The Gaze Unseen but Seen.

I suppose as an African American woman that I feel the gaze sufficiently different than most women.  As normatively what is desired is not me and what I have to offer is subsequently negated.  Even when a man looks at me I know it is usually because of one thing.  In my case it's my hair for some reason being a African American woman with her "own lengthy" hair appears to be an oddity.  As I read Berger's Ways of Seeing I was amazed at the realization that nudes were painted hairless.  Even when viewing the paintings of nudes and those I'd seen in the past it never really occurred to me, they were hairless. At that moment I had to question myself and say "what the heck was I seeing?"  Truth is I was not seeing.  Sometimes viewing and looking is not actually seeing.  As Humans we see what we want or don't want. Berger states, "Hair is associated with sexual power, with passion." (pg. 55). You realize that in anyway that a woman or femininity is shown she is always shown in a diminished capacity. If they are looking at my hair in and most African American households hair is your crowning glory you are still in some form being diminished.  As an adult this has made me look at myself way more than I ever thought that I would.  I always thought that my hair was extremely important because of the male gaze as I now know it.  As Berger noted I was being "confined to a limited space." (pg. 46).

My eyes are opening to my own gaze and to that of others  and it is becoming clearer to me.  Bell Hooks speaks about how she reached out to her family, friends and other women. Bell Hooks asked about what they felt about representations in film and television.  I would have to put myself in the arena of being as Bell Hooks stated, " as one black woman put, I could always get pleasure from movies as long as I did not look too deep." (pg. 121).  I realized oh shoot that's me and if I had a moment of clarity it was short lived.  Whatever critical analysis that may have surfaced in my brain was supplanted by the need to be entertained. Bell Hooks states, "There is power in looking." (pg. 115).  What is the power if you do not realize you have it or when you use it is fleeting?

Ultimately, at this time in history there is an opportunity not seen previously.  There are many avenues unto which we can express this power of looking.  I never truly understood that I have done this without even truly knowing that I did do it.  How many times have I looked at Facebook, Instagram or a television show and critically analyzed what I saw?  Decided that what I was seeing was not representative of me.  Bell Hooks says, "watching television was one way to develop critical spectatorship." (pg. 117).  I have watched shows like Basketball Wives and realized that my friends and I don't act like raving lunatics.  All of us at some point have made commentary to that affect and yet we had chalked it up to entertainment.  Yet, what do these representations of minority women suggest.  When someone meets me who is of a different culture or background will they automatically think that is how I will act.  I wonder and hope with all my might that is not the case.  Will our young daughters relate to these images as the only way I can be famous. One is to become the wife or just the girlfriend of an athlete and two simply be the object of his desire? Berger notes, "men act and women appear." (pg. 47).

In the case of the reality shows, videos of late and magazines when it comes to being a woman, you are an object.  I believe that be you White or of another race you are gazed upon equally the same  because you are a woman.  Bell Hooks rationalizes, "critical, interrogating black looks were mainly concerned with issues of race and racism." (pg. 117).  There was a point and still is a point where the object of woman is forgotten.  We tend to gloss over the issue of being female and will skip to how we feel the race is portrayed.  I believe that is how the commentary starts on these mostly minority shows look at how these Black folks are acting.  So, race comes before gender, male before female.  Yet after this femaleness remains ultimately the object. Berger says, "the social presence of women is different."  Hence the titles Basketball Wives, Real Housewives of and Hollywood Ex's all are connotations of the male gaze, his prize.  In a social aspect and in popular culture these titles reinforce the power that men and the gaze have over us.

I am a avid moviegoer and most times I turned off my brain.  I sat mind numbingly most times and just viewed the action and not the meaning. Truthfully, this is a new thought process for me to "unleash the repressed gaze" as so aptly put by Bell Hooks. I thought back on the last few movies I saw and I realized it was chalk full of objectivity.  In one movie the gaze fell on the star of was male and his form and that lasted all of two seconds before a flurry of naked women were thrown in the mix.  Then later the one additional female secondary character was the object of rape.  Now that I have thought critically about those scenes I actually for a split second thought what is the point in the theater and then of course at that time I simply moved on in my mind.  I realize now it is about the power of the men over these women.  It was to simply state the prowess of these men.  I must note the naked women were white and in an orgy.  The raped female was non white.  Bell Hooks notes this in her critical analyses of such films as Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It.  She states, "his work mimics the cinematic construction of white womanhood as object, replacing her body as text on which to write male desire with the black female body." (pg. 126).

Ultimately, we must open our eyes and "see" critically. We must embrace the oppositional gaze, if we want to affect change and how gender is viewed we must view ourselves differently.  There are someone of us already on this path.  I am joining the oppositional gaze and changing as we speak.  How I view myself has to change and thereby how I see others will as well.  I don't believe it is impossible just to be entertained and not look for a deeper meaning.  Yet, what does have to happen is a critical discourse, that there is more to a woman than the outside representation.  There have to be on lookers who say that this is no longer acceptable as the only way a woman can be viewed.  That women are not just objects of sexual desire.  We are multilayered and it is time that this layered being the woman be viewed as such.


 
Venus and the Lute Player, ca. 1565–70, Titian and Workshop (Italian, Venetian), Oil on canvas


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091939/