Talk:Nudity/Archive 1

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This page needs archiving

I could do it, have done it for other pages, but I'm too busy right now (lot of copying and pasting involved). See Wikipedia:How_to_archive_a_talk_page.

Also, I don't see a mention in Terminology of the terms "buck naked" or its later corrupted version "butt naked." Search on Google for meanings. 209.26.250.130 15:25, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Representation

From the artist perspective I dont think that the word nude or naked makes much of a difference. I have worked as a figure model, and while it can be taxing staying still for long periods of time I find it quite enjoyable. Being nude in front of a class room of artist is very comfortable, because they are very professional. I have modeled in front of many age groups and various experience level. If I know I will be modeling in a few weeks it also gives me more incentive to be in shape. I have modeled perhaps 50 times and only about 5 times did I get a spontanuous erection. Most of the time the instructor will continue the pose until the prescribed time, other times a break will be called and I will take care of the situation. For the most part the class sees the model as the subject and class goes on.

Isn't the representation of nudity, i.e. in a film, in a picture, in a sculpture, a nudity itself? It seems to me that the effect is the same: nude bodies are shown. Usually (AFAIK) physical nudity and its representation are evaluated the same way.

Really? When I was in the Prado, I saw lots of naked people on canvas, but very few if any naked people visiting the museum. - user:Montrealais

• I think there's a difference between represented nakedness and actual nakedness (I prefer to use the NPOV term "naked" rather than "nude" which connotes a positive spin).

Your assertion that "naked" is somehow a NPOV term between "nude" and "stripped" is a POV I, for one, don't share. The fact that someone wrote a book arguing that it should work that way doesn't mean that it's how people actually use the terms; to the contrary, the fact that the case had to be made at all points out that they do not.

Furthermore, it's traditional for the titles of encylopedia articles to be nouns (e.g. "nudity"), not adjedtives. Tverbeek 15:20, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

For example, it's acceptable to have a restaraunt with a view of people who are less than fully clothed, such as happens in hotel restaurants that often overlook a pool, where people are visible wearing only their swimsuits. However, a guy walked into the resturant from the pool, at Usenix 98, and the person at the front desk yelled out "Sir! There are ladies in this restaurant." What is visible from the resturant is alot different than what actually happens there, i.e. the representation of people who are not fully clothed is alot different than people actually not being fully clothed.

As another example, we might see a bank robber with a gun on the news on TV in the restaurant, but if a man with a gun actually walked into the restaurant there would be quite a commotion.

Despite our postmodern society that can't seem to tell the difference between reality and represented reality, I still think there is a difference between the signifier and the signified.

Theatre is a middle ground. For example, I've seen completely naked actors in a theatrical production that showed a scene where people would be expected to be naked, i.e. appropriate nakedness. But if audience members were naked, this would be out of context. Since theatre is, at least in part, simulacra/simulation (i.e. Artaud who coined the term "Virtual Reality" coined this term to denote theatre), the nakedness in theatre is OK because it's on the other side of the proscenium, which functions much like the TV screen or the glass window that separates the pool from the restaurant in the example I explained above.

Bush?

By putting in one about Bush does not make a poltical statement? I thought this place was suppose to make npov

That's not much more NPOV than the rest of the paragraph. And you forgot to leave the first quote mark in place, anyway. But it's not POV to say that people say that slogan, just to endorse that slogan. -- John Owens

Here is my point there are about 4 or 5 other slogans why allow a cheap shot that is directed at one person

If you phrase it correctly, fine. -- John Owens

John you have restore my faith in this forum for now Keith( also incorrectly spelled Kieth) don't ask

I disagree, i think that it is more pov than the rest of the statements, its also more vulgar. further i have heard all of the others but not this one. can we cite it as a popular slogan? Cavebear42 15:25, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, of course it reflects a POV; it's a political slogan. And as for it being vulgar, again: that's the point of it. I don't think any of them can be called "popular" (they're all protesting popular opinion), but I saw variations on the "read my lips" one frequently during the first Persian Gulf War. Tverbeek 16:10, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the problem with that slogan isn't the political aspect but... that it's only incredibly very loosely related to nudity. The other quotes are about nudity... while this only necessarily implies a revealed labia which isn't typically what is thought of as nudity and there is nothing explicit about it... I'd remove it because it's not about nudity like "Nudes not nukes" is... and it's not advocating nudity like that quote is either... it's just a bad quote for this article, not because it's political. gren 20:53, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Who said the examples were supposed to be of people advocating nudity? They're not; they're uses of nudity as part of a political statement. You're right: a protest slogan that revolves around the revealing of shaved labia isn't related to nudity; it is nudity... "beyond social norms" as the section header states. Maybe the problem is that it doesn't translate well to just the slogan, and needs some description of the context. Tverbeek 22:15, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Western culture

