Final film

John Berger - Ways of Seeing

This whole essay about women in art is so important but I just photocopied the most relevant part for my project. This idea that a woman's identity is split into the surveyor and the surveyed is just so perfectly explained. It connects to the practice of habitual body monitoring as women are constantly seeing themselves from an outsider's perspective. This is so damaging because it makes women think that their worth is determined by others', mainly male, opinion of themselves. 

"Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another." This idea is at the very core of my project that as women we need to mend that relationship with our bodies, we are not two separate entities but inextricably connected, how we treat our bodies has a huge impact on who we are. Just because this essay makes so much sense doesn't mean that this is how it should stay, all women need to be aware of this and pull away from this. 

Women have become 'a sight' is society in which they are continually under scrutiny by men but also by other women. This patriarchal society has made an environment where women see each other as competition for men's attention and therefore can be very cruel to one another, criticising their appearance. Therefore women are manipulated into not seeing the bigger problem, and rallying together to establish the equality of the sexes. It is such a huge problem to solve because as Berger points out it is so ingrained in our culture, that is has become a part of every women's identity. 

It is interesting that John Berger also talks about women living in 'limited space' which is very similar to Lily Myers' poem 'Shrinking Women.' This focus on reducing your body mass as a woman, influences your ambitions, personality and confidence. Our society makes women feel like they do not deserve to fill up space but need to accommodate for men. This will only start to change when girls are taught to see their bodies as the apparatus to live their lives and not as something to be constantly kept in check. However this cannot just come from the parents but from society as a whole to establish equality.