By: Keaton Wilder Marcus

In John Berger’s second episode of “Ways of Seeing,” he delves into male perceptions of women and the pressure women face being perceived by men. In the opening two minutes, Berger outlines how women’s bodies and beauty are visualized in two ways: One, by men who only appreciate how women present themselves in manners that sexually cater to them; and two, women either in their own private spaces obsessively creating a hyper feminine avatar for themselves to later present to men, or envying and judging other women based on how attractive they appear by male standards. Berger observes that “behind every glance is a judgment,” meaning that male eyes looking at women and female eyes looking at other women–and the art (paintings, film etc.) everyone creates about women–-always have a lick of looking down or at women.

Berger then observes that “in European tradition, the nude implies an awareness of being seen by the spectator. They are not naked as they are, they are naked as you see them.” The word tradition is essential here because it implies something stereotypical in how men see naked and scantily clad women in ways inaccurate to their experience; or how they re-purpose women in art to nurture their own sexual desires. In these re-productions, women cannot simply exist because that would imply their beauty is for something outside of male pleasure or jurisdiction, and god forbid women pose or act for themselves only. Berger uses the painting “Vanity” by Hans Memling as an example, suggesting that there’s a deeper hypocrisy in men painting women looking at themselves for men’s own personal pleasure.

In the painting, a completely nude woman simply stares at her reflection. Memling, the male artist, has painted a nude woman for no reason besides pleasure, yet he believes the act of placing a mirror in front of his female subject is justifiable enough to condemn her under the label of “Vanity.” Men have the privilege to capture and judge nude women while simultaneously resenting the fact that a woman may examine herself under the perverted watch of a man. Berger makes a distinction between nakedness and being on display; he describes the former as “to be without disguise, and the latter as “to have the surface of one’s own skin, the hairs of one’s own body–turned into a disguise.” In “Vanity” or “The Judgement of Paris” among the several other examples Berger uses, Memling and Peter Paul Reubens and the other male artists mentioned are evidently crafting this “disguise” where women only appear for men and as men want them sexually. The women featured in these paintings are homogenous in their physical appearances–they’re all drawn with large breasts and butts and voluptuous hips and they’re all conscious about the fact that leering men are perceiving them.

What must be questioned, then, is the relevance of Berger’s 1978? observations. Women formatively seen as sexual sights to behold for the male eye instead reclaim their bodies for themselves with the lens of a phone and the figurative middle finger to voyeurism that is a selfie. In 2024, Women–particularly teenage girls–have the ability to picture their own selves and actively depict only what they’re comfortable with showing to others online. In a world five decades later where anyone can call themselves an artist and re-produce imagery of themselves and others, are Berger’s words on the performative aspect of female beauty and nudity still applicable?

Petra Collins–Canadian photographer, director, model, and so-called “it” girl–would like the opportunity to object. Perhaps it’s the fact that Collins has earned deals with Adidas and Gucci and Bluemarine that makes her voice worth listening to; or how she’s garnered over one million followers on Instagram from photography and music videos and short films endlessly praised as poster girls for the “female gaze” and popularizing Gen Z’s trademark hyper feminine, dreamy vision of girlhood; or how on that same social media platform, her account was temporarily suspended for posting a picture of herself in panties with an unshaven bikini line. This essay is less interested in the brouhaha over Collins’ brand deals or controversy, however, and more her fierce challenge to the fact that women’s bodies are so widely seen and depicted for men in the media; and how her work can be both radical rebellion to that male gaze while additionally representing a level of femininity that blurs the lines between reclamation of that femininity and catering to the gaze that fetishizes it.

Whether a work of Petra Collins depicts a vision of who teenage girls want to view themselves as or who they are in reality, there is an unflinching honesty evoked in her photography that most are too afraid to uncover. Perhaps it’s with “The Teenage Gaze,” Collins’ series of portraits spanning from 2010-2015, where she most unlocks a documentarian style reflecting slices of female adolescence rarely deemed worthy of visual representation. These are the quiet moments and memories in a girl’s life that we either find too mundane or invalidate as grossly sexual. Three girls sharing a cigarette on a bed become nostalgia envisioned for the present as the viewer is forced to focus on the smaller details: the faded, dirty film aesthetic or the facial expressions that evoke a silence that isn’t awkward–but more a mutual comfort that only the closest of friends have.

In the world of Petra Collins, a girl falling asleep on textbooks becomes a visual staple of high school torture; a girl sobbing in the hallway is no longer an act of dramatic passivity but rather vulnerability brought to life in a manner we’re forced to confront; bras and underwear and skirts and knee high socks disconnected from the remainder of the subject aren’t simply clothing but rather iconic aesthetic manifestations of girlhood; girls getting drunk at parties they likely didn’t enjoy and twerking on teenage boys they likely didn’t find attractive are scenarios that fell short of that “last night was a movie” pipe dream–but are still realized on film before your eyes. Collins doesn’t glamorize these moments or alter them to be something they’re not–because that would strip the uncomfortable realism from them–but she takes them seriously so that viewers do too.

