If you walked by a window, and a girl was changing, would you look?

[yhelothar]

i wish there were more of these dumb clueless women on my street.

They waged a fierce battle involving spotlights, construction paper and crude signs, but in the end roommates Sophie Parker and Karen Linebarger bowed to the realities of city living and tinted their windows, lengthened their blinds and stopped strolling around their apartment in underclothes.

But the lesson they learned is one that will resonate throughout Seattle, where the line between privacy and propriety can sometimes blur amid the increasing number of high-rise condos and apartments. You can have a room with a view, they learned, but it doesn't come without cost.

For Linebarger, 25, the lesson began in May when she moved into Parker's Queen Anne Avenue North apartment with views of the city and Elliott Bay. In the more than two years she had been renting the apartment, Parker had been blithely living her life and minding her own business with little concern for the broken blinds and the possible perspective they afforded her neighbors.

She was more interested in her own view of the city than theirs.

"I just figured most people were like me," said the 26-year-old former assistant to a federal appeals-court judge who's taking a break while considering her next career move. "If they saw someone undressing, they'd be like, 'Oh,' and look away."

But Linebarger immediately noticed otherwise.

Within days of moving into the second-story apartment set up on a hill, she saw a man using binoculars to watch her from an apartment across the small parking lot to the south.

She brushed it off initially, but it kept happening.

Then, the man began racing back and forth on his balcony, waving his arms and a flashlight at night.

It appeared he was trying to get her attention, she said.

"That went on for a solid week in June," said Linebarger, who works at a high-end specialty shop in Pacific Place. "Finally, I called the cops." Police wrote in a June 23 incident report that the peeping couple told them they could hardly help looking because "the girls" were always "putting on a show" and "walking around with no clothes on."

The officers told the spying neighbors ? a couple the roommates estimated to be in their 60s ? to put down the binoculars and told the two women to fix and close their blinds.


They told Parker and Linebarger that many people view an open window as an invitation to peer in and they said the onus to protect privacy is on the people who seek it.

"Their response was correct," said Seattle Police Department spokesman Sean Whitcomb, defending the officers' actions.

"The laws addressing voyeurism are intended for areas ? such as a bedroom window inside a fenced backyard ? that have a reasonable expectation of privacy," Whitcomb said. "There is no expectation of privacy in a window facing a public street," he said.

King County prosecutors said they do not recall filing charges in connection with any similar sort of case.

"We have to be able to prove sexual motivation," prosecutor spokesman Dan Donohoe said.

After the police suggestion failed to stop their neighbors from looking into their apartment, the roommates posted signs on their windows, including one that read: "Perverts Stop Watching Us!"

The spying neighbors then called police to report that the roommates were harassing them. Police returned to Parker and Linebarger's home once again to suggest removal of the hand-lettered banners.

Parker and Linebarger were outraged. "They made it sound like it was our fault, like we were doing something to entice them," Parker said. "So, it's fine for them to look at us, but we can't insult them."

"Come on, we wear boy shorts," she said in disgust. The boxer-style briefs, she said, "are the least sexy underwear in the world."

Repeated attempts to contact the neighboring couple were unsuccessful, but their landlord of five years defended them.

"Those girls have been prancing around up there harassing all of us," said Lila Anderson last week. "It's ridiculous. The rest of us just don't look anymore."

As density rises, some local developers are building with privacy in mind to prevent issues like this from arising.

According to Megan Hilfer of Parsons Public Relations, the design firm GGLO has incorporated "a series of opaque, multicolored panels to create an artful" privacy buffer in their renovation of the historic Cobb Building on Fourth Avenue.

Until last week, Parker and Linebarger were still fighting to protect what they saw as their right to privacy and a view.

In addition to the signs, they'd tried to stymie their neighbors by letting a friend shine a bright spotlight into the couple's windows and strategically placing pieces of construction paper on the lower third of their windows.

But those didn't work, and they were still sporadically catching the couple, both the man and woman, peering up at them. This week, they gave up and put tinted film on their windows and started drawing their longer blinds.

It's maddening and creepy, they said, to have to shutter the views and block the breezes to "keep sick people from looking," Parker said.

But that's the reality they're resigned to now.

"I guess it's that or wear clothes all the time," Parker said. "It's frustrating."

 

[Psynaut]

These girls are either morons or attention whores, or probably both. The poll should ask: "if you walk around naked in front of a window are you stupid enough to think people won't look?"

 

[dawp]

I've done it, had a good looking blonde accross the street from me when i was about 18, and she would walk around nakid at night. Needless to say I had my brothers binoculars.

meant to say this was a picture window on the second floor, as was my bedroom.

 

[Eeezee]

I have walked past a window while a girl was changing. I did look. It's not like I was hidden or anything; she had a ground floor room, it was around sunset, she had the only room with a light on. Psychologically speaking, you naturally gaze towards parts that are "different" ie the lit room instead of all of the dark rooms.

