Hot take: this ain't no consensual reality. But these weren’t merely drunken shenanigans. This is how Northern Europeans go about their daily lives. There’s nudity, which isn’t necessarily sexual; and then there’s sex, which usually involves nudity. Controversial though it may be, Swedish families dress and undress in front of each other, sauna, even walk naked through the house. There aren’t that many nude beaches, oddly enough, although during the 80s there were a few, but it doesn’t take a trained psychologist to discern that Northern Europeans see nudity in a radically different way than we do in America. To us, nude equals dinner bell. To them, nude is just … nude.
When I lived in Cyprus, we used to go to a topless beach on the weekends. We went because it was a nice beach, not because of the boobies. You could always spot the American men, though; they were the ones prowling up and down the beach with cameras. Ugh....
I'm all for the human body being accepted for what it is (or isn't). Nudity shouldn't be a big deal. Here's the problem, though: If nudity was to be normalized, Madison Avenue would take a massive and collective shit. For years, they've monetized shame and outrage about our bodies...and we've bought into it. I have, you have...ALL of us have. Madison Avenue has created products to meet this "need," even though it's totally artificial.
I'm working to overcome the training I've received my entire life to hate my body...but it's hard. It's so deeply ingrained and interwoven into everything I am that I often don't even realize what I'm doing. We've all been trained that we should strive towards the "ideal" body...but what, really, IS ideal? How do we attain and maintain that idea?
I agree..."Nudity and being naked are two different things." The problem is that we rarely make that distinction, and so the human body has been gratuitously sexualized. Human beings have been taught to be ashamed of their bodies and their sexuality. Why? Because it made it easier for religion to maintain control over us.
Puritanism/Calvinism made shame a constant feature of American life, to the point that we long ago accepted it as normal. That shame has been monetized, it keeps us in chains, and it maintains a needless, ridiculous sense of prudery in so much of American thought and culture.
Why else is porn so heavily consumed within the Evangelical Christian community? Shame doesn't eliminate sexuality; it just forces it to be expressed in odd and sometimes unhealthy ways.
Bravo, my friend. Right you are, too, about the way Madison Avenue warps our self-perception in a way that's guaranteed to make us feel just massively insecure enough to buy the product being hawked as a way to fix the "problem." Capitalism!
We're so worried about other people's opinions of us. Approval-seeking makes bitches of us all. Fortunately, as we get older, we also get better at not caring as much. But oh, the years we've already wasted at that point!
"In the U.S., men can go topless; women can’t. In some Muslim countries, men have the freedom to wear what they want; women don’t. Having a choice is one thing. Not having a choice is something else."
This is something I discussed a lot back in the days when I was teaching Ethics. My stepping off point was Dr. King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail,' where he provides a collection of heuristics on how to judge when a law is just, and when it is unjust.
1) A law can be unjust in its formulation, in that it makes two (or more) classes of persons and unequally divides rights and privileges unequally based upon conventions whose only purpose is to entrench power in a select group, and legalize oppression of the other(s). Some nuance is needed here, because laws granting rights to adults that are denied to minors are nominally based upon care rather than power. Yet blacks were legally discriminated against on the grounds that they were intellectual and moral children. However, the first case is based upon scientifically valid facts (the human fore brain doesn't finish until around age 25, with males finishing later than females), while the second is based on racism and bigotry.
2) Laws that are just on their face but applied unequally. Laws that stipulate traffic control, or that require licenses for parades and protests, are just on their face. But they were (and still are) applied unequally: black people are disproportionately pulled over for nominal traffic violations while, as King was careful to note, they were disproportionately denied permits for protests. This latter is why he was in jail in the first place.
Laws that require a dress code for one group, or denies them the right to drive, etc, but not for the favored group with power are unjust on their face. Note that the Amish and Orthodox Jewish communities have strict dress codes, but those codes apply to everyone. Men's clothing differs from women's, but both are strictly circumscribed.
Many Muslim women in western societies claim that they *want* to wear their burkas and such. But I cannot help wondering if this isn't really an example of abused person syndrome, where the abused makes excuses for the abuser. They could easily prove me wrong by going a week or even day in purely western garb of their choice, just as I could prove that I'm really free to dress as I like by spending a week or a day in full scale Ren garb (which I dearly love, but which I would have to suffer endless insult and possibly assault were I to go out in the world that way.)
I guess this is a long way of saying that the examples you set out are good ones.
I have a dear friend, someone for whom I have enormous respect, who CHOOSES to wear a hijab. She's smart, educated, funny, adorable. Like I said, the whole package. With her, I never question her choices. I know she made them wisely. But for women who don't have her smarts and education, I DO wonder. For them, is it really a choice?
