"When confronted with an object that is ambiguous in nature, individuals must deal with it in some way... ...in such situations, individuals may choose one interpretation over another to reduce ambiguity." pg. 606 "Nudity and Framing"
Most
of us know when to take our clothes off. Obviously, it is necessary to
do so in private when we bathe and change etc., but clothing is
generally required in a formal public setting. On top of that, different
types of dress are considered appropriate depending on the occasion.
The long list of rules regarding nudity and dress may be taken for
granted in any given culture, but, like the quote above suggests, the
human "problem" of nudity has never been solved by one set of rules.
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Images like these demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of the role that nudity plays in our society. What are each of these images trying to communicate? How can you tell? Is one more "appropriate" than the other? Questions like these might be hard to answer at first, and the remarkable thing is that these images aren't even that different! How much more difficult is it to answer general questions like: When is the naked body beautiful? When is it obscene? Is it dangerous?
Nudity is such an important problem that, alongside societal norms,
there are penal laws that pertain to it. However, these codes have been
subject to controversy over the ages, and they are certainly not
uniform across the globe. Inconsistencies in laws and norms relevant to
nudity highlight that fact that they are a social construct and
culturally relative, and with a little investigation we can begin to
glimpse the reasons behind some of the strange rules we are so familiar
with in America.
Prior Studies on Nudity
“In a
world where everyone seems to be going public, it’s inevitable we’re obsessed
with what’s left of the private.” – Catharine Lumby
Throughout history, researchers
have worked to attempt to understand the ambivalence which our
society has in regards to nudity, sex, and the media. Robert Maddex states the following as an
introduction to this cultural contradiction: “We are all born
naked, yet humans have some innate need to cover their nakedness to function as
social beings. The taboo against nudity…is an old one. When Europeans came to
the New World, they were often shocked by the relative nudity of some Native
Americans. In the Old World, public nudity was equated with wantonness or a
lack of morality.” (Maddex, p. 228) This
sense of the natural state of a body being morally wrong has pervaded through
time and history. Americans tend to think
of humans as always clothed (a social truth) rather than essentially naked (a
natural truth), which downgrades the naked state from being morally upheld as
natural to one which is highly sexualized, immoral, and/or taboo. (Barcan, p. 2)
However, there are still times when nudity
can be an acceptable form of creativity or expression of self. “What constitutes improper nudity is often
difficult to pin down, and relevant laws appear somewhat inconsistent. Nudity…can be perfectly acceptable both
socially and legally. A nude model in a
freehand drawing class or a nude statue in a museum is not considered offensive
by most people."
(Maddex, p. 229)
The
question that naturally comes from this contradiction is simply “Why?” Why is there such confusion towards nudity in
America, and why does nudity seem to be acceptable in some situations while
completely wrong in others? To find the
answer, we must dive into previous research on the subject.
From
a sociologist’s perspective, sexuality has much more to do with culture than
simple biological functions: “That we are sexual is determined by a biological
imperative toward reproduction, but how we are sexual – where, when, how often,
with whom, and why – has to do with cultural learning, with meanings
transmitted in a cultural setting.” (Longmore, p.44) Another research article again illustrates the
vast scope which sexuality entails, saying “sexuality, in contrast with sex, is
much more than physical attraction and contact…Sexuality involves all that it
means to be a man or a woman; it is a part of a person’s total being. Our sexuality includes emotions, values,
moral and ethical makeup, social relations, ability to use good judgment and
make decisions, physical desires and fulfillment. Sexuality cannot be separated from a person’s
total life.” (Stinnett, p.222)
In our society, the negative taboo towards
sexuality likely comes from the idea that uneasiness with nudity in related to
uneasiness about sex. Although the words
“naked” or “nude” have nothing to do with sex on first glance, popular cultural
conceptions link these words almost automatically. In a 1968 report on the public image of
nudism, the author commented that many people “link the words nudity and sex as
readily as they would link knife to fork.” (Clarke, p. 212) This “automatic” assessment can itself be
treated as an interesting phenomenon.
The next question
which researchers sought an answer to was “why are nudity and sex automatically
assessed as being one and the same in most aspects of American culture?” When the research is compiled, the answer is
again simple – media and advertising create an intrinsic link between nudity
and sexual desire. The effect of the
media on sexuality is an area which has been a host to hundreds if not
thousands of research studies throughout time.
A synopsis of a few of these studies can be seen below:
Media in General
·
“In the United States, youth ages 10 to 15 most
frequently name the mass media, including movies, TV, magazines and music, as
their source of information about sex and intimacy.” – (Kaiser Family
Foundation, 1997).
