| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 11:52:22 AM | Let’s look at the topic of nudity from two sides. First lets try this more common approach:
There are some people who really do need to cover up. Lets face it, given the choice we only really want to see attractive bodies naked. As a matter of fact, some people are so naturally ugly they really should just stay home till they can afford to get a make over and some designer cloths.
Here’s another approach to the topic of nudity:
Do we really need our laws throwing people in jail for simply being in their natural human state? Could our lives be somehow better if we simply adjusted our views pertaining to this natural state of being human? Why do we attach a word like “naked” to our natural state? Why encouraged and forced to continue to perpetuate the idea that we, for some unclear sexual reason, need be uncomfortable with certain parts of our body around others? Should we really continue to perpetuate the notion that we all have something attached to us that is SO truly distasteful to others that we should considered someone who simply chooses not to cover up these parts of their body to be obscene? Is this what we really want, to sentence those who don’t “know better” to jail?
Personally, I just don’t see the crime or harm in being completely exposed and unashamed as a human being in the presents of other human beings? I can, however, see some serious and deep seeded physiological problems created within cultures using laws and social criticism to perpetuates a “cover up or else mentality”. If there are those who are uncomfortable being around others in their natural state perhaps the real “work” should be done with those who are unable to adjust to the sight of other human beings in their nature state? Why do some make such a big deal out of humans not “covering up“?
I’ll bet it even bothers some folks that we don’t cover up all animals with sexual organs exposed to the public eye. I know it was said that one of the former British Queens was so against nudity that she even covered up her coffee table’s legs. What is really behind this nervousness about the human body exposed? Is it a good thing that some feel certain parts of our bodies are obscene?
If ALL clothing were optional, like hats and belts, would we all be consumed with sexual thoughts all the time? Or would we, on the other hand, quickly realize that the human body, in it’s entirety, is just another part of the whole of nature? I personally believe the ladder would be the natural progression of human adjustment to this change in social awareness. Perhaps, clothing certain body parts suggest there is something really special underneath. Certainly, some women’s clothing designers believe suggestive clothing is more alluring than simply not making a big deal out of having to cover up certain body parts.
Perhaps being comfortable with our entire bodies, we might be less aroused or incited by the sight of it in others and more ok with ourselves in general. | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 12:27:43 PM |
Let’s look at the topic of nudity from two sides.
The first line was good. Of course angle shots, close ups, time lapse photography and a few other tricks come to mind, then you get into moral, ethical, and mental issues.
I am not a Transvestite, but I like to put on everybody elses shoes, and figure that if nobody is getting hurt or offended in the nudity situation, then it's all good.
You illustrated it very well. | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 1:10:04 PM | If nudity had been the norm since the dawn of man,
then the title of this forum IMO would have been:
What is Wrong with Clothing? | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 1:21:29 PM | ^^
And then some of us would have had a lot more to say. Like I can't wear a hat because it prevents my perspiration from evaporating, and my whole body gets overheated.
I don't like underwear because its either too tight, or too loose.
Why don't they make any pants in my waist size, and belts that don't stretch out and break so fast? | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 1:37:27 PM |
posted by: panicattaqu
Ummm, I'm not religious and I don't believe in the bible at all. Please stop using biblical references to prove a point. It doesn't roll that way where I'm from.
Exactly, it's called "quoting a source in order to prove a source". That violates one of the rules of most debating societies! What? You didnt think there were such organizations? | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 1:46:28 PM | you call that simple????? i'd hate to see what you call complicated!!!
They're just choppin wood. They got nothing better to do with their brain cells then think up this unsubstanciated nonsence. It has to be complicated..it's the only way to make bullshiite sound good! These guys act like god himself faxed each and every one of them a memo explaning all the things that arent in the bible. | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 1:55:02 PM |
posted by: FOR U
God is not naked. He is not human with a human body. He is a Spirit.
Then how could we be created in his image? Hmmm, just another contradiction in a long line from that famous book of truths!  | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 2:18:34 PM | There's nothing wrong with nudity. Well okay...make that partial nudity when in public.
I would require panties or boxers be worn by everyone in public places ( I work in a hospital darn it).
