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 Peg's
Polemic
Every
month, philosopher Peg Tittle casts off the calm, measured and qualified
style of her profession to deliver her opinionated and impassioned
column, exclusively for the TPM philosophy café...
Number
11. Fragrance
Free or Shirtless
The
request for fragrance-free environments has again been in the media.
And our reluctance to grant the request once again exposes our inconsistency.
I mean, we have laws prohibiting nudity because it offends some
people to see naked bodies. Why do we respect visual space more
than we do olfactory space, and acoustic space, for that matter?
In
fact, if we're going to rank order these things, it makes a lot
more sense the other way around. Consider ease of avoidance: if
you don't want to see something, you don't have to look. But we
can hardly close our ears as we can our eyes, and closing our nose,
well, it interferes with the oxygen supply.
True,
it depends on the situation. If the visual offense is on the wall
across from your desk at work, you can hardly be expected to quit
your job in order to avoid it. And if the offensive Chanel No.5
is only in your neighbour's home, well, don't go visit. However,
it is currently illegal to be nude even on your own property. And
it is not illegal to wear Chanel No.5 at work. As I said, inconsistent.
But,
you may say, it's not just that nudity is offensive, it's immoral.
Okay. That's a new point. (Though I'd really really like to hear
why it's immoral for me to bare my chest, but it's okay for my brother
to do so.) However, I'll respond, it's not just that fumes are offensive,
they can be harmful.
And
I believe a health risk trumps an immorality. Why? Because you choose
your values - if you don't want the pain of immorality, you can
just change your values. If I don't want the pain of inflammation
with its headache, itching and teary eyes, etc., I can hardly just
change the biochemical composition of the stuff involved.
For
me, it's acoustic space that matters a lot, and I'm tired of people
trespassing. Every time my neighbour works around his house, he
sings - loudly enough for me to hear. I don't want to listen to
him sing. But I have no choice. And oh he must have a lawn (we live
in the middle of a fucking forest, for god's sake), and he must
maintain it with a noisy lawnmower and a noisier weedeater. I don't
want to listen to it. But I have no choice. Short of leaving my
home. But he's intruding on my space - why should I be the one who
moves?
Frankly,
I support the fragrance-free request, if only because it shows us
that our attention has been generally limited - to physical space,
which we value most of all (consider trespassing laws and the many
'no touching' laws). But, as we are now understanding, that's not
the only private space to be respected. And as we struggle to balance
our various freedoms and rights, let's at least be consistent: if
she can wear Chanel, and if he can sing, I can go shirtless.
Peg's
Polemic will next be updated in mid-October 2001
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