Confronting the public nudity taboo
USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1998 by Anthony Layng

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"... It seems inevitable that we will become increasingly comfortable with nudity so that, some day, pictures of naked models and actors and the presence of nude bathers on public beaches no longer will shock the moral sensitivities of most Americans."

During the last 50 years, there has been a tremendous liberalization in American attitudes concerning sexual behavior, but public nudity continues to evoke disgust and ridicule. Even though legal restrictions have been relaxed and clothing-optional beaches are more numerous than ever before, as are the sunbathers who frequent them, most Americans continue to disapprove of nudity no less than their grandparents did. In spite of the fact that it now is quite acceptable to display nearly all of one's body poolside or at the beach, total nudity continues to make Americans very uncomfortable.

Proponents of nudity usually maintain a low profile, not wishing to invite what seems to be inevitable hostility. Given the present concern with "family values," it is likely that such attitudes will persist for some time. However, there is a gradual trend in American attitudes about the human body which suggests that the public nudity taboo may be abandoned one day.

Why have prudish attitudes toward nudity been so tenacious in the U.S.? Those who are middle age or older certainly are aware how other American taboos have declined or even disappeared. For most, masturbation no longer is equated with self-mutilation and premarital sex has become a nearly universal norm. Like many other sexual activities, they have lost their immoral status. Even homosexuality increasingly is regarded as merely an alternative sexual orientation.

Remember how risque it used to be to read about sexual encounters in a novel or to watch an impassioned love scene on the movie screen? Today, this is the stuff of day-time TV, considered quite tame by present standards. Modern literature and motion pictures, intent on titillating and shocking audiences, now must resort to creative violence and psychopathic horror. Scenes of urban cannibalism. serial murder, and mass destruction are rampant. Yet, even as our tolerance of and appetite for depictions of violence have increased greatly, a majority of us still find public nudity intolerable.

While Americans are much more sophisticated today on many subjects, nudity continues to induce very charged reactions. Even among scholars, the mere mention of nudity is likely to degenerate into wisecracks and old-fashioned moralizing. Commercial television programming, prime time or not, still avoids nudity, though ABC's "NYPD Blue" does show partial nudity. Occasionally, topless women and mothers nursing babies may appear in a documentary.

Most of us are highly ambivalent when it comes to nudity. Privately, we have an appetite for reading about it or looking at pictures of nudes. Numerous successful novels contain explicit descriptions of sexual anatomy, and Playboy has 3,400,000 subscribers. Since commercial films are designed for public viewing, though, on-screen nudity is subject to strictures. Paintings of nudes by European masters and classical nude statues from Egypt, Greece, and Rome are exhibited to the public without much complaint. Yet, those who openly express tolerance of public nudity in the U.S. are likely to make themselves very unpopular.

Ironically, some Americans associate nudity with purity and innocence, having Adam and Eve in mind perhaps. From this perspective, primitive tribes that lack clothing may be seen as exemplifying some sort of pristine nobility. Others attribute tribal nudity to cultural backwardness. Both views are fully compatible with condemnation of nudity among "civilized" men and women. Although television documentaries that include pictures of minimally clothed or even entirely naked natives of Australia, Africa, the Pacific islands, and South America do not seem to offend mainstream audiences, any prime-time images of bare Caucasian breasts and buttocks are likely to cause a great deal of trepidation. Male frontal nudity is especially taboo here. After "NYPD Blue" included some nude scenes, it had considerable difficulty getting sponsors despite its excellent ratings, though this generally no longer is the case, with some notable holdouts.

Banning nude swimming and missionary efforts to clothe "savages" still find a great deal of support in the U.S. Probably this is because many people seem unable to distinguish nudity from licentiousness. By associating unclothed bodies with sex and immorality, public nudity is considered obscene. As this view would have it, since sex in a public place is wrong, so is nudity.

