"Ways of Seeing" By John Berger

The other week I read a book by John Berger... and this is what I had to say about it...

In the book “Ways Of Seeing”, John Berger writes about how men and women differ in the sense that men have a more superior role than the female. Women are born into and expected to conform to certain expectations, furthermore men have imposed these expectations.
In link to John Berger’s suggestions, a writer, Janet McCabe, wrote a book that centres on how television and literature audiences respond to that media and what they find pleasurable. In McCabe’s book she has quoted Modleski and Radway’s works on female audiences and noted that many women have fantasies about being a naïve heroine that will be swept away by a dashing, male hero. The popularity of these tales insinuates that women want to have a submissive role and that looking a certain way will be more enticing to the said hero.

Women feel like they are always being watched, judged and criticised and what a woman thinks she looks like isn’t always how others perceive her. The female has been taught and persuaded from childhood that she must continually watch and survey herself and whatever the situation, women are always wondering/thinking how they are being perceived (at face value). Berger also writes about how it’s of crucial importance how a woman is seen to a man. But I do not agree, why should she only survey herself for the importance of others but not to satisfy ones self?
Ideas, perceptions, expectations and what is seen as being beautiful is continually changing over time, but beauty is still valued highly by both men and woman.
Radway suggested that romantic literature (and other media portrayals) would facilitate certain expectations and reinforce the idea of how women should be seen.
Berger also says that women behave and present themselves in a way that they think will be attractive to men and also that a woman’s idea of success is being able to draw a man to her thus having a brilliant marriage and a family.
As a woman, I believe more women have a wider view on what success is. If a woman has brains, beauty, a job that pays well and a great social life but no man, Berger is saying that woman are not truly successful but whose to say that she does not feel whole, and is feeling complete the same feeling as success, I think so.
Men form their opinions of women before they know them (judging a book by its cover) thus deciding how they should be treated, although women themselves decide how they want to be treated and they do this by letting people see what they want them to see.
The way women behave is seen as being their character e.g. a joker, angry etc. Men, on the other hand are allowed to have single emotions that are relevant to a short period of time and that do not categorise them.

In my opinion, first impressions are always important and we are all guilty of judging someone by what we see on the outside; some more than others. I believe that women are the harshest critics in today’s society.
Berger says that men categorise women but do women also categorise themselves? One argument could be that men only categorise women and not themselves because women are seen as being more complex and men are ‘simple’.
Nevertheless, in “Ways Of Seeing”, men are thought to be the surveyors and women the surveyed. Men look at woman whilst they are aware of constantly being looked at. Women view themselves from what they think is a male perspective and women therefore, like men, make themselves something to look at thus creating oneself into an object rather than a whole person.