On the Loss of Nudity in the Men's Locker Room

Our ideas of masculinity are in continuous evolution, devolution, and reformulation. Collectively we experience these shifts through the troubling, exciting, dangerous, and creative ways in which we encounter the “masculine” psyche. The reflections here are based on personal experience in the arena where masculinity is responding to itself: in the experience of primary contact when observing the bodies of other men. The observations focus on tendencies being manifest currently in the behaviors men are exhibiting in private space for men, exploring the ways men feel and do not feel comfortable being seen and seeing others. This very fundamental experience, observing and being observed, is (considered in the context of all male environments where nudity had been and might be implicit in the encounter. The men's locker room is the setting for these observations, spaces that historically have been arenas for open male association and are now increasingly becoming spaces of modesty and distancing between men. ...