Such American Puritanism has European roots. Even in Victorian times, a large proportion of Europeans never saw a naked human body, and attitudes from these eras are especially evident in the beliefs of American Christian fundamentalists. Ironically, numerous Mediterranean beaches no longer require clothing. France's largest nudist colony (Cap d'Agde) attracts 40,000 European tourists each summer. Guests not only swim in the nude at this resort, but go about naked even while shopping for groceries and eating in restaurants. Scandinavia has a long tradition of nude sunbathing. It is difficult to find a Swedish public beach where most of the bathers are not nude. Asia attracts numerous European tourists by offering them nude resorts and beaches. Gambia, in West Africa, is the choice of many Swedes who wish to holiday in the buff during the winter, even though locals are a bit shocked by such immodesty.

 Many Christians in Europe and the U.S. are thought of by others as relatively anti-sex. Certainly, the Catholic Church has this reputation, and fundamentalists long have insisted that "listening" to our bodies is what prevents us from listening to God.

Nevertheless, nudity taboos are not peculiarly Christian. Women in Islamic societies have gone back to wearing traditional garments, reflecting Moslem fundamentalists' insistence on covering the entire female body. Hasidic Jews believe that a husband must never see even his own wife's genitals, requiring that couples make love in the dark. On the other hand, some Christian sects have advocated and practiced nudity. The Doukhobors, who migrated from Russia to Canada in search of religious freedom, shocked their Canadian neighbors on several occasions when they staged highly publicized protest demonstrations wherein the participants -- men, women, and children -- were entirely naked.

There is some irony here in that the Puritans, Victorians. and other Europeans inherited much of their culture from the Greeks and Romans. In classical times, public male nudity often was entirely acceptable. High-status males exercised, participated in sporting events, and conducted public rituals in the nude. Greek art portrayed males without clothing to emphasize their athletic ability, heroic stature, and beauty. To this ancient population, male nudity indicated empowerment, since women, slaves, and barbarians were not permitted to be nude in public.

Shame and modesty

Many Americans are so thoroughly ethnocentric about nudity that they insist their intolerance is a reflection of human nature. As illustrated by the Adam and Eve myth, humans do experience shame. Writer Mark Twain once pointed out, "Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to." Shame and modesty, though, did not give rise to clothing, more likely, they were byproducts of clothing.

When missionaries introduced dresses and shorts to Tasmania, Australia, the natives graciously accepted these gifts, but still persisted in undressing at times the missionaries considered to be most inappropriate. Although this caused great embarrassment for the missionaries, the Tasmanians seemed to enjoy disrobing in public. One suspects that doing so in the presence of missionaries became a source of entertainment for them. Several accounts describe how they sometimes kidnapped a European, stripped him bare to examine what he might be concealing, and then released him unharmed. They probably were perplexed to discover each time that these white men had nothing of note that seemed to justify concealment.

Clothing did not evolve merely to mask a particular part of the body. Looking across the international spectrum, one sees conspicuous inconsistencies regarding which parts of the body people elect to cover, if they choose any part at all. In some places, the bottoms of feet are considered so repulsive that one must be careful at all times to conceal them from view. In other places, women's lips are believed to be so seductive that wearing veils in public is imperative.

 Some New Guinea males wear a long, curved, and decorated gourd on their penis, apparel that seems designed more to exaggerate than to conceal. Some Pacific islander women frame their vaginas with tattoos, and many in Africa decorate their breasts with patterned scars. The intent is to enhance personal appearance and entice the interests of the opposite sex.

Americans insist that even nursing mothers conceal their breasts from public view, though in most parts of the world this prohibition is considered strange. Americans are convinced that breasts are inherently and blatantly erotic in spite of the fact that many native peoples find this fetish highly amusing. We do not insist that women cover their chests because breasts are so alluring; breast are so alluring because we insist that women cover their chests. Concealing any part of the body may render it more erogenous. Young women of the Nuer tribe in east Africa generally wear no clothing, but when they do an erotic dance designed to arouse prospective suitors sexually, they don short leather skirts.

