how-are-bodies-regulated-in-contemporary-culture

How are bodies regulated in contemporary culture?

(ABSTRACT)

Figure 1. ‘Venus de Milo’, Greek Statue of Aphrodite (100 BCE) ARTSTOR

Named the “greatest work of antiquity” by art historian Kenneth Clark in 1956, the classic Greek statue ‘Venus de Milo’ (Fig. 1) dating from 100 BCE has set the precedent for ideal feminine beauty in the Western world since its rediscovery in 1820 (Millett-Gallant, 2000, pg. 28). As Macdonald writes, historically a woman’s identity has been shaped through the appearance of her body, thus the Venus is seen as a trope representing the desirable female form as both “sexually avaliable and complacent with her display” (Macdonald, 1995). This ideal has been brought forward into Western tradition: the female nude continuing to act as an object for visual consumption (Millet-Gallant, 2000); its presumed complacency allowing men to study, and in turn regulate the female body (Parker, 1985). The power of this gaze becomes more apparent when confronted (either directly or indirectly), perhaps best exemplified by Mary Duffy’s live performance in 1995, in which her body as the armless nude “invoked the classical Venus de Milo, while at the same time offered itself as a vulnerable human being and naked medicalised specimen” (Millett-Gallant, 2000, pg. 25). Duffy’s performance signified a reversal of the long-established symbolism and ideals surrounding the disabled body and the female nude, as the Venus de Milo is often perceived as broken and incomplete (Schnieder cited by Millet-Gallant, 2000), and in doing so she “[transforms] the objectifying stares of the viewers into moments of personal agency through the performative act of staring back” (Eisenhauer, 2007, pg. 12). This act of observing and being observed is redolent of Manet’s painting ‘Olympia’, revealed in Paris in 1865, and aggressively tarnished by one critic as “naked [...] like a cadaver on the slabs of the morgue” (Fournel cited in Beeny, 2013, pg. 51). Whilst reminiscent of the traditional female nude—so heavily depicted in nineteenth century Western culture—’Olympia’ rejects the intimate privacy of the viewer watching the scene as an outsider, her gaze being described as “notoriously direct” (Beeny, 2013, pg. 51), thus disrupting the power balance of men as active observer, and women as passive subject (Parker, 1985). Such performativity against power “creates alternative modalities of power” (Butler, 1993 cited in Eisenhauer, 2007, pg. 17), and a sense that the female body is reclaimed by its owner. This was directly addressed by Duffy’s performance, in which she said: “I have been stared at all my life [...] it feels like I am holding up a mirror to your voyeurism and saying, so you want to look do you? I’ll give you something to look at” (Duffy cited in Eisenhauer, 2007, pg. 17).

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