In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing Episode 2, he brings up the controversial ideology that women’s nudity is solely created for the male viewer,connecting it with nude paintings of women from the Renaissance period. Some women say that they don’t feel represented by classical Renaissance paintings, they don’t see the subjects as human at all. They see themselves and their nudity as their own, and take possession of it. My own view is that women are very much still objectified in today’s media and society. That many of the choices women make with their images are still influenced by the male’s gaze.
It is often said that it is act of empowerment when a woman posts a provocative picture on the internet, but the audience of the picture is still largely the male’s view. To me, this ties back to the discussion Berger had about The Judgment of Paris, where men are looking at naked women and judging them, therefore turning it into a beauty contest. It brings the questions to my mind, “What are we, women being empowered by?” and “Would women feel the need to flaunt their sexuality if they truly had complete control over their images in society?”
Unfortunately, I do not have the answers to these questions, but it further supports my idea that women are still depersonalized. In Berger’s discussion, the woman’s assertion that women’s nudity is their own, is contradicted by her claim that we all have an image of ourselves. Women cannot have an unbiased image of ourselves because women are still objectified in today’s society.