The Naked Self: Being a Body in Televideo Cybersex

Abstract

Unlike text‐based cybersex, televideo is an embodied experience. Participants present their bodies as an object to be looked at. Through in‐depth interviews this study examines the relationships among selfhood and the body and the context in which both are located. The body, much like the self, exists as both a viewed object and an experienced subject. Televideo cybersex participants manipulate this relationship by presenting themselves as only a body, the experience of which acts back in an erotic “looking glass” affecting how the self conceives of the body. While in some cases the medium serves to create a “disembodied” context for interaction, as this study illustrates, it may also serve to fully embody. The obvious relationships among self, body, and social situation made evident in any form of sexual experience are largely unexplored in sociology, yet fully within the realm of interest and theoretical models of symbolic interaction.

Performing and interpreting identity through Facebook imagery

“…These worked much like a tour of one's home, moving from one area of the site to another. These interviews were conducted both online and offline and were largely unstructured, with only a small set of guiding questions at the onset (Waskul, 2002). The idea here was to interact with the participants in a number of environments and benefit from such corroboration (Paccagnella, 1997).…”

Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Performance and Virtual Space

“…If cultural space is already spoken for and ''clothed'' in the hierarchical structures of society that are generated by economic, governmental, educational, and other social institutions, then natural space is open to possibility and free from the institutions that regulate social life. Barcan (2001) and Waskul (2002) note particularly that nudity has the effect of obliterating social roles and promoting egalitarianism. Perhaps most succinctly, Baumeister (1991) has written that ''Just the act of removing one's clothes can help strip away symbolic identity and work roles, allowing one to become merely a body' ' (p. 38).…”

“…As Waskul (2002) observes concerning televideo cybersex: ''being naked in the presence of others reduces the whole of the self to the body'' (p. 215). If supplemented by text or voice, the body may not be the extent of the self in photographic media, but it at least serves as the physical base upon which the self is constructed and must be reconciled with.…”

“…This is especially valuable to those that do not meet the ''classical'' body standards alluded to by Kipnis or who are otherwise ''disenchanted'' (Waskul 2002) with their bodies:…”

Mead and the Art of Trash Talking: I Got Your Gesture Right Here

“…Yet the behavior is rarely part of the discourse studied within sociology. This is odd considering that since Mead's (1964) focus on communication, gesture, language, and communication, sociologists have focused on such things as sports, children's games, and online discourse (see Lakoff and Johnson 1980;Langer 1989;Lever 1978;Waskul 2002).…”