·
Media influence people via cultivation, the phenomenon whereby people come to believe that
media depictions are accurate representations of mainstream culture. (Gerbner,
2002)
Television
·
“In the realm of sexual socialization, television is
thought to contribute to young people’s knowledge about sexual relationships,
their judgments about social norms regarding sexual activity, and their
attitudes about sexual behavior, among other influences.” (Farrar, p. 7)
Music
·
In
two decades of sex in music videos, research showed that sexual innuendo was
very common (though explicit sex was not), women were presented in revealing
clothing or positions of implied nudity five to seven times more frequently
than men, women tended to be portrayed as subordinate sexual objects in
traditionally female roles that were often overtly sexual, and even when women
were portrayed as powerful and independent (rare), they were still highly
sexualized. (Andsager, 2003)
Advertisements
·
Analyses
performed in 1988 (Soley) and 2004 (Reichert) show trends of increasing
proportions of advertisements which contain sexual content, increased nudity
(both partial and full) in sexual content especially for women, and increased
explicitness in depictions of sexual activities in advertisements across
multiple magazines.
o
Both
studies used a ranking system of the amount of clothing in the ads, one
spectrum being fully dressed while the other side being totally nude, and each
study used six different magazines to analyze the advertisements in them: two
women’s magazines, two men’s, and two general interest/news magazines.
o
In
Soley, the images analyzed were comparing advertisements from 1964 to
advertisements from 1984. The conclusion
was that “the social attitudes towards sex and sexuality are less conservative
in the 1980s than in the 1960s.” (Soley, p. 960) Nudity was also more prevalent
in the 1984 advertisements than in the 1964 advertisements, and women were
dressed in more provocative outfits than males in all types of magazines. The
study showed that as society became more sexually open, advertising agencies
adapted to become more sexually explicit.
o
In
Reichert, the study looked at magazine ads from 1983 and 2003 to analyze the
differences, and concluded that while the amount of sexual advertisements had
remained constant between the two years, the female’s level of dress became
more provocative (Reichert, p. 828), and that “in 2003 almost four out of five women
who appeared in ads were suggestively dressed, partially clad, or nude.”
(Reichert, p. 833).
·
One
way that the media’s focus on women’s bodies has been quantified is in terms of
“relative facial prominence”, which states that men tend to be portrayed in
print media and artwork with an emphasis on the head and face, and with greater
facial detail, while women tend to be portrayed with an emphasis on the
body. It is not uncommon for magazine
advertisements to show only the body or shape of a woman, and not put her face
in the advertisement at all. Archer et
al. refer to this as “face-ism” bias, where the “face-ism” of men reflects the “body-ism”
of women – that is, the media portray women as if their bodies are able to
represent the woman as a whole. (Archer, 1983).
Clothing/Fashion
·
In
Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando, the narrator comments on the power
of clothes to create an identity: “[T]here is much to support the view that it
is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mold of arm
or breast, but they mold our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.”
(Woolf, p. 117)
·
“There
are clothes whose function is paradoxical rather than marginal, their primary
function being to make the body look naked…. A number of elite fashion
designers have played with making clothing that simulates nakedness, and have
made “nude” outfits – flesh-coloured shoes, dresses, jackets, handbags,
stockings, and make-up.” (Barcan, p. 16)
Unfortunately, these mixed messages of
nudity being “ok” through the media yet “morally wrong” in the general society
greatly contribute to the confusion which is associated with sexuality and
nudity. Children are considered to be “protected” from the damaging
effects of viewing nudity growing up, but body violence, nudity, sexualized
conceptions of women, and much more create an extremely convoluted value system
within the American society. Advertisements containing nudity are beginning to
show up in ads not obviously related to sexual activities, such as fast food
restaurants, web providers, housing loans, watches, and more, and it seems that
nudity is quickly becoming the “latest fashion” while still being a very taboo
subject in everyday life. Even though there is now more nudity in
entertainment than ever before, blatant public nudity is generally not
acceptable – evidence of this could be noted with the disaster of the wardrobe
malfunction of Janet Jackson in the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.
Although we as individuals are able to make clear-cut judgments on what we
believe to be culturally proper or not, our society as a whole is still
characterized by a sense of ambivalence towards nudity, one which does not appear
to be changing anytime in the near future.
The Genesis Effect
The premiere human creations of God suddenly feeling ashamed of their bodies? Can it get any more confusing?
In case you
don't know the story, Adam and Eve disobey God by eating a forbidden
fruit and then
"the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” Genesis 3:7 NIV.