BTW, I love the MLK quotes. Love them.
And if you start wearing Ren Faire garb, I've got your work ;-)
I am much more cautious with any judgments on the hijab. Quite a few women like wearing scarves as a means to control their hair, and it offers a chance for its own kind of sartorial statement.
Oh, and by the bye: high heels and skirts/dresses that are tight around the knees? I've a lot of objections to those as well, though that comes from a different place. Any clothing that does not allow you to run or fight is a problem, I would argue. (Although, if you're practiced at popping those heels up into your hands, they make for some pretty savage weapons.)
"Any clothing that does not allow you to run or fight" is definitely at huge problem! These days, I'm willing to forfeit a LOT in terms of fashion just to be comfortable. And mobile.
A lot of (uneducated) guys will snicker at the Scottish kilt as wearing a dress. But if you think of it purely in terms of mobility and action, the kilt is pure warrior garb. Absolutely nothing binding your legs.
I've actually two comments, so I'll break them out separately. First per, "It’s not the nudity itself that we Americans find so titillating. It’s the lure of the forbidden. It’s the sheer naughtiness of seeing something we’re not supposed to see." At Ren Faire, I stuck (in the past) resolutely to historically accurate garb, and I tended to hang out around those shows and areas that emphasized the same. There were plenty of women wandering about in chainmail bikinis (its a thing; there are specialty shops just for that) and guys in barbarian Booyah! But I was down at the Nobles' Glen, where the Queen held court, and so everyone was in Elizabethan Correct garb. But it was after one of the shows, so there were just a few folks hanging out.
This one young woman needed to adjust something, so she hoiked her skirts up over her knee. It was like someone had just walked up from out of nowhere and hit me in the face with a flounder. It was one of the most intensely erotic moments I'd ever experienced, and it is not as though I'd never been exposed to a woman's calf before. Really gave me something to think about.
Isn't it wild when something so powerful hits us upside the head when we least expect it? I totally get how you felt in that moment. AND it reminds me of that great scene in The Three Musketeers when the Duke of Buckingham is dueling inside a laundry. You remember it, I'm sure. And there is one particularly buxom woman who hikes up her skirt to get down to the business of washing clothes.
They were using their unshaven legs as soft scrub brushes. (I think I mentioned that Faye Dunaway did not shave her 'pits for that film?) I always liked the one who gets that dreamy look in her eyes as she sets her chin down on her hand and watches the sweaty pretty men doing sweaty stupid things.
When I lived in Cyprus, we used to go to a topless beach on the weekends. We went because it was a nice beach, not because of the boobies. You could always spot the American men, though; they were the ones prowling up and down the beach with cameras. Ugh....
I'm all for the human body being accepted for what it is (or isn't). Nudity shouldn't be a big deal. Here's the problem, though: If nudity was to be normalized, Madison Avenue would take a massive and collective shit. For years, they've monetized shame and outrage about our bodies...and we've bought into it. I have, you have...ALL of us have. Madison Avenue has created products to meet this "need," even though it's totally artificial.
I'm working to overcome the training I've received my entire life to hate my body...but it's hard. It's so deeply ingrained and interwoven into everything I am that I often don't even realize what I'm doing. We've all been trained that we should strive towards the "ideal" body...but what, really, IS ideal? How do we attain and maintain that idea?
I agree..."Nudity and being naked are two different things." The problem is that we rarely make that distinction, and so the human body has been gratuitously sexualized. Human beings have been taught to be ashamed of their bodies and their sexuality. Why? Because it made it easier for religion to maintain control over us.
Puritanism/Calvinism made shame a constant feature of American life, to the point that we long ago accepted it as normal. That shame has been monetized, it keeps us in chains, and it maintains a needless, ridiculous sense of prudery in so much of American thought and culture.
Why else is porn so heavily consumed within the Evangelical Christian community? Shame doesn't eliminate sexuality; it just forces it to be expressed in odd and sometimes unhealthy ways.
Bravo, my friend. Right you are, too, about the way Madison Avenue warps our self-perception in a way that's guaranteed to make us feel just massively insecure enough to buy the product being hawked as a way to fix the "problem." Capitalism!
We're so worried about other people's opinions of us. Approval-seeking makes bitches of us all. Fortunately, as we get older, we also get better at not caring as much. But oh, the years we've already wasted at that point!
#2:
"In the U.S., men can go topless; women can’t. In some Muslim countries, men have the freedom to wear what they want; women don’t. Having a choice is one thing. Not having a choice is something else."
