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Synapse
March 26, 20260 citationsOpen Access

Rethinking visibility, gendered bodies and permeable boundaries – whose eyes?: Women’s experiences of changing in a public change room

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MCMarianne ClarkEGErika Goble

Key Points

  • To examine women's experiences of changing in public change rooms, focusing on visibility and the body.
  • Qualitative analysis of women's narratives
  • Theoretical discussion on visibility and gendered bodies
  • Engagement with existing literature, including Marianne Clark's work
  • Women experience a complex interplay of visibility and privacy while changing in public spaces.
  • The understanding of bodies and gender continues to evolve but remains challenging to conceptualize.
  • The importance of context in shaping women's experiences is emphasized.

Abstract

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.

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Cite This Study

Clark et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69c4ccc9fdc3bde44891862bhttps://doi.org/10.26108/6008-3p36
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Also Consider

Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context:

  1. 1Between the Thresholds of Visibility: Teenage Girls Negotiating Sensibility and Femininity in the School Changing Room2026
  2. 2Subjectivity and moments of non-gendered embodiment: A discourse analysis of CrossFit women's bodies2026
  3. 3“You can just be in your body how it is”: Queer embodiment and resistance in physical activity2026
  4. 4Gender Asymmetries: Visibility, with what Power?2026
  5. 5“It is Not Even My Body”: Trans Persons Experiencing Body Borders2024 · 2 citations