Rethinking Visibility, Gendered Bodies and Permeable Boundaries – Whose Eyes?: Women’s Experiences of Changing in a Public Change Room

The experience of having one’s body looked upon in a simultaneously public, yet private space, such as a fitness center change room, is both deeply specific and yet highly recognizable. First explored by Marianne Clark in her 2011 article, Whose Eyes?: Women’s Experiences of Changing in a Public Change Room, author Clark discusses, with Phenomenology & Practice’s co-editor Erika Goble, how the phenomenon has both changed and yet, remains highly relevant 14 years later. Clark and Goble also discuss the centrality of the body in the production and interpretation of meaning and the persistent difficulty in adequately theorizing and conceptualizing bodies and their capacities.