June 12, 2007 - Tuesday

June 12, 2007 - Tuesday

nudity and other such things

Nudity.

Naked, nekkid, bare-assed, au naturel, bare-naked, unclad, starkers, in one's birthday suit, in the altogether, in the buff, in the raw, naked as a jaybird, stark naked, without a stitch, the full monty –many words indeed to describe a state of total undress.

Recently a friend (and fellow welterweight UFC bronze medalist) described being in a women's change room in the Czech Republic. It was illuminating stuff, aside from the natural male-centered tendency to imagine cute young minxes snapping wet towels at each other's asses while giggling demurely, it brought to mind the various taboos surrounding nudity in a variety of different places and societies.

The thought of being nude amongst other nude people tends to be a daunting one. Western culture, being mostly centered around Christian ideology, looks at nudity as a big no-no. Frankly, this is just as well considering the types of people that are avid church goers. This is why priests do not conduct services naked to a nude congregation. What kinds of services priests might be conducting after services won't be discussed in this missive. This is also why Jesus on the cross has a white towel around his waist with a tiny little 'Westin Hotel' logo on it.
In Europe there is far more of a tendency to be nude. Some countries more than others. For example, if you were at a Christmas party in Holland and you were presented with a pair of spandex bicycling shorts, the expectation is that you strip off whatever you're wearing then and there –Christmas carols on the radio in the background, family members of all ages watching intently– and try them on. The Dutch, you see, love to be naked. Any opportunity that arises, such as the temperature cresting 15 degrees, or a splash of water on a shirt collar, and the Dutch will strip down to their skin and spend the rest of the social event like that. Grudgingly they will put their clothes back on when it's time to leave.

Perhaps you would not like to see your relatives naked. Not so with the Dutch. This was freaky for me as a young lad. I saw far more naked twattage and breasts than any 10 year old should have to see. And it was all the wrong twattage and breasts. I would gauge it to be about 60 twats –enough light to fill a medium sized room.

Anyway.

Later, in my twenties, I would accompany my grandmother, to a nearby spa. The place was amazing. It had Turkish baths, infra-red saunas, rooms with tiny lights that would gradually change colour while you were lightly sprayed by super-heated scented mist, a hyper-active whirlpool, a larger 'cooling-pool' filled with, what I understood to be, Perrier, and a sensory deprivation float tank in which you could hear all the delightful sounds your body makes when it thinks you're not paying attention.

The thing about this place, this Mecca of hedonistic relaxation, was that it had separate change rooms for men and women. But when you emerged, naked, all sexes were nude together, wandering in and out of the different rooms, chatting amicably with each other; ballast hanging, jib at half-mast, all such equipment being studiously ignored in favour of the kind of eye-contact usually associated with police interrogations.

This is actually one of the unspoken traditions of being nude amongst nude people; always maintain strict eye-contact. The amount of eye-contact going on in these places can, at times, be unnerving –almost a staring contest in which both parties, deep below their airy chatter, are daring each other to take a peek. Which you never ever do. And you definitely do not comment on packaging:

"Good sway on those testicles today Jan. They seem to be hanging well."
"Wow Esther, how do you manage keep you labia looking so shiny?"
"Rough night there William? Your asshole's looking a little loose buddy."

As a matter of fact, all talk of bodily functions are strictly verboten. Probably because the focus of such topics is just too there in terms of contextual reference. If you ever want to clear out a sauna room quick, just make a few fart jokes and offer a nipple-pinching challenge for good measure. People –especially men– usually don't talk about sex during these occasions for very apparent (underlined) reasons.

Huh.

Suddenly I am reminded of having to deftly leap into the aptly named 'cooling-pool' because of two attractive young girls who decided to (I'm not kidding) do a tactile comparison of breast size in a jacuzzi I happened to walk by. I am grateful for that pool which was conveniently placed one jump away from what could have been a very awkward situation.

Thankfully, for the most part, all thoughts of sex are oddly missing in the all nude environment. This might be partially because the types of people you actually would like to see naked are almost never there. And even when they are, such as my gorgeous Swedish ex-girlfriend who accompanied my step-mother, grandmother and myself to the afore mentioned spa, you seem to be disassociated from any thoughts of coitus. As if your normal sex-drive has been reduced to a tiny little voice far in the back of your subconscious. I remember sitting in a sauna across from the three of them, who were conveniently sitting in a row of ascending ages, and understanding how a doctor can look at the female from in a clinical and professional manner.

Yes, and how many of you have seen your step-mother naked? Exactly.I was quite comfortable with the situation and only felt self-conscious when one of the fully-clothed staff of the spa came wandering through, thus illuminating one of the age-old conundrums of the human psyche. Clothed people make naked people feel…well…naked. As a matter of fact, clothed people hate naked people with the kind of abhorrence usually reserved for public pooping, and vice versa. I know this because I've been clothed trying to get through the nude part of a public beach (another example of the ingenuity of Czech planning) to the standard part. I was very aware of being glared at like a pariah for daring to be clothed as my feet slipped on pale glistening backs and dodged wildly flailing soccer-playing penises.

