The relation towards contemporary views is similar, objectification is being surveyed, and the male gaze is the culmination of religion and traditional beliefs.

              In art, paintings are works of imagination of reality and fiction. With most paintings that include women and men together, there’s a fine line between the real and the fake. 

Two females pictured together in what seems like an intimate relationship. Well, in the 19^th century where this painting was drawn, lesbian and homosexuality were clearly not defined or accepted at all. Thus, we have some sort of grasp of the opaqueness of the painting. Something that is quite pervasive in art, especially in early art was nude women. In this specific category, nude women were drawn as sensual and disproportioned to reality. In the painting above, not much of the detail is exaggerated, though the concept of it is clearly exaggerated because of the way the bodies are positioned. It isn’t very sensual at all when the act of censoring the vagina are common practices in nudes and the bodies are directly in view of the surveyor. A depiction of lesbianism, a good contemporary point of argument, but the focus seems to be more so on the deed of lesbianism: two females having sex. To relate it to the present, painters were merely people that had a lot of kinks. If this was done in the present, one would assume it’s a tribute to a male’s fantasy of lesbians. Something that is quite popular in these times are porn, and one of those categories that top the charts are lesbians. Porn, like nudes are exaggerated in concept and execution. Some nudes have elongated necks, backs and maybe large breast yet small heads and feet. As a male myself, objectification is a big part of the male gaze, and most of it has to do with the culture and traditional upbringing of men. Lesbianism is no different than objectification because we don’t see it as love, rather just a category for porn, especially when things like girls having sex with girls is such a fetishized thing in popular culture.  

               The importance of traditions in upbringing, especially men and today’s society, is the term patriarchy. Defined as a system where men are the bread earners that weight more of an importance to society than women, who are often considered as the child bearers and house maids.

Bell Hooks describes patriarchy as a “political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating...” (Hooks 18). This formal definition is solid but it’s vague. From a male’s perspective, I don’t see much of the patriarchy that females may see in their life. Some examples that Hooks provides give insight to males since she has told anecdotes of her childhood growing up with boys as a girl. Her brother was raised differently than her in the perspective dealing with rage, where “a boy should not express feelings,” and “enjoying violence was a good thing” (Hooks 19). The opposite was her, being female, could not express rage and she was forced or at least coerced to express overwhelming emotion. Another example where Hooks was impacted by patriarchy was when her dad allowed her brother to play marbes while she was not. A key element here is the boy girl difference, where one is able to do something, and one cannot. Limitations placed on one’s gender because of an even greater feat, the tradition and upbringing of males and females. However, it’s that way for a reason, something that is something even bigger than just women must raise our boys right.In this case, males have to be straight with their children and boys cannot just be boys and girls cannot just be girls. They should be able to freely express themselves in every way possible, just allowing them to experience issues will make their kids more open minded and stronger, more important that there is this bond between the parents and the child. To this day, men are not held accountable by other men, and men that want to hold others accountable aren’t very sure how to do it because it so deeply ingrained into the culture f boyhood that awareness of this toxic masculinity is the only way to solve this problem. Thanks Gillette.

Works cited:

https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Gustave-Courbet/Le-Sommeil-1866.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristifaulkner/2019/01/17/how-boys-will-be-boys-is-being-challenged-for-the-better/#59fcc6e18272

Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Bell Hooks Understanding Patriarchy