‘The look’ by Rosalind Coward

‘I adore women and my eyes are in love with them’. This quote summarises what the text is about. It is showing how women are perceived in our society and the negative attitudes that surround them.
I have looked at how men are generally in control of the media. The photographic, film, television and advertising profession is largely dominated by men. Men tend to gaze at women on the streets by staring, assessing, judging and ogling at women and in contemporary culture the camera is an extension of the male gaze.
Women are always in the spotlight, they are always in the public eye on billboards. These women are beautiful and give a sense of what we ‘should’ look like. They take an overpowering position due to the large scale and stare off the image with a look of availability.
Strict control over women’s sexuality seems to be a characteristic of male-dominated societies. Marriage often operates to secure women’s labour and reproductive capacity to the advantage of men. There is a sense of duty for a woman to become married, have children and look after the family. This is quite an old fashioned attitude but is still present today. Single women at the age of thirty are generally looked at with pity, for example Bridget Jones.
The last hundred years have seen less and less direct control on women’s morality and fertility. However it is interesting to look at how women have changed over the centuries in many ways including their fashion, attitudes, morals and even the roles that they play in our contemporary society.
Women are a crucial aspect towards sexual relations. Their aesthetic appeal is viewed in many ways including voyeurism, sexual peep shows and pornography. Women are exploited as objects to be viewed and appreciated in a desirable way.
There is a large pressure to be compared with celebrities and the ideal form, and feeling compelled to look a certain way in order to fit in.
This can then lead to unhappiness with us leading to plastic surgery, violence to our bodies and feeling insecure and uncomfortable in our skin. ‘Does my bum look big in this’ is a typical example of questioning our appearance and never quite satisfied with the outcome. Every region of the body is now exposed to this scrutiny by the ideal. There are also many non-surgical ways to make ourselves ‘feel good’ like beauticians, health spa’s, waxing, eye brow tattooing and eyelash dying, even a simple trip to the hair dresser helps to boost our physical appearance and thus our inner selves.
There is a mythological character called Narcissus who was captivated and fell in love with his own self-image, his reflection in a pool. A narcissistic identification is supposed to be like when women looking at glamorous and highly sexualised images of other women because these images are meant to function like a mirror. However the images do not give back a glow of self-love as the image in the pool did for Narcissus. The faces that look back imply a criticism.
The tragedy is that young girls are subjected to being concerned with their appearance. There are several stages that they pass through including puberty which begin the notion of feeling the need to fit in and look great. They then begin to become a woman and more scrutiny of becoming completely entranced by the media and Narcissism and being controlled by an image obsessed culture.
The general moral behind this text is; ‘Do some work!, Transform yourself!, Look better!, Be more erotic!


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