Caroline Broadhead’s work in this exhibition caught my eye. She has an interesting combination of woven metal and pearls. The artist told me that she has always been concerned with objects that come into contact and interact with the body, exploring the external range of the body through light, shadow, reflection and movement.
2. V&A AFRICA FASHION
This exhibition looks back at the history of fashion in Africa, including the women’s equal rights movement and feminist designs. This exhibition gave me an insight into feminist design in Africa, unfortunately there was less jewellery design related to it rather than the majority of clothing design. However, through the evolution of patterns, shapes and so on, I could fully appreciate the power of feminist design
To find out more about what stakeholders actually need, I contacted the following experts/organisations for more information and advice.
1.Experts
（1）Sarah Day www.wearandresist.com sarah@wearandresist.com
Wear and Resist was started by Sarah Day, in early 2017. Wear and Resist supports a range of women’s charities giving £2 from each design associated with them. I have already emailed her and look forward to her reply. I plan to be able to discuss with her donation type jewellery designs and help influence.
（2）Heather Thomas heather.thomas@thelightbox.org.uk
Head of Learning and Engagement at LightBox, The Lightbox or to take part in a group artist-led session for adults affected by mental health issues. I would like to have the opportunity to work together to organize workshops and try to combine art and counselling.
2. Charities/Organisations
(1) ANAWIM centre for women in Birmingham www.anawim.co.uk
Anawim brings people together from a range of communities and backgrounds to help women understand the impact of their trauma, and to begin the healing process by overcoming obstacles and learning how to move forward to a brighter future for themselves and their families.
(2) Being Woman UK www.being-woman.org.uk
“Prejudice and discrimination harms individuals, communities and society. BEING WOMAN is a charitable incorporated organisation based in Northumberland, United Kingdom. They are committed to empowering women with the knowledge, skills and confidence to challenge all forms of prejudice and discrimination in society.
（3）Rights of Women www.rightsofwomen.org.uk
T heir vision is to achieve equality, justice and safety in the law for all women.
Schneemann was a radical artist who remains a feminist icon and point of reference for numerous contemporary artists to this day. Addressing urgent topics from sexual expression and the objectification of women to human suffering and the violence of war, her work is concerned with the precarious lived experience of humans and animals. The artist has created many groundbreaking art/performances using her own body as a medium. Many of her exhibited works explore the sexualisation and objectification of women and have inspired me on how to improve body image in my project.
2. Soheila Sokhanvari, Rebel Rebel
Rebel Rebel, the first major UK commission by Iranian artist Soheila Sokhanvari, celebrates and commemorates feminist icons from pre-revolutionary Iran. As I enter the Curve Gallery at the Barbican, I am greeted by the songs of Googoosh. It is her bittersweet story – a story of punishment, persecution, imprisonment and exile, but also of perseverance, unquenchable creativity and defiance – that becomes the story of almost all the women who appear in Sokhanvari’s exquisite miniatures. The walls of the entire gallery have been painted with traditional Islamic iconography in geometric shapes. When I visit inside, I can feel the cries of women across time.
For this discussion I invited my undergraduate classmates who are now working as jewellery designers around the world. We discussed around my research questions – how can jewellery design help women improve their image to reduce the impact of the male gaze on self-objectification in the age of social media？
They gave me some helpful advice and points to consider：
Which part of the woman’s body is the most suitable for wearing jewellery to improve their image?
Is it possible to have some interaction between the jewellery and the body？
If presented as virtual jewellery, AR interaction design can be considered.
If presented as a physical jewellery, it is possible to think about how to incorporate new techniques in addition to using traditional crafts.
I started to rethink the possibility of using jewellery design to improve the image of women to help them reduce the impact of self-objectification under the male gaze. With that thought, I began to explore the relationship between jewellery, patriarchy and femininity.
As Russell (2010) said:
“The hallmark of human civilization and patriarchy is hedged struggle for domination especially on the body of women, sexuality and production which is universal internationally. Jewellery, a form of art defines lucidly body interaction and is closely wound up to the social mechanism competing to dominate those very bodies.”
