I'm coming at this from a different angle. I want to talk about how we think and feel about our bodies.
As a child, my thoughts about my body were informed both by school and the Catholic church. In religious education, we were taught that our bodies were precious. My body is the temple of my soul. I should consider it sacred. Certainly, we were aware of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden--their nakedness was their shame. But my religious teachers didn't emphasize this shame. Instead we were taught to think of our bodies as gifts from God, and that we should treat our bodies with care. As we grew older and reached puberty, we were taught that we should avoid licentious sexual behavior not because it was evil, but because it indicated a reckless disregard for our bodies, which deserve to be treated with care. Certainly, the fig leaves that covered Adam & Eve's shame lurked somewhere in our awareness, but mainly we were taught to protect our bodies as we would anything holy.
In school, we were taught to protect our bodies. We were taught that we shouldn't let people touch us in certain places, and if someone made us feel uncomfortable, we should tell an adult. The message we heard in school reinforced the message we heard in religious education: though school didn't use words like holy or sacred, nevertheless they instilled the idea that we should be as careful with our bodies as we would with our most valuable possession. We shouldn't flaunt it before everyone, and we should be wary of anyone who wanted to come too close to our bodies.
As I grew older, I became aware of a different way of thinking of the body. It is a classical idea. I realized that some cultures thought of the body as the supreme beauty. The human form is excellence itself. These are the classical Greek ideals, this is the statue of David. Or, from Shakespeare's Hamlet, on our bodies:
In form and moving,
how express and admirable
...
the beauty of the
world, the paragon of animals.
This perspective differed only in how it felt we should approach the gift of our bodies. Instead of asserting that we should protect our bodies, instead we get the feeling that we should actively admire the human body. It is worthy of our praise. To use religious language, we should not hide our bodies away, but we should set them upon a hill for all to see. The body, this perspective maintains, is close to a miracle. The body is the ultimate work of art.
It must be observed that both perspectives placed great value upon the body. They differ only in how they choose to express this common sense of worth.
Now I'll turn to our present moment and the issue of body scanners. Again, I am not at all concerned with the debate about privacy vs. security. I am thinking only of how this reveals our thoughts and feelings about our bodies.
I have heard several people defend the use of body scanners and more intrusive pat downs with this sentence: "I've got the same body as everyone else, so I don't mind."
This is a new perspective, and it is increasingly common. As far as I know, it was not even common when I was a child. The previous two perspectives lasted thousands of years, whereas this new perspective, or so I believe, has only come to be widely held within the last fifteen years or so.
When I say that my body is essentially the same as every other human body and that I should therefore have no problem with an inspection of my body, I assert that my body is worthless. There is nothing unique or sacred about my body. There is no need to protect my body from the eyes or hands of strangers. After all, they will find nothing new under my clothes. This is a disavowal of the religious perspective of the body. Also, it does not express any sense of pride in the body. When I go through a body scanner, I know the inspector is not considering an object of beauty. I am not ennobled by the gaze of my anonymous inspector, and I am fully aware that my inspector is not concerned with the excellence or the magnificence of my human body. Indeed, my anonymous inspector cannot even see my face, which is certainly an integral part of the beauty of our bodies.
Instead, our bodies have become meat.
This is how we think:
There are 7 billion human bodies in the world. There are 3.5 billion penises. There are 3.5 billion vaginas. There are 7 billion asses. There are 7 billion breasts.
In such a context, how can one penis be worth anything? One vagina? Two breasts?
Our individual bodies are comparatively worthless.
I would bet that if you asked TSA inspectors who has just finished work how many penises or breasts they saw or felt during their shifts, they would have no idea. They are only concerned with processing the bodies before them. They are actually trained to view the body as nothing more than meat--they absolutely should not take time to admire the perfection of the bodies before them. Instead, they should dispense with each body as quickly as possible. If there is an extraneous object on a body, they should focus on that object. The body itself is unimportant and should be disregarded as much as possible. We want the assembly line to move swiftly to avoid further delays.
I personally believe every human body should inspire awe, admiration and wonder. But I cannot defend this perspective scientifically. It is a matter of aesthetic or religious belief. I cannot deny that the composition of my penis' erectile tissue is virtually identical to the other 3.5 billion penises in the world.
And yet, though I cannot defend the value I sense in the human body, I feel compelled to express it. And I can't express it better than this:
from I Sing the Body Electric, by Walt Whitman:
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or
cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd
neck and the counting;
Such-like I love
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