How We Learn in John Berger's Ways of Seeing

When a young toddler begins to speak, naming things they see around them, it is because they saw their parents do it. As they grow into a teenagers, they give names to things based on what they have heard from their friends and social media. This pattern carries into adulthood. The way we identify things reflects the progression of understanding art featuring woman, as explored in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. He presents the idea in chapter three that woman were portrayed in art since the beginning and how it transcends to modern times. His main points surround the portrayal of woman throughout the ages and what effects it has had on our view of women not only paintings, but as humans in society. The ideas of women are contradictory because it is facilitated by men and the way they see women. Berger talks about this concept, and much more in chapter three of Ways of Seeing.

Even today, despite much debate, we live in a patriarchal society—we live in a world ruled by men and their thoughts, feelings and ideals. Women are a large part of a man’s life, and there are standards and inferences made about them. Berger explains man’s view of its counterpart through art. The earliest depiction of nudity is in art surrounds the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In the tale, Eve is pictured as a temptress and because of her rebellion against God; she is a lesser being. This is what kicked off the prejudice against the female race. The discrimination reflected in society by the roles women are given in the world. They are objects owned by men. Women are expected to clean, bake, cook and please their men in anyway possible. They do not hold jobs; their job is to obey and dote on their husbands. Women are passive members in art, so they become ...

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... floating, a tiny piece of something much bigger. In retrospect, the vanity of the women stems from the man’s vain tendencies to believe that the only reason women were created is for the enjoyment of men.

In fewer words, Jon Berger’s Ways of Seeing discusses how humans see the world and he does so through the lens of art, seeing as he is an art historian. Specifically, in chapter three, he brings to attention how the portrayal of women in art and in the world is contingent on the male eye and its ideals. Women have been oppressed in their sense of selves because men dictate what they prefer in a women. Even in this day in age, a woman’s self-worth banks on the acceptance of men. Her only way of making a way in the world is by impressing men with hyper-sexual and or submissive tactics because that tradition has been drilled into all of our brains since Adam and Eve.