Wearing a round metal ring on the finger and many other parts of the body is one of the common traditions in different parts of the world. The ring is one of the most symbolic of all types of jewellery. My choice of the ring as the main target for analysing the relationship between jewellery, patriarchy and femininity is representative and clear.
Padaung women neck rings. 2013.
1. The Tradition
The tradition of wearing rings or band as ornamental or ritual jewellery was derived from the Romans traditions and they had various symbolic functions like marriage, conspicuous exhibition of high status and wealth, family or kingdom seal, proprietary act, and fraternity or solitaire. It is explicit that design of rings for both male and female is different due to factors like body character, ritual or custom and psychological traits of the two aspects. On average, women are slightly shorter and fairer in complexion than men so the ring design for ladies is more exquisite and smaller. In contrast, men’s rings are wider and exaggerated appearances. Psychologically, ring is also used as love symbol, proprietary act, sexuality ownership, power wealth and status. Majority of rings which are presented to women for marriage proposals, faithfulness, poesy, purity, or betrothal all symbolizes an act of proprietary or ownership.
Indian bride bangles. 2014.
2. Wedding and Engagement Ring
Russell expressed a point that jewellery also as the symbol of control bodies and ownership of sexuality and for it the most obvious usage of jewellery is wedding ring and engagement ring. Various cultures traditionally had jewellery that separated the fertile and available from the rest of the women. Currently the size of the diamond or other precious stone on the ring of engagement dictates the worth of the woman. Also the larger the precious stone on the ring also denotes the woman beauty and prominence in the society. In early days the pain and faithfulness of the woman also translated to the size of the ring that the husband gives her. The rings varied from promise rings to faithful rings during the battle or during industrialization where men would venture out of their territories to look for better opportunities for their families as posited by Russell (2010). This means that the largest and burdensome ornaments were reserved for women whom the society viewed had honour and appropriate femininity mould.
Ritual rings and other types of jewellery have been used as a tool of ownership of sexuality. This is grasped through physical incapacitation, ownership and control and is applied over to the female body. Engagement and wedding rings are examples of how jewellery exerts power to women over reproduction and sexuality. Betrothal rings were pieces of jewellery that restricted the girl from physically using their sexual organ for their own gratification but reserved it to the husband that the society deem fit.
Roman Engagement and Wedding Rings
3. The Diamond Ring
Diamond ring is the mainstream as engagement ring nowadays. The branding of the female body has been successfully and extremely incorporated through the male honour projection that is currently the American culture wrapped in the diamond engagement ring. The ritual is not tradition but a ploy devised by diamond producers and advertisers by integrating it into American ways of life. The trend commenced in 1880s and suffered a blow during the Word War 1 and due to Depression era (Miller, 1997). However, the trend was revived by the world biggest diamond cartel known as N.W Ayers for De Beers through advertisement campaigns that made diamond rings an inseparable part of engagement and wedding ritual. According to Cele and Scott (1996) De Beers campaign success was hedged on the narrative that sexual and wealth potency are associated with particular way in which their policy on engagement rings that are incorporated straight from the advert to the wedding etiquette gospel. Thus the campaign success also is hinged on making diamond ring an object of eliciting sex a link which has been conveyed to non-engagement advert for diamonds that created a proscriptive narrative on how to accurately procure an engagement ring coupled with the inflexible guide on how to determine the good quality and price.
With the development, the company commenced an aggressive campaign using the slogans dubbed diamond are forever and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe lyrics of the song titled “Diamonds are a girl best friend.” The idea was to link diamond to sexuality and it materialized quickly which depicted a female willingness to be owned through diamonds exchange as gifts. What followed were adverts that portrayed explicitly sex and greed appeal and this was fuelled by the loosening of the nation moral during the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
Natural Diamond Engagement Ring. 2018.
