[Hume L. Yates]

I rarely fly, but about two weeks ago, I flew out of a major airport. It was the middle of the day and there were no lines at the security gate. At the gate where I was at, there was one line leading to two machines. One was the standard x-ray walk-through, and the other was one of the new body scanners. I was more concerned with getting all of my things into the gray bin then I was with watching others – I even forgot to take off my shoes. There was one security guard sitting between the two machines, and as I approached, he pointed me to go through the standard x-ray line. But right before me, he had pointed an attractive businesswoman to the new scanner. I got just a glimpse of her posing with her legs spread, arms out, and chest out. After I got through my x-ray and was retrieving my belongings, I noticed that two other attractive business-type women had gone through the scanner line. One was posing in the scanner, the other was putting on her belt, shoes, and jacket.

A very small cross-section, but I wondered if the security men were deliberately sending attractive women through the body scanner. I half-thought of sticking around and watching, but I instead moved on to my flight. I haven’t paid too close attention to the stories about these scanners, but I knew the gist – images that see through clothes; virtually naked; somebody in a separate room was looking at them, couldn’t copy them. Afterwards, I looked online enough to know that there’s some questions about who is actually looking at them and saving the images. Some people have suggested that it’s all a government plot to control our lives, but I don’t get that paranoid. But all of the available scanned images online are a handful of the same images that the security people are releasing. Are some of the images much more revealing?

My opinion at the moment is that it doesn’t matter who is actually seeing the see-through images, or what they show. What more matters, in my opinion, is what those women were THINKING. Little doubt that these women all have slightly different feelings. Some are probably used to it by now and really don’t think about it much. Some probably have some feelings of embarrassment at the process. Some may be extremely humiliated by the ordeal of having to “pose” for a revealing picture, while in public as others like myself look on. All I know is that I really didn’t want to have to pose for those things. I glimpsed at the eyes of the first woman getting scanned. I thought I detected the expression of someone who was trying hard not to be humiliated. Trying not to think about the stranger(s) looking right through her clothes, or the men telling her how to pose, or the crowd around her watching her ordeal.

Just my observations and opinions. Anybody have any thoughts or experiences yet with the body scanners?