The Female Gaze

John Berger wrote in ‘Ways Of Seeing’ ‘according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’ (Berger 1972, 45, 47). Berger argues that in European art from the Renaissance onwards women were depicted as being ‘aware of being seen by a [male] spectator’ (ibid., 49)

It is argued that the male gaze has three perspectives: one of the man behind the camera, one of the male characters, and one of the male spectators. The male gaze, it is argued, can be attributed to patriarchy because of its inherent inequality.

However, Life Drawing Wales and many other ‘party’ life drawing events, as well as work in the life room, where the overwhelming majority of the artists sketching away are women, especially in education where this is highly pronounced with often the tutor and all students are female, the life models experience the ‘Female Gaze’.