In 1989 the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous group of women dedicated to exposing sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film, and society at large, boldly asked, "Do women have to be naked to get into the Metropolitan Museum?" Their findings proved revealing, as the poster above shows. They have periodically updated this famous poster and in 2012 recounted and discovered the following:
The number of female nudes has decreased but the number of represented female artists has increased only one percent in the past few decades. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is the largest museum in the United States and one of the largest museums in the world, containing millions of works and years of prestige, tellingly has more female nudes than female artists. This study is limited to only the Modern Art section and if the entirety of the museum was included the number of female artists would be frighteningly lower.
These numbers reveal one of the many reasons why our vision of women and female objectification are so entrenched in our society. Previously female voices were underrepresented or squashed, leaving half of the population unheard and leading to the accumulation of literature, artwork, and media that to this day still does not equally feature both male and female works, opinions and ideas. As John Berger states in his book, Ways of Seeing, "To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men." The saying "it's a man's world" holds more power because throughout history the vast majority of institutions in European history have been lead, controlled, and expanded by men while their wives mainly controlled the domestic sphere. These wives were generally chosen based on their economic standing of their fathers and their physical attractiveness. "Men act, and women appear," as John Berger notes. For centuries women in art and literature were rarely depicted as multidimensional creatures but as sights. For a clever satirical piece on this concept, both funny and disturbing in its truth, please click this link to read Teenage Girl Blossoming into a Beautiful Object.
The objectification of women is not simply an issue of the past because it can still be seen in society today from the media to fashion to politics. Recently I attended Alexander Wang's fashion show. It was my very first and I was incredibly excited by the opportunity. When I was a child I had considered going into fashion because of my own unique style sense and because so many people could envision me being successful in fashion because of this. However I ultimately decided that the field was not right for me. I was not comfortable with the idea that my appearance would constantly be placed under a microscope, harshly observed and scrutinized, and in such a competitive atmosphere too. The nostalgia that fashion brought made me curious, though. I had only been a part of the world through web articles, clothes shopping, and glossy magazine articles. What was the runway, the culmination of it all, really like?
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| Alexander Wang fashion piece, image source Vogue |
Going to a fashion show is 90% waiting and 10% actually watching the show. Once the lights dimmed and the music started thundering the models began their procession down the stage. But the models were irrelevant--the clothes were the focus. That is why some of the models had their faces covered as they walked, why they wore shoes that made me twinge with sympathy from my standing room position in the back. That is why the models all looked so sullen as they strutted from end to end in clothing worth thousands of dollars. Their bones jutted from their skin and I wondered idly if this lifestyle, the clothes and the camera lights, truly made them happy. The day was not meant for them it was meant for the audience, for Alexander Wang, the designer. In the few minutes it took them to circle the runway they were nothing more than the clothes they were wearing, objects more or less, because that is what we made them.
Models are not doing poorly financially if they are able to snag gigs like the Alexander Wang fashion show. Most go into modeling willingly and struggle to remain viable in an industry where looks really do mean everything. There are male models in the profession too and they are subjected to scrutiny as well. But the main issue is that often times these models are not subjected to the same form of objectification. This can be attributed to what Laura Mulvey notes in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, "According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like." Seeing large parts of the female body revealed in fashion is normal--plunging necklines or backs, sheer fabrics, long bare legs and more. But in male fashion the body undergoes a different treatment. The same can be said of advertising, film, comic books and other mediums. Male and female bodies are universally treated differently.
We do not hold men and women up to the same standard because the viewer/spectator has historically been assumed to be male. Only when the woman started to have her own disposable income did advertising to her become just as important as advertising to men. But this phenomena still does not eliminate the fact that we have now created two separate images --a male viewer and a female viewer--because we still separate the ideas of masculinity and femininity. We associate the feminine with subservience and weakness and until we accept both masculinity and femininity, female voices and male voices, male viewers and female viewers, until we no longer have to make these distinctions, women will continue to be objectified.
The first step is recognizing the difference and pointing it out to others. The second is encouraging more dialogue on how we can portray women as people, as human beings, not as objects dependent on their bra size or their willingness to be subservient. The third and most important step is to avoid preventing women from joining in on the conversation about their own bodies or limiting the venues they have to express these opinions. In this day and age the number of female artists in the Met should not be limited to 4%. As a society we can do better than that. In an ad to a movie that gained millions of dollars in revenue that tried to portray the female protagonist Black Widow as a strong female character they should focus on her strengths not the shape of her butt. This year marks the 40th Anniversary of Roe v Wade and the Women's Rights movement and the efforts of those women fighting for rights 40 years ago was just the beginning. It is up to this generation to continue where our mothers and grandmothers left off.
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