It’s difficult to describe these portraits as under the lens of Collins because, stylistically, it seems more like the photographer (and everyone who views her photos) is being given the privilege to be a part of the lives of the photographed–not vice versa. Whether she’s framing girls brushing their teeth or checking their make-up or even zoning out while smoking, there’s not a single picture where they’re looking towards the camera–realizing that their lives are being captured and looked at; blurry, likely handheld shots of girls sharing kisses or letting showers rain on them while still partly dressed–or fully undressed–are sexual without sexualizing because it’s the moment itself not the boobs or the lips or the legs; the subjects aren’t posing for anyone or looking at anyone or inviting anyone to look at them–they’re presenting themselves as they are and refusing to apologize; look if you so choose to and fuck off if you’re too scared to.

Collins’ “Selfie” is a series of photographs that began in 2013 with a mission statement described as “examining selfie culture in teenage girlhood and the power for young women to create, curate, and distribute their own imagery” (Collins). In the aforementioned Hans Memling example, the male painter depicts a fully nude woman for himself and decidedly puts a mirror in front of the woman in order to label the work “Vanity–” re-purposing its intentions as a product of female selfishness rather than his own. “Selfie” then functions as an unconscious modern parallel to the imagery Memling presents. Instead of a mirror, there is a cell phone; instead of condemning women for looking at themselves, there is admiration and appreciation for it. Collins is picturing young women outside of Memling’s male realm and inside of a female one grounded in depictions of digital euphoria for the subject and not against the subject.

The portraits are all rather aesthetically unglamorous, and fortunately so because the glamor in them is depicted within the photograph–unaltered by the power of Collins’ camera. She is framing women and only women–picturing them taking pictures of themselves in naturalistic and tender manners that evoke such freeing joy for an act so ruthlessly condemned as a selfish measure of oneself. A group of girls huddle together with unblemished smiles on their faces as they all eye a singular phone without a lick of envy and self-hatred or the “vanity” that Memling believes he portrayed; the models pout their freshly applied lipstick and tilt their heads and scroll on their beds and occasionally give the phone’s camera–and Collins’ camera–complete neutrality.

How can we know? That’s because there are no requirements for the subject’s behavior in this example of Collins’ work–which can ultimately be described as an nearly unfiltered depiction of an aspect in girlhood so commonly re-purposed for men to scoff at or lust over–or perhaps, hypocritically, both. Collins strives to put these quieter moments of femininity on blast, thus reclaiming the concept of a mere selfie into monuments of women capturing each other on film. Whether you like it or not, there is magic in how Collins frames two girls against posters of Lana del Rey and “Bonnie & Clyde,” as if she’s demanding that these moments share a stage as significant as these iconic images of pop culture.

In the Berger text, an unidentified woman claims that “women are always dressing…to show the kind of character they want to represent.” The work of Collins carries an essential sense of universality, but in instances, it’s appropriate to contend that she projects more desirable versions of herself onto the models she photographs. In a 2019 interview with Minya Oh, Collins explained that during puberty she “had serious body dysmorphia” and was unable to conceptualize what she looked like then but rather what she aspired to look like in the future. Collins still holds the advantage in the inevitable relationship forged between the photographer and the photographed. Even as she is determined to innovate beyond the traditional purpose of a camera from simply capturing moments to creating mutual bonds with those moments–or endorsing conversation with her models and processing their ideas into her own–her work will never not cater to some aesthetic desire or nostalgic need that slightly alters the reality she is attempting to portray.

In terms of nostalgia, Petra Collins is now 31 years of age. The fact that her models are still commonly adolescents speaks to her artistic drive to grasp onto a past that may have escaped her. In an interview with The Talk, Collins explains how, as a teenager herself, photography was akin to socializing “because I was literally taking photos of my peers.” Reminiscing on that period, she “feels more like a voyeur now.” In one sense, Collins’ depictions of younger girls may be reflective of her own experiences as a teenager. In another, Collins’ camera is an instrument of her perception of those featured in the pictures she takes.

