I am woman

In honor of Women's Day this week lets talk about some things. I'm currently an intern with an NGO called the Worldwide Organization for Women. I am what some would call a feminist, but shouldn't all women be feminists? Should we not work towards empowering one another and advocating for the rights of all women? But I digress, what I really want to talk about it art. I love art in all it's forms. I have a minor in art history and have always loved visiting museums. Last night my friend and I went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. As we wandered through an amazing exhibit of work by Picasso, Manet and Matisse I was struck by the difference of depiction of men and women. One of the rooms of the exhibit had numerous paintings of nude women. I don't generally have a problem with nudity in art, but something about these paintings bothered me. I realized that in every painting the women were shown either from behind or from an oblique side angle which obscured their faces and they did not face the viewer. The one male portrait in the room however, showed a seated man, fully clothed who confronted the viewer with his gaze, showing his face. The particular combination of artworks in that room made evident an underlying gender inequality. I had not before considered these beautiful paintings as objectifying women, but that is what they do. While the man was able to sit fully dressed and facing the viewer, the women were on display, with or without their permission, with their faces hidden. As I considered these works of art and the male gaze for which they were created I concluded that they were not so different from images still created today. The male gaze has immense power and influence in modern media, just as it had historically. Ad campaigns with sexy themes and innuendo are meant to appeal to the male viewer and his gaze. Magazines encourage women to put themselves on display for the male gaze under the guise that it will be empowering. But will it? Does putting yourself on display get a women respect and power? The answer is no. While the art I enjoyed was peaceful and not overtly sexual the women were objects, not people. Let's not try to empower ourselves by becoming objects for men to gaze on.