What do most people do when they see a naked or nearly naked person in public? Most probably experience a moment of shock, point and laugh, call the police, or all of the above. Ask Eric Stagno. After seeing him parade around naked in a Planet Fitness gym doing “yoga-like” exercises, alarmed gym members called the police, who carted him away in handcuffs despite his claims that he thought Planet Fitness was a “judgment-free zone.” The phrase “judgment-free zone” shouldn’t be taken too literally.
This bit of common sense comes as a surprise to Anna O’Brien. She’s the woman who recently stepped onto a platform in the middle of Times Square in New York City, shouted “Let’s do this!”—and stripped down to a pink bikini for a photo shoot.
Not surprisingly, she was subjected to an impromptu public comment period, with remarks ranging from the bemused to the supportive to the downright creepy. O’Brien does not look like the Forever 21 models plastered on billboards in Times Square. The founder of a “curvy fashion blog,” she is, well, obese.
But her zaftig measurements aren’t the problem; her enormous lack of self-awareness is. Writing about her experience in Cosmopolitan, O’Brien admits she was the one who suggested the Times Square location for her photo session, even as she complains about the uncharitable attention she attracted—several men expressed their appreciation in less than gentlemanly terms. O’Brien notes, peevishly, that the infamously half-naked, painted desnudas prowling around nearby weren’t being targeted with inappropriate remarks. Then again, they make a meager living taking smiling pictures with lecherous tourists, not whining about their lives on a curvy fashion blog. Spying someone filming her while she posed, she says, “I was just a body he wanted to exploit and use. My feelings didn’t matter.” The agony continues: “Tears began to well up. I was prepared to be pointed at, shamed, and called fat. I didn’t expect to be fetishized.”
What did she expect? To be offered a MacArthur genius grant? “I wanted to make a statement and I wanted to be seen,” O’Brien admits. To be sure, dropping trou in Times Square is indeed likely to get you “seen.” Which is why her complaint—“I’m more than my body and I deserve respect and human decency”—rings a bit hollow. What of the respect and decency O’Brien owed to the public? And imagine if no one had reacted at all. Would O’Brien then have complained that she was being marginalized and ignored—not fat-shamed, nor fat-fetishized, but fat-silenced?
O’Brien only recovers her poise when a little girl tells her she looks pretty, unwittingly endorsing the hegemonic appearance-based standards she thought she was rebelling against. “I realized in that moment, it had all been worth it. I had been seen.”
Note to other would-be Times Square exhibitionists: If you strip down in public, you will be “seen.” But you don’t get to decide what the people who are “seeing” you think about it.
