Portal:Nudity
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Introduction
Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. While estimates vary, for the first 90,000 years of pre-history, anatomically modern humans were naked, having lost their body hair and living in hospitable climates. As humans became behaviorally modern, body adornments such as jewelry, tattoos, body paint and scarification became part of non-verbal communications, indicating a person's social and individual characteristics. Indigenous peoples in warm climates used clothing for decorative, symbolic or ceremonial purposes but were often nude, having neither the need to protect the body from the elements nor any conception of nakedness being shameful. In many societies, both ancient and contemporary, children might be naked until the beginning of puberty. Women may not cover their breasts, being associated with nursing babies more than with sexuality.
In the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, from Mesopotamia to the Roman Empire, proper attire was required to maintain social standing. The lower classes might possess a single piece of cloth that was wrapped or tied to cover the lower body; the lowest classes including slaves might be naked. However, through much of Western history until the late modern period, people of any status were also unclothed by necessity or convenience when engaged in labor and athletics; or when bathing or swimming. Such functional nudity occurred in groups that were usually but not always segregated by sex. Although improper dress might be socially embarrassing, the association of nudity with sin regarding sexuality began with Judeo-Christian societies, spreading through Europe in the post-classical period. Traditional clothing in temperate regions worldwide also reflect concerns for maintaining social status and order, as well as by necessity due to the colder climate. However, societies such as Japan and Finland maintain traditions of communal nudity based upon the use of baths and saunas that provided alternatives to sexualization.
The spread of Western concepts of modest dress was part of colonialism, and continues today with globalization. Contemporary social norms regarding nudity reflect cultural ambiguity towards the body and sexuality, and differing conceptions of what constitutes public versus private spaces. Norms relating to nudity are different for men than they are for women. Individuals may intentionally violate norms relating to nudity; those without power may use nudity as a form of protest, and those with power may impose nakedness on others as a form of punishment. (Full article...)
Selected general article
The history of nudity involves social attitudes to nakedness of the human body in different cultures in history. The use of clothing to cover the body is one of the changes that mark the end of the Neolithic, and the beginning of civilizations. Nudity (or near-complete nudity) has traditionally been the social norm for both men and women in hunter-gatherer cultures in warm climates, and it is still common among many indigenous peoples. The need to cover the body is associated with human migration out of the tropics into climates where clothes were needed as protection from sun, heat, and dust in the Middle East; or from cold and rain in Europe and Asia. The first use of animal skins and cloth may have been as adornment, along with body modification, body painting, and jewelry, invented first for other purposes, such as magic, decoration, cult, or prestige. The skills used in their making were later found to be practical as well.
In modern societies, complete nudity in public became increasingly rare as nakedness became associated with lower status, but the mild Mediterranean climate allowed for a minimum of clothing, and in a number of ancient cultures, the athletic and/or cultist nudity of men and boys was a natural concept. In ancient Greece, nudity became associated with the perfection of the gods. In ancient Rome, complete nudity could be a public disgrace, though it could be seen at the public baths or in erotic art. In the Western world, with the spread of Christianity, any positive associations with nudity were replaced with concepts of sin and shame. Although rediscovery of Greek ideals in the Renaissance restored the nude to symbolic meaning in art, by the Victorian era, public nakedness was considered obscene. In Asia, public nudity has been viewed as a violation of social propriety rather than sin; embarrassing rather than shameful. However, in Japan, mixed-gender communal bathing was quite normal and commonplace until the Meiji Restoration.
While the upper classes had turned clothing into fashion, those who could not afford otherwise continued to swim or bathe openly in natural bodies of water or frequent communal baths through the 19th century. Acceptance of public nudity re-emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Philosophically based movements, particularly in Germany, opposed the rise of industrialization. Freikörperkultur ('free body culture') represented a return to nature and the elimination of shame. In the 1960s naturism moved from being a small subculture to part of a general rejection of restrictions on the body. Women reasserted the right to uncover their breasts in public, which had been the norm until the 17th century. The trend continued in much of Europe, with the establishment of many clothing-optional areas in parks and on beaches. (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that Chris Ernst stripped naked in 1976 with her Yale University teammates to protest the lack of showers for the women's rowing crew?
