The logic of our age doesn’t allow for standards of dress, yet all of our sensibilities tell us that certain attire is inappropriate in certain circumstances. “My body, my choice” is a mantra that in elite circles has become a dogma, yet nobody really believes that what you do with your body in public is your business alone.
An airplane, where strangers, often from different cultural milieux, are shoved in close confines for hours, is a good testing ground for our hyperindividualistic ideas.
Let’s start with the public near-nudity and then proceed to the public self-pleasuring.
The story of the “mortified,” scantily clad passenger asked to cover up is so common it’s a genre now. The tabloids love it because it makes newsworthy photos of half-dressed women. Social media accounts love it because it spurs debate.
The debates over these incidents are irresolvable because, in a hyperindividualistic age, there’s no standard by which to judge someone else’s attire. How is it your business?
To even suggest a woman is underdressed for the occasion is probably misogyny. Men who might get distracted by a mostly uncovered female body have only their own pervy brains to blame.
But on a recent American Airlines flight, a member of the crew apparently felt she had the right to ask a passenger to cover her butt. The passenger, a pornographic social-media influencer, was not wearing pants and according to the pictures she herself has posted, had about half of each butt cheek exposed. Admittedly, butt cheeks do not have 100% distinct boundaries, and so measuring fractions of cheeks is an imprecise science.
The social media maven took to social media to complain about this affront. Nobody has a right to tell me how much of my butt should be covered. My booty, my choice.
Travel writer Gary Leff noted that the flight crew was probably in the wrong, by the standards of American’s rules. American recently changed its manual for staff to become more tolerant of antisocial behavior that didn’t cross into violence or physical danger. The airline will “welcome all customers unless there is a risk to the safety or security of the flight.” As a result, the flight crew isn’t supposed to do anything about naked passengers unless another passenger complains.
But even then, according to one lawsuit, some of American’s flight crews seem to take an extreme laissez-faire attitude.
Neel Elsherif, a clothing CEO, was flying back from Milan when she noticed the man next to her in first class “brazenly” masturbating. She repeatedly asked the flight attendants to stop him, but they declined.
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After all, his body, his choice, right?
The brazen masturbator case is in court now, and so the airline is being mum. But it seems that we are running into the limits of our world where the only moral rule is “you do you.”