Who Runs the World? "Men!"

        In the 21st century, women have a greater amount of freedom- women can vote due to ratification of the 19th amendment, becoming deans in institutions, able to create their own artwork without retribution, punishment, etc.- compared to the likes of the middle ages and renaissance. Unfortunately during those time periods, a majority of the females had no freedom, having to deal with typical house work, ex. cleaning, taking care of the children (unless you were born into a rich a family, became a nun, or gain recognition through your art work). One important reason that a females freedom was diminished was due to superiority of the males, having women confine to their orders/commands.
        Feminist and activist Bell Hooks describes in her own words this system known as patriarchy, where men hold the power and females do not. Hooks, in her story The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, writes "Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females...," (18). Hooks, claimed in her story, was born to patriarchy in her household. Being more talented and aggressive than her little brother (traits men should have, not females), she was scolded by her father claiming it is not lady like. Yet patriarchy was not only inherited through the leading male in the house hold, it was also part of religion. Hooks writes, "at church they had learned God created man to rule the world and everything in it and that it was the work of women to help men perform these tasks, to obey, and to always assume a subordinate role [to man]," (18). Religion, being a powerful belief that everyone during these times believed in, helped fuel this system of patriarchy, could have even been what ignited it.  Most common form of patriarchy during these time periods possibly could be the Pope, the king of an empire such as France, Nobilities, husband and/or father. This system is what gives male their dominance and shapes them mentally with authority, which is noticed today amongst many males.

Esther before Ahasuerus, 1622- Artemisia Gentileschi

Female begging to the male to prevent the oncoming violence, source Google Images.

        Aside from describing what patriarchy is, there is another form of male authority which is noticed in the form of art known as the male gaze. This "gaze" is the way male artists view women through their own eyes, often objectifying them to create a perfect, manipulated painting. The female being drawn is not herself as the painter tweaks and edits the painting to satisfy his belief of how the female should actually look. John Berger, in Ways of Seeing, writes "she is not naked as she is. She is naked as the spectator sees her," (50). The spectator is not just the painter himself, but others who observe his fine art. The woman tries to seduce the viewers, having the intention to leave them sexually satisfied. They are subjective to the man, never pleasing themselves, but always giving the man attention in which he desires. "Women are there to feed an appetite," Berger claims, "not to have any of their own, " (55). Within the male gaze, there is a distinction by which the women are drawn, being nude versus being naked. When you are naked, you are vulnerable to whom ever looks at you- bare skin. But when your are nude, it is basically a disguise of a naked person, only being there to represent a body and disconnecting from yourself. "To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to been naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself," Berger writes (54). The only person being recognized is the painter and the observers. It is this sense of satisfaction and sexual relief which males receive when painting females in their own eyes, degrading women to help obtain this sensation.
        Whitney Chadwick, author of  Women, Art, and Society, writes "... the gaze became a metaphor for the worldliness and virility associated with public man and women became its object," (74), resembling a form of patriarchy a brief definition of the male gaze. When reading both texts separately (not analyzing both), I could not find the relation between Patriarchy and art. After, I was able to notice a form of it by analyzing the male gaze in which men have this control over women, their art, and they have no choice but satisfy his wants. You can also see forms of the male gaze not just in female magazines, but males too such as Sports Illustrated, having these models pose in a specific manner grasping the observers attention.

Male Gaze- Sports Illustrated 2007

The Birth of Venus- Sandro Botticelli, 1486

Need a better understanding of the male gaze? 

Works Cited

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print.

Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Atria, 2004. Print.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting :, 1973. Print.