Discussion 3 (ways of seeing)

In the European painting, there are differences between nakedness and nude. Theses differences are more visible for women than men because of the tradition. For John Berger, being necked is to be oneself and being nude is to be seeing necked by others and not yet recognize by oneself. That mean we can compare nudity to the object such as how we see women in the art without clothes. Therefore, we can realize that this form of women representation can be applied to pictures and we can illustrate this fact in many images we have seen in our life.

At the beginning of this episode, Berger said that men dream to women and women dream to themselves. Also, he mentioned that women are taught how to appear to others, particularly to men because in the western tradition, the community taught women that their success depend to the way they look like for men. In this situation, western works of art consider women as an object that the beauty can be appreciate by men. These depictions have influenced the way we think, the place of women in our society. But in our modern society, women are fighting to be considered not as men’s objects but as a person who has the right as men. In the episode, we see the conversation between Berger and some women around the table, we can understand how these women want the society change the perception of western tradition painting related to the nudity of women.
During the presentation, we see women using mirror to look themselves and Berger shows some arts where women are looking themselves in the mirror. What are they looking for by using the mirror? Are they looking the imperfection of the form of their body? we see that mirror is very important for women, they use it to see how they look or how they should look like. Women pay attention to every detail that has a connection to their face and body, they are worry about their beauty, they want to be perfect in the eyes of men. According to Berger, behind this glace, there is judgments. Even today, this old European art still affects the society where we are living. In our daily life we see that women are more interested to their beauty than men.