America's Beef With Nudity

When one of my housemates came back from spring break in Miami she commented about how she was disturbed by a topless beach she "accidentally" stumbled upon. Knowing her it probably was an accident, but that's aside the point.

So I asked her, "What was so bad about it, do those women have something you're not accustomed to?" She snapped back at me and said that people should not be naked in front of complete strangers. But boy do I love playing the devil's advocate. So I pressed her for some better reasoning, "But nudity itself isn't harmful. If I'm just walking around the beach with nothing on, how does that affect you?"

She stumbled for an answer. Ultimately she simply said that she doesn't want to see other people naked. Fair enough. I still didn't think that was good reasoning to force people to wear clothes, but she was getting a bit annoyed and I didn't feel like having to eat dinner by myself so I dropped the issue.

But it did keep me thinking about our perception of nudity for some time. In the United States nudity is seen as a taboo, something that must be avoided for us to remain pure and innocent. That's why kids giggle when their parents accidentally take them to that PG-13 movie that shows a nipple.

But why are we like that? Why is there such a pervasiveness to nudity? There seems to be a double standard.The image to the right is ostensibly crude: we see David's penis. But no... it's ART! But if that wasn't a statue and was just some man standing there being photographed (like this) it would be considered soft pornography by some.

But when it comes to advertising we're back to no holds barred. Calvin Klein does a great job selling their underwear by selling sex. Just take a look at the image below. And that ad is perfectly acceptable for us to admire in any magazine that we would let our 12 year old kids read. Some of those ads can be found in the magazines in your doctor's office.

And when it comes to movies... 3 second penis or boob shots are all the rage. But what is interesting is that while boobs appear on the TV for sexuality purposes, a penis only comes on the screen to make people laugh. Remember that scene from Borat, I'm sure you do. Some people would just say thats because a hanging testicle isn't as "beautiful" as a women's bosom. And that is what really bothers me. That is only true because our society has constructed a man's genitalia to be "ugly" while a women's bare chest is seen as "artistic" and "sexual." There is absolutely no good reason for that. It is an entirely artifical creation that we have developed.

Now how does this all relate to nude beaches? I contend that the only reason nude beaches are not the norm in the U.S. is because our society has constructed an image of nude beaches as being places where really dirty things happen and where everyone is just flaunting their sexuality. And the movie industry has done a great job on entrenching this notion by the way. Just as we've been primed to view David's penis (above) as artistic, we've been trained to think of nude beaches as "disturbing" and X-rated.