Although many tribal people feel no need for clothing, most of us consider it essential, regardless of the weather. In societies where people avoid public nudity, there usually is consensus that clothing basically is a response to innate modesty. They are quite wrong about this, because the Nuer and others who have no inhibitions concerning public nudity have the same human nature we do. Since people often believe that attitudes familiar to them are normal and natural for others, most Americans do not realize that their distaste for nudity is peculiarly American, a cultural trait which has its own unique social history. Our cultural biases prevent us from recognizing that the public nudity taboo in the U.S. has very little to do with our genes.

All societies share certain behaviors, and these might shed light on human nature and how we respond to nudity. For instance, all human populations behave so as to distinguish themselves in some way from animals. Everywhere, there are customs and traditions that symbolically confirm human uniqueness in the biological world. Some maintain this dichotomy by equating public nudity with bestiality. Once we deny our common ancestry with the beasts of the field, it becomes logical to hide those parts of our anatomy associated with sex, birth, or excretory functions, since these activities challenge our claim to be something other than animals. This may be why we so long have attempted to prevent, conceal, or otherwise control birth, copulation, masturbation, suckling, and menstruation. Such animal behavior flies in the face of our claim to be something unique. Clothing, by altering our appearance, helps to deny our bestial nature.

Any reminder of the fact that we are animals may be suppressed or concealed in some way. Consider the importance we place on audible flatulence in any public arena. In many settings, even yawning, stomach rumbles, or belching are unacceptable. In the privacy of the home, one may indulge in such creature releases with relative impunity, but while out in public, one must exercise diligent constraint, subordinating physical comfort to emotional comfort.

 By the 1960s in America, many were willing to question old attitudes toward morality in general, and at this time, sexual "hang-ups" became especially difficult to defend. In this intellectual climate, nudity became a political statement, testifying to one's sophistication. At Woodstock and other outdoor mass concerts, hundreds of unacquainted people spontaneously removed their clothes and "let it all hang out."

Even though stage nudity has a long history, the popular Broadway musical "Oh! Calcutta!," in which the actors remove all their clothing, seemed to anticipate a great liberalizing of attitudes toward nudity. One might have thought, as I did in 1970, that, by the end of the 20th century, public nudity would have overcome its stigmatized status. Yet, today, there are counter-trends involving a great deal of phobia. Tolerance for nudity seems to have fallen victim to an anti-pornography movement. Some feminists have defined female nudity as politically incorrect, presenting women as sex objects. Some corporations, fearful of negative publicity, no longer purchase paintings of nudes for their art collections. Male nudity recently has acquired a connotation of homoeroticism, implying that male nudists are either gay or exhibitionists, and probably both. Given the American propensity for equating nudism with sexual license, the rapid spread of AIDS suggests to some that public nudity must remain banned.

Although college campuses generally have been in the vanguard of liberalization, some no longer display nudes in their art collections for fear of offending militant student sentiments. In 1992, Pennsylvania State University removed from an art history classroom a reproduction of "The Nude Maja," the famous painting by Francisco de Goya. This action was prompted by an English professor who insisted that the painting made her and her female students uncomfortable, maintaining that it even constituted a form of sexual harassment.

Parents who take nude pictures of their own young children have been apprehended by the police. A mother in Boston was arrested for taking pictures of her four-year-old son. Similarly, one offending father, a New Jersey immigrant from Israel, where young boys and girls are accustomed to playing nude on beaches, was arrested, handcuffed, and jailed, then barred from seeing his children for two months, merely because he took pictures of his six-year-old daughter for a photography class project. Fears of pedophilia outweigh common sense in many instances.

Although it is commonplace for women to go topless on public European beaches, the practice still is likely to result in arrest in this country. Hollywood, fearing NC-17 ratings that restrict box-office sales, continues to avoid full frontal nudity, even though it long has been accepted in European films. American-based airlines ban onboard weekly magazines that include pictures of nude models, such as those popular in Japan today. In-flight movies and those shown on commercial television are edited to delete "offensive" nudity.

