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How do Venus paintings and Playboy magazine regulate the female body?
Figure 1 - Sleeping Venus (1510) Giorgione [Painting]
Figure 2 - Pamela Anderson Playboy (November 1994) Playboy [Magazine Cover]
The female body has been continually regulated through the use of naked and pornographic images to maintain the idea that the female body is a commodity. By emphasising a woman's value on her physical and sexual attractiveness, the female's identity, mind, and personality have been made redundant. Historically, this can be seen through the ‘nude’ paintings or Venus’s, often depicting the nude body female body in a perfect male standard of beauty. In contemporary culture, magazines containing pornographic material create a standard in which biological women and their bodies are objectified. The main support for this has been done through the Male Gaze. The Male Gaze refers to the theory that women are objectified sexually through the standards of a heterosexual male and, as a result, depicted in a patriarchal manner. They continually sell their bodies to this standard created by the gaze. In this essay, I will be applying this to depictions of contemporary standards of women by examining celebrities in Playboy magazine, exploring how pornographic images regulate an unachievable standard for women through the sexualisation, lack of representation and objectification of the body.
Firstly, we must develop an understanding of how the Male Gaze has been responsible for regulating the female body. It must be addressed that it is not solely responsible; there are veritable factors for the implication of irresponsible and unattainable beauty standards, as women often enforce this ideology, and these ideas can constrain other genders. But, within this essay, we will just be looking at cis-gendered women. The Male Gaze refers to the notion that a woman performs and is an object of heterosexual male affection. Driscoll argues that it creates the argument that within our dominant culture, the gaze cannot help but be internalised (1997, p. 93), creating standards that sit within the woman and herself performing to it. This allows the body to be regulated through control by presenting a body that is desirable by the male gaze. This can be argued to be a form of ‘subjectification’, a term created by Michael Focult (Blackman, 2008, p. 23) of how subjects create themselves to be developed into a type of subject and is not a naturalistic ideal. The Male Gaze consistently regulates how we view women and shapes our society and how we believe we should act. This interlinks of gender performativity (Butler, 1990), and how women shape how they feel they should act and look as a woman, depending on how physically their body should resemble a woman, even within how they dress.
The body has become a commodity, although it has been through enslavement, sex work, and even modelling (McCarthey, 2023). This has been amplified within the feminine body. Pornography and erotic images have accelerated this in recent years. There is evidence of women selling their bodies themselves as a commodity. This work intends to sell women an ideal back to them when applying Marxist feminism as the cause of a woman's suffering and regulation. There needs to be an ideal standard set by the world around them. As a result, women ‘Women mirror the injustice masculine society has inflicted on them - they become increasingly like commodities.’ (Mulvey, 1999, pp.49). The body is, therefore, regulated through capitalism to sell this society back the ideal.
These theories work together in understanding how the role of the women's nude body has been continually exploited and created a body which is not naturalistic but socially constructed. Through the Male gaze, the woman is viewed as an object of entertainment, and a woman herself may unconsciously submit to this gaze. When a woman sees these images, many of which have been painted to an impossible perfection, the woman then buys into this false narrative, attempting to imitate this design and restrict their body to an ideal. This regulation acts as a ‘looking glass self’ (Blackman, 2008, pp.23), which illustrates that the expression of anyone's identity is an incorporation of our own expression and our responses to society. Acting as the common concept of the ‘docile or disciplined body’ (2008, pp.26) which is used in various feminist theories presents the body as something that can be malleable and can become internalised. When failing to gain these formed bodies through naturalistic terms, the women may often result in plastic surgery, especially in contemporary culture. Further verifying regulation of the body through its moulding of a commodity, limiting its potential, and reaffirming the male status of the female's body.
Venus paintings were a popular form of female nude painted throughout the Renaissance. They were depicted nude, with the breasts on show in many poses, usually facing the painting but would often cover their genitals. The famous Sleeping Venus (figure 1), painted by Giorgine (1510). The lady lacks an identity, although she is most likely a mistress of courtesans, but there is no record of who she actually was, and she just remains nude. These portraits were usually commissioned by lords, using art as a reason for eroticism and voyeurism. Even within this picture, the girl is dehumanised, as she is not real, yet we can gaze upon her without her consent. This sense of voyeurism, as the viewer watches the Venus creates a power dynamic, placing the viewer and the owner of the painting above the individual (McCartney, 2023) and underplaying the role of consent. This was crucial for understanding the role of the male gaze in art and media, and how it has become established within this patriarchy for generations. This nude image regulated the body due to the idea of Venus being perfect and the ideal woman, drawn by the male and nude, is what he wishes the woman's body to be.
