Naked Europe covers up
economist.com
economist.com
Or as alluded to, maybe it's just the sexualization of nakedness.
Even in otherwise conservative countries (like Italy), sexualization, in media and in society at large, just wasn't a big deal in continental Europe...
You could watch things in national broadcasting that would be off limits for Americans for example. And similarly for movies and books.
I thought north America and their shorts weird at first, but I switched quickly. My friends were later scandalized when I told them I used to wear speedos.
Today, when I go back, nearly everyone is wearing north American style shorts and very occasionally the tight long boxer like speedos.
Anyway it could just be cyclical fashion.
1. You are in a competitive swimming event
2. You are from another country
3. You are a college student trying to be funny
There was a TV ad in Australia (originally from the UK) related to this. It asks the simple question: "How far away from the beach do bathers become undies?"
In the old times only people around you saw you. Today someone is there with a phone, takes a photo and the photo can be uploaded to the net for everyone to see.
And the data on sexting shows that it's very much a minority of Americans who send/receive nudes: http://www.pewinternet.org/2010/10/23/teens-adults-and-sexti...
Digital cameras. Young girls don't mind being topless in front of the people on the beach. They do mind being photographed and finding themselves in some online collection being shared across the planet. Coupled with the risk of facial recognition or other tagging schemes, they really don't want their identities/addresses being shared alongside semi-nude pictures. Cameras now have a much greater "creep potential" than film.
I would also suggest that a greater awareness of skin cancer means younger people generally cover up more, trickling down to lesser toplessness for both men and women.
Although I don't want my child naked on the beach (she's half a year old) not because I mind someone seeing her naked but because of all the cameras/smartphones. The loss of privacy is real, and its a direct effect due to the common practice of taking your smartphone -with quality camera these days- with you everywhere.
[1] http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Cultural_victory_(Civ5)
Overall we arent all that purdish.
> Overall we arent all that purdish.
Not everyone in the USA is, but do you remember the drama about Janet Jackson's nipple? Or how protective ratings in games and movies/series are regarding anything related to sex, yet violence seems totally OK? That's the double standard of the USA. It doesn't have to be this way.
Before the innovation of smartphones with high quality cameras young children, here, used to be just naked on beach. It also used to be very normal to breastfeed in public.
But there are various possible factors as the article describes. Since as you need to lock your smartphone up (not allowed to take with you) this doesn't explain why saunas are now more prudent.
In my line of work, I don't see an increase in privacy happening, I see exactly the opposite despite increasing privacy measures.
In fact, I see observation (video, audio, etc.) devices are literally going to be everywhere. They are in our devices, homes, cars, transportation vehicles (aircraft, public transit), cities, streets - there is nearly nowhere to hide - for any of us.
Whether this is right or wrong may not matter any more unless it can be controlled. Can it be controlled?
If it cannot be controlled, I see only one other option - and this is the sticky point...
..we have to be ready to face ourselves and each other publicly at all times. There will be little to no way to hide, to maintain privacy, etc. Our cultures will have to adapt, perhaps, at first, by trying to hide, enacting laws, etc. However, if it is inevitable that privacy cannot be maintained, then I argue, our culture will have to evolve.
Perhaps the culture of the future will protect your child from sexual predators in a different way. Perhaps we will have equal potential to be seen naked publicly whether on the Internet, a nude beach, regardless of age, gender or ethnicity.
To ensure the safety and security of society, people will have to change, even if our accepted norms of nudity, sexuality, etc. change. I can only hope that we as humans will be able to evolve to handle the changed paradigm and still ensure reasonable safety and security of society.
I will say, I believe people today globally already have to be extremely more open-minded than ever before, on average, just to mentally cope with how we have changed as humans.
Feel free to debate me here.. as I said, I am not sure if even I believe what I'm writing, but.. I'm trying to be open-minded about it.
I think privacy will still exist, but maybe it will come at a premium outside of homes.
The primary processual means of protection we've come up with appears to be policy and regulation. Cultures differ so different policy and regulation in different places.
However, I'm seeing a trend of justifying privacy intrusion through the argument that "only the machine learning algorithm sees it". For any purpose, governmental or not, algorithmic or human, the breach of privacy is a breach.
I guess naturally we will likely find some kind of balance... or maybe not... but I do still believe we will be forced to confront the fact that we will see and know more of each other.
