The surveyor in me is on her way to acquire a female gaze

In May of 2009 I decided that it was time for me to turn my gaze inside and stop looking at myself from a male-oriented perspective; so I did what I have always wanted to do and that is letting my natural gray hair shine like a beacon of age and experience at the top of my head. Despite my incessant efforts throughout my life to stand up to culturally accepted norms, the surveyor inside me—I am sorry to confess—had been and had acted (on occasions) as a male. “Men look at women.” John Berger suggests, [and] “women watch themselves being looked at. […] 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.” [Ways of Seeing. BBC & Penguin Books, 1972]

Throughout years, I have learned and realized that in order for me to have the male dominated society to treat me the way I want to—not as “an object of vision: a sight”— I have to take on an active role and consciously define what can and cannot be done to me. True. I sometimes slipped from the path, but everybody makes mistakes. Nevertheless, during the process, I have shed many of my acquired male-oriented perspectives and started afresh with a new understanding and gaze at myself and my surrounding.

My decision to turn gray has so far received rave reviews, if you will, from women and has been seen as a courageous act. At times women have confessed that they see me as a brave woman. Although I can understand the appeal the act has generated in these women, courageous or not I do see it as yet another step in my ever-continuous endeavor to define my being the way I want to not the way others want me to be “represented”.

Now, having said that, let us for a second imagine me as an object—a woman to be looked at and to be desired by a presumed audience, i.e. heterosexual men. Contrary to the positive response I have been receiving from other women, the men now receive me in a totally different way. Now I am for most part invisible. Their gaze does not stay on me as it used to, and if it does, it flies away in disarray at the moment it meets my gaze—as if threatened, at times suspicious. This of course is not true about all men. My dad thinks I look very trendy and the man I used to date (now a friend) loves my new me.

At the same time, the gray has brought about a certain kind of respect, and I have noticed that most people—men or women—address me as “ma’am” while just four months ago I was referred to as “Ms.”

To gather up my thoughts, if it is true that every one of my actions is also read as an indication of how I would like to be treated, then I have to say I have been enjoying the way I am being seen and treated now. Honestly, I am not sorry to see that men and women who possess a male surveyor inside keep their distance and consciously create a vast space between us obviously trying to stay on the safe side, making it much easier on me.

Now that my social presence has changed, I would like to have around me women and men who have shed their so-called male gaze (gray hair is NOT a requirement,) and have stopped surveying others as objects, or have stopped surveying completely.

Gender and beauty

In her most famous book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir claims that one is not born a woman but that one becomes a woman. This claim unfortunately is still accurate fifty-some years after the book’s publication.

It is throughout one’s life that a female who constantly is bombarded with gendered ideas and concepts comes to see herself as a woman bound to act in certain ways and live by certain means in order to be accepted by the patriarchal society. These days every advertisement, every movie and TV show encourages women (especially young women) to behave in ways popularly known as “normal”. Images of tiny, tall and for most part young women who are constantly in search of a socially accepted image can be seen everywhere, from billboards to even crime scenes of Law & Order Special Victims Unit.

It seems that the whole purpose of all this is to rip women of their individuality and to kill in them any thought of adhering to a subjective and well thought doctrine and way of conduct.

I look at the whole process as a plan to make (read manufacture) dummies of women who, while enjoying a herd mentality, act and behave as lovely muses for one purpose only and that is to provide inspiration for men and to ultimately safeguard the mankind—and by that I really mean man kind.