Conclusion
Overall, the human body is contextualized in many different ways by American media. Advertisements oftentimes put forth a sexual ideal to sell products. Figurative art pieces explore the beauty of the human form for aesthetics sake. Pornography depicts explicitly sexual content. In turn, we frame the naked body in our minds to make sense of the challenges it presents. Even in our day to day language, we frame the naked body with the words we use to describe it. Because of the variety of ways nudity is handled, our perception of it remains fragmented and compartmentalized, and so we as a society continue to create, obey and perpetuate norms/laws to make sense of it. The origin of this reflexive relationship between culture and the media may be unclear, but with the sociological imagination, we can understand nudity much more.
The Genesis Effect
The premiere human creations of God suddenly feeling ashamed of their bodies? Can it get any more confusing?
A young person socialized in our current culture is bound to consider
their clothes as necessary as their own skin. But where did this need
to cover up originate? In America, where more than 3/4 of people belong
to a Christian faith, the logical place to start looking for answers is
in the Garden of Eden.
In case you
don't know the story, Adam and Eve disobey God by eating a forbidden
fruit and then"the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” Genesis 3:7 NIV.
As David Velleman explains it:
“What Genesis
suggests is that the necessity of clothing was not a cultural
invention but a natural fact.”
Most people in America feel the familiar "need" for their clothing,
but few would suggest
that this feeling is a religious hegemonic construction.
Whether intentional or not, traditionalists may be responsible,
in part, for perpetuating the feelings of ambivalence towards nakedness
that began in Eden to the point of nudity becoming an "ambiguous symbol
of both innate purity and the inevitability of it's loss." (Barcan 280)
Laws and Public Nudity
In
Austin it is not uncommon to see scantily clad individuals commuting on bike
around the city or areas where nudity is not only accepted but the norm. Places
like Hippie Hollow, Barton Springs, and even clothing-optional apartment
complexes are well known places that provide a suitable environment for nudity that
other Austinites don’t blink twice over. Logically the question follows why is
nudity more acceptable in Austin than many other places in America? Of course
we do not see individuals walk naked around downtown or the UT campus, but the
question still remains. In Texas, Penal Code Title 9, Section 42.01 categorizes
public nudity as disorderly conduct. In the law an individual can be found
guilty of the offense if they “intentionally or knowingly expose their anus or
genitals in a public place and is reckless about whether another may be present
who will be offended or alarmed by his act.” The section regarding indecent
exposure emphasizes that an offense occurs when genitalia are exposed with a
sexual intent and if another is offended by this act. These definitions and
laws unsurprisingly are similar to both conservative and liberal states. The
site Nudistlaw.com lists all the state laws on public indecency and depicts the
related nature of these laws. All of them describe that if an individual is
offended by another’s exposure and if there is a sexual intent, that individual
could be guilty of public indecency or indecent exposure. These policies do not
make public nudity illegal but support the social norm of public nudity being
obnoxious and offensive. Returning back to Austin we might describe the larger
social acceptance of public nudity as a sub or counterculture where there is a
reversal in what is socially acceptable in mainstream society. These
subcultures exist throughout America as can be seen by the many nudist/naturalist
colonies and clubs. However, this small change in values is not an alienating
feature from the rest of America and is seen as the norm in other countries.
Laws and Public Nudity
 |
| Images from Hippie Hollow Park |
In
Austin it is not uncommon to see scantily clad individuals commuting on bike
around the city or areas where nudity is not only accepted but the norm. Places
like Hippie Hollow, Barton Springs, and even clothing-optional apartment
complexes are well known places that provide a suitable environment for nudity that
other Austinites don’t blink twice over. Logically the question follows why is
nudity more acceptable in Austin than many other places in America? Of course
we do not see individuals walk naked around downtown or the UT campus, but the
question still remains. In Texas, Penal Code Title 9, Section 42.01 categorizes
public nudity as disorderly conduct. In the law an individual can be found
guilty of the offense if they “intentionally or knowingly expose their anus or
genitals in a public place and is reckless about whether another may be present
who will be offended or alarmed by his act.” The section regarding indecent
exposure emphasizes that an offense occurs when genitalia are exposed with a
sexual intent and if another is offended by this act. These definitions and
laws unsurprisingly are similar to both conservative and liberal states. The
site Nudistlaw.com lists all the state laws on public indecency and depicts the
related nature of these laws. All of them describe that if an individual is
offended by another’s exposure and if there is a sexual intent, that individual
could be guilty of public indecency or indecent exposure. These policies do not
make public nudity illegal but support the social norm of public nudity being
obnoxious and offensive. Returning back to Austin we might describe the larger
social acceptance of public nudity as a sub or counterculture where there is a
reversal in what is socially acceptable in mainstream society. These
subcultures exist throughout America as can be seen by the many nudist/naturalist
colonies and clubs. However, this small change in values is not an alienating
feature from the rest of America and is seen as the norm in other countries.  | |
| Nudist protesters in San Francisco. Taken by Jim Wilson/ The New York Times |
Not only have social opinions on nudity but
legal decisions have been discussed for a long time. In 1935 New York’s People v. Burke decided that people
renting a gymnasium to swim in the nude was not illegal because the activity
was not lewd (Nevitt, 1950) Even today
in San Francisco nudists are suing the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to
prevent the passing of a nudity ban on the city. If the ordinance were to pass
a fine ranging from $100-$500 would be placed on the offender depending on the
repetition of the offense. Using the conflict perspective anti-nudists are the
majority group that opposes and imposes themselves on the minority group, the
nudists. The struggle here is to maintain a norm that most people hold and can
be seen implemented through society using laws and social pressure. In a recent
humorous segment of the show The Colbert Report, a case in New York made
a judgment on whether “lap dances” were art and whether they were eligible for
a tax break. Although this ventures into the realm of what is considered art,
it is important to note that when analyzed and decided by experts as art, there
was uncomfortable feeling with the kind of nudity displayed.Stephen Colbert The uncomfortable
feeling with and negative view of public nudity may stem from multiple things
but it is obvious that it can create conflicts in social and legal spheres.