4. Feminist Jewellery
There is a small number of jewellers that have focussed their attention on gender issues and the gaze to which females are constantly subjected. These jewellers seem to speak to the feminist and queer approval of female choice and female agency, empowered female bodies, rather than the objectification of female bodies. Rebecca Russell investigates jewellers that produce works inspired by queer and feminist theory as well as experimenting with this idea in her own designs and manufacturing of jewellery. She describes her own work as a “creation of a body of work that explores jewellery’s potential to serve as a tool with which to critique and queer traditional thinking about the body.” (2009: 93)
The exploration of gender fluid jewellery
5. Conclusion
All over the world from ancient’s times the rings have long been observed as the superlative symbol of faithfulness, fertility, poesy, betrothal, engagement or promise for marriage. At dissimilar time frame diverse rings ritual developed which continued to own women through proprietary act. Women have been subjected into situations and circumstances that are unacceptable and demeaning in exchange of a ring. Every stage of ancient woman life was crowned by a ring and finally marriage ring which crowned or marked as a symbol of ownership to eternity for women. Gender equality sources for free will and the engagement concerning the rings that are associated with the life of women harbours no free will but exhibit forced power dynamics (Russell, 2010). Men have asserted authority to women through societal hierarchical structures that demean women as inferior beings. From ancient time up to 21st century women continue to suffer injustices through being awarded a little precious token (diamond ring) while forfeiting their dignity and transformed forever into pallid misfortune symbol. Women sexuality ownership was asserted through the context of rings functions. The wedding and engagement rings traditionally served as both symbol and means of authority to enforce the expected role of wives. Gendered sexuality commenced once the girl reached puberty and the society engaged in mechanism which constructed gender bias through cycle of obligations and prohibitions. Physical incapacitation does not only serve to promote but also to impose ownership which neutralizes femininity by imposition of restrictions. The Paduang women were restricted through bronze neck rings, the Hindu bride through bangles and Turks bride through puzzle rings. In Africa women also underwent heinous physical incapacitation by wearing enormous jingle anklets and 5 kgs neck rings as imposed disability locuses. The incapacitating objects were usually crafted as cultural pride thus women are required to submit to these traditions that keep them subordinate. The exchange that happens during marriage or engagement using all manner of rings from diamond to gold commences the first subordination for women turning them into commodity, and further transcend to sexual labour division and other form of gender inequality.
The long-standing patriarchal system in which a man seems to have made a conscious decision to show his ‘purchasing power by using his wife’s body as a site for displaying his financial wealth’ has led to women’s bodies being ‘turned into a kind of capital bosom from which to hang jewellery’ (Arnold, 2013: 15). Media advertising under consumerism exacerbates this more entrenched ideology, such as the size of the diamond in an engagement ring often being a reflection of the husband’s financial power and possession of his wife. The female body is thus used as a display of power, adorned for others (especially men) to see. Feminism, on the other hand, advocates the rights and role of women in society and supports the freedom of choice for women to be able to make decisions on their own personal terms. Although some jewellery designers are aware of this issue and give feminist ideology to their designs, the focus remains on appearance, sexuality and the body, rather than on women’s individuality, talents and abilities.
Reference：
1.Arnold, J. 2013. Victorian Jewellery, Identity, and the Novel: Prisms of Culture. London: Ashgate Publishing, pp.15. Available at: https://www.wfanet.org/app/uploads/2018/06/WFA-Guide-toProgressive-Gender-Portrayals-in-Advertising.pdf
2.Awefeso, N. (2002). Wedding Rings and the Feminist Movement. Journal of Mundane Behaviour. 3(2).
3.Cele, O. & Scott, L. (1996). Something old, Something New: Exploring the Interaction between Ritual and Advertising. Journal of Advertising. 25(1): 33-50.
4.Kunz, G. (1917). Rings for the finger: from the earliest known times, to the present, with full descriptions of the origin, early making, materials, the archaeology, history, for affection, for love, for engagement, for wedding, commemorative, mourning, etc. London: J. B. Lippincott Company
5.Lerner, G. (1987). The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford UAP.
