Image of the woman

This article is dedicated to the Image of the Femme , not for what it is but way in which it is perceived by the men. This is why the thesis brought in the article is that this image does not proceed, essentially of the periods, that from the male point of view.

Seduction of the images

The images are tempting ; the plastic of the woman also, one can play with the image as much as one wants. The image, and in particular that of the woman, was used for the conquest of the to be able on the Western spirit; to be able on the spirit of the human being, independently of its kind.

To decipher the springs of this seduction by the images, such is here the question which arises: the image of the body of the woman was worked so much during the centuries that it really coincides with the real woman, neither in the past nor today.

The various images of the woman in the past persist in the collective memory.

Prehistory

With the Paléolithique superior were carved called female figurines Venus. They date for the majority from the Gravettien, the such Venus de Willendorf or of Lespugue. Their round and corpulent forms led certain authors to see there a worship of the fertility or Goddess-Mother, without possibility however of scientific demonstration.

During the more recent periods, figures mean and dancing are represented on the walls of the caves or the rocks. It is the case in Raising Spanish or, with the Neolithic , on the Saharan walls decorated of pretty Telamones on their mounting.

L'" Allegory of the cave " return more to the Psychanalyse that to prehistory, even if imagination makes us locate it in these moved back times of the human history, the cave symbolizing the intra-uterine life.

Antiquity

Greek

The emerging patriarchate relegates the women in the Gynécée. The image of the woman bequeathed to the Occident is primarily a male product. Strictly confined with the field of the reproduction of the species, the Greeks idealized those which they did not consider exclusively not dedicated to this one: they became as many allegories in the form of goddesses, of nymph S and Ondine S.

The idealization of the woman in fact a development of the hero, appears central and main actor of the accounts. Pénélope waits the hearth, and like the Beautiful Helene, the " prepares; rest of the guerrier". It is however under allegorical female features of the " Victoires" , like that of Samothrace, that they we will bequeath in spite of them the image of a virile femininity.

While going back to the first representations of Western sexuality, one finds a Satyre hairy and jubilant, with the feet of goat, continuing a gracious nymph, sometimes merry sometimes startled or appeurée, sometimes seeming to indicate the bush to him in which it will hide, often expressing the fear of the imminent Viol.

Celt

At the Celtic , the woman has an inheritance of which it could inherit and which it can bequeath. In Ireland, it seems held with military obligations. In addition to these legal provisions, the Celtic woman can exert a trade as well as the royalty and have servants. The most famous example is that of the queen Medb. Ella has also access to certain sacerdotal functions concerned with the druidism, the divination and prophecy, like the Gallisenae of the island-of-Center (see article Vate). But this raises more of the Mythe and the Légende S that history; one does not know of it large thing if not what it shows through of testimonys of the Latin authors and one hardly has iconographic representations of them.

Roman

Following ancient Greece, guardian gods and goddesses populate the Pantheon. Sexuality is well assumed by the Roman polytheism. Christianization will put a term at the pagan licenses.

A certain perception of the woman will remain however in Italy, cradle of the Western thought of today. Until the Rebirth, the only representation of woman authorized by the dogma is that of the Madonna, only redemption with the original fault of the girls of Eve. Virgin with the child who will give infantile dolphins, seeking the feeder center that a all-powerful maternal image will want to give them well.

The Middle Ages

In the medieval Christian Occident, the direction of the original sin and its atonement changes sexuality. The ecclesiastics moralisent considerably the reports/ratios of the intersubjectivity sexuée by introducing topics of purity related to virginity and the worship of the Blessed Virgin, digging the gap between the men and the women of the medieval company. The image of the woman is brought back to this icon and this belief founder to which no mother corresponds: this point of view causes to make responsible for the original sin the half of humanity. The only adventure which the woman can live is the Adultère, which reprobation Sociétal E fills of danger.

Rebirth

The spring of Botticelli brings a new glance on the woman. Profane art or crowned, Venus or Virgin Mary, artistic subtlety make us doubt. Venus de Botticelli brings to the Occident a new direction of the beauty, its birth accompanies spring, prototype of a beautiful fair young woman to the long hair, the clear skin and proportioned measurements.