But that was there, and this is here.

Recently, in Ontario, or as I like to call it "Hreeeagh…", the ban against topless sunbathing has been repealed. This in no way should make you think that some how Ontario is becoming liberal. As I've mentioned before, being naked is a criminal offence associated with rape and public masturbation. This may have something to do with the sudden freakishly incongruous outbursts of public nudity in random places throughout North America.

This is one of the weird trends (along with the sudden wave of female teachers shagging their underage students) I've noticed in my perusal of various media outlets:

Metro – June 11th, 2007
"BROOKLYN. A man who appears nude or scantily clad near apartment windows in Kensington has traumatized at least two women since May and is still on the loose, according to police sources and the victims."
It is interesting to me that people that unwittingly witness some nudity are considered to be 'victims'. By that rational couldn't I be considered a 'victim' for unwittingly viewing Spiderman 3?

Spokesman Review – June 8th, 2007
"A naked Liberty Lake accountant plowed his Honda Odyssey minivan through lawns, into garages and into a parked car before being arrested in his neighbor's yard today, police say."
After calls from several motorists early Wednesday, Okaloosa County Sheriff 's deputies found a nude man walking near the Inn of Destin on U.S. Highway 98."

Emerald Coast – June 11th, 2007The 32-year-old man from Mesa, Ariz., was uncooperative in explaining why he was naked and where he was staying, according to a Sheriff 's Office report. He said he was in Destin on vacation and staying with his grandparents in Shalimar, the report stated."

With the kind of repression of personal freedoms going on here, it's no wonder that the odd person will cast off all their clothing and scream "Here I am…naked and free!" right before getting dive tackled by a platoon of police who then beat them like a piñata and charge them with Exposure of Sexual Organs.

But ah, the majority of North Americans frown on such wanton displays of public breastfeeding and topless sunbathing. I can only attribute this to the fact that the majority of North Americans look like large wet pears and know that they themselves could not possibly appear naked in public for fear of being harpooned.

There is this weird psychological gap between fully clothed and nude. Anything between the two is considered sexual and therefore wrong. It's, odd isn't it, that any place that allows total nudity also provides changerooms to change from clothed to naked. As if taking off your clothes is somehow dirty business, but putting them on is no big deal. Am I the only person that finds that a little… uh… screwy? I'm not so sure strip-clubs (whose point I still fail to see) would be as appealing if the girls came out entirely naked and then slowly and sexually put on some slacks and a sweater to R&B. It's states of undress that is shocking to uptight people, not dress.
Then there is the Middle-East where many women are obligated to wear a burka, (ie. Darth Vader Get-Up) or face being labeled a whore, ostracized, and stoned to death. Not only is this a huge security risk, but it's just not practical. It's hot in the Middle East. Of course that whole twisted idea is based entirely on male insecurity and a slavery-style mentality towards ownership. I, for one, don't understand what the big secret is supposed to be. If you drop a tarpaulin over a yeti, there is still a yeti underneath.

Sigh.

It's unfair for me to label the entire Middle-Eastern masculine population as 'insecure' as it seems the amount of bodily self-consciousness a society has is in direct correlation to the frequency at which nudity is acceptable. In North America, and large parts of Europe (Britain), people are obsessed with the perfect body. This is loopy because the vast majority of those populations are about as far away from the 'ideal' shape as logic is from the Burka. In other parts of Europe nudity is not such a big deal, with some practical and usually well-placed restrictions (for example, it is unwise to arc-weld, or be a zoo-keeper nude) and the people look better. They do. They're better looking per capita. Their confidence in the human form shines though in their form of human. What I'm also partially addressing here is varying levels of societal advancement. It seems that the societies with more open-minded conceptions of nudity are somehow more civilized. It's just a reflection of a pervading soft-core ideology as opposed to hard-core fundamentalism.

Does that make any sense?

Now, I'm in no way condoning rampant nudity everywhere across these lands. But I am saying that the odd harmless naked person here and there shouldn't be placed in the same stockade as a child-molester. They spice things up a bit. Add a little dangle to the day. I'm the first to admit that the male body is a goofy-looking thing. Aesthetically unappealing, and more than a little silly looking. Even (if not more so) those men that spend so much time in the gym they look like they were sodomized by an air-compressor. I don't want to see naked people everywhere. But there is a vicious cycle at play here. The more religious-rightists that get away with deeming the naked body pornographic, the more things they will label as pornographic. And these hypocritical nitwits need to stopped flat-footed. We've got to slowly ease them into the idea. We can't startle them with too big a notion all at once or they'll start shooting or blow themselves up. And therein lies the crux of why the odd bit of random nudity is a good thing: It gets them used to the concept.

And just to set the record straight: I don't need to see naked people… Unless I'm about to fuck them.

Or they're looking me in the eye.