The Loss of the Body: Self Identity, Privacy, and the Body
By: Laura Mohsene
Tags: Mind, Body, Shame, Loss, Body Image

On Being Human

Our bodies, ourselves

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

The body is a private thing. It belongs to us. We identify with our body and sense ourselves within it. Our body is us. We cannot separate who we are from our bodies. It is for this reason that humans are so concerned about their bodies. We want our bodies to appear attractive to others or, at least, to appear the way we want them to appear. We want control over our bodies.

We often fear the loss of our bodies in several ways: control over our own bodies, our physical privacy, our health and safety, even our very lives.

We want to be able to control how much of our bodies to reveal to others. Americans views the sight of the naked body as something shameful or erotic, but often not as something natural. European cultures, though not all, are less inhibited about nudity compared to Americans, yet many people, regardless of where they live, are fearful of being naked.

Have you ever had a dream where you were naked and the eyes of others were watching you? This is a bad dream for most people. The fear of exposure is strong.

But why do we fear nudity so? It is likely because, to our minds, the exposure of our bodies to others leads to the loss of privacy and control over own bodies. More than that, we fear judgment.

Author Carmen Williams quotes Dr. Jaclyn Lotter in an article titled “Why Are We So Afraid to be Naked?”:

“Dr. Lotter claims that this is because, “By being naked, we bare ourselves to the judgement of others, exposing our self-perceived imperfections …”

Being naked or exposed unwillingly is strongly connected to the idea of judgment.

Dr. Lotter argues that “The majority of images in the mainstream media are of young, white, thin women.” Women who don’t live up to that media ideal (one often airbrushed into existence) are bound to feel ashamed of their bodies in comparison to the media ideal when so few can meet up to that standard.

There are also just as many images of ripped men that can make a normal man feel ashamed of their bodies also. Popular culture and films abound with images of men with huge muscles a small waist.

Female patients also must endure the embarrassment of nudity in front male and female doctors and nurses. Any woman who has had a gynecological exam or had breast cancer or given birth has had to expose their body to medical personnel repeatedly. For some, this is excruciating, but others will eventually accept it as a necessity.

It isn’t just women, but men also fear their bodies being judged. Some men avoid going to the doctor because they fear being naked, especially if there are female doctors or nurses present.

See this link to read what male patients have to say about nurses and doctors and their fear of exposing their private parts: Male Modesty. Men are no less embarrassed to expose their bodies than women. As a result, many men avoid going to the doctor until it is too late.

For men and women, the experience of being exposed in a medical setting can make them feel a loss of control over their own bodies because they are forced to reveal it.

Worse than the fear and shame of being exposed during a medical exam is the even worse experience of the loss of privacy when we deal with law enforcement. Police and other law enforcement personnel have the right to force suspects and prisoners to endure strip searches and other enforced nudity.

Anyone who is forced to reveal their bodies to people in law enforcement will experience anxiety and embarrassment. For example, in 1993 Michael Jackson was charged with sexual abuse of a child. Afterwards, Jackson stated that “law-enforcement authorities had examined and photographed his body this week as part of their investigation (Weinraub).”

According to Jackson:

“They served a search warrant on me, which allowed them to view and photograph my body, including my privates, my buttocks, and any other area that they wanted. It was the most humiliating ordeal of my life, one that no person should ever have to suffer (Weinraub).”

Law enforcement has the legal right to force suspects and prisoners to be frisked or a search of their body icluding internally. In addition to being forced to expose our bodies, being frisked is also felt as a loss of control over one’s body. Any unwanted touching of our bodies is an invasion of our personal privacy and an affront to our sense of self.

Women have experienced forced nudity in prison: According to the AELE LAW LIBRARY OF CASE SUMMARIES: Corrections Law for Jails, Prisons and Detention Facilities, female prisoners were forced to be nude in front of “cadet guards:”

“A certified class action lawsuit asserted that in 2011 female inmates at an Illinois prison were subjected to strip searches during a training exercise for cadet guards.

The women were compelled to stand nude, almost shoulder to shoulder with other prisoners in an area where they could be observed by others not conducting the searches, including male officers.

Inmates who were menstruating allegedly had to remove their sanitary protection in front of others, were not given replacements, and some got blood on their bodies, clothing, and the floor. The naked inmates also were required to stand barefoot on a floor dirty with menstrual blood and raise their breasts, lift their hair, turn around, bend over, spread their buttocks and vaginas, and cough.”

What could be more humiliating and shaming than that?

Women are not the only ones who are affected by this. Here is yet another instance from early American history in which a person was subjected to the humiliation of forced nudity.

The remarkable story of Thomas/Thomasine Hall, a person who was repeatedly subjected to the viewing of his/her body while living in Warrosquoyacke, Virginia in 1627, is mentioned in several historical texts.

In She/he/they/them: Understanding Gender Identity, Rebecca Stanborough states:

Her parents had raised Hall as a girl going by the name Thomasine. Then when she was 22, she cut off her hair and joined the army as a man. After leaving the military, Hall went back to living as a woman. According to Rebecca Stanborough, “Sometime later, Thomasine immigrated to the Virginia colony of Plymouth and appeared in society sometimes as a man and other times as a woman… Some people were upset by this and took Hall to court (Stanborough 20).

