1 Woman and 1 Man: 2 Views in Sex Role Debate : Lectures: As art scholar Michelle Guy takes a serious look at subject in Newport Beach, Bryan Redfield discusses his book about 'pickup' tips in Laguna Beach.

By JESS BRAVIN

June 19, 1992 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

NEWPORT BEACH — Citing Murphy Brown’s baby, the nomination of two California women for U.S. Senate and Hillary Clinton’s views on home-baked cookies, pundits have called 1992 the Year of the Woman.

But the debate over sex roles in the post-feminist age isn’t limited to newsrooms, sitcom studios and faculty lounges; this week, two public lectures in Orange County probed rather different sides of the dilemma.

At the Newport Harbor Art Museum, a young, feminist-educated art scholar presented what might be considered the culturally elite perspective: “Women Looking: The Male Gaze Under Scrutiny.” Earlier, in terms an Indiana University frat boy could understand, a self-proclaimed expert in Laguna Beach declaimed on the subject of his new book: “A Bartender’s Guide on How to Pick Up Women.”

And, measuring what may be the pulse of the moment, both said much the same thing.

Delivering a lecture his jacket copy calls “The Truth at Last,” Bryan Redfield, the titular barkeep of his self-published book, revealed his secret discovery last weekend to nearly a dozen listeners at a bookstore in a Coast Highway shopping mall.

In earnest tones, the one-time Chippendale’s cocktail waiter instructed, “You have to treat a woman as more than the sum of her body parts.”

Redfield, 41, wrote his book after spending 14 years behind the bar, during which time he says he observed 10,000 men and women meet.

Like any good social scientist, Redfield attempted to quantify their behavior; the result, propounded on the patio outside the Fahrenheit 451 bookstore, includes Six Steps to Avoid Rejection, Five Things That Have to Transpire Before You Speak, Three Types of Attire, 31 Classic Mistakes and 12 Golden Rules for a Successful First Date, not to mention the Two Biggest Mistakes Women Make.

Running down list after list, Redfield gave prospective suitors rules of thumb to gauge their standing with would-be paramours.

“The three areas that identify what you’re in for,” he intoned methodically, are “1) the eyes; 2) the attitude; and 3) the wardrobe. The eyes tell you where her head is at; the attitude, what you’re in for in the long run; the wardrobe, what she’s advertising.”

But if some men were hoping the Hollywood bartender would eventually present them with a secret formula for romantic success, they were disappointed. The unmarried Redfield’s method for eliminating “99% of the problems most people have” when they meet eligible others was neither hypnosis nor a spiked drink. Rather, it was nothing more provocative than suggesting that the zoo or an art gallery would be a good destination for a first date.

“Those are neutral, unthreatening places where you can get to know each other as people,” he observed. After all, in the ‘90s, he said, “a woman’s place is in control.”

It was a message well-received by the single men who turned out to see Redfield, who sold three books that day. Two of those went to women who said they were buying them for needy male friends.

“I never realized how thoughtless people are in their approach,” said Armand Ortiz, 30, after Redfield’s discussion of ineffective pickup lines. “A canned kind of thing is kind of a put-off. What he said is pretty useful,” the twice-engaged, never-married Laguna Hills property manager added.

Keith Roper, a 34-year-old computer programmer, took heart in another of Redfield’s observations, namely “that if your relationship is based on the non-physical, the chances of it lasting are greater.”

The Newport Beach man also appreciated one of Redfield’s most unusual suggestions: that men who want to appeal to women sharpen their fashion sense by observing what male characters wear on soap operas. “I never thought of that,” Roper said.

But not all present found Redfield as enlightened as he claimed to be.

“I am offended by the title,” said Terra Wolf, 44, a Laguna Beach schoolteacher. “It’s a sad fact that people have to be brought down to this level, that women should be treated like we’re meat at the store,” said Wolf--who noted that she was a single mother whose parental duties presently kept her out of the dating market.

“Yeah,” added Ann Leonard, 23, with a touch of amusement: “Like if they say the right thing, they’ll get you into bed.”

While some women were laughing off male views of them, the subject was serious business at the Newport Harbor Art Museum.

In her lecture there, curatorial assistant Michelle Guy propounded the ways women artists today are “deconstructing the male gaze” that has dominated the female aesthetic for millennia.

“Power is implicit in art works, and art works have traditionally been made by men,” said Guy, 24, who studied art history, comparative literature and feminist theory at UC Irvine. “Men determine what culture is, and women have been assigned passive roles”--essentially, she said, the role of being looked at by men.

“As women, we’re conditioned to look at ourselves constantly, to tell ourselves how to display ourselves,” she said. But even success at this male-imposed task has traditionally invited ridicule, she said: “Men instruct women to make themselves beautiful, but if you catch them doing it--fussing with makeup in front of a mirror, for example--you can attribute a vice to it.”

In reaction to the idealized way such men as Michelangelo, Renoir and Picasso have projected women, the museum presented recent photographs by feminist artists as part of its current exhibition, “Devil on the Stairs: Looking Back on the Eighties.” Some of these works dealt with such issues as rape and battered women, rather than pretty faces and bodies.

Guy’s largely female audience of about 25 agreed with her argument.

“The problem in society has been men defining women, both in art and real life,” said Dee Fryling, a Costa Mesa art therapist in her 50s. “How we change this disruptive power relationship is the question of the next century.”

Agreed a man in the audience, Ricky Green, “This whole domination game has gone on since 2 AD. We have to go back and look before that, to Gnosticism and pre-Euro historical models. Women today are just trying to get back to the place they once were,” said Green, 40, who is seeking a teaching credential in art at Cal State Long Beach.

Yet, not all women found sinister design in men’s interest in looking at them.

Pausing for an iced tea at Redfield’s lecture, Nina Ferrer, asserted that she enjoyed the fact that her bathing suit attracted male attention.

“A beautiful woman is an art form, she should be looked at,” Ferrer, 16, asserted. But rather than being forced into passive roles, Ferrer said that “women, and what women want, are exactly the same as men.”

As if to prove the point, Ferrer looked up and down at Redfield, then engaged in a conversation several yards away.

“That bartender’s kinda cute,” she said. “You know how I can get his phone number?”