If she wanted to change in privacy, she should have either closed her blinds or turned out the light

I think it would be aggravating if you enjoy the cool breeze while naked, though. I guess you can't have it all.




Also, an interesting question: does walking around naked in your home with the blinds open count as indecent exposure?

 

[Maiora]

If a straight guy says no he's a fscking liar plain simple!

Here's proof LOL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34GvOxsn8DY

 

[HaiBiss]

Originally posted by: Maiora
If a straight guy says no he's a fscking liar plain simple!

Here's proof LOL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34GvOxsn8DY

I agree with him, but the old couple in the story are going out of their way to look at the girls just put the binocs down and walk away.

 

[Newbian]

If they are giving it away for free people will look.

As for women wearing boxer shorts that can be very hot provided the women themselves are hot.

Now all I need are some to move near me so I can find a cheap telescope to buy.

 

[Parasitic]

I personally think boyshorts are sexy because...well...they are. This whole issue just sounds silly to have even made it to the news. Come on, it's not like those girls are from super rural places that your "next door" neighbor is 40 miles away. If you are going to be near naked with an open window, people will look.

 

[BUTCH1]

Silly girls, of course we are gonna look!, although someone prowling a parking lot with binocs. is kinda creepy, at that point it becomes more than a casual sighting and closer to stalking..

 

[fatpat268]

Err, first off... boy shorts are far from being the unsexiest a woman can wear.

Second, why the fuck was this guy using a flashlight to try and get her attention? If you watch, do it silently and in the shadows like a regular pervert, otherwise you're asking for trouble.

 

[Bateluer]

Is it so hard to put up blinds or shades on the windows if you want to stroll around in your under garments?

 

[Newbian]

It's much in the way of women wanting to be able to legally walk around topless or breastfeed in public.

If you do such activities then expect to be stared at by straight men and the occasional woman.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: fatpat268
Err, first off... boy shorts are far from being the unsexiest a woman can wear.

Second, why the fuck was this guy using a flashlight to try and get her attention? If you watch, do it silently and in the shadows like a regular pervert, otherwise you're asking for trouble.

Lol, exactly what I was thinking. I don't understand why the old people in the other apartment are doing all that other crap to the girls.

 

[nanette1985]

Who's the one person who voted that they wouldn't look? Why?

 

[meltdown75]

boy shorts on Kate Beckinsale. le fap

what was this thread about again?

 

[Bignate603]

This is one of the more ridiculous news stories I've heard in a while.

 

[Newbian]

Originally posted by: princess ida
Who's the one person who voted that they wouldn't look? Why?

Because he likes men.

 

[wwswimming]

this happened a few weeks ago. one of the women was on the balcony wearing only a
bath towel. i figure that was not a coincidence.

 

[Buck Armstrong]

Originally posted by: fatpat268
Second, why the fuck was this guy using a flashlight to try and get her attention? If you watch, do it silently and in the shadows like a regular pervert, otherwise you're asking for trouble.

Well, he was obviously trying to get their attention. Now why would he do that? Because he thinks the two young women are going to invite him back up for a threesome? :roll: Sounds to me like the old guy was trying to alert them to the fact that the whole city could see their dumb, naked asses.

 

[waggy]

these girls are fricken idiots. while they have the right to walk around the house naked with the windows open they can't cry about it if someone looks in.

 

[alchemize]

The real question isn't would you stop and look, but would you stop and Fap.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: waggy
these girls are fricken idiots. while they have the right to walk around the house naked with the windows open they can't cry about it if someone looks in.

oh yes they can

and they can make the news for it

theyre still idiots though.

edit: to be clear, id look, but i wouldnt stare for an extended period or go out of my way to try and catch some chick with her blinds open. and i wouldnt get out binoculars. probably.

 

[BrownTown]

My room last year in college faced directly into another building and on the MAJORITY of days if you were looking out your window at night you could see a college chick in her panties or naked. I mean I could literally be typing at my computer on ATOT and turn my head 90 degree to the left and BOOM! naked chick. Do they really think if it is that easy somebody isn't going to look?

I mean I knows its probably immoral or something, but I think there is a big difference between actively dtalking around trying to see a naked chick and having them just flaunt it in your face like that (I can all but guarantee the girls in this one dorm room knew EXACTLY what they were doing)

 

[RichardE]

I live on a university townhouse complex that has big rooms with big windows. Any night of the week you can see half undressed, or almost totally undressed woman prancing around in the windows, doorways, streets, ect. University life is fun heh.

 

[Gamingphreek]

I would most definitely look away. When people are wearing revealing clothing, when there is questionable material on the TV or in a movie I still look away. In my mind, yes that person put themselves out there like that, but (being a guy) that is someones wife or future wife. Not only that, even if they don't have any honor or respect for themselves, I do.

-Kevin