Europe emerged from the Dark Ages in about 1350 C.E., with a rebirth of artistic styles in the Greek and Roman tradition that lasted for centuries. The Renaissance saw depiction of human emotion, Christian imagery, and realism in portraying the human body. See Titian’s Venus of Urbino. A completely naked Venetian courtesan, Angela del Moro, reclines among feathery pillows and vibrant flowers in an elegant Italian palace. She gazes directly at the viewer with a look that makes this work, "the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses", as Mark Twain famously stated.
The Venus of Urbino helped to establish the female nude as a genre. This genre, like any, has developed clear and defining characteristics. The nude must have …show more content…
Ruby Rose begins her autobiographical Break Free with a typical picture of feminine beauty: her reflection in a bathroom mirror, applying makeup. However, despite what one might infer from this image, Rose is not a woman, and she is applying makeup not because she wants to, but because she feels she must to fit in within society. Rose doesn 't identify with the identity of “woman” that’s been assigned to her, and presents herself as such here not because she’s happy with herself that way, but to appeal to how other people would rather she looked The gender roles that Berger details in “Ways of Seeing” are very clearly still present and applicable to our modern world, the world that Ruby Rose calls home. Because of these gender roles, Rose is unable to freely express herself and her genderfluid identity, and is forced to come out in order to be recognized and understood within …show more content…
At the beginning of the video, while presenting as a woman, Ruby Rose wears a white dress, and has blonde hair. The bathroom she’s in also had a lot of bright, white light streaming in through the window. As she changes her appearance from feminine to masculine, she strips herself of this white imagery, and changes into a black suit, along with darkening her hair. I think that there is definitely some symbolism in the color change of Rose’s outfit from white to black. White can represent the oppression of women under the gender binary, women traditionally wear white wedding gowns, but marriage has its roots in the transfer of a woman as property from her father to her new husband’s ownership. In addition, according to our cultural convention, women are expected to be pure, virginal, and sexually unaffected. These things are all represented by the color white, and so by shedding the color, she is also symbolically shedding the pressure of the gender binary, and disregarding what is expected of her as an assigned female at birth
The Venus of Urbino helped to establish the female nude as a genre. This genre, like any, has developed clear and defining characteristics. The nude must have …show more content…
Ruby Rose begins her autobiographical Break Free with a typical picture of feminine beauty: her reflection in a bathroom mirror, applying makeup. However, despite what one might infer from this image, Rose is not a woman, and she is applying makeup not because she wants to, but because she feels she must to fit in within society. Rose doesn 't identify with the identity of “woman” that’s been assigned to her, and presents herself as such here not because she’s happy with herself that way, but to appeal to how other people would rather she looked The gender roles that Berger details in “Ways of Seeing” are very clearly still present and applicable to our modern world, the world that Ruby Rose calls home. Because of these gender roles, Rose is unable to freely express herself and her genderfluid identity, and is forced to come out in order to be recognized and understood within …show more content…
At the beginning of the video, while presenting as a woman, Ruby Rose wears a white dress, and has blonde hair. The bathroom she’s in also had a lot of bright, white light streaming in through the window. As she changes her appearance from feminine to masculine, she strips herself of this white imagery, and changes into a black suit, along with darkening her hair. I think that there is definitely some symbolism in the color change of Rose’s outfit from white to black. White can represent the oppression of women under the gender binary, women traditionally wear white wedding gowns, but marriage has its roots in the transfer of a woman as property from her father to her new husband’s ownership. In addition, according to our cultural convention, women are expected to be pure, virginal, and sexually unaffected. These things are all represented by the color white, and so by shedding the color, she is also symbolically shedding the pressure of the gender binary, and disregarding what is expected of her as an assigned female at birth