Question #1
The importance of the difference is about the perception of the nudity of the pictured women. Are we looking at them as at the sexual objects or the objects to be judged? Or, on the contrary, are we looking at naked women as at them, just for their simple being, without any male interference or interest and judgment? In my opinion, these differences apply to images of today’s western society in a very similar way as back then. Ladies are in an all-source of media often presented as an object, in position to try to catch the attention by the visual perception by looking submissive, available, and ready.
Question #2
The role of the women depicted as a beautiful thing to look at, whose biggest interest is to be pretty for the men. Women were just sexual objects, which were even more attractive if they were submissive without their own opinion, quietly following the men’s demands. The position of women in modern society is more and more equal to the position of men, but we can still see many situations nowadays where are the same old rules still applied. For instance, magazines or photos on social media are presenting women’s nudity without any artistic relevance, or intellectual overlap. Even some very intelligent, successful women still believe that they are not fully accepted by society without positive judgment of their physical beauty by men.
Question #3
The beauty of women was ranked by interest and judgment of men’s enjoyment. Women at the paintings were looking at themselves in the mirror, thinking about how they look and how they are looking at by men. Mirror was also used as a symbol of the vanity of women. The hypocrisy of the men was hidden behind the moral condemn of the women for their vanity in order just to look at the naked women’s body. We can see a kind of parallel between the women naked bodies pictured in old paintings and photos of naked women in every other magazine today. Women are often seeing as a sexual object without any other interest than to be pretty and accepted by men.
Tereza I agree with your first paragraph about many women having the same way of thinking as those women portrayed in older Western works of art. Although feminism is manifested worldwide, they still choose to be submissive.
Do you think, there is a possibility, that some of these women, that freely decided to stay submissive, are sometimes even taking advantage of those men’s weakness for the naked women? Or if not these women, then some marketing companies?
Hi Tereza, it is very interesting that you pointed out about men attracting more towards submissive women. This let me ponder on the story of Adam and Eve. Did God really made women subservient to the men and men the agent of God? Looking into the history, i believe God actually did where women are marginalized and the patriarchal society objectifying women and prejudiced against them. Now I believe God is slowly but steadily changing the status quo.
Please ignore my previous comment.
Hi Tereza,
it is interesting that you pointed out about men being attracted more towards submissive women. This actually gave me a chance to ponder upon the story of Adam and Eve. So, did God really make women subservient to men and men – the agent of God? Looking into the history, i believe that God actually started the conventional idea of women being marginalized and the arise of patriarchal society where women are objectified. Now, looking at the current situation, where women are equally successful as men, God must have realized that the punishment he gave to Eve should be over by now because we can see the steadily changing status quo of women in the society.
Hi Tenzin. Patriarch and matriarchy are changing one another all the time. In my opinion is very important, if we, as a society, will try to not be a part of any extreme. Some differences between women and men are all right and very natural and 100% equality in the very all aspects would not be okay. I actually believe that we should embrace and admire the differences of our sex. (Without degrading one sex over the other one of course).
But of course, in a sense of rights, education, or salaries or free will of the life choices should be unconditionally equal for both genders.
I agree with you on the part3 that men in the picture want to see a pretty naked women and the women want to see what men see in the image of the mirror.