Visual Freedom

Composite Image: Using images from Google Images

One of the biggest turn offs going to gym or swimming is the gender segregated shared locker room.  The very thought of confronting an image violating your visual field puts a second thought making that health building trip. You may go there with intent of improving physical health & may comeback with a lasting mental scar. A fellow blogger recently posted on nudity in locker room. The post raised some valid concerns that remains true for men’s locker room as well. Since she mainly covered women’s locker room, I thought of elaborating the concern around this ubiquitously prevalent social disorder. This is not merely against nudity per say, it’s against primal display in public places frequented by kids. (and signs to remain clothed all the time)

Yes we all are born naked just like any other animal, however collectively as a species we agreed to evolve into civilized humans and respect each other’s visual boundary. Just as we evolved to cook-n-eat from kill-n-consume; we also evolved to cover our pudenda distinctly differentiating us from our pre-evolutionary ancestors. So what makes some of us to de-evolve and display primal behavior? One observation at least in men’s locker room is that going back to basics is more prevalent among older population. Not sure if it is selective amnesia where they completely forget that they are in a visually shared environment or their brain cells that control that piece of information on civilized behavior goes dead after certain age? Some are born exhibitionist and have compulsion to flaunt their assets. Fair but it doesn’t hurt to exercise some common sense before flexing compulsion. You won’t sing in public if you have dreaded hoarse voice, well then extend that logic and broaden your scope of common sense. One may argue that when some skimpy swimsuits leave very little room for imagination what’s the big deal if one goes full Monty? Well that’s the last straw that can shift the balance; that little glimpse can brutally assault an imagination and change the reality from what it’s supposed to be an obscure to obscene. Besides no one would like to be confronted with a dismal future while they are in their prime present especially given the fact that most unwarranted flashes comes from geriatric section of the pack

There’s a fundamental difference between man & woman’s mind when it comes to visual acceptance of nudity. While most women detest any sort of human nudity in public, most men on the other hand shows considerable tolerance towards their gender counterpart going au-naturel. It is not clear if men’s leniency towards unclad women if purely out of respect or merely due to apprehension of repercussion on frowning at a human female – The Supreme Being of Universe. One possible scientific reason to explain this anomaly on nakedness tolerance between genders could be, probably during the process of human socio-psychological evolution, woman’s brain completely evolved to auto-frown the sight of bare bodies in public places; while man only half evolved retaining some level of primal quality (along with many others) resulting into partial tolerance towards unclothed ladies.  I must admit that the limited tolerance is only selective as long as the flaunting is visual treat over visual terror.  The mental block separating treat from terror varies from individual to individual. Don’t ask me to elaborate on this, all I can say is this may be one of those residuals of mal-functioned evolutionary process of male mind. To summarize it in one line, Woman baring it all is bearable by man, while man bearing it to eternity is a bare necessity of every woman. 

Image credit: Google Images

Going back to locker room, the big question is how to prevent modesty being sacrificed in the locker room. Of course there are laws that they don’t want to obey, obvious clear instructions are there which they don’t want to follow.  Let’s evaluate few ideas & weigh in pros-cons for each one of them.

1) Make Unisex locker rooms.
– Well this may curb most women from baring it all but on the other hand it may encourage more men to be primal

2) Put cameras in locker room & project it out to screen in lobby.
– Nah this makes lobby the busiest place

3) Take that face detection software from digital camera & modify it to meet the need. Put those sensors in locker room and as soon as it detects any modesty-breach it will laser morph it like they do to blur certain objectionable images on public television.
– The software has to be real accurate as some facial contours …. Well never mind

4) Dedicated skinny-emerge rooms. (Skinny dip is – you immerse your bare skin into water, skinny-emerge out of cloths to expose bare skin & intentions). Just like they have smoking zones to respect non-smokers breathing rights, skinny-emerge rooms to protect visual rights.

And finally,
While you are morally bound to respect individual’s visual freedom, by all means you have liberty to visualize freely!! You have freedom to invite anybody (irrespective of their consent) in any or no attire to indulge in any act into your own mental visual frame aka imagination. Unfortunately for an Indian husband like me married to conservatively raised wife, I lost that democratic right too under the bond of holy matrimony. My wife can’t tolerate nudity even in mind, especially mime!!

The only thing that’s universally admired naked is TRUTH. Put your towel on.