This gives new meaning to the term “stage fright”

I saw a brief report of this on CNN Headline News yesterday, and just now found time to follow-up. This is from MSNBC:

Visitors to Britain will find a new stop on London’s site-seeing route this spring: a usable public toilet enclosed in one-way mirrored glass situated on a sidewalk near the River Thames. The contemporary art exhibit, which allows the user to see out while passers-by cannot peep in, toys with the concepts of privacy and voyeurism.

The story goes on to say that the Italian-born artist-creator conceived of the idea while watching people at art exhibits. She observed that many people were so afraid of missing anything that they wouldn’t even take time to go to the bathroom.

The “Don’t Miss A Sec” exhibit — which was unveiled in December — reflects peoples’ reluctance to leave the spectacle, and allows the art-goer to remain in the action, even while on the toilet.

Well. I don’t know about you, but for me, this is a solution still in search of a problem. I don’t care how reflective that mirror is from the outside, when I step inside and see that I’m surrounded by people, I’m immediately convinced that the joke is on me and that the act of shutting the door has somehow turned that mirror into regular glass.

No way am I going to, um, attend to business under those circumstances!

Still, this exhibit raises a bunch of cultural, behavioral and psychological questions, not the least of which is whether there’s such a thing as “reverse voyeurism.”