The real problem with body scanners is Americans think everyone else just as perverted as they are
There’s nothing creepy about the full body scanners the President of the United States Barrak Obama has ordered Transportation Security Administration agents to buy up and install at airports.
It’s the American psyche that’s creepy.
Most cultures wouldn’t care — walking through and giving guards a good look at what’s underneath their clothes. But we’re Americans and we are excited and ashamed of that excitement that naked people cause.
We are one of the only cultures in the world that doesn’t want anyone to mention sex, and then we talk about it all the time. Titillation is a word we try to avoid because of three reasons: 1. There are four syllables in it; 2. We’re always titillated; 3. It includes the word “tit.”
While the rest of the world has naked bodies bouncing around on television, 
beautiful statues throughout their landscape reveling in and admiring the human figure, Americans still launch protests when Michelangelo’s David comes to town and demand plastic covers on National Geographic photos of topless African women.
Face it, Americans in general have a difficult time with sex. We like it because we’re repulsed by it and then want more of it. We think about it more than any other culture because we’re not supposed to ever think about.
We don’t mean to snicker and giggle every time we here the word boobie, but we can’t help ourselves. It’s ingrained into our puritan roots — our nation was founded by a bunch of people on the Mayflower who didn’t want to show too much ankle. The Salem witch trials resulted from a woman showing off her neck and just a few generations ago, American women were dressed in the Burka equivalent.
So the idea that there’s a machine that can see through our clothes is exactly the nightmare we’ve all been dreaming about. And when I say “we,” I’m referring to every 12-year-old boy — which is the maturity level of most Americans when it comes to sex.
Of course, the idea of TSA agents becoming sexually charged by looking at a digital version of our bodies is kind of gross. (And the idea that the person watching the digital pictures pop up will be alone, in a room, nowhere near the checkpoint, is even creepier.)
These guys are going to find more bombs than bombshells walking through the airport. I actually feel bad for anyone forced to look at every airline passenger sans clothes — seeing them in purple velvet jumpsuits and stretchy pants is bad enough. I say force prisoners to oversee the body scans, imagine the torture of having to look at naked American after naked 
American after naked American. Most of us are not Playboy models or even that fit. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.
The real issue with these machines is that they will show people what they really look like. Americans don’t want to see the truth, they want to see themselves as they think they are.
When the TSA agents finally get X-ray vision, they’re not going to see my Olympian bod I picture in my head, they’re going to see a 42 year old man. I try to take care of myself, but, I’m not 23 any more and my body reflects my appreciation of beer, wine and that extra helping of that last meal.
As the controversy continues to swirl around the peeping eyes of security, the real problem is there is not any controversy with these machines. They might help keep people safer and that’s a good thing without really causing much of a hassle.
No one is going to keep the images and it’s unlikely there’s ever going to be, xraybootie.com — there’s just no point to it and so few of us are so sexy that we look spectacular faceless in ghost white skin.
The people who are complaining the most about it have assumed everyone thinks the same way they do. They are the ones who find it titillating and sexy and it kind of turns on the exhibitionist in them.
But not everyone is a perv in the US. Sure, most are, but seeing the outline of someone’s penis is not really a big deal. And for most, it’s not nearly as big as we think it is.
And that may really be the problem.
Scott Burgess is the Executive Editor of HipsterTravelGuide.com. He doesn’t care who sees him naked at the airport, he just doesn’t want to be arrested for it.
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