But looking? Playing the outsider observing the world around you? Sitting in a coffee shop and watching the crowds drift by, picking out their back-stories and imagining where they\u2019re going? Everybody wants to do that, men and women alike, even when they know they shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The world is visual. Fashion, art, advertising, signs and sights surround us constantly. We sit on trains and buses \u2013 our ears plugged with headphones, etiquette keeping our mouths shut \u2013 and we gaze out at everything trying to understand it with our eyes alone. Throughout history technology has strengthened the role our eyes play in understanding what\u2019s around us. The alphabet made human voices visual; clocks and calendars made time visual; now the internet is turning physical objects like newspapers or money into visual ephemera. Eyes are a portal into the world.<\/p>\n
We look because we need to, we\u2019re trained to understand the world by looking. I know my impulse to photograph what I eat and share it with my friends is a result of that training, something that both men and women receive. Part of the reason men are simply seen is because we aren\u2019t<\/em> taught that being looked at is frightening. That training is reserved for women.<\/p>\n For women, being looked at can turn into something immeasurably more frightening. It\u2019s a daily tragedy that people write and think about constantly, it\u2019s one of the key issues of our age, or any age. Because being looked at might turn into something frightening it becomes at first an early warning system and then something that is frightening in itself. Looking is a portal into a nightmare.<\/p>\n Being seen, on the other hand, suggests that you welcome being looked at.\u00a0 You control something vital in this exchange. Men default to this, as we should all be able to, and the spectre of violence passes us over. Fear makes it hard to be seen. I think most of us understand that, or at least try to.<\/p>\n Scared people hide. It\u2019s instinct. It can take on many forms \u2013 trying on a new personality to impress somebody; overcompensating for your timidity with bravado; burying your head in a book, out of the way, eyes down in a corner where nobody will find you.<\/p>\n Being seen is a choice. Being looked at is a choice somebody else has made.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n There is another, less violent side to the question of why men are seen and women looked at.<\/p>\n The coolest men, icons in the news and posters on bedroom walls, are the effortless ones. Think of Frank Sinatra<\/a> and his lazy smile or Marlon Brando<\/a> and his worn white t-shirt. Even in fiction the thrill of male ease can be so distracting that you hear people saying that they wish they could be like Don Draper<\/a>. Despite the show relentlessly showing us his misery and his alcoholism and his loneliness \u2013 imagine looking like that<\/em> guy for a day! Imagine walking around and having everybody watch you!<\/p>\n Those effortless men are a trick, of course. The serene exterior is all we get to see, calm above the surface but paddling like crazy down below. I\u2019m sure we all know this, on some level, but we choose to ignore it. If what we see is effortless enough we keep watching and marvelling, all the other failings ignored. Men go out and buy Don Draper\u2019s suits and ties. Sometimes their girlfriends go and buy it all for them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not completely different from when I catch myself staring. I stop, of course. I don\u2019t want to make anybody uncomfortable. I look down. But even though I wish I wouldn\u2019t, I find myself glancing back again.<\/p>\n The most admired women on the planet are anything but effortless. Their clothes are vastly more elaborate than men\u2019s and must be changed season to season. Their hair and make-up are put together by professional stylists, every minuscule mistake highlighted and blown up into a \u2018story\u2019. Each step down the red carpet is rehearsed. And it\u2019s all part of the spectacle.<\/p>\n For females in the public eye primping is part of their job. There\u2019s no female equivalent of Don Draper. There\u2019s Joan with her otherworldly hair and impossible pin-up girl<\/a> body inside the kind of dresses you see displayed in magazines. She wears the work put into her appearance like armour plating<\/a>. There\u2019s no mistaking the way she looks for anything accidental, she\u2019s made sure that you want to look at her. And maybe that\u2019s a step towards being seen \u2013 she\u2019s taken this decision and taken it decisively, even if it might be the only one open to her.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n They\u2019re all around us these perceptibly designed women, on billboards and magazine covers. Their images are manipulated further when they divorced from their physical bodies and turned into pixels to be shaved and blurred and rearranged. We all look at those false images and complain about them not being real. Sometimes you can see exactly where they cut the leg or the arm or whatever and we show each other, laughing at how false it is \u2013 that dress couldn\u2019t fit on a real person! Imagine seeing somebody walking around who really looked like this!<\/p>\n![\"602ac557-ae58-6e1c-ca46-ce9471b26033_img_6173_w1-11d486c2aca997edfa74c6422049daa9d6308638-s900-c85\"](\"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/602ac557-ae58-6e1c-ca46-ce9471b26033_img_6173_w1-11d486c2aca997edfa74c6422049daa9d6308638-s900-c85.jpg\")
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