For example, following the growth of her hips and thighs in adolescence, Collins had her first “identity crisis.” In “The Teenage Gaze,” Collins depicts visual motifs of hips, thighs, and legs as well as the shorts and underwear that accentuate the awkwardness of developing female bodies. In further detail on this “crisis,” Collins believes that the ideal vision of femininity implemented on her younger self was something skinny and rather pre-pubescent; therefore, the growth of her body during puberty was conversely a destruction of the beauty standards she was told to aspire to. Returning to “The Teenage Gaze,” the girls featured in the series–as well as the vast majority of her models–are skinny and white and all dealing with realistic, if privileged, issues of body image and sexuality. Collins prefers photographing what she knows, but there is an unwavering honesty in the stares and silhouettes of these girls; there is a timelessness in how Collins excavates past insecurities and implements them on her models. She is living vicariously through who she photographs–and her art’s permanence is gorgeous. It’s the fact that all these girls look like her that may limit the audience she is hailed as the modern voice of.

Collins herself claims that her own portrayal of femininity can tend to be a product of a certain dreaminess or self-realization that her own adolescence lacked, suggesting that she’s “sort of creating a world that I wish I was accepted in, or that I wished I lived in.” The volatility of Petra Collins then must be championed as well as challenged as we examine pieces of her work that put a larger emphasis on making her models and the worlds surrounding them as gorgeous and aesthetically unreal as possible. There is a vagueness that forces us to wonder whether Collins’ imagery is a product of how she interprets girlhood or how she wishes to interpret girlhood.

If thus far we’ve explored how Collins immortalizes her past through depictions of adolescence, maybe it’s time to examine instances where she strays from that course and navigates waters outside of her grasp. Perhaps girlhood is where she sees herself while womanhood is less focused on introspection and more on Trinidadian rapper Cardi B in her “Bartier Cardi” music video. Collins directs her decked in Swarovski crystals and red lingerie spitting braggadocious bars like: “Diamonds all over my body, shinin’ all over my body, Cardi got your bitch on molly;” The pinks and reds and grainy film aesthetic that give the video a heightened, fantastical quality stay true to the roots of Collins–but instead of girls taking selfies it’s Cardi keeping men on leashes and twerking on her husband in the backseat of a Lyft car. There’s swagger and style that’s easy to dabble in with this fur-filled Old Hollywood mirage, and it’s evident Collins is living by the motto she used in reference to Georgia O’Keefe: “They could tell you how they painted their landscape, but they couldn’t tell me to paint mine.” It’s additionally evident that Collins did intend to shine a female-centric light on the video, explaining that she wanted “every single woman in every single scene to be like, a goddess.” Collins is demanding nuance in how we see depictions of femininity and what’s considered empowering versus what’s not; who’s really to say why women consciously owning the parts of her body that trigger sexual pleasure can’t be seen as validly feminist?

Amy Newman certainly wants a say in the matter. In her 1990 essay “Aestheticism, Feminism, and the Dynamics of Reversal,” she contends that postmodern feminism’s reversal of patriarchal ideologies tends to swap the oppressor and the oppressed instead of making them equal–as per its intentions. Newman utilizes the words of psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin in parsing how aestheticizing female bodies contributes to the constant objectification of women in the media. Benjamin claims that in this cultivation of aesthetics, the artist has opted to “eroticize suffering–” and the product gives viewers sexual pleasure in something already relentlessly drooled over and voyeuristically abused by the patriarchy that governs it. According to Benjamin, this uniquely postmodern “romanticization of victimization devalues the subjectivity of others.” In other words, female sexuality has already been stamped as something for men and in competition with other women, and so depicting female sexuality merely caters to men despite possibly feminist intentions.

Benjamin’s musings work in tandem with those of Berger’s in the sense that “Ways of Seeing” establishes a certain male tradition in how female sexuality is portrayed in art. Berger uses Peter Paul Rubens’ “The Judgement of Paris” as an additional example in how men tend to paint other men judging naked women as the women judge their own nudity under the male eye; the male artist crafts a painting featuring nudity for his own pleasure while projecting his desires on the men within the painting. Berger then claims that “amongst the tens of thousands of European oil paintings of nudes, there are perhaps twenty or thirty exceptions–paintings in which the artist has seen the woman.” When men paint naked women, they aren’t seeing the woman for their vulnerable, naked self but rather the physical aspects of her naked body that please men. This idea is the pre-conceived control men have over women in art that Benjamin believes invalidates portrayals of female sexuality under a feminist label. And what Benjamin and Berger could interrogate Collins on is the reason behind filming a video with Cardi B twerking in lingerie. If we as a society have become so desensitized to objectifying female bodies, does Collins expect us to be media literate enough to make a distinction between what’s for Cardi B–and women–or what’s for the leering men that Berger describes?

