Key Quotes from Rosalind Coward

'For looking is not a neutral activity'

   -we don't all view things in the same way

'the look is largely controlled by men' 

'the film and television industries are dominated by men, as is the advertising industry'

'the camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the streets'

   -media is the modern way of gazing at women. More visable. Cements the idea of lack of power. Repeated male        interpretations of women everywhere.

'women's inability to return to such a critical and aggressive look is a sign of subordination'

'subordination' 
1. Belonging to a lower or inferior class or rank; secondary.
2. Subject to the authority or control of another.


'Those women on billboards, though; they look back. Those fantasy women stare off the walls with a look of urgent availability'


'In this society, looking has become of crucial aspect of sexual relations, not because of any natural impulse, but because it is one of the ways in which domination and subordination are expressed'
   -socially constructed


'appropriate sexual behaviour for men and women.'
   -link between how people appear and ways we believe they should act. The look should echo the way they act. Visual look of weakness


'obsessive recording and use of women's images in a way to make men comfortable. Clearly this comfort is is connected with feeling secure or powerful'


'distanced view of the female body'
   -allowing to fantasise and dominate. Men need these images to reinforce their own power and strength in society to make themself feel better and to reassure their control.


'sex at a distance, is the only complete secure relation which men can have with women'


'Voyeurism is a way of taking sexual pleasure by looking at rather than being close to a particular object of desire'
   -this way men can always stay in control, men's anxiety of not being good enough as the image. Image replaces reality.


'advertising in this society builds precisely on the creation of an anxiety to the effect that, unless we measure up, we will not be loved'


'fascination and damage'


Ideas
Photography seems to be neutral but never is.