A Picture and 1,000 Words: Naked in Public

[unhappycamper]

A Picture and 1,000 Words: Naked in Public
by Ryan Bigge
Published on Sunday, August 8, 2010 by the Toronto Star

It's safe to say that Philip Carr-Gomm is the rare man of letters who would admit to reading Playboy for the centerfolds, rather than the articles. His new book, A Brief History of Nakedness, is exactly what it sounds like, complete with numerous photographs such as the one seen above. But rather than providing flimsy justifications for his ogling, the book instead offers a sustained mediation on the spiritual, cultural and political implications of being naked in public.

The 50 peaceful women seen here are part of Baring Witness, a group of Iraq war protesters who posed nude in West Marin County, California, in November of 2002. As Carr-Gomm argues, "Nakedness makes a human being particularly vulnerable but in certain circumstances strangely powerful, which is why it has become so popular as a vehicle for political protest." According to Carr-Gomm, by disrobing, protesters demonstrate that they are both fearless and have nothing to hide.

At least, that's the ideal situation. Sometimes the political intentions of being in the buff can get lost, as happened during the recent expressions of G20 activism. "There's a naked guy at Queen and Peter," @one_more_night tweeted. "I think he's protesting clothes."

For a cold, northern country, there's a surprising amount of clothing animosity in Canada. (Our country's first nudist club formed in 1918, while it took until 1929 for the United States to be able to say the same.) In his book, Carr-Gomm mentions the Toronto-based Naked News ("the program with nothing to hide"), Montreal-born artist Cosimo Cavallaro (who, in 2005, created a chocolate sculpture of a nude Christ entitled Sweet Jesus) and the World Naked Bike Ride (created in 2004 by Vancouver's Conrad Schmidt).

And, of course, the Doukhobors. A radical sect of Ukrainian Christians, the Doukhobors (which translates into "spirit wrestlers") were considered heretics by the Orthodox Church and generally irritated the Russian government. So in 1899 the Doukhobors were encouraged to move their troublemaking to Canada, where they were promised 65 hectares of free land, a bracing climate, equitable laws, peace and prosperity. More than a third of the population (nearly 8,000) said yes, but by 1903 they were unhappy, and an extremist faction called the Sons of Freedom emerged, inspired by the Quakers and Leo Tolstoy. As Carr-Gomm notes, the Sons of Freedom "decided to mount a sustained campaign of protest against the government, whom they believed had reneged on their promises regarding land rights and were enforcing compulsory education in government schools."

[Scuba]

1. Thanks. Much better method than self-immolation.