Also contributing for this purpose of the monopoly of the image of the woman related to the religion, the painting of portraits of noble ladies develops, presented in the courses of Europe in order to conclude marriages and alliances. Once married, the lady is in general represented with a puppy of company or a Hermine (the such lady of the same name of Léonard de Vinci), symbol of the fidelity of the lady. The small deadened animal symbolizes a sexuality alleviated in the marriage.

Intermediate periods

Progressively and less representing one allegorical idea and more a real woman, her own personality takes rise. The returns on traditional mythology are nevertheless the required passages of the artists making their humanities. Enough late, Rubens modifies the perception of the body with its three Graces .

The Dandy EMS causing represented in the table of Manet the lunch on the grass watch a new license of manners in the middle-class company " engoncée" 19th century. Painters neo-classic S unite then with the Impressionniste S to explore the human emotions and to translate them on the fabric. The Féminité enables them to find these expressions, it is to them a source of inspiration making it possible to leave traditional cleavages on the image of the woman.

See the detailed article: femininity in painting.

The XXème century

The Fifties

Prehistory of the postmodernity.

See the article on the Image of the woman in the Fifties

The Sixties

By his report/ratio of copinage antiséduction, the garçonne breaks the taboos between the sexes and speaks frankly with its interlocutors. It precedes the conquest of the Cénacle S reserved to the men, the revolution is close. Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim under the camera of Truffaut was a imperceptible Gavroche as much as coveted, which became icon.

The advertizing image

In the United States, the report/ratio with the image is rough and direct: Cindy Crawford distributes large sheets of paper white to a floor of frameworks joined together and gained with its cause. The conquering image, with the carnivorous smile and the white teeth hyper, where the woman triumphs over a burst of laughter, knows a disenchantment in Europe however.

Various adulated female types of the Masters of marketing and the agitprop: to see the article Publisexisme.

Synthesis

the photographic image

The image of the women almost never belonged to them. The great majority of the mannequins are photographed by men who apply their vision, often machist, on the postures wished for these puppets with irreproachable figure because that made sell.

the press

So that the situation is reversed, it is necessary to await the magazines like It in France and their draftings of journalists women who decide choice of the photograph of a with respect to their public. Consequence of the sexual Revolution, the less stereotyped professions is feminized, and one sees from now on the décideuses ones, directors publicity to work this image, perfectly with the fact of male psychology (and sound eye) on the subject. The sector is not as well as possible concerning the image of the woman, since even in the City magazine S dedicated to a female target assistantship, one finds an iconography unslung: publicities smart Porn, images shocking by degradation which they induce, etc When with the magazine Photo , it is well, there are many photographs inside, what Ca outside shows made of the good inside of the magazine.

the actresses

Vectors of the female image, the actresses of theater (one thinks of Sarah Bernhardt and its success on the other side of the Atlantic), and later of cinema, make it possible to leave a solidified framework, and to find a Féminité represented and played with talent: the female character interpreted by an actress releases the traditional diagrams of the spectators by the audacity of his play (see Beautiful Noiseuse of Rivette); it is good to recall that in Greek Antiquity, the feminine roles were played by actors; the presence of the women was prohibited on scene.

Today

Through the modern media, the image of the woman is omnipresent today in arts, the commercial productions, the communication. This image is rich and multiple. But often, this public image is shifted compared to the real woman because it conveys an ideal, a sexual phantasm, a symbol, and a whole multitude of elements.

The border between erotism and Pornographie is not always very clear, dependant on several interpretations of the directions of these words (art/commercial; suggestion/representation; emotions/desire). The image which is given of the woman in the pornography presents it like an object of desire, without taking account of an emotional dimension. The pornography, sentimentally impoverished product, nourish the contempt and the anger of the feminists and the moralists (however seldom of agreement) towards the pornographes. It returns to the women an image of themselves fantasmée by the men, of a maltreated or fetichized female body. This image is generally undergone and rejected by the real women who do not represent themselves thus.

See too

Random links: