【１】高校進学率が六〇％を超えるのが昭和三六年。昭和四九年には九〇％を超える。大学進学率が二〇％を超えるのが昭和四四年。昭和四八年には三二％になる。大衆受験社会は昭和四〇年代後半にはじまった。【２】週刊誌が大学合格者高校別一覧や受験関係の記事を頻繁に登場させるようになるのが昭和四〇年代である。
　この間の進学率の上昇によって親は子弟を少しでもよりよい学校に入学させようとする。【３】教師も進学先のない子どもがでないようにしなければならないという教育的配慮を働かせる。となると、入れる学校を確実にみきわめねばならない。生徒の相対的学力査定――偏差値が必要になる。【４】ところが、確実に入学できる学校を探すためにいったん偏差値がつかわれると、それまで曖昧だった学校ランクが明確になり、固定化する。教師が指導する学校には必ず入学できることになるが、その反面、それまで曖昧だった学校序列が偏差値によって、明確な学校ランクとなる。
　【５】こうして昭和四〇年代後半以後に「輪切り」といわれる学校の総序列化が急速に進んだ。職業高校が普通高校の序列の下に組み込まれはじめるのもこのころからである。昭和五〇年には「高校入試に跋扈する偏差値」のような偏差値バッシング記事が登場するようになる。
　【６】学校が総序列化すると、受験競争への焚きつけは、学歴社会や立身出世物語などの外部に帰属させることなく、受験社会内部で自己生産することができるようになる。学校ランクや偏差値ランクがそれ自体として競争の報酬になり意味の根拠となってしまうからである。【７】偏差値五十一と五十六の僅差の学校ランクが将来の昇進や賃金に持ち越されるわけではない。にもかかわらず、偏差値やわずかな学校ランクが受験競争の誘因になってしまう。
　【８】しかも、すべての学校がランク化つまり総序列化状態におかれれば、事態は一部の人々の間のエリート校をめぐっての競争にとどまらなくなる。平均学力の生徒も、相対的上位校をめざしての競争に焚きつけられる。∵【９】生徒は模擬試験などによって偏差値五十五と知らされたとき、偏差値六十八とされる学校への志願はあきらめるだろう。しかし頑張れば偏差値六〇の学校に進学できるのではないか、というようにかえって焚きつけられる。【０】（中略）
　したがって、受験競争はすべての人を巻き込み、熾烈になる。しかし、失敗感や挫折感はすくないというパラドクシカルな状態になる。というのは、大衆受験社会においては、模擬試験や受験情報で自分の学力の相対的位置を早いときから知らされている。高望みしているわけではない。はじめからほどほどのところがめざされている。大きな目標もないかわりに大きな挫折もないのである。そもそも偏差値受験体制は成功と失敗が断続的ではなく傾斜的である。上をみれば失敗であり下をみれば成功である。
　また背後に立身出世や学歴社会のような大きな物語があるわけではないから受験に失敗することは立身出世物語の成就や失敗ではない。せいぜいがいまより頑張れば就職のときに多少有利かもしれないという「景品」程度である。受験の成功や失敗によって心の傷を残し青少年の人間形成に影響をあたえるといったことははるかにすくなくなったのである。（中略）
　大衆受験社会とは、受験がシステム化された社会である。受験が一回かぎりのものではなく、中学校受験、高校受験、大学受験というように何回もある状態をいう。しかも学校が総序列化されたなかでこういう競争がおこなわれると、目標と競争への焚きつけは主体の欲望からではなく、受験社会のほうからやってくる。（中略）
　欲望は受験システムからやってくる。受験システムの外部にある個人の野心や欲望は回収され空白化する。だから大衆受験社会におかれた受験生は、「なぜか（自分でもわからないうちに）受験競争にそれなりに頑張ってしまう」ということにもなる。大衆受験社会はシステムに飼育された（空虚な）主体の製造工場である。
　
　（竹内洋「立身出世主義」）

