No Eye-Sores Here

            The way we stare becomes interesting on a lot of different fronts, once we start breaking down what it is that we are staring at, for how long and its appropriateness in relation to being “civil”. In class, the discussion we had was framed around the veiling of the “eye sores” in a community. Which are ridiculous, taken into account of who the “eye-sores” were. People in society who don’t look like upstanding members of it; these are people like beggars or the homeless that a certain community, or city, didn’t want to be shown. This correlates directly to the civilization aspect of staring. Assuming that no one wants to see the “low down” members of its society; painting an unfair depiction of society. The message that this seems to underlay is that society doesn’t have “ugly” people.

            I believe that when we put this into context on how we stare at women, these variables become interesting and twisted in a sort of manner. The most stared at part of a women’s body seems to be her breasts. Breasts are stared at all the time and are therefore sexualized, like the image of the women, in media and in other places. The breasts are so sexualized because we, as a society, stare at them so much. This puts into play the question of “how long can I stare?” This question is fundamentally wrong though. Because women’s breasts are starred at so much, it seems that it becomes even easier to sexualize women.

Don’t stare for too long because these are not objects, this is a part of a real human being. (Depiction of woman's breasts)

Instead of objectifying breasts and women, we should be celebrating the body in the same way we would celebrate a male’s body.  The point I’m trying to make is that too often, we objectify the female body in ways that we should not. By staring, we make the women’s body an object of what we know, into something we desire and even though the frame work of being “civil” and not staring too long is too extreme a thing to structure it around, it is correct in the aspect of respect. Having a mutual respect for each other’s bodies will undoubtedly cure the staring problem I believe. Maybe the beginning of being “civil” was respect in the first place, but now the word “civil” means civil in the terms of the social construction around it. Civil in terms of the masses, and what the masses think is largely influenced by the media through images of society. So we see this idea of staring evolve into not looking at what society deems as “eye-sores” and looking at what society deems as desirable. But it’s important to go against the masses of society with important matters such as this, and to explore deeper into the matter and not to take things at face value. Taking things at face value will only perpetuate the problem, not help to solve it, as a society, these are things we need to be talking and thinking about.