I'm not sure, that might be a good thing in one light, having to face each other, and the end of the concept of natural privacy on the other. Perhaps only those with the means to enforce their privacy will be able to in the future. I think that agrees with your point that outside of certain situations it might come at a premium. Or maybe it will come at a premium regardless of environment.
I'm reminded of the physics concept "the observer effect", by observing something you change it. That change is what we must face when we are almost always being observed.
For myself, I'm cool with a lot of that. My partner will have to decide for herself. Though it might affect me since we live together and have a child. We're adults though. Our child, however, is our responsibility and if I can protect her privacy in cases which are likely to backfire later on, I should, IMO. Don't get me wrong: I don't have the illusion I'll be able to protect her in every case in this regard but I believe this to be one of those examples. Another one is where your child did something stupid (such as breaking the law) and you documented it. Don't shame your child in public!
What's going to happen is that there will be documented cases of what children did in their youth which were not acceptable. But because roughly all children have that, its kinda OK. "We all were young" will have public sources to back it up, if they're searched for.
However not doing anything is a defeatist approach to the problem IMO. In that light, I find your post defeatist itself; instead of being open minded about this I suggest being pragmatic; a slightly different angle, also less extreme one way or the other. We still have some privacy left. You can, for example, wilfully leave your smartphone home as Bruce Schneier wrote in his latest book Data and Goliath. We have that choice. His essay Data Is a Toxic Asset, So Why Not Throw It Out? [1] also covers this very topic. Because that also covers how others should treat your private data, something the EU is far ahead on with privacy laws, right to be forgotten, GDPR, accountability on losing private data, etc compared to the USA.
[1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_t...
However, the ultimate goal of this technology is to uniquely identify you for the sake of personalization, tracking, etc. There's an implicit grant being invoked that if anonymized properly or if certain measures are taken, then the privacy breach is ok.
I'm reminded of some culture I heard of once that refused to have photographs taken of themselves out of fear that it would steal their souls.
Any case where data is harvested via observations of you in which that data that represents you is not controlled by you or you are not aware of, seems like a breach of privacy.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm not defeatist, I believe we have the power to change things. But, I'm also saying, I'm not sure, for a variety of reasons, we'll ever be able to rollback the concept of pervasive survellaince because, it is starting to become part of technological advancement - for our technology to recognize and work with us better, it must observe us. So long as that is the case, that ability can be abused unless it is protected, and, as security experts like Bruce Schneier have said, there is no such thing as absolute security, only security that lasts for a certain period of time [1].
[1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychol...
You are right though, we do have some control for ourselves and our families and we do have rights and responsibilities to protect that. And we can be pragmatic about that. To those things I cannot disagree and it is our responsibility as responsible adults to do that.
For myself, I could care less. I don't give a rat. For my partner, that's her choice. My child however, I have an issue with that.
I assume facial recognition will progress in the coming years, and I don't want my child's high school classmates to find a naked picture of her when she was still a toddler.
Whether I'm right or wrong on this, I cannot tell yet.
However if history repeats itself, she has a form of autism and will get bullied on school both like her father and mother. I don't want my kid to get bullied by this; my (in)action.
EDIT: Oh, and I once reported a picture hosted on Yahoo.com with a naked child on a beach. The response I got was that it was likely shot by the family as part of their children's pictures so it was "OK". That has the consequence of it being impossible to get such removed (though in the EU we do have the right to be forgotten).
I also don't parse why you would have wanted to get that picture removed... for the benefit of the child, whom you don't know? Why let them/its parents do it if it causes any issue? Imho, the more you sanitize, the worse the problem becomes.
Also, I am very much going to educate my child that in this world things you do are registered on social media and the Internet, and that pictures of her will be difficult to remove. That would, for example, result in that she'd refuse to get on camera during sex. That's for later though.
As for the picture. Because I genuinely thought I stumbled upon child pornography. It had to do with the pose, that nobody else was on the picture, and probably also some kind of discrimination on my side (the kid was Asian) plus the movie Holly [1] having made a deep impact on me.
Now pictures of adults as teenagers, that's a different kind of laugh ...
Maybe this is just a local thing with my city's clothing-optional beach, but: there are seemingly strong social mores against using cameras (or even using a smartphone in a way that can be misconstrued as maybe taking a picture/video) on clothing-optional beaches.
As well, it's hard to carry around your camera or smartphone when you, yourself, are naked; and because of this, families on the beach where the family is naked, tend to move away from anyone who is wearing clothes. Weirdly enough, "clothed on a nude beach" = signal of being a pervert.