Conclusion
Overall, the human body is contextualized in many different ways by American media. Advertisements oftentimes put forth a sexual ideal to sell products. Figurative art pieces explore the beauty of the human form for aesthetics sake. Pornography depicts explicitly sexual content. In turn, we frame the naked body in our minds to make sense of the challenges it presents. Even in our day to day language, we frame the naked body with the words we use to describe it. Because of the variety of ways nudity is handled, our perception of it remains fragmented and compartmentalized, and so we as a society continue to create, obey and perpetuate norms/laws to make sense of it. The origin of this reflexive relationship between culture and the media may be unclear, but with the sociological imagination, we can understand nudity much more.
Works Cited
§
Andsager, Julie, & Roe, Kimberly. “What’s your definition of dirty, baby?”: Sex
in music video. Sexuality and Culture.
2003. 79-97.
§
Archer,
D., Iritani, B., Kimes, D. D., Barrios, M. “Face-ism: Five studies of sex
difference in facial prominence”. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology. 1983. 725-735
§ Barcan, Ruth. Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy. Berg Publishers, 2004.
§ Clarke, Magnus. Nudism
in Australia: A First Study. Elysium Growth Press. 1982.
§
Eck, Beth.
“Men are Much Harder: Gendered Viewing of Nude Images.” Gender & Society 17. 2003. 691-710.
§
Farrar, Kirstie, et al. “Sexual messages during
prime-time programming”. Sexuality and
Culture. 2003. 7-37.
§
Gerbner, George, Gross, L., & Morgan, M. “Growing
up with television: Cultivation processes”.
Media Effects: Advances in Theory
and Research. (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum. 2002. 43-67.
§
Kaiser Family Foundation. National survey of teens: Teens talk about dating, intimacy, and their
sexual experiences. Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation. 1997.
§ Longmore, M.A. “Symbolic Interactionism
and the Study of Sexuality”. The Journal
of Sex Research. 1998. 44-57.
§ Maddex,
Robert L. “Nudity”. Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior and the Law. Washington, DC: CQ
Press. 2006. 228-233.
Gale Virtual Reference
Library. Web.
§ Nevitt, P. K. “The Legal Aspects of Nudism”Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.195. 41(1). 57-61
§
Reichert, Tom & Carpenter, Courtney. “An
Update on Sex in Magazine Advertising: 1983 to 2003”. Journalism
& Mass Communication Quarterly. 2004. 823-837.
§
Soley, Lawrence C. & Reid, Leonard N. “Taking
It Off: Are Models In Magazine Ads Wearing Less?” Journalism Quarterly. 1988. 960-966.
§
Soley, Lawrence C., & Kurzbard, Gary. “Sex
in advertising: A comparison of 1964 and 1984 magazine advertisements.” Journal of Advertising, 1986. 46-54.
§
Stinnett, N. & Walters, James. Relationships
in Marriage and Family. Prentice Hall. 1977Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. 1977 (1928)
§ Velleman, J. David. "The Genesis of Shame" Philosophy & Public Affairs 30.1 (2001): 27-52. Web. 15 Nov, 2012.
§ Velleman, J. David. "The Genesis of Shame" Philosophy & Public Affairs 30.1 (2001): 27-52. Web. 15 Nov, 2012.