- ... that having painted a domestic scene depicting his nude wife, Robert Ballagh felt that he had to produce a nude painting of himself as a follow-up?
- ... that Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, caused outrage in 1784 when he ordered that people be buried naked in reusable coffins from which the body fell into the grave via a trapdoor?
- ... that film critic and censor D. I. Suchianu wanted Romanian moviegoers to cease "falling asleep whenever they're not shown a naked breast [or] a hip that's getting some action"?
- ... that César Mascetti was reportedly the first Argentine journalist to interview a member of the Beatles when he met a naked George Harrison on a Rio de Janeiro beach?
- ... that Meghan Trainor was inspired to write "Made You Look" after her therapist asked her to look at herself naked for five minutes?
- ... that Ettore Sottsass's design of the Olivetti Valentine typewriter was inspired by the pop-art nudes of Tom Wesselmann?
- ... that after women's suffrage in Switzerland was approved in a referendum in 1971, the tabloid Blick sported a cover with a naked blonde and the headline "Thank you for the Roses"?
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General images
- Image 1Nudist couple at Terra Cotta Inn, Palm Springs, California, US (from Naturism)
- Image 4The Barricade (1918), oil on canvas, by George Bellows. A painting inspired by an incident in August 1914 in which German soldiers used Belgian townspeople as human shields. (from Nude (art))
- Image 6Naturist swimmers in Australia (from Naturism)
- Image 9Couple walking naked in the streets of Barcelona, Spain (from Naturism)
- Image 13Using birch branches in a Finnish sauna, 1967 (from Nudity)
- Image 14David (1504)
"What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?"
— Michelangelo (from Nude (art)) - Image 15Susanna and the Elders, 1610, Artemisia Gentileschi. This work may be compared with male depictions of the same tale. (from Nude (art))
- Image 16Families bathing nude at a hot spring in Taiwan (from Naturism)
- Image 17Naturists in a river, 2014 (from Nudity)
- Image 18Nudist hiker in British Columbia (from Naturism)
- Image 20Finnish Sauna (1802) (from Naturism)
- Image 21Crayon-style print by Gilles Demarteau with a nude man after original drawing by Edmé Bouchardon was acquired by Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw as a teaching material (from Nude (art))
- Image 23A necklace reconstructed from perforated sea snail shells from Upper Palaeolithic Europe, dated between 39,000 and 25,000 BCE. The practice of body adornment is associated with the emergence of behavioral modernity. (from Nudity)
- Image 24Naked participant at Burning Man 2016 posing as Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (from Naturism)
- Image 27Public naturist recreation area at Lake Unterbach; Strandbad Süd, Düsseldorf-Unterbach, Germany (from Naturism)
- Image 28The far west end of Zipolite Beach, Oaxaca, Mexico (from Naturism)
- Image 29In many European countries women may sunbathe without covering their breasts. (from Nudity)
- Image 32Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos (1808–1812) by John Vanderlyn. The painting was initially considered too sexual for display in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "Although nudity in art was publicly protested by Americans, Vanderlyn observed that they would pay to see pictures of which they disapproved." (from Nude (art))
- Image 33A publicity photo showing a mature naturist couple making tea. North America (from Naturism)
- Image 34One of the photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal: a naked prisoner being forced to crawl and bark like a dog on a leash. (from Nudity)
- Image 35Signpost at Mpenjati Naturist Beach (from Naturism)
- Image 39A woman naked on the beach at Valalta, Croatia (from Naturism)
- Image 42Zoë Mozert was one of the Earl Moran's first nude models in the 1930s. (from Nude photography)
- Image 47Photograph by Jean Louis Marie Eugène Durieu, part of a series made with Eugène Delacroix (from Nude photography)
- Image 49Florida naturists (from Naturism)
In the news
- 17 May 2024 –
- Iranian police arrest more than 260 people, including three European citizens, on suspicion of spreading Satanism and nudity in Iran. (ABC News)
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