It is often argued that Playboy magazine is a place of resistance for women, a place to reclaim their sexuality, putting themselves on display, looking outwards and staring at the viewer, where a woman's own real body is placed on display. Playboy Magazine is an American magazine popular throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. It sells images of women in sexual depictions. In Figure 2, Pamela Anderson stands posed, looking awake at the camera, as she is on the Cover of Playboy magazine. Pamela Anderson was a 1990’s celebrity often objectified by the media. Here, she is depicted in control of her sexuality and is displayed as an American conventional beauty, with blonde hair, blue eyes, full lips, and her breasts clearly on display. This idea works in contrast to the Venus, suggesting Playboy may even be a feminist site of agency, as they claim over their sexuality and nudity. Does this ability speak so loudly about their sexuality act as a reclamation of sexuality and their body? (McCartney, 2023). I argue that because the woman is displaying her body for the Male Gaze and conforming to its regulation through the camera, just as a Venus would for the owner of the artist, her ‘nakedness is not an expression of her own feelings; it is a sign of her submission the owners’ feelings or demands’ (Berger, pp.46). This is enforced when the magazine is brought for the targeted audience, and the woman is elected on whether her body is desirable. This is emphasised even more when it is known that Hugh Hefner is a profit of these women’s sexuality, just as the lords and nobility would have been. These women sell their bodies, maybe as personal freedom, but only because they fit the regulated standards, of which the Gaze has regulated. Continually, tis widened representation of women portraying themselves more visible actually ‘traps them in the disciplinary gaze – and constantly maintains this – through the demand that they make themselves objects for men (Tynan, 2009, p.190). I argue that it is anti-feminist and helps regulate the body for the Male Gaze when It is only when she is projected in a man's fantasy that her body takes on an image of power. (Mulvey, 1999, pp.53), while creating media that buys into the impunity to objectify women and their images.
To conclude, the female body has been regulated for many centuries, mainly to appeal to the male gaze and within contemporary culture to sell back to us as individuals. by portraying a perfected image through the male gaze. The male gaze has altered our perception of female beauty, creating it into a commodity to sell the ideals back to us. Historically, this utilised Venus, often portraying courtesans, having them painted and acted in a perfect manner, crafted by a male, to be brought for erotic purposes. In contemporary culture, the female body is under much pressure to appeal to the standards created by elites and maintain a heavily sexualised image. These regulations can be sold to individuals if they are not met. Playboy Magazine portrays images of objectified women to be sexualised for Male entertainment; even with the women being more active in the creation of such images, they help push the gazes. When those images are sold, it reaffirms the idea that the female body can be sold and bought for the right price. To summarise, the body is regulated through the communication and consumption of a sexualised and objectified female figure through its commodification and male gaze.
Bibliography
Berger, J. (1972 ) Ways of Seeing London; Penguin
Blackman, L. (2008) Introduction: Thinking through the body The body: Key concepts. Oxford: Berg
Butler, J. (1990) Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge.
Driscoll, E. (1997). Hunger, Representation, and the Female Body: An Analysis of Intersecting Themes in Feminist Studies in Religion and the Psychology of Women. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 13(1), 91–104. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25002300
Mulvey, L. (1999) Visual and Other Pleasures, Palgrave Macmillan UK, Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=6583424. (Accessed: 20th May 2023)
McCartney, N. (2023) 'The Body' [Slides 1-40]. Unit 4: Cultural Studies. Central Saint Martins Available at: https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1345304/course/section/441226/Stage%201_Th e%20Body_NMcC_2023%20SMALL.pdf?time=1678700018491 (Accessed: 10th May 2023).
McCartney, N. (2023) 'The Gaze' [Slides 1-56]. Unit 4: Cultural Studies. Central Saint Martins Available at: https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1345304/course/section/441226/Stage%201_Th e%20Body_NMcC_2023%20SMALL.pdf?time=1678700018491 (Accessed: 6th June 2023).
Tynan, J. (2019) ‘Michel Foucault: Fashioning the Body Politic’ in eds. Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik, Thinking through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, London: I B Tauris, pp. 184 – 199. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/reader.action?docID=4444010 (Accessed 20th May 2023)