1. “THE GAZE” In the animal kingdom, often it is the male that is on display for females—with the presumption that females choose mates.

2. Woodabe Tribe, Niger This is also true in some human societies.
If this holds any truth, does it even make sense that women are the ones being watched in our society? Wouldn’t it make more sense if men were on display? In the Woodabe Tribe, it’s the men who put on makeup and dance for the women in their public rituals.
Woodabe Tribe, Niger

3. Woodabe Festival

4. Woodabe Festival Dance

5. In western culture, the imagined spectator is aways male— even when the target audience is women. Even in advertising, women are eroticized TO women from the perspective of a heterosexual “male gaze.”
However, in western cultures, the women are on display and under intense scrutiny. The scrutiny is so intense that women learn to see other women through the “male gaze.” Even advertising targeting women eroticizes women TO women, as if it were targeting heterosexual men. Research shows that women are sexually stimulated by these kinds of images that eroticize women from the perspective of the heterosexual male gaze. The media has trained the average woman to be bisexual in order to learn how to please men.

6. Advertising uses unattainable body types to instill insecurity in the audience, which compels them to buy products to feel better.
Who says one body style is better than another? Commercial interests. It is typically the unattainable body style that is held up as most desirable, so that the majority of viewers can feel inferior in ways that can only be remedied by buying the product being advertised. This is called “creating a need.”

7. There is no single body style that is ideal in all cultures.
Mauritania's 'wife-fattening' farm

8. Mothers force-feed their daughters.
In Mauritania, mothers force-feed their daughters and punish them by injuring their fingers when they cry.

9. Cameron Russell (both pics from 2003)
The images we see of women in western media are constructs and not real. On the left we see Cameron Russell modeling in a photo shoot. On the right, we see a photo of her at the same time period, taken with her grandmother. The left is a fabrication. The real Cameron Russell hadn’t even started her period yet. Our idea of the glamorous model is a myth, for many reasons. Many models are subsisting at starvation levels, which means they’re not at a healthy weight—and yet, they are viewed as the ideal bodies. Second, most models have very little power in their careers—yet, they’re seen as empowered women. Third, they become “the most insecure people on Earth,” as Russell says, because they’re constantly being watched.

10. How did this western convention of representation come about
How did this western convention of representation come about? John Berger has a famous theory about “the gaze” (i.e., the power dynamics of looking).
We’re going to focus particularly on the female body and move to John Berger’s theories about the power dynamics of looking—also known as “the gaze” (g-a-z-e).

11. Ways of Seeing Chapter 3 The Naked and The Nude Based on The Nude by Kenneth Clark

12. Genesis Tradition
Berger points out that our western traditions of representing the female body unclothed actually comes from the Genesis tradition.

13. Genesis 3:16
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons And the Lord God called unto the man and said unto him, “Where are thou?” and he said, “I heard they voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself Unto the woman God said, “I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception. In pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.”
The “natural order” of women’s subservience to men, as well as pain in childbirth, is attributed to Eve’s original sin in the Garden of Eden: all women are destined to pay for Eve’s actions. The “New Testament” reiterates the woman’s place as subservient to men. Disparaging treatment of women becomes justified and normalized through literal reading of the Bible (when this literature is taken out of cultural contexts).

14. An unusual tradition of representation emerged from this culture
An unusual tradition of representation emerged from this culture. At first, it wasn’t so strange: The first European nude paintings were of Adam and Eve together (p ), typically in story form. Left: Fall and Expulsion from Paradise by Paul de Limbourg, Early 15th Century

15. The viewer becomes god-like, looking at the pair in judgment.
Then, painters started showing just the moment of shame in relationship to the spectator.
The viewer becomes god-like, looking at the pair in judgment.
This relationship between viewer and viewed causes shame in the western tradition of looking.
That relationship and shame also become a defining aspect of the “nude” as an art genre.
Adam and Eve by Mabuse, Early 16th Century (Flemish)

16. Nude Naked Natural The Unclothed Body
Nakedness objectified in representation.
Natural state + God’s Eyes (culturally constructed through concept of shame/sin)
We’re born in a natural sate, not naked or nude.
Nakedness can only be named in comparison to a clothed state.
NATURAL When we are born, we are not naked. We are just born into a natural state. We just are. The body is only in a “naked” state in cultures that clothe the body. “Nakedness” can only be named in relationship to a “clothed” state.
NAKEDNESS If you are born into a culture that has compulsory body covering, then you are born “naked”—which means in a shameful state that needs to be covered up. You lack something when you’re born—i.e., clothing. “Nakedness” is therefore a culturally constructed state that can only be named in relationship to a clothed culture. Naked = Body + God’s eyes viewing the body in shame/sin.
NUDE The nude is a specific way of representing the female body in art history and advertising. It is a constructed convention that objectifies the naked body as an object for viewing. Nude = Nakedness objectified in representation

17. Here’s where the tradition intensifies and focuses on women:
Painters begin to depict Eve alone on display (instead of with Adam) with the ideal body form of the day. The “Eve” theme becomes a way to justify painting unclothed women (all painters in these eras are male).
The women appears subservient to the viewer (who is male) as Adam and Eve were subservient to God.
Tradition of mirrors also sometimes used to show vanity, which is hypocritical because the woman has been created for the male spectator’s pleasure.
Such traditions are distinctly western and are not found in other cultures of the time.
Memling
Vanity
Vanity by Memling

18. Ingres 1780-1867 La Grande Odalisque
Pretty soon, painters no longer had to claim they were painting “Eve” from the Bible story—every woman was Eve. Here we see “La Grande Odalisque.” An “odalisque” is a concubine—a slave often used for sex.
Ingres
La Grande Odalisque

19. Features of the nude: Women are
Features of the nude: Women are on display for a presumably male heterosexual viewer - looking at the viewer (or sometimes in a mirror), aware of being seen. - acknowledging the shame of being seen - acknowledging submission to the viewer as a result of this shame.
In western art, shame becomes a kind of display; women are depicted looking at viewer, aware that they are being seen. This acknowledgment of shame to the viewer
Is as a sign of submission. Above: Nell Gwynne, Mistress of Charles II ( )
Rubens

20. Titian
Venus of Urbino 1538

21. The tradition persists in advertising and pornography (women put on display with implied subservience to the viewer).
Playboy bunny / Rubens

22. Guerrilla Girls
However, this is a distinctly western phenomenon. Other cultures did not develop the same traditions for representing unclothed people.

