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

[elainegrey]

You agree it was knee-jerk and probably misogynist? It's been a long road to get to where i could see that in myself.

I frequently appreciate how my parents blessedly did not gift me with weight issues and appearance issues. I did get a great deal of pressure to take middle class responsibility to be secure and professional. In a number of ways, i think i had a bit more male socialization than average for a daughter (and my mother did as well). My internalized pressures have a great deal to do with being strong (Have pneumonia? Ignore it and attend those meetings! Is the kitchen not clean at midnight? Get up and clean it at 4 am!) and presenting professionally (including "housewife" as a profession). I suspect those internalized pressures are just as much class and culture driven as gender driven. There's a strong thread of expectations that i'm pretty sure is Scandinavian (some of the strength and stoicism); and i think of "depression babies" and their recognizable adaptations. (I might need this tenth butter tub, better save it.)

I'm reminded of those young coming of age novels about the artist youths living in a Jewish culture and the struggle of breaking free of those cultural demands. Similarly, there's that memoir of the woman who has left a restrictive Jewish community when she realized she was dooming her child to the same confines she rebelled against.

[laughingrat]

No, no, I don't think you're misogynist, just that the framing of how women behave is so fraught, and on top of that we're taught to ignore that framing ("Pay no attention to the System behind the curtain"), so it seems like noticing this stuff is a process of peeling back layers. I didn't find your comment hurtful, FWIW.

I'd be interested in that last novel especially, if you remember the title. There was one called Bread Givers that I had to read in college, about a young Jewish immigrant woman leaving her restrictive family, that really got to me. It's been years since I read it, but it was so good.

[elainegrey]

I think i do have a pretty well learned streak of misogynism i learned from hanging out with geeky guys growing up. It's there and i continue to recognize that i've not completely rerouted around that training.

“Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots” is new, see http://www.alternet.org/story/154406/how_i_left_my_ultra-orthodox,_ultra-repressed_hasidic_community_/