I Am Not the Eve You Perceive Me to Be

     

         And as if it were not stigmatizing enough to be the origin of all the ills befallen man.  Ideologies’ like those of Eve and her seducing ways as told in the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, has denied women the right to be. This early conditioning has brought forth my fate as a female in the form of Eve. But early on in life, I did not conform and will not be fall such ridiculous antics. I use my own image and express it nakedly and proudly.

         It is fair to say (in the eyes of man) Eve has condemned and betrayed her image and all women into an regressed, repressed non- free thinking individuals, (or so we have been taught). Unwillingly she was trusted upon man’s own objectified slice of womanhood, Eve was deprived of the basic ability and right to be as naked as a man.  She fore gave the freedom of the self for the object of the Gaze.

         John Berger’s clearly has a point when he says, “ Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated.” (Bergers 46). So did Adam and God himself judge Eve on the basis of that one act?  Hell yes, therefore, penalizing her to an existence of the "object". As seen through the various formats of media, especially advertisements, where females have always been portrayed as something to be seen and not necessarily heard.

          So what is the reason for man to justify lurid looks and gazes upon women that would not befit their own mother, but nonetheless are practiced with such underhandedness? Well, as Laura Mulvey explains in the chapter, Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema. “ The paradox of phallocentrism (Centered on men or on a male viewpoint, especially one held to entail the domination of women by men.) in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world.” (Mulvey 833). We are to be looked upon and desired but we are also to be looked down upon as an inferior version of man. 

         Oh really? It is no wonder why women of all forms and color have slowly crawled their way out of the oil paintings of Berger's yesteryear. Clearly, somewhere in between those hundreds if not thousands of years of objectification and subjugation

 Eve had finally discovered some kind of counter attack for the feverish beastly peering of male dominance, which was found in her critical gaze.  

         Bell hooks explains this of the blacks woman stare and the implications, “ The “gaze” has been and it a site of résistance for colonized black people globally. Subordinates in relations of power learn experientially that there is a critical gaze, one that “looks” to document, one that is oppositional. In resistance struggle, the power of the dominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating “awareness” politicizes “looking” relations-one learns to look a certain way to resist.” (Hooks 116).

         So if empowerment lies in the reversal of the “Eyes” before the ”I”. It may be fair to say that although women are still Eve’s in the eyes of man, this object, the naked still, this silent beauty is critically staring back into the abyss. With social media sites such as, tumblr and instagram empowering individuals – especially that of Eve and womanhood.

      More and more frequently we are seeing Images of women posing for themselves first, and all else second. But is this advancement really, maybe and maybe not? I speak for myself when I say perhaps. I use my images to express under my rules and convictions, whether a man or woman for that matter stares, is up to them. 

http://www.cabrillo.edu/~mmoore/imageswomen.html