6.Miller, P. (1997). Those Quirky Dream Merchants. Catalog Age. 14(1):7.
7.Munn, G. (1993). The Triumph of Love: Jewellery 1530-1930. London: Thames & Hudson.
8.Russell, R. (2010). Gender and jewellery: a feminist analysis. Create-Space Independent Publishing Platform.
9.Scarisbrick, D. (2007). Rings Jewellery of Power, Love and Loyalty. London: Thames and Hudson Publishers.
10.Stol, M. (2016). Women in the Ancient Near East. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
11.Howard, V. (2003). A Real Man’s Ring: Gender and the Invention of Tradition. Journal of Social History. 36(4): 837-847.
12.Zoellner, T. (2006). Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit and Desire. New York: St Martin’s Press.
13.Kothari, K. (2017). The True Significance Of Bangles In Indian Culture. Accessed January 1, 2020 from: https://www.bollywoodshaadis.com/articles/the-true-significance-of-bangles-in-indian-culture-1665
14.Deneson, A. (2017). True love waits? The story of my purity ring and feeling like I didn’t have a choice. Accessed January 1, 2020 from The Guardian Online: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/18/purity-ring-virginity-abstinence-sexual-education.
I contacted Dr. Qian Tao, a psychologist from the Department of Mental Health at Jinan University, as my expert. I wanted to learn more about the impact of the male gaze on the objectification of women in various aspects of psychology, individuality, etc. I prepared the following four questions for the interview.
Social media is flooded with visual products of the male gaze, do you think this is usurping women’s cognitive resources?
Do you think there is an impact on women such as in shaping their individuality? For example, now that the popularity of electronics has led to an increasingly younger age group using social media, does the invisible male gaze in social media affect them in terms of their own individuality, talents and abilities?
How do you think can help women improve their image to reduce their self-objectification?
Do you think there are any effective ways to reduce the impact of the male gaze on women?
Evidence of Expert Interview
I have recorded and translated Professor Qian Tao’s interview responses in the following.
A1: Yes, there is no doubt about it. But I think the greatest appropriation of women’s cognitive resources comes from the reality. When women get to higher education, the influence of the male gaze I think diminishes as well.
A2: I think there are influences, especially on children who are most susceptible. I don’t support children using electronics too early, there is too much cluttered information online and it has a very strong impact on the quality of the children’s individuality. Secondly, I think the most vulnerable group is young women who have just graduated from high school and are entering university.
A3: I think the most important point is to give women the freedom to be themselves. Admittedly, I am sometimes influenced by other people’s vision to choose external images that suit me but are not my cup of tea. In the larger social system, the right to be yourself is difficult and it is hard for you not to be influenced by what other people see. This influence also happens to men. But in comparison, the sexualisation of women leads to the self-objectification, whereas men are not so affected in this respect.
A4: Education. Periodic educational activities or talks on the subject, especially for women at school. In my opinion, this is the most effective way to reduce the impact of male gaze.
In two offline interventions, a total of 12 women were face-painted and interviewed by me. 9 audience were only willing to accept changes to their eyeshadow colours, 1 audience wanted me to paint a tear for her and 2 audience members were not willing to do the painting but accepted my interview.
To protect the privacy of the participants, the photos do not show the full faces or mosaics are added at the request of the participants
In the intervention, I encouraged the girls to tell me what kind of image they wanted to become without taking into account the gaze of others. I can clearly sense that participants will still be apprehensive. We started off outside outside in a coffee shop then I moved the venue to my home so that the participants could be more relaxed to have a conversation. I put some answers in the below and I have used the form F+Number instead of the names of the participants.
F1: Chose pink eyeshadow. She is a bisexual and when I asked if she changes herself because of the male gaze, she gave me the answer that she defined her image according to the style she likes but sometimes will dress the way the partner likes.
