When I started spend long periods of time in a male suite, I noticed that the guys frequently changed their clothing in front of each other and in front of other girls. First and most obviously, a double standard exists. It is socially acceptable for a guy in 1998 to be seen without his shirt or even merely in boxers - this was the nearly unanimous conclusion from interviews of fifty people living in my building and approximately twenty family members of various ages. It is also notable that it is acceptable for a woman to parade around on a beach in a string bikini but not to walk out into the suite area in less revealing bra. Secondly, most guys, when taking off their shirts, are not self-conscious about their bodies.
Women are typically anxious about wearing swimsuits.
My roommate backed out of taking off her shirt with me when she saw herself in the mirror. Similarly, in chapter three, Ruth discusses the contradictory ideal images of women and there extreme counterparts. While my mother expressed a fear that the guys I was interested in wouldn't want to date someone who everyone had seen without a shirt, I appreciated the freedom involved. The actual transgression can be divided into three separate parts. First, late one Saturday night, my friends and I returned from getting coffee and were talking while we waited for someone else to get home from a movie.