Liberated or not, there ain't no way in bloddy hell I'm sitting on that seat if the previous person sitting there wasn't wearing their underwears (and thick ones at that too...none of that string stuff). Haha.
JMHO | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 2:34:01 PM | Simply put, there's nothing wrong with nudity whatsoever.
The 'problems' with nudity are artifically maintained. Humans are an adaptable species, and thus developed clothing as a way of protecting themselves from the enviroment and it allowed them to survive in many harsher enviroments than their naked bodies could withstand alone. Being imaginative and having the time to do it, clothing started to employ artistic traits as well, to the point where wearing decorative clothing would easily overshadow the actual physical need for it. This became so popular (and relatively easy to do) that it became the normal situation to be wearing clothing, to the point where it would be abnormal to be seen not wearing clothing. This established abnormality is what leads to the false perception of nakedness being 'wrong', coupled with the fact that two people intent on having sex would be getting naked. Thus the whole 'naked=sex' mindset that is driven into people in the modern world and which is completely false. Who looks as a dog and thinks 'naked=sex!'? Obviously no one does (normal that is), and that's because it's normal to see dogs without clothing. Just as it's abnormal to see dogs with clothing (at least in most areas).
One should note there are primitive human societies on Earth today that live in enviroments that require little or no clothing, and they naturally are partically or even fully naked. From their point of view, everyone walking, (say downtown in a city) wearing all these impressively intricate clothing items would be 'abnormal' and strike them as weird. Just as everyone else wearing clothing would be 'shocked' and 'uncomfortable' seeing this naked person, even though they wouldn't give it a second thought. | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 2:48:24 PM | I just realized Im posting comments from people who posted 2 years ago! Doah! Actually I dont think this was a very good thread topic to begin with. It's obvious why public nudity shouldnt be allowed for so many practical reasons and not moral ones. But I think a better question would be... Why do christians have a problem with the depiction of nudity in say magazines and movies? Playboy to them is porn, Cinemax movies are porn, Sports illustrated swimsuit issue is porn, highway billboards showing a pair of hot legs for a varicose vein laser procedure is porn, basically anything you look at that makes you think of sex is porn to christians. Thats why they're always screaming about "Family values"... like your not a good dad cause you look at porn?
Id like to know exactly where in the bible is says you cant look at the photographed depiction of a naked woman! | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 3:20:51 PM | People say nakedness is a beautiful thing, that's relative.
Walk through your local town and count how many disgustingly obese people you see. I know you'll see more depending where you live, but now imagine walking down to the shops and seeing naked obese people everywhere.
Doesn't conjure up very pretty images, does it? | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 3:24:50 PM | I was in Las Vegas once with my sales reps at a convention and we, three women and two men, took off for a while to sit in the sun at a plaza by the convention center.
A youngish 30 something woman strolled by , this was a wooded, concealed area with private spots, took a seat, casually removed her top and then her bottom down to a thong and sunbathed while she read a magazine........quite nude.
Guys tongues hung out, women sneered in scorn, and me...i kept trying to get a better look but was disappointed she didnt let her legs hang open .... we were like a bunch of gargoyles, all with different grotesque faces........and then it hit me how innocent this woman was.......it was just her, her body and the sun.... pure and natural.... and she didnt linger, she get dressed after a bit and strolled on.........
We.....our minds and attitudes....had the problem, not her. | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 3:29:02 PM | Just in case others didn't realize, the OP has posted today also - the top post on this page is his.
I have read the first page and the last and can see, in the two years all talk of any religious aspect of this thread seems to have sort of disappeared (on this page anyway).....as I wondered if it would, for I was surprised to see this thead in the religious forums at all....and yet, because it started with a religious slant and a couple of those first posts highlighted the issue about Adam and Eve - one posters' feeling Adam and Eve felt shame upon discovering they were naked views vs. the other's who felt it was not the nakedness that caused them shame, but the shame for thinking nakedness was shameful that was the problem (and a very interesting twist, I think, on a story that has been used all this time to almost prove nakedness must be shameful :)....
But, rather than either of those views, I have another to offer that might also tie in the OP's point about nudity of animals vs. humans also.