Because those who do record it are doing their best to make sure not get spotted
> Today, nudists complain, it is more difficult to separate nakedness from sex. French nudists say their movement’s younger members are overwhelmingly men; women are leery of being leered at. “Parts of Cap d’Agde have been completely sexualised,” says Wim Fisscher
> If any space is more embarrassing for non-European tourists than a French nude beach, it is a German or Dutch sauna. They are unisex and naked by default. All bodies, thin, fat, young or old, are treated non-judgmentally. The one thing that will earn a disapproving stare is wearing clothing, because such modesty implies an inappropriate level of sexual consciousness.
But then:
> But the vision of nakedness as a demonstration of freedom and equality seems to be faring less well. Nudity has been central to European culture since the Greeks first sculpted Hermes.
Hermes was a great choice for this sentence, but it makes me wonder whether the writer knew that. Representations of Hermes were often naked, or at least displaying genitals, but they certainly weren't conceptually separated from sex. A Herm had a large erect penis. There was a statue of ithyphallic Hermes in a famous temple of Demeter, and an accompanying legend saying that he'd gotten into that state by seeing Persephone.
Cf my other comment. THis is the left brain hemisphere at work. As people become more and more shifted into this mode of attention.. they lose sight of the whole. A women is a collection of parts. Head, arms, legs, breats etc. More worryingly of course, we see each other as things, and less as people. This is what the left brain hemisphere does, it gives an attention to the world that helps us navigate the world. It creates classes / categories like "tree", or "house", which are never the actuality which is domain of the right brain hemisphere (which deals with any actual instance in experience).
And I think pornography, plus the obsession with social feeds, I mean let's be honest Instagram is pretty much porn. I had to cut out the app from my iPad because you'd tap one image than another and next thing you know you're looking at some seriously suggestive / sexualized content.
This is a time where our sanity is truly in our hands. By the looks of it, not a whole lot of people care for sanity. But then again it has to do with age too. I can't see how I would have seen the bigger picture ten or twenty years ago. I'm just 44 now. I had to suffer a LOT , and observe myself a lot to see what's going on.
As the article points out historically nudism used to been a progressive cause where the conservative right was against it, while today those positions has almost switched sides. I have yet to see a Swedish politician that both support nudist and Muslim to choose what clothes they want to use in public spaces, even if occasionally someone slip their tongue and say things like "Neither government or corporation should decide what clothes people should wear".
The smartphone argument that the article brings up sounds wrong. While it could be true for a beach, not many would voluntary bring expensive electronics to a sauna and most bathhouses has now days a ban for it anyway. Relax areas want to keep noise and photoing down, while other areas which allow kids want parents to keep track of their children and reduce the risk of drowning. If smartphones with cameras was a major contributors to this cultural change then we should expect to see a much small impact for saunas and public bathhouses that forbid smartphones, and yet I doubt the data support that.
You haven't seen the people who use the sauna at the gym I used to go to, then. They always freaked out at me for not bringing my phone/headphones in and just using a small hand-held timer to make sure I didn't stay too long... They also got mad because it made me want to talk too.
Well, prudery is contagious, especially when it emanates from a dominant culture...
The Economist is claiming "Today, nudists complain, it is more difficult to separate nakedness from sex." which seems plausible enough, but what would drive the change?
Men with speedos or women with breasts out on the beach? Nobody cares, and not because we thought this is just some "connecting with nature" that has nothing to do with sexuality, but because we didn't have a problem with sexuality.
Or, e.g. some politician having an extra marital affair? Who cares. Mitterand had an illegitimate child and nobody batted an eye.
Sure, there are some prudish nuts calling for moral outrage (usually on the right or related to the church), but they held no big power in these here parts.
But some things apply more than others in aggregate (statistically).
So, well, exclude Ireland and the UK for one.
But you can keep nordic countries, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, and others...
Don't forget that many of the early settlerd in the USA were literally Puritans. Hard-right moralizing Christianity has always felt at home here.
Also, as stated in many other places in this thread, it's ridiculous to ascribe to change to Islam.
Either way, it's clearly not because of Islamic values.
Go to the beach, and want to post about it, better put a top on, or get banned (if you're female)
This is not a moral or religious questions. It is simply biological.
