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. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. 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. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another….
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object — and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”
John Berger, 1972 Ways of seeing
The woman as an object of design
Wise words from John Berger. Still relevant after so many years. I think every woman will recognize this. A woman, willingly or not, is always an object of design. How do women do it, shape themselves? More specifically, how do today’s ambitious working women, women who want to make a career, do that? How do they look like? How do they behave? Who are the sources of their inspiration? This interactive workshop addresses these questions.
Fictional women as role models
As I do my other lectures and workshops, when looking for answers to these questions, I use fictional characters, women we know from literature, film and television. The great thing about these fictional women is that they give us a unique look at their lives. Our eye follows the camera and it takes us to places where we normally don’t see women in real life. We see these women close up, not only in the kitchen, on the street or in the office. They allow us to join them to the night café, the bedroom, the bathroom and the toilet. We see them writing in their diaries. We see them lie. We see them crying lonely and being unreasonable. We see them fall. We see them get up.
In short, we get to see everything. This enables us to have a true understanding of their motives. We can identify ourselves with them. Therefore, in addition to being a source of entertainment, women of the silver screen are influential role models.
NETFLIX offers a rich source of strong female characters. Women who struggle to combine the different roles assigned to them. Mother, daughter, lover, wife, friend, career woman, boss and manager. These ‘superwomen’ are having a hard time. They must have an impressive set of (often very contradictory) qualities: caring, loyal, independent, chaste, attractive, empathetic, strict, results-oriented and stress-resistant.
A closer look at prejudices
Where does this self-imposed image come from? Why do they raise the bar so high? According to Berger, men look at women and women look at each other. We don’t just look, we also judge. We consciously and unconsciously have all kinds of prejudices about women. This workshop, which I also highly recommend to men, is about those prejudices. Specific prejudices about women in the workplace. Women with jobs. Women who are not dependent on ’them’ or a man, because they earn their own income. Women with ambition. Women with responsibilities. Women with talents.
Starring:
Phryne Fisher – Miss Fisher’s murder mysteries, Sandy – Grease, Susan, Desperately seeking Susan, Birgitte Nyborg – Borgen, Betty Draper & Peggy Olson – Mad Men, Jessica Pearson, Rachel Zane & Donna Paulson – Suits and many others.