Collins may not be the answer, but she asks a question in return: “Why did being alive and being a sexual creature make her a monster?” This quote is an excerpt from what could be described as a devilish aesthetic twin to “The Teenage Gaze.” Collins dubs it “Fairy Tales,” a photography book of erotic fairy tales and surreal portraits featuring Euphoria’s Alexa Demie. If the former was a series highlighting how sexual discovery peels the layers of our body back to its vulnerable center, the latter depicts how women evolve and change with puberty into something visually inhuman. As a result, Collins shoots portraits of Demie in various forms–whether that be fairies or sirens or mermaids–as hypersexual femininity in a girl’s headscape brought to the screen before you.

Demie’s presence is made imposing and larger-than-life as she graces a stripper pole decked in see-through black lingerie and fin-covered arms; her skin is tinted golden, her lips glistening, and her jet-black hair whips in elegant, carefully prepared movement. An image that could be simply reduced to “sexy” is instead so textured and cinematic because Demie’s character is unapologetically full of herself in this moment completely alone in the spotlight; she’s reclaiming the scandal and the sexiness as her own characteristic rather than a compliment from someone watching her.

The female aesthetic and gaze must come in manifold forms, and women should have the choice to embrace lust and sexual power in untamed, unchecked manners of how they portray themselves–even if it’s only in a traditionally unaccepted path of their imagination. And there is real ugliness too: like when Demie portrays a woman traumatized by sexual violence that left her feeling as worthless and inhuman as the black goo covering her hands and body. The glitz and glossiness of the stripper wouldn't be complete without the aesthetically uncomfortable trauma goo, and neither would paint the full picture without the beckoning and lust of Demie looking towards the camera tied in pink bondage. And an intriguing aspect in Demie’s performance is how often she stares down the lens; it isn’t necessarily kind to whoever's behind the camera, but rather seductive–embracing a macabre sexuality and exploiting a vulnerability in whoever views the image.

But there is still room for dialogue between the likes of Collins and Benjamin. The latter, in reference to bondage (which Collins depicts frequently), believes that feminism shies away from submission “for fear of admitting women’s participation in the relationship of domination.” In other words, a woman tied in bondage evokes a sense of another–possibly male–presence that she has let manipulate and control her for personal pleasure. In the case of Collins and Demie, the rope’s end is invisible to the frame and so is the existence of a male character; Demie has an autonomy that reclaims a sexual device that would otherwise demean her, and an aura mysterious and distanced enough from the real world so that it seems internal–for her character and her character only.

If the intimacy of Alexa Demie’s piercing gaze doesn’t sum up Petra Collins, the stunning recklessness of her “good 4 u” music video for then teenage popstar Olivia Rodrigo is her thesis statement. Berger contends that men have established an entitlement over perceiving women, but what’s stopping Rodrigo from stripping cameras from the older men who film her as she slyly slams her ex-boyfriend for broken promises? Benjamin contends that a woman’s body will only be an inevitable display for men to lust after, but what’s stopping Rodrigo from dolling herself up in make-up and miniskirts only to buy a gallon of kerosene and burn her oil-flooded bedroom to the ground? One thing is for certain: no one is stopping Collins from capturing it on film as Rodrigo sticks her face inside a ring light chanting “Well screw that, well screw you.” There is a uniquely female rage in how Rodrigo stares down the camera–ever so slightly charismatic and sarcastic as if she’s playing the part spectators want her to be before screeching the chorus in their faces. This performance isn’t for the old men filming Rodrigo and it’s not for us either. Perhaps as Rodrigo stands in the center of her flaming bedroom, Collins is setting everything and everyone that tells her how to paint her landscape aflame as well.

Works Cited

YouTube: Home, 3 June 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nybfKycotU&t=1776s. Accessed 14 March 2024.

B, Cardi. “Cardi B - Bartier Cardi (feat. 21 Savage) [Official Video].” YouTube, 3 April 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXnMSaK6C2w. Accessed 14 March 2024.

Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing.” YouTube: Home, 3 June 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1GI8mNU5Sg&rco=1. Accessed 14 March 2024.

“Commercial.” Petra Collins, https://petra-collins.com/commercial/. Accessed 14 March 2024.

“Georgia O'Keeffe – Interpreted by Petra Collins.” YouTube, 19 July 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDT_RaEq0dI. Accessed 14 March 2024.

“The Indy.” The Indy, 12 April 2018, https://www.theindy.org/1442. Accessed 14 March 2024.

Robertson, Emma. “Petra Collins.” The Talks, 21 September 2016, https://the-talks.com/interview/petra-collins/. Accessed 14 March 2024.

Rodrigo, Olivia. “Olivia Rodrigo - good 4 u (Official Video).” YouTube, 14 May 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNi_6U5Pm_o. Accessed 14 March 2024.

Newman, Amy. “Aestheticism, Feminism, and the Dynamics of Reversal.” Hypatia, vol. 5, no. 2, 1990, pp. 20–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810153. Accessed 15 Mar. 2024.