News in the Nudes

I've just realized that this is my first post of 2008, so if you're reading this -
Happy New Year!

Anyway, part of the inspiration for this inconsequential ramble came from here:
http://losing-the-thread.blogspot.com/2008/01/topfree-equality.html


The other part came from the fact that very soon I'm going to spend two hours sat/stood/lay in front of a group of people, and I won't have any clothes on. In my quest to question the entire universe therefore, I'm going to ask why. Not why am I doing it ? per se, I already know that. I'm doing it because I'm good at it and I enjoy being paid £8.50 per hour for being an attention-seeking old tart! What I'm questioning is why our dichotomous relationship with the naked human body?

Bare Bits
It seems strange to me that our western society uses the nude as the greatest of its art forms, yet at the same time considers nakedness as something corrupting. For instance, I can take my children to an art gallery full of, often very realistic, paintings and sculptures of people without clothes but they can't see an unclothed person on a film because that gets rated as adult.
Film censors are strange like that. A 14 year-old can watch some of the most horrific violence, yet as soon as someone takes their clothes off the film gets an adults-only rating.

Back to art. I can (and will) sit naked in a room full of clothed people, and anybody can see me do it - it's a publicly advertised drop-in group for life drawing. Yet if I walked down the street naked I would be arrested. Interestingly, I wouldn't be arrested for public nudity because it's not actually illegal in Britain but if someone were to complain then I could be arrested for Breach of the Peace. I wonder how many police officers would observe such niceties.

The situation is worse for women, they can't even take their top halves off without someone being appalled by an offensive nipple. Some women have actually used this shock value as a political tool, PETA are famous for it.

Am I a Hypocrite?
At the same time a funny thought arises, I like looking at naked women! I like looking at clothed women too, but I prefer naked ones. Is this a subconscious sexualization or just personal taste in the same way that I like looking at mushrooms, or complicated Victorian architecture?

Thinking of situations I've been in involving group nudity, I've not been offended by anybody's body and seriously impressed by a few, but I definitely liked looking at the women more than anyone else; and women of all sorts of shapes and sizes depending on how it seemed to suit them. Thinking even more deeply, I've just realized that the most attractive people I've met without clothes are actually the people I've already found attractive regardless of what they were wearing, or not. In other words, naked is good and can be a turn-on, but the real turn-on is the person and not their body (I think!).
Phew! I'm obviously not as shallow as I thought.

So Why Does It Matter?
It's a question I've been asking myself for a while: why does it matter to be naked? I have realized in a religious context that nude rituals are definitely the best. Being naked ("skyclad"!) in that situation is equivalent to making a universal statement: This is me. Entire. Uncovered. With nothing hidden.
Why, then, is the nude so popular in art? I can understand nude drawing from the point of a couple of the artists that attend to draw me, because they're animation students. To them a good working knowledge of human anatomy is indispensable. Can this be said for the other artists, though?
Drawing a human being, a human being draped in cloth or simply some draped cloth are equally difficult/easy. It's all about line, shadow, highlight, shade and so-on. It doesn't have to be a naked human being at all and yet drawing the naked human being is considered the pinnacle of art. Perhaps it comes from the thought that Man is the Measure of All Things. This uniquely Classical Greek idea has some sway over artists and society in general, but I find it to be a false flattery. Most models would.
Who would you prefer to draw or paint? Would you prefer the almost featureless, slender modern concept of the perfect "body-beautiful" (Kate Moss, for instance) or would you rather attempt to portray a normal person? You know, with fat bits, different textures and a variety of shapes and colours?
Me too!

Why Does it Matter to Me?
Why indeed. Why, if I'm so comfortable naked, do my balls shrink when I disrobe to take the first pose? Why am I bothered about the size of my paunch when I know it makes me more interesting to an artist?
I'm more comfortable naked than most, and I know that most people who don't have a serious hang-up become a lot more comfortable and relaxed after about ten minutes of group nudity. But am I still as comfortable as I'd like to be nude in public or am I still fighting my socialization which says that naked equals sex? I think perhaps that it matters because I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made.

In an ideal world it wouldn't matter if you went shopping in your birthday suit or a three-piece so long as you were happy and comfortable, but to our societal norms it does. Perhaps as Lily The Pink says in her blog, it's about time we started to go Cretan!

Love,
Seán

ADDITIONAL

After publishing this post I decided to decorate it with some pictures. The photo at the top is my "official" modelling picture taken by Sara Smith.

The drawings of me were created by three of the artists during the University of Bolton's life drawing group that I mentioned in the post. Going from top to bottom they are by:

Martin John Hayes

A. Pederson

Dave Cowley.

A special thanks goes to these three artists for letting me borrow their work.

Love,

Seán