I question the adequateness of the statement: "Western culture has become much more restrictive about nudity for children in recent decades, presumably as a result of concerns about pedophilia and child pornography." (My emphasis.) I don't know, I admit that I really don't know, but I would suggest that it might be more a question of Anglo-Saxon cultural diffusion, and of dress fashion, than of genuinely changed views on the sexual value of pre-pubertal (or pubertal) children. Anglo-Saxons have, I believe, been more prudish than even Catholics on the Continent. I'm prepared to change the presumption.

As a support (admittedly a weak support, but the best I can come up with :) for my theory is my own experience: Why did my mates and I start jumping into the river in our underpants to take them off and lie naked in the sun while drying, when the Big Boys did it the other way round? Why did we continue with this custom when WE were the big boys? I can think of no other reasonable explanation than that being how our cultural models on TV did. (In TV bathing boys were often shown, but the drying-up part wasn't, and the bathing boys were never naked, unless they were from some backwards corner of the world.) -- Ruhrjung 17:41 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

I think it is definitely more of an issue in England and especially America. In England the Victorians were extremely prudish about nudity. Even an ankle would have been considered obscene. Although it is interesting that public nudity in certain contexts was probably more accepted in the victorian era than it is now. people would often bathe in rivers nude. This was probably because men and women were segregated so it was acceptable to be nude in the prescensce of members of the same sex and also that outside 'polite society' most ordinary people were not as prudish as we think of them.

America is also particularly obsessed about sex. I think rather than being inspite of being protestant it is because England and America have been strongly protestant that nudity is an issue. There is a misconception that nudity=sex. Why should a woman's breasts be obscene? They are not a sex organ and have nothing to do with sex but are purely for feeding babies. Male nipples are not considered obscene so why womens? --Cap 11:52, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In art

New topic: how about a page for Nudity in art?

Patrick on July 18, 2003,

Editing

I notice that when you edited this page you must have used an external word processor, and then pasted the whole article back in. When you do it this way you loose connectivity to the old article and it ends up looking like you edited the whole thing. I suggest that in the future if you do it that way again you might document what you actually changed, in the edit Summary section, just to make it easier for the rest of us to see what was altered. Thanks. Reigh

I did not use an external editor, but I see that the revision of 14:04 18 Jul 2003 UTC is accidently blank, I don't know why. I agree that this can be inconvenient because the diff function is only available between consecutive versions and between a selected and the last version. Currently you can still see easily the combined effect of my last three changes because there are no later changes yet: [1] - Patrick 01:17 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Murals and art

"Once the universal state of mankind prior to the invention of clothing." Have the nuns been using those 18th century textbooks again? In the "Progress of Mankind" mural, does this vignette follow "The Discovery of Fire"? Wetman 06:50, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Image

Is the photograph Image:Artful_nude really necessary here? I don't think so; especially not one that doesn't even show the subject's face. If you must have a nude photograph, include one of the entire body preferably, or at least the crown to the waist or kneecap. I think that this needs to be changed.

Cookiecaper 04:29, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If you can find a better public-domain nude image, feel free. – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 11:57, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

But why should it include a face? The article already has an image of a traditional artistic nude, in which complete nude figures are shown. By contrast, this is a fairly typical modern artistic nude, in which the human form is instead treated as a semi-abstract compositional element, not as a potrait or illustration of a scene. In modern nude photography or painting, including the subject's face is usually considered more provocative, because it invites the viewer to "connect" with the subject as an individual (which is why most pornography is shot that way). It's more likely to be perceived as "naked" rather than "nude". I'd also rather Wikipedia steered clear of that here. I think this photo is reasonably tasteful, and a good illustration of the article's subject. It may not be strictly necessary, but I don't see any harm from it. Tverbeek 12:27, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Here in Canada, an advertisment that pictured a woman in a bathing suit was banned precisely because it did not show her face. It merely showed her body! It was an ad for whiskey. It was banned because it was dehumanizing, and by not including the face, was seen as objectifying women. Many people found the advertisement offensive because it depicted the woman as a piece of flesh, rather than an entire human being. When we see a butcher shop, we often see cattle without their heads. We see a hunk of meat hanging from a meat hook. This desensitizes us to the overall context. The headless piece of meat is thus, in many ways, like the hooded prisoner, in which the nameless faceless entity gets regarded in some sub-human way. It's thus (with the recent Iraq prison situation) possible it might be interpreted as "stripped" rather than "nude". Glogger 14:19, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

1) Do you really mean "banned" by the government or some other authority, or do you mean "people complained about it, so the advertiser took it down?" (If it's the former, I'm going to have to reconsider fleeing to Canada if the upcoming U.S. election goes badly.)

