The Gaze

Seeing and being seen.

By Henri Matisse (French; 1869 - 1954)

“The love-glance may be anything from an open, cloudless smile to a troubled, serious gaze, but it is instantly recognizable to the like-minded recipient. It differs entirely from Miss World's orthodontic grimace, the coquette's winsome leer, or the closed, resentful stare of the fashion model (which suggests nothing so much as a juvenile delinquent interrupted in the act of self-abuse). It is completely involuntary, the more obviously so the more it is fought down by modesty (the process is matchlessly and movingly depicted by Shakespeare in the courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda). What it announces is the fact of incarnation: I am here, my inmost self, in my face. The rest of my body, it says, my private parts, and therefore I myself, all are yours, if you will have it so. Being unguarded, like the naked body whose uncovering it foreshadows, it is a pledge of innocence, and an innocence not subsequently destroyed, but fulfilled, in the sexual act.”
— Robert Grant

We live in a time in which we are constantly exposed to the “eyes”. The eye of our time is the camera that we all carry in our pockets or handbags. The perpetual presence of the eye makes us anxious and paranoid. This eye inspires hyperawareness and through that, it controls our behaviour and actions. It invites separation from our more authentic, instinctual reactions and responses.

This eye is impersonal and cold — is a tool of detached observing, not an intimate contemplating of another. Being seen can always unnerve us. Still, in an intimate setting, even if it brings discomfort, it can ultimately bring liberation as it can make us feel loved in that part of our being in which we found ourselves unlovable or ugly.

When we speak of women’s experiences, we often hear how a woman may experience herself in a third person (the famous Atwood quote about male fantasies and many others that seek to explain this phenomenon). When so, she is as a passive element in her own life and reality, constantly seeking and evaluating how she is observed or what is expected of her. She internalises the collective “eyes”, the “faceless observer” and acts accordingly — of course, it feels heavy, since this faceless observer only seeks to veil her from herself. In this state, she does not know who she is and is looking outwardly for an identity — she may attach herself to philosophies, politics, theologies, aesthetics, values, trends, other people or anything else that provides some stable identity in the moment.

We may also often hear how she feels burdened or even exploited by the “male gaze”, seeking to avoid it or even actively rebel against it through making herself intentionally “ugly”. But she comes to see that even in the so called “ugliness”, she still attracts eyes, attention and comments — “ugliness”, just like beauty, seizes the minds.

There is nothing a woman can do to avoid eyes — veiled or nude, young or old, she is still eroticised, or if not explicitly eroticised, she still remains an object of fascination, pondering and analysing to both men and women. However, instead of avoiding this reality by hiding, I invite you to find ways to empower yourself and come to see the eyes as a source of power for you in an impersonal context, and as a vessel for intimacy in a more private and personal one.

To be looked at, does not mean objectification and reduction — if we do not objectify and reduce ourselves, there cannot be such a thing. One can be perceived and still have their own subjectivity and point of view; one can allow for another’s perception to exist without obliterating your own. In fact, you will only feel under the pressure of another’s if you do not have your own point of view to begin with.

For many women who we may know as powerful, glamorous or as seductresses, being seen is not something that passively happens to them — it is something they deliberately invite and enjoy. Such a woman loves the camera, loves the projections and observations that come in her direction because they are an offering. To endure that, she of course, must be internally strong, with a strong sense of self and strong roots. She must be an ascetic who, as she moves others, remains unmoved — outwardly a condemned or adored “whore”, inwardly a “virgin” subject to neither condemnation nor adoration.

She does not receive the man's gaze as a passive object but accepts it as a conscious subject. By being moved, made to feel or inspired to direct his attention or gaze towards her (positively or negatively, it does not matter), he has already made an offering. Now it is up to her to decide what to do with that — use it to build herself up without giving anything in return, nourish it and magnify it, or nullify it completely.

More intimately, being truly seen—in all your complexity, your beauty, your “ugliness”, your contradiction—is one of life's great gifts. When you release fear of objectification and recognise that even in another’s eye, you are still a being, still a subject, you open yourself to this gift.

Today’s guidance shall focus on giving you methods and techniques that will allow you to develop your own point of view and gaze (it is already there but you must connect to it) and also ways to navigate the collective gaze, the male gaze and even the gaze of other women.

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