Observing the beach ...

The beach is supposed to be an arena of relaxation, of minding your own business, of

doing what you want. But behind such notions of anarchy or individualism is heavily
regimented behavior. The French sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann's study of topless
bathing on French beaches illustrates this very clearly. Many of his beach informants
stated strongly, ''Here on the beach everybody does what they want", but a world of 5
unwritten rules and regulations allowed them to do so. People knew exactly where the
borders were, how to look, how to dress and undress, how to move their bodies.
The rules were especially clear in the sensitive field of topless bathing where women
turned out to have very precise ideas about the propriety of this French tradition: when,
where and how to let go of the top piece. Kaufmann's choice of topic may sound esoteric, 10
but it unearthed a whole universe of ideas about privacy, individualism, social relations,
and gender.
One of his main arguments is that the beach is a laboratory for the sophistication of
the gaze. People he interviewed often said, ''I don't spend any time looking around, I am
in my own world". There is, of course, no way you cannot look. People on the beach are 15
constantly testing different ocular techniques, consciously or unconsciously switching
between different ways of seeing: watching, staring, glancing, scanning, looking from
the corner of your eye, pretending not to look, making brief eye contact, looking away.
There was constant observation of how other people handled these techniques and
very quick registration of those who broke the rules. Topless women in particular 20
monitored the male gaze as well as that of other females. ''When bodies are naked
glances are clothed,'' as the sociologist Erving Goffman once put it.
All this doesn't come naturally. The ways in which people observe at the beach have
changed over time. The colonizing gaze of the Victorians would today be considered
most provoking and unsophisticated. The degree of learning ocular competence also 25
becomes obvious when kids constantly have to be told, ''Don't stare". You have to
learn to discipline the ways you look at others in a suitably disinterested way: observing
but never staring.

from On Holiday Orvar Löfgren (1999)

© David Ripley, Inthinking

www.englishb-inthinking.co.uk
Grasping words and ideas
In this text, the author regularly expresses an idea in two different ways, using different
vocabulary. Generally, one way uses basic vocabulary and the other uses more complex,
less common vocabulary. For each of the words or phrases given below, find the other way
the same idea is phrased, and write it in the space provided.

"doing what you want" (l.2) = ...................................................................

exercising personal freedom

"individualism" (l.2) = .............................................................................

personal autonomy

"rules and regulations" (l.6) = ....................................................................

norms and guidelines

refinement of observation skills

"sophistication of the gaze" (ll.13-14) = .....................................................

In this case, there are two re-phrasings :-

"these techniques" (l.19) =

(i) ...............................................................
these methods

(ii) ...............................................................
these approaches

The phrase "colonizing gaze of the Victorians" is not very clear - which words later in that
paragraph suggest what it might mean ?

most provoking and unsophisticated

........................................

How many different verbs or verb-phrases are suggested for the basic verb 'look' ?

Watching, Staring, Glancing, Scanning, Pretending not to look, Making brief eye contact, Looking away
.......................................

Where would you place each of these verbs on the line below, which runs from 'very tactful'
to 'very tactless' ? Be prepared to explain why.

tactful tactless

"Watching"
"Making brief eye contact" "Staring"
"glancing"
"Pretending not to look"
"looking away"

© David Ripley, Inthinking

www.englishb-inthinking.co.uk