2) A woman in a bathing suit is quite a different thing from a woman without any clothes. And the context of it being a commercial advert changes things as well. The analogy to meat is an interesting feminist critique (and I agree with it to a point), but it's not how the subject is usually addressed in art; it should be included as an example of a POV, not as the objective way of categorising images.

I'm by no stretch of the imagination a prude but I do think the exploitative image on this page is unnecessary. "Nude" does not need illustrating. It's not as though anyone reading this does not know what a naked body looks like (although some might only be aware of what their own is like). Were there a selection of nude bodies, perhaps some conforming less to the stereotypical Western image of beautiful form, then this might be more acceptable. At the very least, a picture of both a man and a woman -- with heads! -- would be much better. Dr Zen 05:07, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

An image of a man and woman (including their heads) would be a very good suggestion... if the article didn't already have one. I wouldn't have a problem with an image showing a figure that isn't considered "beautiful", but is the intent here to illustrate what the human body looks like, or to illustrate nudity as a concept and a subject of art? I think you're right that the idea of "not wearing clothes" doesn't need illustrating, but the treatment of the subject in art probably does. The b&w photo is a typical example of nudity in modern representational art; I really don't see it as "exploitative". If it were a pornographic image, I could see your point, but I think it's rather tasteful. (Personally, I'd be happy to have a male image instead, but I think that'd upset more people, as male nudity is less commonly seen and therefore more controversial... and also a poorer example.) Tverbeek 13:52, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My point, which you have gleefully skipped over, is that "tastefulness" does not quit a person of the charge of "exploitation". Arty porn is still porn. The purpose of the photo remains the objectification of the attractive female body. There are countless images of less "tasteful" bodies and yet the one chosen is not. Hmmm. I'm not in the least concerned about "upsetting" people. I simply don't feel the image in place conveys what you believe it does. Rather than say "this is how the nude body is conveyed in art", it says to me "this is how 'art' objectifies women in the same way as 'porn' but thinks it can escape the charge by doing it in well-lit b&w". There are plenty of artists who photograph the nude body in an interesting way a million miles from the wankfodder presented here. Yes, you are right, this is often how the female nude is presented, but if your argument really does devolve to claiming that Wikipedia should reflect usage rather than look to inform, I look forward to an interesting illustration for the pornography article.Dr Zen 23:12, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Whatever it's "saying", it's describing the world as it really is, and yes, I do think that Wikipedia should do that as objectively as possible. Even including the parts that not everyone considers "nice". The fact that it can't be that frank with certain other articles (without getting into legal trouble) is no reason it shouldn't do it with this one, where it can. That's how Wikipedia does in fact inform. By contrast, taking a stand against (what you consider) exploitation is not "informing"; that's persuading, and it's not what Wikipedia is meant to do. Tverbeek 00:35, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I do not think you are being in the slightest bit "objective". That is my point entirely. By using artporn as your illustration, you are suggesting that this objectification of women is acceptable (which you believe) and that contrary views are not. Perhaps you will point me to the part of the article where you discuss the image, and why it properly illustrates nudity? It is not a question of being frank because the message your image conveys is not open, out on the table, but is covert. (The message is "it is okay to objectify women so long as you can claim it's art -- we claim it's art by using moody lighting". Dude, I like nuddy pictures of ladies as much as anyone, and I certainly prefer my pr0n tasteful, but I don't consider my preferences in any way "objective". What you continue to ignore is that Wikipedia chooses how to "inform". It doesn't report everything. It chooses what slant it puts on things. By upfront containing an image of a woman's torso, it puts across the message that nudity means a woman's unclothed torso. Yes, that's one of the things it means. So is a Jpeg of a busty porn star! Because these things exist, and including them would presumably only be informing the reader, I suppose you do not mind if I acquire and emplace a nude photo of my choosing from that genre? Or is porn only okay in black and white?Dr Zen 00:56, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please stop trying to make this about me, because it's not. I didn't write most of the article. I didn't contribute the image. I don't even find it all that interesting to look at. (As a gay man, how much more dispassionate about female nudity could you want?) So please drop the "you you you" accusations. The only stake I have in this little tempest you're brewing in a teapot is as someone who objects to unilateral censorship based on subjective criteria. If you can find an available image that represents modern artistic nudity without being what you consider "porn", upload it and use it. Or if you feel the text needs to explain how some