World Naked Bike Ride

Yesterday was the World Naked Bike Ride Day, WNBD. I went out to watch it. There were six starting points around London and then they were supposed to merge at Westminster Bridge which is the most central point of the city. The event was to start at 2-2:30pm, so I thought I can catch them at around 3pm at the merging point.

Three years ago, my family and I went out for a nice walk in St. James's Park. It was there and then that we came across such an event. Before that we had no idea about it. We all got shocked when we saw them. Most people around us were cheering and taking photos and videos of the naked cyclists. Later on, I read about it a bit more when we got home and I realized that this is a worldwide campaign basically about defending the nature and against oil consuming. The campaigners also demand safer roads for the cyclists. The event is hold in many big cities around the world, especially in Europe every year simultaneously on a fixed day in June.

What I saw yesterday was interesting. The event raised several questions: how did thousands of people convince themselves to attend such an event? Were they just from one social class or were they from varied classes with different revenues and levels of education? Were they just the youth? How was their gender distribution? Was it an anarchy movement against the norms and values of the society? Would it count as the disobedience of the minority against the majority? Could there be any imaginable accomplishment for the movement? What has been the result in the previous years? In terms of psychological indexes, was it an exciting activity which could be considered to work against depression or similar mental disorders? What should be the government's reaction? Ignoring the movement, controlling it or stopping and suppressing it? Etc.

Personally I have no idea about the answers. However according to my observation, I can assume that the attendants were from both genders, from various ages, different educational backgrounds, and with varied incomes. I saw that most of them were quite happy and the reaction of the people on the street were mostly welcoming. The movement was extremely peaceful and I did not see any violence at all, not from the people and not from the officials. I take the movement seriously as a noticeable case study in sociology, anthropology, social psychology, politics, etc. As a journalist and a researcher, I like to see such events and study about them.