After reading the text 'Women as Objects - Feminist Critique' from the book 'A Queer Romance' I was asked to identify some key words that stood out, as well as some important quotes. Feminist, objectification, representation, gender, class, appearance, perspective, woman and equality seemed to jump out of the page the most. It is evident from just looking at the key words that in western cultures, women can be viewed much lower than the male figure and it seems as though a man has the dominance. There is also a lot of pressure for women to be judged as someone who is significant in our society, both past and present. "It is within this psychoanalytic framework that one can talk about emotional situations or social contexts which produce instabilities which may disturb many things, including gender performance and gender identifications." - page 20, is another noteworthy quote from the text.
"Women as objects and men as the subjects" page 19, seemed to be the main argument of the text. John Berger, who seems particularly interested in Marxism and feminist ideas identified with Laura Mulvey's effort to address questions about the objectification of women. There is a lot of sexualisation of women nowadays, so called 'lad-mags' are partly to blame as well as page 3 in the Sun newspaper. This doesn't bother me as such, however I do think that page 3's time may be up; maybe it should be moved to somewhere in the newspaper that a child cannot accidentally see it or just be removed completely. Women posing naked, I think is alright, however I think it is a shame that this is normally aimed at a male audience. Why should it be for his needs? Aren't women allowed to see this too? Also, why is it always thought of as sexual for a woman to strip down and be naked, can't she state a point by doing this? Keira Knightley for instance, I applaud her for doing this, posed naked to make a point that every woman is beautiful and that the use of Photoshop is unnecessary.
I felt that I could identify a bit more with this text since my previous studio project was based on femininity and the connotations it may hold. Although, I am not a feminist myself, there are similar beliefs that I have; I've grown up mainly with my mother and Nana shaping my views on things and they're both quite headstrong and very independent people. I know for sure that my Nana has several beliefs about how women can be perceived.
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