‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,’ wrote Simone de Beauvoir in her magnum opus, The Second Sex. What constitutes womanhood and femininity is still confined to traditional roles that the ‘second sex’ has been made to play since the dawn of civilisation. Despite some gains in redefining what womanhood can look like, we haven’t made any significant progress.
Women are still treated as subordinate beings by the patriarchy. They are only valued for the care and nurture they can provide in their domestic roles. Women’s role in society’s eyes, then, becomes limited to childbearing and caring for the home. And nowhere was this more evident than at the art exhibition section of Chapchar Kut, one of the most prominent spring festivals celebrated in Mizoram.
Progressive data, regressive depictions
Chapchar Kut is a lively spring festival, which is usually celebrated in March after the bamboo clearing season. It is famous for the Cheraw (bamboo dance), along with other traditional dances, music, competitions, and feasts. Chapchar Kut originated as an agricultural festival, marking the end of the strenuous Jhum cultivation harvest, before the new sowing season begins.
Manipur has one of the highest sex ratios in the country, with 976 females per 1000 males. Given this, one might think the state is a haven for gender equality, and its society might have moved past patriarchy; however, that is not the case. While visiting the Chapchar Kut festival, we came across paintings that proved just this.
A recurring theme in these paintings was women depicted within the domestic sphere: in the kitchen, with their babies, and bathing by the river, while looking aesthetically pleasing. In whatever domestic activities they were involved in, they looked immaculate, with no blemishes or imperfections. Their bodies fit conventional and patriarchal beauty standards. The dissonance between progressive statistics and the regressive imagery in the gallery space is where the true crisis of Mizo gender politics lies.
Women as spectacle, the male gaze in art, and the politics of looking
Even in art, women are rarely depicted as having any agency. In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey said, ‘In their typical exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.‘ Along the same vein, English art critic and novelist John Berger also said, ‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.‘
Together, these ideas reveal how even in art, a woman’s presence is mediated through the male gaze, shaped less by ideas of autonomy or agency and more by how she is meant to be seen and consumed by men. Women are often reduced to objects constructed for visual consumption.
Berger proposed that the reason women are still depicted this way is that the painter assumes that the ‘ideal’ spectator is male, and the woman in the painting is ‘designed to flatter him.’
While speaking to one of the artists whose painting was exhibited at the gallery during the Chapchar Kut festival, I couldn’t find much reflection on his part regarding his inspiration behind painting a beautiful woman in traditional attire. Berger proposed that the reason women are still depicted this way is that the painter assumes that the ‘ideal’ spectator is male, and the woman in the painting is ‘designed to flatter him.’ American philosopher Marilyn Frye, in her 1983 book, quite rightly pointed out, ‘Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving.‘ In this case, it translates into male artists painting for male spectatorship and male validation.
These galleries, such as the one in Chapchar Kut, often reinforce male-centred worlds, where women exist as accessories rather than beings of their own. For example, in one of the paintings, a woman is seen engaged in the activity of separating stones from rice in a kitchen. Ironically, this painting is placed right beside another where two men are seen duelling on a hill. This wasn’t an isolated instance either. In other parts of the gallery, similar placements existed.
John Berger argues that women learn to survey themselves through the eyes of men — that the act of looking is never neutral. If that is the case, then women spectators cannot simply escape the male gaze either; they, in fact, participate in it. The question then is not just whether men see women this way, but whether women, too, have been taught to see themselves through this narrow, patriarchal lens. Do women question why the female body is always composed, contained, and domesticated? Or has repetition rendered these images so familiar that they no longer provoke thought?
When domesticity becomes destiny
Domesticity itself doesn’t have to be inherently oppressive. For many, it can be a site of identity, care, and comfort. Taking care of the home is fine. However, this shouldn’t be the only role women are confined to. A choice isn’t a real choice if you don’t have any other meaningful options.
Representation shapes perception, and perception shapes reality. When women are repeatedly visualised within domestic boundaries, those boundaries begin to feel natural, even inevitable.
The art exhibition during Chapchar Kut summed up yet another quote by Berger: ‘Men survey women before treating them. Consequently, how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated.‘ Representation shapes perception, and perception shapes reality. When women are repeatedly visualised within domestic boundaries, those boundaries begin to feel natural, even inevitable. According to a global survey of 23,000 people, young men are twice as likely to hold traditional views about gender roles compared to older generations.
The domestic woman, contained within the home, aligned with tradition, visually pleasing, and non-disruptive, mirrors the gender expectations embedded within patriarchy. This performance of femininity determines which women are accommodated and even celebrated by the patriarchy, but only so long as they remain within these prescribed boundaries.
American gender studies scholar Judith Butler argued that ‘gender is always a doing‘ and that ‘gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylised repetition of acts’. This applies to the women in the paintings at the art gallery. The women in the paintings aesthetically repeated daily domestic acts of cooking, caring, nurturing, and running errands, while men in the paintings hunt, spend time outdoors with animals, and fight other men. And that is how, even in art, men and women play parts determined by the patriarchy.
We have to move past just passively viewing and start actively questioning the ideas hidden beneath the surface. Because if these gender roles are produced through repetition, they can also be challenged through repeated interruption.
Taking a closer look at what we see and questioning it is the only way to stop these old patterns from repeating. We have to move past just passively viewing and start actively questioning the ideas hidden beneath the surface. Because if these gender roles are produced through repetition, they can also be challenged through repeated interruption. The possibility of change lies in making visible what has long been accepted as natural and in refusing to see it as inevitable. To look at these paintings without critical interrogation is to accept, perhaps unconsciously, the limits they impose upon women.
References
- Berger, J. (2008). Ways of Seeing. Penguin UK.
- Butler, J. (2006). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
- Frye, M. (1983). The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press.
- Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.
