The Male Gaze and Patriarchy

The male gaze is a term that can describe how men portray the way a woman acts in the form of a visual art. With John Berger's "Ways of Seeing", he goes into depth with how visuals of the male gaze has effected society. He is able to do this by addressing the subject of the sexual objectification women faced. As the category of the "nude" came to be, it started with the depiction of Adam and Eve, where the woman is blamed and now deemed as lesser compared to man. Berger explains as the Renaissance approaches, the narrative is then changed from the whole story, to then that one moment of shamefulness where their nakedness has now made them consciously aware. But even as paintings become more secular, the theme of painting a shameful nude woman is still pervasive among male artists. Not only are the women depicted as shameful, they are also painted in ways that take away from her just being a woman, pushing the agenda that women do things for men. Berger states, "You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the women whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure" (51). Men paint women in their image all while painting her in ways that deem her character in a hypersexualized, submissive, or vain way which takes away from her even though the man painted her for his liking. Which leaves the question, did the men that paint these women as such, truly believe what they were painting or did they force that narrative? It became such a trend that the artist behind these paintings, saw nothing wrong. As time progressed the male gaze went from artwork to advertisements like the Van Heusen one below. This add from the 1950s shows a woman catering to a man. At this time, this was just one of many adds created by brands to keep women in the shadows of man, or give women just one simple domestic duty.

Van Heusen 1950's tie advertisement
https://brightside.me/inspiration-relationships/a-photographer-created-a-reshoot-of-ads-of-the-1950s-to-show-that-the-world-has-changed-442810/

On the other hand, 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" (18). In short, patriarchy is trash. It is a continuous cycle where women experience self deprecation at the hands of men to uphold there esteem. This cycle is usually upheld by physical violence, psychological terrorism, and misogyny. Patriarchy rules our society without us even realizing. These rules of "boys should behave that way" and "girls should carry themselves this way" have been put in place since the beginning of time. But as time progressed, women were bold enough to take a stand and claim what they rightfully deserved. With these small yet effective changes, women began to reclaim the overall sense of what it means to be a woman. We were no longer doing things because it's to cater to a man, nor are we lessening our skills to feed the ego of a man. With this also came the reclaiming of a woman's sexuality. Even still, in today's society, men are expected to go out and enjoy "being a man" while a woman may still be expected to be reserved and "wait for the one". With the cartoon below, it is clear that the woman in it has taken on a style of dating that may be frowned upon for women. She refers to herself as a slut but then takes it back as she claims she was just acting like a man. The fact is, some women still do this.  They same themselves or shame others for doing the same thing a man does simple because society, or in this case patriarchy, has set them up to believe. 

Double Standards in Dating
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-the-grade/201012/double-standards-in-dating-practices

Works Cited

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

Hook, Bell. "Understanding Patriarchy". Willing to Change. Atria Books 2004.