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.
1 comment:
shirin...absolutely impressive. You underscored the problem quite emphatically. The male gaze no longer is outside, it is inside..and that more than anything is what is so problematic. It is so much easier to say it is the media, it is society, is is the patriarchal culture...but more difficult to say it is within me. Alternatively, because it is within it is also, from a certain perspective, easier to "change." In other words we can't easily change society, media, or culture as we can't control other people...but we do have the ability to control what exists inside of us. Is it easy? not at all. Is it possible. yes? as you so eloquently put it.
btw, your gray hair is quite beautiful. :-)
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