Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. “Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision : a sight.” The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Only a man can make a good joke for its own sake. If a woman makes a good joke this is an example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she as a joker-woman would like to be treated by others. If a man does the same, his action is only read as an expression of his anger. If a woman throws a glass on the floor, this is an example of how she treats her own emotion of anger and so of how she would wish it to be treated by others. Every one of her actions - whatever its direct purpose or motivation - is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.Įvery woman's presence regulates what is and is not 'permissible' within her presence. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself.

Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.

Ways of seeing by john berger