people feel that nude images of women (including this one) objectify them, then kindly stop whining about its failure to do so, and add that information to the article. I do respect that point of view, and I'm certainly not going to try to stop you. (Some of my best friends feel that way. Some don't.) I just don't give that point of view unilateral veto power over the choice of images to use to illustrate the article, which is what you seem to be insisting it should have. Tverbeek 04:26, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Luckily, my time on the interwebnet has accustomed me to users who simply do not listen to whatever others say, so it comes as no surprise that you simply do not address what I am talking about. I'm rather bemused that you suggest that I am trying to veto an illustration because I think it is porn. That rather casts me as something I am not. I do not believe you are "dispassionate" about female nudity at all. Why does not taking a sexual interest make you necessarily dispassionate? I'm not interested in having sex with men, but even so, I can be passionately interested in depictions of men's forms. Or do you think not? So blinkered that you can only understand the world this way or that? I addressed my points to "you" in the general, not "you" in the particular. I meant "you" who have been working on the article (for which you are in the position of spokesperson by default). Don't take it so personally. I'm asking you to discuss an image that has been used. As it happens, I find your aggressive attitude and unwillingness to even engage the subject disheartening. This is why edit wars happen. Editors with a fixed POV, such as yourself, fight for their "turf" and do not so much as consider counterarguments. I repeat that my criteria for "censorship" are far from subjective. Did I not say that I liked the photo? I think it conveys a POV message though. But you just aren't hearing that. It suits you to hear what you want to. This conversation is finished. Keep your article as it is. So much for discussion and compromise.Dr Zen 05:06, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I hear it. I simply don't agree with it. There's a difference. Tverbeek 05:51, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Several months later, a better pic (better for reasonings, im not discussing taste) has been used and I commend the editor who did. Cavebear42 21:09, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Maybe you should provide some reasons why this is better, because I don't see how it is. The article already had one 19th century head-to-toe painting of reclining nude woman making eye contact with the viewer; how does a second one add anything to it? This isn't an article about nudity in pre-modern painting; it's about nudity in general, and I think that including some relevant image from the past century would be appropriate. Tverbeek 22:18, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I didnt state any reasons b/c i was supporting his reason for changing it, "replace no-name nude with famous nude". further, the other paintings were put there to show both the change in feelings on nudity and to show the use of nudity only to depict classical scenes. The top picture is used to set the tone of the article and help emphsize the point of the article. i think that this new pic shows that very well, has much more to add than the other paintings, and the addition of a random b/w nude would add no more than last months playboy centerfold. dont get me wrong, i like the b/w nude (she's my desktop background) but i feel that this is a better contribution to the subject of nudity as a whole. Cavebear42 23:07, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Tverbeek. Image:Artful_nude is worth including here, if there's room for another photo of a woman. Thing is, we've already got enough photos of women and not enough of men. The "erleuchtung" model is also very tasteful, so I guess it's a toss-up. But fwiw I'd support including "artful_nude". Kasreyn 11:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry guys. I'll erase everyone. User:Coconutfred73 8:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Merger with Naked

If there's going to be a merger (independent of the question of what the title of the page should be), I would hope to see some of the material from Naked salvaged and imported into Nudity, rather than the other way around. The former page is substantially less organised, not as well written, and has some material that really doesn't seem encyclopedic in nature (reflecting the existing consensus as best as possible), but more suited to an essay suggesting new insights into subject. (e.g. the "new inventions" section and the book reports). Tverbeek 15:20, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've executed a merger of this page with Naked, taking what material I could incorporate from that page into this one, and reorganising it somewhat in the process. I believe the usage of both naked and nude (and variations thereof) in the resulting article represents a non-POV treatment of the subject (though of course the text itself may have remaining biases). Tverbeek 19:51, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Naked is more neutral than Nude

"Nude" is being censored in other links to Wikipedia. For example, http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Swimming_pool has censored "Nude" but has not censored "Naked". Part of the reason may be that "Naked" is a neutral point of view (factual) term that describes a scientific reality, whereas "Nude" is certainly not neutral, i.e. "Nude" calls to mind nudism, nudes, nude photos, and thus carries with it an unnecessarily positive (pro-nudist) bias.