Another account adds this information:

On more than one occasion, Hall’s rough-and-tumble neighbors tried to settle the issue themselves. Once they examined his anatomy while he slept; another time two youths threw him to the ground and conducted their own investigation. Perhaps to forestall similar treatment, Hall on several occasions permitted groups of men and women to determine his sex by close inspec- tion. But the verdict remained uncertain. Some called him a male, others a female, and still others could not decide (Vaughan 147).

According to Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America, “Hall suffered through two examinations at the hands of Warrosquoyacke’s married women, who concluded on the basis of a ‘peece of flesh’ protruding from Hall’s lower belly that s/he was a man. Their tenacious insistence that s/he was a man eventually convinced the plantation commander, who had initially ignored their findings” (4).

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Also, according to editors Lamphier and Welch: “In early 1629, a group of women inspected Halls body and declared that Hall was a man, while Hall claimed during questioning to be both man and woman. The plantation commander, Captain Nathaniel Bass, however, decided that Hall was female.” (Hall).

Bass ordered Hall “to dress as a woman and Hall was sold to a new master, this time as a maidservant. Still questions about Hall’s identity persisted. Groups of community members repeatedly examined Hall. A group of women inspected Hall again while she slept and then a third time while Hall was awake and concluded that he was a man. Next a group of men forcible searched Hall’s body and decided that he was a male” (Hall).

Today, Thomas/Thomasine Hall would be recognized as intersex. Due to so many invasions of her privacy, Hall’s loss of control over her body would have been psychologically painful.

Like Hall, those who are born intersex may experience shame about their physical body because they know they are different and try to keep it a secret. Or, like a young girl I once knew, their bodies may have been modified by a surgeon who decided they knew what was best for them at their birth which has left them without a choice about their own body. In addition to being intersex, this young girl was also molested by her stepfather compounding the loss of control over her own body.

Rape and molestation are even further extremes in which a person loses control over their own body. Regardless of age or gender, one of the aftereffects of such abuse is fear for the safety of their own body.

According to King County Sexual Assault Resource Center: “When the shock and disbelief begin to dissipate, the primary feeling is fear — fear of physical injury, mutilation, and death. Other feelings range from humiliation, degradation, guilt, shame, and embarrassment to self-blame, anger and revenge” (Home).

Rape and sexual abuse at any age robs the victim of control over their own body and the acts perpetrated against them leave them with deep shame. Similarly, women who strip for a living often feel a loss of control of their own bodies as they become an object to be viewed by others rather than being seen as a person.

Another type of exposure is when people enjoy showing off their bodies for public viewing. Strippers, actors, Instagram influencers, and other performers display their bodies for public consumption. Men and women who actively work to become and stay fit or physically strong also enjoy the feeling they get feel when they show off their bodies to others because they receive adoration and compliments. Rather than shame, they feel empowered by displaying their bodies.

Photo by alpay tonga on Unsplash

Our sense of self is so strongly connected to our body that any loss of control or physical changes to our bodies disturbs us.

Another way people may experience the loss of the body is through disease or accidents or body dysfunction. The inability to use our bodies as normal is one type of the loss of the body. Diseases that cause loss of mobility or accidents that leave scars or disfiguration can also cause the person to feel a loss of their body. Aging also causes men and women to feel the loss of their youthful bodies and they may feel their body has become something foreign. This kind of loss can lead a person to feel ashamed of their appearance.

While Monism and Dualism quibble over the reality of whether the mind and the body are one or two separate entities, most people’s personal experience is that the mind and body are so interconnected that they are difficult to separate. Therefore, the ultimate loss of the body is in death, which is usually greatly feared.

Most people fear death even if they believe they have a spirit that separates from the body at death due to the loss of their body. For those who accept science’s view that the death of the body, is also the death of the self, they may experience a strong fear of death since they believe there is nothing afterwards. For them, the loss of the body is the loss of self.

I invite conversation about this subject, so feel free to comment.

Sources:

Williams, Carmen. “Why Are We so Afraid to Be Naked?” News W24, w24, 13 July 2018, www.news24.com/w24/SelfCare/Wellness/Body/why-are-we-so-afraid-to-be-naked-20180713.

“Hall, Thomasine/Thomas .” Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America. . Encyclopedia.com. 16 Oct. 2020 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.

“Home.” Home | King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, www.kcsarc.org/.

Stanborough, Rebecca. She/he/they/them: Understanding Gender Identity. , 2020. Print.

Vaughan, Alden T. “The Sad Case of Thomas(Ine) Hall.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 86, no. 2, 1978, pp. 146–148. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4248200. Accessed 12 Dec. 2020.

Weinraub, Bernard. “Jackson Calls Sexual Abuse Charges ‘Totally False’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Dec. 1993, www.nytimes.com/1993/12/23/us/jackson-calls-sexual-abuse-charges-totally-false.html

Carmen Williams. “Why Are We so Afraid to Be Naked?” W24, w24, 13 July 2018, www.news24.com/w24/SelfCare/Wellness/Body/why-are-we-so-afraid-to-be-naked-20180713.