John Berger and Feminism - Vaishnavie Ravi

Berger's Statement - Ways of Seeing:

“A woman must continually watch herself. 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. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another...One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”

In the history of media and film making, feminism has become an important issue and has shaped the way in which men and, mainly women, are presented in mass media. Over the years, women were portrayed as weak and emotional figures and sometimes the main representation, being a sexual object. To this day, women can still be seen as these sexual objects, despite the fact that the media and the public like to think we have come a long way in creating a egalitarian society.

From a magazine to TV shows and films, many women are seen as people with the perfect, ideal body ( tall,slim and beautiful) when in reality, what we see on the front page of Hello! magazine or The Sun is purely artificial. It has been touched up, photo shopped, you name it. It is most likely that these celebrity women wish that they were seen as themselves with no "adjustments" made to their looks. But unfortunately, we have this society in which we have accepted that it is okay to put a girl on front cover and change the way she looks just to make her look more "appealing". 

In most old movies, the woman is often portrayed as one of two, a character who is weak, unable to do things for herself and must be protected by a man, or as a sexual object. But this is not what she is, as Berger stated, "She has to survey everything she is and everything she does" and that "Women watch themselves being looked at.". These women are unable to present what they are really capable of and are not given enough credit as to what they do. An example can be that on the news or radio stations, we tend to see or hear more male voices or figures as the experts or main actors. Why? There may be a smaller number of women who do have this job, but the existing number are underrepresented compared to the males. Once again, Berger mentions this opinion "men act and women appear.". Having said this, women have taken the roles as the superhero, the business woman, and strong woman who is able to take and handle so many issues in their daily lives. There has also been an improvement in children movies (Disney) as the young girl is no longer searching for her " Prince Charming", but she is able to take on the issues her self and is able to fight for her self.

In my opinion, I strongly agree with Berger's statement on feminism, however I do believe that the media has come a long way in the representation of women and their roles in media to this day.There are many campaigns on social media and female role models who have been a big part of feminism and allowed it to grow and become a bigger and empowering issue in society. These include famous singers, youtuber's and feminists across the world. Despite this, there are still gaps in which feminism can be used to change the empowerment of women forever.