Nearly Nude? A no no...

-Connect to theoretical issues discussed by Wallace in Chapter 4

A few months ago, I logged onto facebook to discover on my feed that a friend of mine from middle school had recently uploaded pictures. Curious to see how Mindy was doing after several years apart, I clicked on her album. Immediately I was faced with dozens of pictures of Mindy in very revealing clothes, or shots of her which led me to believe she had nothing on. In some pictures, Mindy was covering herself with her hands, so, apparently that's not porn? Needless to say, I was shocked that my seemingly conservative, clarinet playing friend had posted such photographs.

I later found out that Mindy, who is a heavier girl, had actually participated in a photo shoot for a magazine "big beautiful babes" and had posted the "non-pornographic" ones on facebook for all to see. She was very proud of her accomplishment. I soon found that I was not the only one with the "raised eyebrow" after encountering these images. Several of my friends from home had seen the photos and could not stop gossiping about Mindy's boldness. "I can't believe she did that! How embarrassing! Does she realize everyone is talking about her?" In this situation, Mindy had crossed the line. She had blatantly disobeyed a social norm: don't go nearly nude on facebook.

This particular social norm is established for us by facebook itself, which allows no pornographic photographs and also, by the users of facebook who realize that nudity online, like in person, is inappropriate and crass. Nudity is very personal and many people do not wish to see others most "private areas", pun intended. When the viewer faces nudity, he is immediately embarrassed and ashamed for looking (sometimes) and experiences cognitive dissonance. To lessen that dissonance, people convince themselves that they were not in the wrong for looking, the person was in the wrong for posting. When a social norm has been established and broken, discomfort ensues.

The leviathan often keeps people in check from breaking a social norm. In this case, the leviathan is to avoid being gossiped about or judged by friends and strangers. People "resist" uploading nearly nude photographs to avoid the scorn of their peers and remain consistent with the social norm that nakedness is reserved for private times.

According to SIDE, Mindy should have been the most likely to conform to these social standards since she was visually anonymous and part of a group (the facebook community). By revealing herself in this manner, Mindy, according to Wallace, disrupted a fundamental element of the facebook community by being a non-conformist. Since Mindy failed to read the sign or ignored the rule, group members of facebook escalated their pressure to ensure conformity by simply raising a virtual eyebrow, reminding the offender that certain behavior that certain behavior is not acceptable. One girl I know posted on Mindy's wall: "Wow, that's a lot of skin." aka- we don't need/want to see it.