What might appear well written is not necessarily neutral point of view.

See Censored page in the quote from one of the websites that's censoring Wikipedia Nude:

Some public swimming pools have regular hours for Censored page swimming, and some pools even require nakedness (i.e. bathingsuits are not allowed). Until recently, many YMCA pools required users to be naked, or to have a bathingsuit made of materials that will not contaminate the pool: the words often used were "nylon bathingsuit or no bathingsuit". More recently dress codes in many pools have been relaxed to allow for additional modestly. Many pool operators allow people to swim fully clothed if they can prove that they have a second set of clothes that are only for use in the pool, and if they are willing to go through the showers in this second set of clothes prior to entering the pool.

The fact that somebody's censoring a word doesn't make it inherently POV. I think you'll find a lot of objective terms censored in a lot of situations, simply because they refer to things someone doesn't want to talk about. The site you cite does it because they think it's naughty not because they think the term is pro-nudist. The site also censors the entire anatomical article on the "reproductive system". Search for their version of the Wikipedia pages for "vagina" or "penis" and you get the same "censored page" redirect. By your reasoning, we should rename those pages to "cooter" and "dingus" because those aren't censored, and lack the "unnecessarily positive bias" of the other terms. Others' censorship should have no bearing on the content of Wikipedia.

Naked and nude are two words that have the same literal meaning (denotation): without covering. They have different connotations, but neither of them is inherently NPOV compared to the other. The question is simply which one makes more sense as the title of an encyclopedia article.

Tverbeek 13:15, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Although I personally prefer nudity, I disagree with the removal of nakedness as an alternate title for the article. This article is a merger of Nudity and Naked (which now redirects here), and it tries not to favor one term over the other. This was a compromise following the above debates over arguably POV terminology. Furthermore, my research doesn't support the etymological difference cited by User:Tregoweth. Webster says that nude comes from the Latin nudus meaning "naked", and their etymology for naked says it's akin to several older Indo-European words... including nudus. I read that as naked being the Germanic cousin of the Romanic nude, not two distinct words that coincidentally apply to the same state of being without clothing.

Unless I'm very much mistaken (always a possibility), I think you mean a user other than me. —tregoweth 02:22, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry; you're right. User:MicroGlyphics edited it several minutes before you did, and I mistook his changes as yours. Tverbeek 03:17, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The two words clearly have a different etymology, because an etymology is the whole of a word's history, how it came to be and how it came to have the meaning it does, rather than simply its ultimate origin. As it happens the Wikipedia article on etymology is slightly misleading on this score (compare any decent dictionary, which will make it clear that history is equally a part of etymology as origin alone -- use Webster's if you like, since you have mentioned it: \Et`y*mol"o*gy\ (-j[y^]), n.; pl. Etymologies (-j[i^]z). [L. etymologia, Gr. 'etymologi`a; 'e`tymon etymon + lo`gos discourse, description: cf. F. ['e]tymologie. See Etymon, and -logy.] 1. That branch of philological science which treats of the history of words, tracing out their origin, primitive significance, and changes of form and meaning.), although it does say that etymologists study words' histories. "Nude" derives from a legal meaning of plainness and is direct from "nudus". "Naked" derives from "nakod" meaning unclothed in old English and cognate with "nudus". They clearly do not have a common etymology, but rather a common origin. Your reversion was far too hasty, and you might more reasonably have rewritten the material. What is currently there is plain wrong.Dr Zen 03:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, etymology was a poor choice of words (stuck in my head from the text that was in question); origin is better. But considering that the text I removed was even more incorrect than my revision (it contradicted your account of their etymologies), I think it was appropriate. Tverbeek 12:31, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nude vs. Naked

It was once explained to me that 'nude' is something of a natural state of being unclothed, while 'naked' calls to mind being defenseless, exposed, unprotected, unarmored against the world or viewers, a possibly shameful state. Whether you considered yourself nude or naked would be a matter of rather significant psychological connotations. This sort of difference seems consistent with the different etymological sources for the word. Is this view not generally accepted? --Obsidian-fox 23:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Nobody has any objections? I might add this, then. --Obsidian-fox 20:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)