Ways of Seeing

        Women are often being perceived by how they physically carry themselves and appear to the 'crowd'. What they wear, how they style their hair, and how much make up they put if at all, will often determine who they are, what they are thinking, and even worse, what men are thinking of them. This old fashioned way of thought, that unfortunately still very much so exist in our society, is the outcome of the 'male Gaze'. According to John Berger, it is the supposition that men act and women appear and are being watched as a female portrait of what the male want to see. The woman becomes an object, a sight and "how she appears to others, in particularly to men, is of crucially importance to the determination of the success of her life" (46). A woman's body could be perceived in the media, or even when walking down the street, either as weapon or weakness. A nice looking body, which the measures constantly change from being skinny to round figure with time, would be perceived as a gift, something the girl should cherish and use to make her feel stronger and to enjoy her status as 'pretty' or 'hot' but not as 'smart' or 'successful'. Would people look at big successful artists that voice the strength of a powerful women such as JLo, Beyonce, or Madonna, if they weren't fascinating to look at? For men perhaps, but especially women who watch them want to be like them, to look like them, to sound like them. Men who watch them want to think of them as someone who lays with them in bed. Do these artists use their bodies for their success, or just so it will be more appealing and have more presence?

NUVOtv - RUN THE WORLD

         Under the caption of their joint image is the title "Run the World" and they do. These three women are successful, powerful, rich, inspirational and beautiful. They each represent a different culture, so can we really be mad if they are using their body for their success? Can we hold it in their favor or against them, when women now want to look/dress/dance/sound like them because maybe it will get them closer to this fame and glory? Yes, men judge women by their bodies, but they are the morons, not the girl who dressed/danced/sounded the way she did so it will make her feel better, sound better, or get her more fame and glory. Because she did it for herself, and not for the, or because of, the man who stands besides her. 

Parade.com - Julia was the first TV show
to portray a black working single mother
on television. In this picture we can see
how Julia is pictured as a strong woman,
who is the head of her household where
standing next to her little son. 

          It wasn't like this the whole time, when a Latina, black and white women had the same amount of glory and fame. According to bell hooks, she could barely find any role models on the screen, growing up as a black woman, because no one looked or sounded like her. According to Oprah Winfrey, her favorite model on 17 Magazine was a white girl with a black hair because "it looked like there was a chance she had some black in her"- Oprah's Interview This, in bell's words is considered the "oppositional gaze," the notion that the world is dominated by "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" and that the black race, mainly females, stares back at the white supremacy without being able to identify with the white male or female on the screen and so it enables them to resist them and inject themselves as spectators, because they are not there and present or represented. Hooks continues to say that "Grown black women had a different response to Sapphire ('Amos n' Andy'): they identified with her frustrations and her woes. They resented the way she was mocked. They resented the way these screen images could assault black womanhood could name us bitches, nags. And in opposition they claimed Sapphire as their own, as the symbol of that angry part of themselves white folks and black men could not even begin to understand" (P. 120). My question here then is whether even if mocked, was it a good thing for black women to have representation at all on television, if only to just open people's eyes of the way they are being portrayed when they finally do?.. Even though it is a huge compromise, it was the beginning of a movement that stopped and said- hey, we are represented in such a bad way, and some corrections has to be done here!

             The notion of patriarchy is also a social problem that is so embedded in our society, we barely even realize we are shaped to act upon it in our grown lives and even in our daily routines. bell hooks writes that as kids it was clear to her and her brother that their "behavior had to follow a predetermined, gendered script. We both learned the word 'patriarchy' in our adult life, when we learned that the script that had determined what we should be, the identities we should make, was based on patriarchal values and beliefs about gender" (P. 19-20). Even me, growing up in a very outspoken and liberal house, remember my parents telling us that when they got married, they decided they will both go out to work and provide for us but that they also had the joint agreement that dad will take care of the outside garden and trees, and mom will take care of the household choirs, such ad laundry, cooking etc. Of course they often helped each other and intertwined their roles, but until this day my mom is the main cook, even though she doesn't even like cooking, and dad is the one building and fixing things around the house, the roles we learned from TV growing up from every sitcom- from Father knows Best to Home Improvement. I even remember asking my mom as a little girl if girls can also fix things?.. how sad. The refreshing shows that did teach us some other house arrangements before the new millennium brought with it The New Normal and Modern Family were Who's The Boss and Full House. Finally two households where in one the mother was the matriarch and the other was a dad who was sharing the role of a mother and a father with two other men, helping him raise his three little daughters. In making those shows one wonders whether they were made with a view of 'gynocriticism' in the words of Laura Mulvey, which is "a way of assessing works of art specifically in relation to the interests and desires of women" (P. 95), and if they were made or directed by women at all! 

Fanpop.com - So... Who's the Boss?....

             As family structure changes, and now households may have two mommies, two daddies, or just a single parent, it could be easier to think that this will help diminish patriarchy. However, just like hooks said, sometimes single mom households try to fulfill both roles of a mother and a father and then male control and supremacy is being taught to her children even more than a two parent household. However, just like Colin Stokes says in his lecture, he makes sure his son will learn that women don't learn to only be princesses but to also be strong independent leaders in our world teaching us an important lesson that in our society we need to embed these lessons in our children and boys, and not only in our daughters. We need to teach the boys to treat women with equal respect to their body and mind, to get to know their thoughts and opinions first before looking at their body shape and hair color. As women are often being treated as embellishment (which is defined in the dictionary as "a decorative detail or feature added to something to make it more attractive; a detail, especially one that is not true, added to a statement or story to make it more interesting or entertaining"), just like in the European oil paintings, we need to remember to think why those women on the magazines and big stars on TV chose to portray themselves this way and choose to either turn them into our role models, or to take them as an example of what NOT to be, how NOT to behave, and how NOT to treat ourselves- as a selling body instead of an incredible mind and talent. 

Further Look - why The Walking Dead is a white patriarchal show

Work Cited
1. Berger, John. "Chapters 2 & 3." Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1972. 37-64. Print.
2. Hooks, Bell. "The Oppositional Gaze." Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South      End, 1992. 115-31. Print.
3. Hooks, Bell. "Understanding Patriarchy." The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Atria, 2004. 17-33. Print.
4. Mulvey, Laura. "Author/Auteur: Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film." Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. N.p.: n.p., 1999. 90-110. Print.