miraty opened this issue on Oct 22, 2003 ยท 28 posts
millman posted Fri, 24 October 2003 at 4:37 PM
Hmmm, well. I can appreciate the beauty of a six year old sitting beside me while I'm playing my keyboard, of a preteen walking and stumbling down the street, the teens with their grace and beauty, and even my sister in law, now in her seventies. Nudity doesn't have to portray or mean sexuality, it's something that some people automatically connect, usually wrongly. As in the case of one little squirrel I used to work with, "How can you guys look at that stuff?" while he couldn't pry himself away from the magazine. Fact is, the opposite sex has an attraction for us, all of us, and the sight of nudity may evoke things that some don't want to be seen. LIke, maybe they're interested, just like everyone else. It's an old taboo, and one that is very slowly crumbling, a visit to any beach compared to the pictures from the victorian era will show this. The US seems to be about the worst paranoid about it, but with the religious right in power, I don't think it's going to improve for a while. It's a shame, there are so many moments that we would all like to preserve forever, but many of them, even fully clothed, are subject to some outdated views of the ones in power. I don't think anyone is really offended by nudity, they're offended that they might respond to nudity in a normal human fashion. As always, the problem isn't the subject matter, it's the way a few will react to it.