Gender query: Self-consciousness of image

[firecat]

I read a blog called The Beheld.

In this post, "Recommended Reading," Autumn Whitefield-Madrano discusses Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth and recommends some books that "go beyond" and "work alongside" Wolf's book. One of them is Ways of Seeing by John Berger. Whitefield-Madrano includes the following quote from the book:

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. … 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. … Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

Whitefield-Madrano says that she relates to this quote.

I don't. Sometimes I dress to look and/or feel a certain way, but once I'm dressed, I don't go around constantly surveying myself. And when I do feel that way, I hate it.

So I'm trying to figure out whether this is in fact a part of being a woman or identifying as feminine (and thus my not doing it is part of my being genderqueer) or whether the author maybe doesn't know what he's talking about or is exaggerating what he's talking about (by using terms such as "continually" and "scarcely avoid").

I'd love for people of all genders to comment on this. What is your gender? Do you constantly watch yourself and feel aware of your image of yourself most of the time? Do you think women or people who identify as feminine usually do that?

Ways of Seeing was published in 1972. In what ways do you think enforced image self-consciousness for women or people who identify as feminine has changed since then?

Comments

[rhivolution]

I find this remarkably close to feminist film theory, with regards to 'the male gaze' concept and the idea that women on screen are always the object. Interesting.

As a genderqueer person whose feminine side is relative but who was raised in a FAAB environment, it's soemthing I do have but not all the time. When I do have it, it's very much from a filmmaking/on-screen perspective, but I do have it and dislike it in myself sometimes. Those are the times that I try to look at it 'objectively' (read: from the dominant paradigm) rather than with myself as the viewer of myself.

If that makes sense.

I think less women now, at least from anecdotal experience with friends, think of their behaviour and action as 100% mask/presentation, which I would say is a sociopolitical shift towards some cultures being more emotionally open and that gaze, that claim over others' autonomy, not always being acceptable. But it's definitely not something completely eradicated.

[pipisafoat]

As a genderqueer person whose feminine side is relative but who was raised in a FAAB environment, it's soemthing I do have but not all the time. When I do have it, it's very much from a filmmaking/on-screen perspective
Huh. Me too. FASCINATED.

[rhivolution]

I don't know if it's more symptomatic of growing up in a time and culture where television and film dominates the idea of narrative, or of me being a media wonk and academically trained to see things that way.

Probably both?

[pipisafoat]

I vote both! I've not been academically trained in that direction (well, there was tiny three-week filmmaking course i took on a whim once, but i was seeing things that way before the course (probably that's part of why i signed up for it)), but my brother is getting his master's in that sort of thing (and this weekend we're teaching 7 6th graders the basics, it's going to be so much fun horrible so much fun), so ... I lost track of my point. So I am exposed to the academic side of things as well as watching far too much tv? So I hear about it and know more things than the average tv consumer? I guess.

[rhivolution]

Best wishes with the teaching, zomg. And I am not sure what it all is, personally, because I'm sure too that I did this before I really got into understanding the structure of film/tv and framing and whatever.