Men dream of women. Women dream of the1mselves being dreamt of. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. Women constantly meet glances which act like mirrors, reminding them of how they look, or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgment. Sometimes the glance they meet is their own, reflected back from a real mirror. A woman is always accompanied--except when quite alone and, perhaps, even then by her own image of herself. While she is walking across a room or weeping at the death of her father she cannot avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she is taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and particularly how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.
A woman in the culture of privileged Europeans is first and foremost a sight to be looked at. What kind of sight is revealed in the average European oil-painting? There were as many portraits of women as there were portraits of men. But in one category of painting, women were the principal, ever-recurring subject. This category is the nude. In the nudes of European painting we can discover some of the criteria and conventions by which women were and are traditionally judged and seen.
What is a nude? In his book on the nude, Kenneth Clark says that being naked is simply being without clothes, whereas the nude, according to him, is a form of art. I would put it differently. To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself. In the traditions of the European oil-painting, nakedness is not taken for granted as in archaic art. Nakedness is a sight for those who are dressed.
We can begin with the story of Adam and Eve, as told in Genesis'

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good to eat, and that it was pleasing to the eye and tempting to contemplate, she took some and ate it. She also gave her husband some and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they discovered that they were naked.... But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, 'Where are you?' He replied, 'I heard the sound as you were walking in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.'...To the woman He said: 'I will increase your labour and your groaning, and in labour you shall bear children. You shall be eager for your husband, and he shall be your master.'

Two things are striking about this story. The couple become aware of being naked because, as a result of eating the apple, each sees the other differently. Nakedness in this story is created in the mind of the beholder. The second striking fact is that the woman is blamed and is punished by being made subservient* to the man. In relation to the woman, the man becomes the agent of God.
In medieval art the story is often illustrated, scene following scene, as in a strip-cartoon. During the Renaissance the narrative sequence disappears, and the single moment usually chosen to be depicted is the moment of shame. The couple wear fig-leaves or make a modest gesture with their hands. But now their shame is not so much in relation to one another as to the clothed spectator. It is the spectator's looking which shames them. Their drama is that they have been seen by us.
Later, as painting became more secular, many other subjects offered the opportunity of painting nudes. But always in the European tradition the nude implies an awareness of being seen by the spectator. The bodies are not naked as they are: they are naked as seen by us.
Certainly I would not deny the crucial part that seeing plays in sexuality. But there is a great difference between being seen as oneself naked (or seeing another in that way) and a body being put on display. To be naked is to be without disguise. To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise, a disguise which cannot be discarded. Among the tens of thousands of European nudes there are perhaps twenty or thirty exceptions, where the painter, in love with the woman, has painted her revealed as herself.
But until Impressionism there were very few. Most of the nudes have been lined up by their painters for the pleasure of the male spectator-owner who will assess them as comparative sights. Their nudity is another form of dress. They are condemned to never being naked. With their clothes off, they are as formal as with their clothes on. Those women who are not judged beautiful--are not beautiful. Those who are--are awarded the prize. The prize is to be owned.
In the European oil-painting the second person, or the second person who matters, is the stranger looking at the picture. The woman must address herself to this stranger.
Sometimes a painting includes a male lover. But the woman's attention is rarely directed towards him. She looks away from him, or she looks out of the picture towards the man who considers himself her true lover--the spectator-owner.
Take the famous Bronzino Allegory of Time and Love in the National Gallery. A boy kneels on a cushion to kiss a woman. She is Venus. But the way her body is arranged has nothing to do with that kissing. Her body is arranged in the way it is to display it to the spectator looking at the picture. The picture is made to appeal to his sexuality. It has nothing to do with her sexuality. The convention of not painting the hair on a woman's body helped towards the same end. Hair is associated with sexual power, with passion. The woman's sexual passion needed to be minimised so that the clothed spectator might feel he had the monopoly of such passion. Women were there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.
The nude in European oil-painting is usually presented as an ideal subject. It is said to be an expression of the European humanist spirit. I do not want to reject this claim totally, but I have tried to question it by starting off from a different viewpoint. Durer, who believed in the ideal nude, thought that this ideal could be constructed by taking the shoulders of one body, the hands of another, the breasts of another, and so On. Was this humanist idealism? Or was it the result of a total indifference to who any one person really was? Do the nudes of the European oil-painting celebrate, as we're normally taught, the women within them, or the male voyeur? Is their sexuality inside the frame or in front of it? These questions and any others I may have raised will remain rhetorical unless it is women who answer them.