F2:Chose green eyeshadow. She told me she had never tried this colour of makeup before. She admits that she is very influenced by the male gaze and is concerned about her body, has tried to lose weight by drinking only juice and every month she goes for skin management. Sometimes she feels tired too, but once she stops the thoughts and behaviours affected by the male gaze, it makes her anxious again and sleepless. She thought that the male gaze had a strong influence on her Individuality and that these mental health problems were likely to be caused by the male gaze, but she hadn’t even been aware of it before. “It’s really scary”, she said.
F3: Don’t like make-up. This time she doesn’t joinus for the face painting either. But she also thinks she is affected by the male gaze. She is very concerned about sun protection not wanting her skin tone to darken and regularly gets her eyelashes permed. She believes that the male gaze only has very little effect on her individuality.
F4: Don’t like make-up. Her sexual orientation is female. But she has also been subjected to male gaze culture on social media. Some guys comment on her dress, her hair under her account. She couldn’t control caring and for that reason she reduced posting pictures of herself on social media.
F5: Chose blue eyeliner. She told me she didn’t care about the male gaze in social media or what people thought of her. The only thing that causes her pain is that her mother is assimilated into the male gaze and only sees her as a commodity. She would be scolded if her clothes didn’t fit or hanging out with her boyfriend. At the end of the conversation her mom always says, “Look what man will marry you.”
F6:Let me draw a tear for her. This participant told me that she had some tendency to depression. When she uses social media, she is very concerned about what people think of her and what they say about her.She sometimes has a hard time controlling her emotions and can’t stop crying.
After completing the intervention, I felt a deep sadness. Most participants were not even aware of the male gaze or even had become accustomed to it. Although many of the participants were aware of the male gaze, they had become accustomed to it. They were subliminally affected and their individuality was worn down. At the same time, the self-objectification takes a serious toll on them both physically and mentally. This intervention does make the stakeholders aware and conscious of the impact of the male gaze, but it is difficult to help them escape it. I felt very powerless at one point, but they encouraged me to see that the power of women helping women can be passed on to them and affect them more deeply. Although our individual power is small, just one more person being able to understand and be aware of the bondage of the male gaze can be a success. Also stakeholders agree that image changes do change their feelings/thoughts, but everyone has a different perspective and I need to be very careful. Image changes that involve stakeholders’ personal perspectives tend to have a positive impact, but image changes such as face painting are difficult to spread quickly to everyone (usually a face painting takes 10-15 minutes). My next step is to think of how each stakeholder can be involved in their own image change and make a positive impact.I think by doing this intervention, I am not only helping the stakeholders, they are also helping me. Male gaze is a reflection of sexist and patriarchal societies, and these social issues contain historical elements that are difficult to address immediately. But I hope that I can use my power to free more women from the influence of the male gaze on their personalities.
After the tutorial with Sasha, I realised that I was missing out on the research for the make-up. However, Sasha thought it was still a good format, but I need to be more careful about the views of the no-makeup group and lesbians. After learning more about the literature on cosmetics, it can be seen that in some cases make-up can lead to the objectification of women as a target (Dax J. Kellie 2021). The use of cosmetics as an intervention is not desirable. It is not possible to use the act of objectifying women to study how to reduce the objectification of women.
The way I implemented it in the final intervention was changed to face painting to do it.
Reference：
1.Behind the makeup: The effects of cosmetics on women’s self-objectification, and their objectification by others(2021), Dax J. Kellie,Khandis R. Blake,Robert C. Brooks
2. Study suggests that women wearing heavier makeup are perceived as having less mental capacity and less moral status(2021), Beth Ellwood
Theme: Share experiences about the male gaze and explore whether the impact of the male gaze on the self-objectification of women can be reduced through changes to the image.
Planned Time：2pm-7pm, Aug 25th, 2022 / 10pm-12pm, Aug 29th, 2022
Location：My Home
Target Group：18-25 young women
Activity Content:
Helping audiences build their chosen image through make-up
Interviewing the audience during the make-up process to find out about their experiences and get their opinions
With the permission of the audience, some images and text versions of the interviews will be posted on a specially created social media platform