I too was raised with the story from the bible about Adam and Eve and honestly, from how I understood it as a child from my teachers in hebrew school, it only seemed to make sense to me in a way as if God was a 'dirty old man' and before they became self conscious and were naked, all was fine....but once they covered themselves up, then God banished them from the Garden of Eden.
Now that is a really twisted view, and yet, as a child, I could not make sense of the story at all, for as far as I knew from everything in school, anything from the 'Tree of Knowledge' sounds like a gift to me and must be wonderful....and yet the Adam and Eve story made it sound like evil. And if knowledge was evil, why was I in school being taught it?!
And so, along with most everything else that did not make sense to me in the bible, I sought to find what did spiritually....and now my view of that story is a little different and it is part of my answer for the OP and the issue of nudity.
My understanding now is The Tree of Knowledge definitely was a gift, though it did not cause Adam and Eve shame, but they became aware of themselves - they became self conscious - meaning conscious of self. Before they ate, they were in paradise and a totally divine state with God - one with God....but when they ate, they became self conscious and now had another state of consciousness so they could now look at the divine state they had been in with awareness....it's like now they knew where they had been.
It's almost like if you're in an all white room, you won't know you're in there without stepping into a darker room to see the contrast. Or the idea of you know happiness because you know sadness, and vice versa.
So, now Adam and Eve, having eaten, now became of themselves and now realized there were states of 'being' that were not all divine anymore. Why did God banish them? I think because symbolically (remember it's all symbolism, imo), symbolically, God had to send them on their journey to find that divine part of themselves again - this time consciously.....so they would really know it. (which, imo, is the journey humanity is still on - re-discovering and re-membering consciously that divine state of unity with God and each other.)
So, why aren't animals covered up? Because they do not have this self consciousness - this consciousness of self as we do - they do not ask, "Who am I?" or "What is my purpose here?", or "Why am I alive?".
With our questions, we have chosen to set ourselves apart from animals and we have chosen to cover up and it is not like it is in this country everywhere. There is a huge spectrum of how people dress, or not dress the world over. Go to any nudist area and it is not just the 'beautiful bodies' there....in fact, from what I hear - it is quite often the less 'perfect' bodied people at nudist places.... and it becomes completely natural for all to be in our natural state.
Much of why I think we cover up is not religious - it is practical. We are cold without clothes on if we live in a climate that is not hot.
The laws say we must not walk around naked. I don't know why. I think you'd have to ask the lawmakers who made those laws why. If they were biblical people, then it's likely because they thought God was saying we must be covered or feel shameful and that, to me, is the greatest shame....that we were made (inaccurately, I think) to believe we were not the beautiful beings we all really are (with a few funny bits thrown in too!)  | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 3:43:07 PM |
Simply put, there's nothing wrong with nudity whatsoever.
Winter in a Northern climate in the middle of Winter? Plus a few other suggestions come to mind. In fact, I was just telling a lady, there is always a but.
I just realized Im posting comments from people who posted 2 years ago!
I knew this was a resurrection thread. I posted on the earlier pages.
We.....our minds and attitudes....had the problem, not her.
Thank you for the image. So many beautiful bodies, so little time.
in the two years all talk of any religious aspect of this thread seems to have sort of disappeared
Allow me to reintroduce it. I am an ordained minister of Libertine Spirituality. I believe in Truth and Freedom. "The truth will set you free" | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 5:54:45 PM | We.....our minds and attitudes....had the problem, not her. but the shame for thinking nakedness was shameful that was the problem ...
If you think nudity is wrong, to you it's wrong.
Just because others agree doesn't make it wrong either.
It just means they think the way you do.
As WeAre1 said only humans are self conscious.
IMO self conscious to the point of losing ourselves and becoming what others think.
Great post, WeAre1. Very "enlightening." | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/1/2008 7:00:02 PM |
Simply put, there's nothing wrong with nudity whatsoever.
Winter in a Northern climate in the middle of Winter? Plus a few other suggestions come to mind. In fact, I was just telling a lady, there is always a but.
