Men Act and Women Appear

Emily Simski

March 6, 2015

Sixth Blog Entry

“Men Act and Women Appear”

            “Men act and women appear” is a phrase that everyone has heard at least once in their lifetime. The point of this quote is that “men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at (Walters 51). In the article Visual Pressures on Gender and Looking, author Suzanna Danuta Walters discusses how men like to be a “Peeping Tom” around women as well as how women feel about this.

            According to Walters, “Women are depicted in a different way from men”. This is true when it comes to the case that the “ideal” spectator is a male while a female is designed to flatter the male spectator. I wish that this would end because men are always finding ways to see women naked or close up. There is a term that follows this kind of situation known as Voyeurism which is when you take a sexual pleasure and look at it instead of being close to a particular object, like Peeping Tom. This would make me a little happier if we had more people who weren't peeping Toms so that women could feel secure with their bodies.

            However women are still advertised on only a certain part of their bodies due to the number of male spectators as well as what the media thinks of women. “Women are signified by their lips, legs, hair, eyes or hands” (Walters 55). This shouldn't be the case because women should be represented by their whole bodies so that men don’t only focus on one part of a women’s body. Compare this to the men who are expressed with their whole bodies instead of just focusing on their abs or muscles. This is what leads to women believing that they have to change their bodies since ads are focused on one section of the female body. This makes me upset because I feel that every women should be accepted for who they are and not have just one part of their bodies be “sexualized”.

            “Men Act and Women Appear” is nothing new because we've seen these images and instances encountered a thousand times before. Men just want to view “the perfect women” based on just a few ligaments on her bodies. Women do have a choice on whether to make this choice or not, but sometimes I feel that women don’t have a choice and are forced to show themselves to make men and the media happy. This is the “male gaze” that women have been complaining about since back in the 40s. One of the reasons why women become feminists is due to the men still treating women like sex selling objects instead of actual women.