[Gendergap] An example of clothed model in medical document

[Arnaud HERVE]

The last few days we talked about appropriate nudity in medical images. 
I have an example of appropriate clothing now.

I think applying such rules as decency, respect, etc. are not totally 
sufficient.

I think that the main principle should to avoid erotic content in order 
to focus on the cognitive effort to understand the physiology. And in 
such a context an erotic content would not only be offensive, it would 
be a pollution for the cognitive intention.

I just worked on this document ( ~ 7 Mo download) :

http://arnaudherve.free.fr/Sugery_table_with_female_patient.pdf

It comes from a vendor of surgery tables. The document was originally in 
German and has been translated to French. Anyway you don't have to 
understand the language, because the medical words are almost the same, 
and the images are obvious anyway.

What I wanted to show is that the patient is clothed, although in a real 
life surgery situation, she would be naked.

The answer for that is not really in respect for the person, although it 
is present here. The main intention is semantic. It mean the sellers 
work seriously at making tables, they talk to buyers who work seriously 
using those tables, and the focus is on the tables and not the patient.

By the way you will notice here and there the arm of a nurse, without 
her face. The arm is naked and the shoulder clothed, which doesn't mean 
the nurse is decent, it means she is working. So her face would not only 
be a violation of anonymity, it would be a pollution to showing her arm 
manipulating the tools.

I think that is the spirit. For images of organs of course it will be 
more difficult, but still the focus must be on understanding the 
anatomy, or physiology, or pathology. Or in other words, discourage 
those who want to drool over female bodies, BUT encourage those who want 
to acquire knowledge.

I think the principle applies to women in sports too. Have a look at this :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Com%C4%83neci

Here you can see, or at least I can see immediately, that the focus in 
on the sports feat and not on decency or desirability.

Don't know if that makes sense to you. So to sum it up it would not be 
sufficient to merely REMOVE the erotic content, it is necessary to 
IMPOSE the cognitive content. Then if you want to positively impose the 
cognitive content, the negative removal of erotic content comes very 
naturally.

Arnaud