23. Erotic Sculptures of Nad-Kalse (16th Century Rural India)
Other cultures at the same time develop different traditions of representation. When people are shown unclothed, the women are not put alone on display to be shamed by the viewer. They tend to be shown together in a sex act.
Erotic Sculptures of Nad-Kalse (16th Century Rural India)

24. Kama Sutra - Hindu
We see how the fundamental values of a culture impacts representation. For example, in Hindu, a culture of categorization, we see the Kama Sutra—categories of sexual positions and pleasure.

25. Japanese erotic art from the Edo period (1603–1867)

26. In the western tradition of shamefulness and sin, the nude woman becomes associated with sexual promiscuity and is an object to be controlled/judged by the god-like spectator
Also, through religious culture, the unclothed state becomes tantalizing, automatically sexualized.

27. Muwaji and daughter Iganani, of the Amazon Suruwaha tribe
Not all cultures see the body as inherently shameful and eroticized at all times.
Muwaji and daughter Iganani, of the Amazon Suruwaha tribe

28. Suruwaha tribe

29. Nudists: Vacation Photos
Nudists (in the naturist tradition) see the body as - in its natural state - not automatically sexualized

30. Body Coverings in societies with belief in body shame.

31. Other societies have traditions of shame and modesty in relationship to the body as well, and practice clothing/veiling
The parts of the body that get covered are those that get eroticized.

32. Different cultures eroticize different body parts. Examples:
Not all cultures eroticize breasts (some cultures just see them as functional for feeding babies).
The face becomes eroticized in the Middle East where veiling is predominant.
Chinese culture for 1000 years eroticized women’s feet so intently that it was taboo for wives to show their feet even to their husbands.
Victorian culture highly eroticized ankles and legs (as they were covered with long skirts)

33. Chinese Foot Binding 1000 years (until 20th Century)
Foot binding (Simplified Chinese: 缠足; Traditional Chinese: 纏足; pinyin: chánzú, literally "bound feet") was a custom practiced on females for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 900's and ending in the early 20th Century.
In Chinese foot binding, young girls' feet, usually at age 6 but often earlier, were wrapped in tight bandages so that they could not grow and develop normally; they would, instead, break and become highly deformed, not growing past 4-6 inches.
The smaller the feet, the greater a girl’s chance at marriage. The foot needed to be small enough to hypothetically fit into a man’s mouth. Some scholars have claimed that the erotic effect was a function of the tiny steps and swaying walk of a woman whose feet had been bound.
The very fact that the bound foot was concealed from men's eyes was, in and of itself, sexually suggestive. That which is concealed or taboo automatically becomes a fetish (example: breasts and buttocks in cultures that cover them).

36. Self-surveillance

37. “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”
Read page 46:
“A woman must constantly watch herself. She is She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.
Dressing room example
Do men do this too? Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?
Have you ever seen women who have given up the surveillance on themselves? How do they act?
So, to what extent is “feminine behavior” a performance to fulfill what we believe are the expectations we must meet in order to be perceived as attractive?

38. projecting? What is she communicating
What is the
attitude this
model is
projecting? What is she communicating
To the viewer?
First, what is the product she’s selling? Shoes Who is the target audience? Women Is she dressed in a sexy way? Yes. Describe the look on her face. Defiant? “Don’t mess with me?” So, she is acknowledging being a sex object being looked at by YOU, as if YOU were a man. BUT her expression says she REJECTS being a sex object to you (if you were a man), even though she’s trying to seduce you into buying shoes. THAT’S COMPLEX.

39. Who is the intended audience here?
Intended audience is still MEN, and in this case both gay and straight men in GQ. Men are not on display for women (women’s pleasure is seen as a very low priority in our culture).
Who is the intended audience here?

40. Nudity sells . . . ceramic tile?

41. We’re Used to Seeing This

42. How is this different? (It’s a nudist magazine.)
Naked or Nude?
She’s aware of being seen, but by an equally unclothed audience who have coded the unclothed body as natural rather than shameful.
She’s in a family photo album aesthetic, rather than an erotic pose. She is in action, rather than posing as sex object.
Men are also featured naked in these magazines, in various travel activities (hiking, etc.)

43. Nudist Philosphies
The body without clothes is normal and not necessarily a sexual object.
Equality – taking clothes off shows that we’re all vulnerable and equal; nobody’s perfect.
People have to be respected for their personhood and not merely what’s “on the outside” (material coverings)

44. Local Nudist Resorts
- Lake Como (naturist, family-oriented) - Caliente (sexualized, couples) - Paradise Lakes (more like Caliente)

45. Lake Como

46. Lake Como naturist, family resort, non-profit member-owned
Lake Como is a naturist, family resort, non-sexualized environment, member-owned and not for profit.

47. Caliente is a different environment. . . .

48. Caliente is a purposefully sexualized environment - extravagant grounds, for-profit (seeking to sensationalize)
family-friendly membership revoked (ASA)
special events to attract public
a reality TV show was produced here.