Mira, Censored | © 2012 Keelan Rosa
This is something I gripe about every time I see it, and I figure it’s about time to get it all into one collective gripe so I don’t go off on another Twitter chain.
Short version: I have absolutely no problem with nudity. I do not understand why some people do have a problem with nudity. It’s up there with ‘why do so many people like Twilight.’ I can accept it as true but I cannot wrap my own mind around it.
Long version…
I hate how often nudity – even partial or suggested nudity – is considered ‘controversial’ or ‘objectionable’.
Do y’all even know what nudity is?
It’s a human. A human without piles of man-made fabric thrown upon them. It is us, in our most basic form.
Every single person who has ever complained about nudity has a body. I can almost guarantee their body is naked once in a while, too.
We’re born naked. We bathe and/or shower and/or otherwise clean ourselves naked. If there is a way to take a piss or change one’s underwear without some ‘private’ part being temporarily exposed to the air, I do not know it. (I mean, it’s totally possible with a bra, but it’s certainly not possible with anything I wear.)
No matter how anti-nudity you are, you probably see at least your own naked body on a regular basis.
Yet somehow acknowledging omg, these parts also exist on Other People is seen as a Big Huge Controversial Deal.
Really? Acknowledgement of another person’s body and its similarities (or dissimilarities) to one’s own is controversial?
As near as I can tell it’s because certain body parts have become inexplicably tied in with sex in most people’s minds, and sex is a Big Huge Controversial Deal, too, despite it being the number-one method for getting humans to exist. (Scary secret time: your parents probably had sex! They probably even have genitals with which sex can be had! I mean there’s artificial insemination… in which case your grandparents still had sex. Really, it’s an astonishingly common thing, this sex. Not as common as ‘owning a body’ but I think we can stop pretending it almost never happens.) Also I don’t know about the rest of y’all but I’m not having sex every time I use a toilet or change my boxers, so the connection’s a bit shakier than it’s treated as being.
Basically, I don’t understand how a thing every human on the planet has is a shameful thing to cover and avoid and freak out over, and I’m not going to pretend to understand it.
I don’t, as a general rule, attempt to turn nudity into a big statement (on the rare occasion I do, the ‘statement’ is usually ‘oh my lands it’s just a body, get over yourself‘). Everything I put in an image is meant to enforce the theme of the image – clothing does not get a free pass into my artwork just because it’s popular and a lack of it is ‘controversial’.