“Our Gaze”
In reclaiming my gaze, I chose to look at the work of Mickalene Thomas which represents women and power. When taking my selfie, I looked at her work titled, "Racquel #6" because it stood out the most to me about the female gaze. The stance of the woman sitting down says a lot to me and represents power and control. She in comfortable in her own space and looking straight at something with a look of strength and power. With that, I did the same with my selfie. I sat down in my own space that I was comfortable in and chose to look straight ahead at the audience and be confident in how I looked. I think the way one poses and facial expressions shows empowerment, especially in women to combat the male gaze. One quote I chose for my selfie is by John Berger, p. 64, “Women are depicted in a quite different way from men- not because the feminine is different from the masculine- but because the ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him.” This to me shows what the male gaze does to women. The "ideal" way of looking at women is supposed to be sexual and flattering. And this male gaze is quite different than the female gaze. The men look at women to be flatter, while women look at other women to be empowered. Another quote I chose is by Nina Siegal, NY Times: “Art That Looks at What Women See”, which states, “They created a shift, a change in perspective, from being the model, the person a painter is looking at, to being the painter herself.” This quote means to me how women are changing the gaze from male to female. They are no longer being a model being told what to do in an image, but instead being a painter who tells herself what to do and what to express to show to others. This shows how this gaze is changing to women telling their own story instead of always being looked at as sexual, but instead empowering which can relate to Mickalene Thomas' work and my selfie.
John Berger, Chapter 3
p. 46, “To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men.”
p. 46, “Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman spears to a man can determine how she will be treated.”
These quotes show how the male gaze is something that has confined women into making sure they please men. Men have boxed women into making sure they look and act a certain way that pleases them. And even before boxing them into this stereotype, they also usually do not look at women any other way than sexually or as the stereotypes they have made up in their head. So with this being said, however they see a woman is how they will treat them, meaning that if she looks sexually attractive, that is how the man will treat her.
Understanding Patriarchy, bell hooks
p. 17, “Of these systems the one that we all learn the most about growing up is the system of patriarchy, even if we never know the word, because patriarchal gender roles are assigned to us as children and we are given continual guidance about the ways we can best fulfill these roles.”
p. 18, “Patriarchy 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.”
These quotes show how it is for women growing up in a patriarchal society. Patriarchy has been instilled into us since we have been born. The gender roles we grow up with based on what our parents teach us and how to act shapes us unless we choose to change it. We have been taught that men are dominants in our society, and everyone else is below them marking them as weak. Females are the opposite of what men based on the patriarchal society and barely have a say in anything. When they do speak up, they are mostly never taken serious. Men's form of domination is using forms of psychological terrorism and violence which I agree with in bell hooks quote. Because that is how men have grown up, being taught that it is okay to be violent and angry to get what they want, which is not the same for women.
The Oppositional Gaze, bell hooks
p. 115, “Since I knew as a child that the dominating power adults exercised over me and over my gaze was never so absolute that I did not dare to look, to sneak a peep, to stare dangerously, I knew that the slaves had looked. That all attempts to repress our/black people’s right to gaze had produced in us an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze.”
p. 115, “Only, the child is afraid to look. Afraid to look, but fascinated by the gaze. There is power in looking.”
In these two quotes, it describes how there is oppositional gaze, which is a tool that black people use to disrupt the power dynamic that white cinema uses to perpetuate the othering of blackness in media, being used by bell hooks. She was always told to look away when looking at other people, especially when it was white people. But bell hooks realizes that there is power in looking, and opposes that gaze that so many told her not to look at.
ONLINE:
Female Gaze: Art that Looks at What Women See | NYTIMES
“’The female artists’ gaze is shaped by their lived experiences, which are different for women and men.’ For Mr. Grau, the female gaze might be defines as simply training one’s eyes on different subject matter, in new ways.”
Mickalene Thomas: Photographed, Collaged and Painted Muses
“By selecting women of color, I am quite literally raising their visibility and inserting their presence into the conversation,” Thomas said in a recent interview. “By portraying real women with their own unique history, beauty and background, I’m working to diversify the representations of black women in art.”
Ana Mendieta: Artist Who Pushed Boundaries | NYTimes
“These questions would echo in her work, which explored themes that pushed ethnic, sexual, moral, religious and political boundaries. She urged viewers to disregard their gender, race or other defining societal factors and instead connect with the humanity they share with others.”
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