This is something I discussed a lot back in the days when I was teaching Ethics. My stepping off point was Dr. King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail,' where he provides a collection of heuristics on how to judge when a law is just, and when it is unjust.
1) A law can be unjust in its formulation, in that it makes two (or more) classes of persons and unequally divides rights and privileges unequally based upon conventions whose only purpose is to entrench power in a select group, and legalize oppression of the other(s). Some nuance is needed here, because laws granting rights to adults that are denied to minors are nominally based upon care rather than power. Yet blacks were legally discriminated against on the grounds that they were intellectual and moral children. However, the first case is based upon scientifically valid facts (the human fore brain doesn't finish until around age 25, with males finishing later than females), while the second is based on racism and bigotry.
2) Laws that are just on their face but applied unequally. Laws that stipulate traffic control, or that require licenses for parades and protests, are just on their face. But they were (and still are) applied unequally: black people are disproportionately pulled over for nominal traffic violations while, as King was careful to note, they were disproportionately denied permits for protests. This latter is why he was in jail in the first place.
Laws that require a dress code for one group, or denies them the right to drive, etc, but not for the favored group with power are unjust on their face. Note that the Amish and Orthodox Jewish communities have strict dress codes, but those codes apply to everyone. Men's clothing differs from women's, but both are strictly circumscribed.
Many Muslim women in western societies claim that they *want* to wear their burkas and such. But I cannot help wondering if this isn't really an example of abused person syndrome, where the abused makes excuses for the abuser. They could easily prove me wrong by going a week or even day in purely western garb of their choice, just as I could prove that I'm really free to dress as I like by spending a week or a day in full scale Ren garb (which I dearly love, but which I would have to suffer endless insult and possibly assault were I to go out in the world that way.)
I guess this is a long way of saying that the examples you set out are good ones.
I have a dear friend, someone for whom I have enormous respect, who CHOOSES to wear a hijab. She's smart, educated, funny, adorable. Like I said, the whole package. With her, I never question her choices. I know she made them wisely. But for women who don't have her smarts and education, I DO wonder. For them, is it really a choice?
BTW, I love the MLK quotes. Love them.
And if you start wearing Ren Faire garb, I've got your work ;-)
I am much more cautious with any judgments on the hijab. Quite a few women like wearing scarves as a means to control their hair, and it offers a chance for its own kind of sartorial statement.
Oh, and by the bye: high heels and skirts/dresses that are tight around the knees? I've a lot of objections to those as well, though that comes from a different place. Any clothing that does not allow you to run or fight is a problem, I would argue. (Although, if you're practiced at popping those heels up into your hands, they make for some pretty savage weapons.)
"Any clothing that does not allow you to run or fight" is definitely at huge problem! These days, I'm willing to forfeit a LOT in terms of fashion just to be comfortable. And mobile.
A lot of (uneducated) guys will snicker at the Scottish kilt as wearing a dress. But if you think of it purely in terms of mobility and action, the kilt is pure warrior garb. Absolutely nothing binding your legs.
I've actually two comments, so I'll break them out separately. First per, "It’s not the nudity itself that we Americans find so titillating. It’s the lure of the forbidden. It’s the sheer naughtiness of seeing something we’re not supposed to see." At Ren Faire, I stuck (in the past) resolutely to historically accurate garb, and I tended to hang out around those shows and areas that emphasized the same. There were plenty of women wandering about in chainmail bikinis (its a thing; there are specialty shops just for that) and guys in barbarian Booyah! But I was down at the Nobles' Glen, where the Queen held court, and so everyone was in Elizabethan Correct garb. But it was after one of the shows, so there were just a few folks hanging out.
This one young woman needed to adjust something, so she hoiked her skirts up over her knee. It was like someone had just walked up from out of nowhere and hit me in the face with a flounder. It was one of the most intensely erotic moments I'd ever experienced, and it is not as though I'd never been exposed to a woman's calf before. Really gave me something to think about.
Isn't it wild when something so powerful hits us upside the head when we least expect it? I totally get how you felt in that moment. AND it reminds me of that great scene in The Three Musketeers when the Duke of Buckingham is dueling inside a laundry. You remember it, I'm sure. And there is one particularly buxom woman who hikes up her skirt to get down to the business of washing clothes.
They were using their unshaven legs as soft scrub brushes. (I think I mentioned that Faye Dunaway did not shave her 'pits for that film?) I always liked the one who gets that dreamy look in her eyes as she sets her chin down on her hand and watches the sweaty pretty men doing sweaty stupid things.
She killed that role! And I love how you described their unshaven legs as "soft scrub brushes." Such poetry, Gares!