It’s an ugly world one in which the body of a woman is always the bearer of a meaning in addition to “I am a body.” A nude male body is just a body, a nude female body is, depending on the position, the clothes and the context, a symbol of sex, motherhood, threat, home, affection and many other abstract concepts. So to be more specific, if I put a photo of myself online it will always be a symbol of something, not just a photo, just as if I wear a low-cut shirt, a jute bag or a ninja turtle costume I will always be a message and not a person inside any body.
Talking about this phenomenon I realize that it’s not a simple idea, but once it’s clarified, there are a lot of practical examples that we can all observe.
The basic theory is relatively easy to understand: it has been claimed, starting from some observation regarding the society that surrounds us, that the female body compared to the male one is considered an “Other from the norm”, a variation of the simple body that is that of a man. It’s obviously not a conscious idea, rather a substrate, an atmosphere that we have been breathing since our childhood. It’s not my idea, it has its roots in The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and that over time it has help sprout a number of theories and tests on the image of the woman in the culture and in the media.
To give you a quick example: if I asked you out of the blue to draw a human being, would you draw a man or a woman?
Spoiler: you would most likely draw a man, whoever you are and whatever gender you belong to, and if you were to draw a woman the chances are that you have already asked yourself this question.
And this, in a world in which the male and female ratio is 1:1, does raise doubts.
This is the reason why, when faced with this image, one would spend a long time talking about the woman, how she’s being portrayed as a symbol of submission, sexuality, how she is a victim and a subject and a weakness, but no one ever talks about the four men around her – four of them! It takes effort to ignore them: what do they symbolize?
And this has an impact on our everyday life, it’s not a discoure that just revolves around itself. Let’s go back to the fact that to our eyes a woman is always the bearer of a message, whether she likes it or not: if she doesn’t cover up enough then “she’s looking for trouble”, if she posts a selfie on the internet then “she is
asking for attention”, if she is wearing tracksuit bottoms then “she is sloppy.” Of course I am simplifying this, but the ramifications are endless. If a guy wears a pair of jeans and a shirt, he is just wearing a pair of jeans and a shirt, full stop. If I do it, I am communicating something.
Because in our mind we see her first and therefore we talk about her first, about her legs, about her heels, about her backside and about her swimsuit, even before we notice the guy in the background? We actually see him in full. But we allow him just to be a guy, a symbol of nothing, bearer of a simple message “I am just a regular guy.”
