How Much Do We Change When Someone Is Watching?

The idea came to me in an airport bathroom.

Not exactly where one expects enlightenment.

I was standing at a urinal with my phone in my hand. There was nothing urgent to read. I was simply looking for somewhere safe to put my eyes.

The interesting part was that I was not observing the other men.

I was observing myself pretending not to observe anyone.

I had adopted that serious expression we use when we want the world to know we are busy. I might have been checking global markets, coordinating an evacuation or receiving instructions from the prime minister.

The phone had become an official certificate of disinterest.

The moment we know we are being seen

Often it is not judgement itself that changes us.

It is the possibility of judgement.

A glance. A room. A camera. A profile. A person whose opinion suddenly seems to matter.

We adjust.

Posture. Voice. Expression. Even the speed at which we move.

We want attention, but with editing rights.

Visibility, provided the angle is correct.

Authenticity, preferably well lit.

The bathroom made the mechanism almost comic because everybody was pretending not to look while being intensely aware of everyone else.

A line of men conducting private diplomacy with ceramic tiles.

The urinal is Switzerland in porcelain.

The jury enters the room before we do

Sometimes nobody is judging us at all.

The jury is already inside.

We bring it with us.

We know which parts of ourselves we think are acceptable, impressive, desirable or embarrassing.

Then a stranger’s glance becomes the possible confirmation of a verdict we had already drafted.

Perhaps we are not always afraid of being looked at. We are afraid that a glance will confirm something we were already thinking about ourselves.

The body knows before we do

A body reacts quickly to being observed.

It tightens. Straightens. Hides. Performs.

Sometimes one look is enough to turn a lived body into an examined body.

And once the examination begins, almost anything can become a CV.

The body. The house. The job. The relationship. The person beside us.

We present evidence before anyone has requested it.

The duty to measure up

There is a strange duty many of us carry:

the duty to measure up to a gaze that may not even be judging us.

We change clothes, opinions, posture, tone, plans.

Not always because they no longer belong to us, but because we suddenly know someone can see them.

Of course adaptation is part of social life.

We do not behave identically at dinner with a friend and at a funeral.

The problem begins when every room becomes an audition.

The right not to perform all the time

I am not interested in the fantasy of being completely indifferent to other people.

We are social animals. We look. We respond. We want recognition.

But perhaps freedom can exist in small moments.

Moments in which we notice the gaze and do not immediately rewrite ourselves for it.

Perhaps the point is not to stop being seen. It is to manage, sometimes, not to change only because somebody is looking.

Back in the airport bathroom, the men remained intensely fascinated by tiles, phones and imaginary points somewhere just above eye level.

Very elegant.

Much less obvious.

Exactly the same thing.