 It does not seem strange that Middle Eastern airlines edit bare thighs from their films, but why is it that naked people, or even pictures of naked people, elicit such negative reaction in North America? Why does the practice of nude sunbathing and swimming cause such consternation here? After all, ours is a country quite accustomed to a great amount of exposed flesh. The advertising and entertainment industries constantly vie for our attention by depicting women and men in scant attire, often suggesting total nudity. Swimwear has been reduced to such minimal proportions that these garments seem more inclined to accent sexual anatomy than to conceal it.

There have been some efforts to liberalize laws that condemn women for being bare-chested on the grounds that the laws do not apply equally to men. In recent years, small protest demonstrations have been staged by women in American and Canadian cities, but their cause does not seem to have gained much sympathy from the population at large. One might assume that feminist organizations would take up this campaign, but they are neutralized on the issue because they are committed to combating the objectification of women. Although they agree that the laws should not discriminate on the basis of sex, many are convinced that going topless only encourages the image of women as sex objects.

Social context

How public nudity is perceived is largely a matter of social context. Some populations are totally comfortable with nudity, while others find it unqualifiedly unacceptable. In 1995, the city of Jerusalem was offered a replica of what might be the world's most admired statue, Michelangelo's "David," depicting the young Israelite king immediately after he killed Goliath. The replica, worth $700,000, was commissioned by Florence, Italy, to commemorate Jerusalem's 3,000-year history. Although the city fathers of Jerusalem were pleased at the prospect of owning this highly visible symbol of proud Jewish history, the gift was refused because David's nudity would have offended Orthodox Jews and Arabs. Similarly, a painting of the classical Greek statue of "Venus de Milo" was removed from a shopping mall in Springfield, Mo., because it was considered too shocking. The original is one of the most popular attractions at the Louvre in Paris.

Attitudes toward nudity may change dramatically from one generation to another within the same society. Until quite recently, for instance, Japanese magazines were not allowed to include pictures of nude models, but many of them now do so. One of these publications, An An, solicited nude photographs from its female readers and received 1,600 entries. It seems that these women believed that such photographs were complimentary, in sharp contrast to what most American women might have concluded. Moreover, these Japanese women were enthusiastic about this rare opportunity to compete with others, a desire that would have been far less likely a generation ago.

Although many educated Americans consider our public nudity taboo to be anachronistic, there presently is no organized national effort to challenge it, and I do not anticipate any sort of social movement devoted to the demise. However, there has been a long-term trend suggesting that, in the not too distant future, America will grow more accepting of nudity.

 In the last few years, memberships in the largest national nudist organization (the Naturist Society) have increased dramatically. There has been much liberalization of American attitudes toward sex in general, and pictures of naked people, on newsstands and the Internet, are more readily available than ever before. Clothing-optional beaches in various parts of the country steadily have increased in numbers, and more and more will be converted to such use. National parks, where nude bathing used to be prohibited, today tolerate it in designated areas. Although many anti-nudity state laws have been proposed in recent years, very few have been enacted.

Some municipalities have discovered that tolerance of nudism can be highly profitable. There was considerable resistance on the part of merchants and the Mayor's Office in Miami to allowing nude bathing on its now famous Haulover Beach. Once it was opened for such use, a veritable flood of European tourists proved to be an economic boom. Florida-based cruise ship lines, formerly unreceptive to nudist organizations. now solicit their business, and it is possible to sign on for a Caribbean cruise with hundreds of other nudists.

Protests against public nudity -- evoking concerns for family values, protection of women, and Christian morality -- should not be viewed as a serious setback to the naturist movement and the liberalizing of American views. Rather, they are more likely reactive responses to the increasing acceptance of exposed anatomy and may be seen, therefore, as confirming liberalization of mainstream attitudes toward nudity. Given the present trends in most of the industrialized world and more subtle trends in the U.S., it seems inevitable that we will become increasingly comfortable with nudity so that, some day. pictures of naked models and actors and the presence of nude bathers on public beaches no longer will shock the moral sensitivities of most Americans. When that time comes, we will marvel at how we used to be so uptight about public nudity.

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