Kindly go read the rest of my post. I touched upon the fact that clothing was developed for the purposes of protection against the enviroment. I was addressing the mindset that nudity in itself is 'wrong'. | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/2/2008 3:29:11 AM | I believe it is to protect people from the environment and you can easily find this out by watching the travel channel shows of tribes in Africa where nudity is not shameful. Also, in modern society people dress up because of style and because of trade companies who make money selling these things. The shame just comes from mans insecurities. Not everywhere is nudity shamed.
That story from the bible is just understood wrong. Watch or read about some bible scholars who have studied the bible their entire lives. Many parts of the Bible are both understood wrong as well as translated over from Hebrew to English and other languages in ways that made the stories sound different.
The story of Adam and the Apple is not a literal tale IMO. No one really ate an apple from the tree. These are old stories passed on for generations to teach lessons. Anyway, it's not even an apple, it was a nut or something. But people are so afraid and scared to dare research the Bible that they never find out that these stories are actually very different.
Let me give you another example. How many people believe that Noah really put every single animal male and female on earth in the Arc? Many people believe this out of fear.
Well they are very surprised when I tell them that it's not true. It wasn't all of the animals, it was only some of them and it was during a flood. Not a worldwide flood, just a flood. Anyone who speaks multiple languages knows that if you translate things over to English or other languages literally, they come out wrong.
Also, Bible Historians have explained time over time that this story was written as a warning. A cautionary tale. Kind of like "The Boy Who Cries Wolf" you see.
These stories are not just limited to the Bible. Other religions have different versions of them. The story of Noah and the Arc is saying that if man does bad things then bad things will result.
P/S Please don't message me about this. I would rather keep the dicussion to the thread and I don't want to get head on with anyone. If you are interested in the Bible and looking at it in a non-Biased way, check google for books or go to the History Channel webpage and order some of the DVDs that show both sides. It's actually very interesting. | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/14/2008 3:34:40 PM | how many species on the planet??
we are the only ones that do cover most of, and usually are required, by law, to cover the sexual areas of our bodies
why?
why are only humans uncomfortable with certain body parts?
why are those parts offensive vs our noses, our ears... etc, etc?
all parts are human, and natural........... how did certain parts become 'offensive'? | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/14/2008 3:49:43 PM | | What's wrong with nudity? Nothing. But I do agree that some people would do better to cover up. Trust me, I've seen this naked body in the mirror and it ain't no Michelangelo's "David"! | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/14/2008 4:09:02 PM | so you're saying imperfect bodies should cover up and perfect bodies are ok?
'imperfect' (by our society's standards) noses... ears, hands, etc... seem to be ok to display but never! never! certain parts
what does that say about us? | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/14/2008 4:15:44 PM | let me be any other species but human in my next life (if that is how life works)
wanna see what that kind of freedom is like - no clothes necessary
in deutschland, on the nude beaches.. they call it FKK
freiheit koerper kulture (freedom of the body culture) | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/14/2008 5:05:05 PM | Arguing that some people are less attractive physically and should be 'covered' while good looking people shouldn't have to is utterly ridiculas and immoral.
It's akin to saying anyone with a ugly face should be wearing a burka, but 'attractive' people don't need to. Never minding the fact it's an entirely subjective perspective.
Nudity is only discomforting for people because we're used to seeing people with clothing, not because there's anything wrong with it. | |
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| What is Wrong with Nudity?
Posted: 8/15/2008 8:21:50 PM | I'm not terribly religious, nor bible savy. But I find it hard to think nudity is a bad thing, as this is how God created us. And in the same state that Jesus arrived to us in. How could God create anything sinful? That just doesn't compute for me.
Previously someone asserted this : "For some reason God wanted the feeling of shame to be hidden from man (or if all knowing he knew they would eat of the tree and discover shame), either way He seems to have wanted nudity to be shameful."
I disagree. That's assuming that we believe the Bible was written in God's words, and then translated correctly and acurately through the centuries. I don't believe the Bible today, even comes close to the original word of God, nor the intent of those words. There are so many different versions of the bible, who's to say which rewriting is the correct version?
I believe that God doesn't create sinful things, therefore Nudity isn't sinful! | |
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