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From: uunet!arris!rshapiro@ncar.ucar.EDU (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Female human aesthetics
Message-ID: <1990Nov17.155213.23767@arris.com>
Date: 17 Nov 90 19:31:52 GMT
References: <8654@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <658245246@lear.cs.duke.edu> <1990Nov11.171709.25842@arris.com> <1990Nov16.161821.17287@iti.org>
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In article <1990Nov16.161821.17287@iti.org> uunet!mailrus!sharkey!hela!iti.org!dhw@ncar.ucar.EDU ("David H. West") writes:
>It's quite unclear to me that there is any power difference
> [between being the looker and being the object of the look]
> in "everyday life", the spectatee is free to spectate right back

This is a typical "free will" argument, and suffers the usual
difficulties. Human beings are not autonomous, independent subjects.
We are utterly social creatures: our very sense of self, our
subjectivity, is highly constrained by the various social groups to
which we belong.  This has long been one of the crucial, and central,
arguments of feminism and the study of gender.  The "freedom" you
describe is illusory.

>, and in
>situations like cinema and fashion shows, the spectatee is being paid
>to do a job, but not by the spectators, who, though they pay for the
>right to spectate, have no direct control over the spectatees.

What's the relevance of this? The point is: the position of being a
spectator is, like most social positions, gendered. This is not to say
that only men can be spectators; it is to say the spectator position
has long been a "masculine" position. Even a cursory look at classic
Hollywood cinema will make the gendering obvious: the photography,
lighting, camera angles etc that are used when the camera (the
original spectator) looks at the female lead are quite different from
the photography etc used when the camera looks at the male lead. The
woman is *displayed*, the man is neutrally depicted.

This is simply one aspect of the general tendency to display images of
women as spectacles. There are many others (strip shows, pornography,
cosmetics and fashion, etc). There are a few general cases of male
spectacle (sporting events come to mind), but these are notable for
being exceptions.

There's an undeniable social fact, at least in this country: women are
FAR more conscious of their appearance than men are of theirs. The
gendered nature of spectacle helps to explain why this should be so,
and also suggests that this is important ground for feminism. Ending
women's status as objects rather than subjects, the object seen rather
than the seeing subject, must involve consideration of women's own
self-identity, insofar as that identity is formed according to
gendered positions of spectator and spectacle.