Besides the dopamine issues, I think Ian Mc Gilchrist 's work on the 'divided brain' , gives a lot of supporting evidence that materials such as porn are by their nature the domain of the left brain hemisphere. That is ME making connections here. Pronography is created by this attention to the world that sees things in parts ("boobs", "ass") -- which is what left hemisphere does. The right hemusphere sees things in broad / inclusive attention (eg. a man or a woman; not a collection of arms, legs, etc).
And then look at the explosion of anxiety and social awkwardness, difficulty to hold eye contact, depression etc. Then look at how aggressive and abusive people become online, as well as the lack of restraint that people now show in chatrooms particularly on Twitch. People will just flat out call a young woman streaming a "whore", or "bitch"; etc.
You can argue these are unhappy people / mentally ill etc. I think the bigger picture is clear from McGilchrist's model of the brain. I think we see it happening everywhere in society. The loss of attention, the extremely reactive social interactions online, the almost religious belief we have in simple words like gender pronouns, ... to me those are all signs of a culture which is losing balance.. and more and more heavily shifting into the left hemisphere's attention (ie. see the world in collection of parts and pieces instead of as wholes). Also you have seemingly more innocent things like extremely geek conventions, explosion of fetishes online..
While we're there. Fetishes. Does anyone seriosuly believe these exist "naturally"? Fetishes are created by the mind. And what do they all have in common? We're seeing the left brain hemisphere at work again. They are always about objects. Things. Parts. Like feet, boobs, ass, and what have you (those are the mildest ones!).
Anyway I could go on and on.
I think the left/right brain hemisphere model, corresponding mainly to two modes of attention, is very very consistent, both with meditation, practices such as yoga, the rise of mental illness especially in the western world, the rise of geek culture, the rise of isolation, etc.
The big question of course is the chicken and egg situation. Which is the cause? Does porn dissociate people? Or do dissociated people come up with porn? As we see with the body, it's both. But I think we're in a spiral here, unless we care for our sanity.
The thing is, it's a complex situation. If porn disappeared off the internet we wouldn't see immediate or obvious changes. Though I would bet we would see some meaningful improvements to how men and women relate. I think the signs are out there.
Anyway, on the original topic, as an American living in Germany, I really appreciate how relaxed people are here regarding nudity. I agree with a point other posters have made: the drumbeat of the fears and predilections of the dominant culture finally overwhelm the native one. Germans are pretty stubborn though, and carve out better lives in the diminishing yet still robust delta between their own ideas and imported ones.
Indeed, Ian Mc Gilchrist mentions how empathy is the realm of the right brain hemisphere.
There is a good animated summary of his work:
RSA ANIMATE: The Divided Brain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI
But I understand it and agree with other posters, with the rise of the internet and pornography there is such a strong connection between nakedness and sex that didn't really exist thirty years ago.
I’m not trying to say that everyone has turned alt-right, or anything of the sort, but the general trend in society is increasingly conservative. With that comes more prudishness, but more importantly, higher expectations to be as expected of you and to do well. We’re far less tolerant of individual quirkyness today than we were 15 years ago, because you’re expected to be perfect, so you wouldn’t want to flaunt your flaws at the beach.
As can be expected the right is pushing the opposite direction, which is a bit ironic coming from a conservative side. I find it a quite interesting question if the political right are simply doing this because the left are pro-immigration and pro-multiculturalism, or if the conservative politics simply want to keep the exact same level of nudity as in the past. Not more or less.
It’s not uncommon for young Danes to spend most of their free time either doing homework or working out.
This is largely because we’ve collectively spent the past 17 years in what’s called “the competitive state”. Here we’ve been told we needed to work hard to survive the global competition. This has brought necessary reforms to our welfare state, but one side effect has been that young people getting stressed because they never feel like they are good enough.
You’ll see similar stories around much of northern Europe.
Sometimes you’ll see anti-immigration parties comment on how immigrants have affected personal freedom for women, like the article states, but then those same parties are pushing agendas to make public nudity illegal. So I wouldn’t say they were forerunners on the issue.
This may be different in other countries of course.
In principle, we eventually may reach a stage where homosexuality is so destigmatized that straight men are not bothered by the possibility of being checked out while naked, and that might make public nudity once again acceptable in all-male spaces. I don't think it is particularly likely to happen soon given that there are other simmering cultural disagreements about how bodies relate to sexuality (e.g. how genital anatomy and gender identity interact) -- I think that consensus and stability around those questions are a precondition for the acceptability of same-sex group nudity.
The considerations for fully public (and by necessary implication all-gender) group nudity are broader, but I think an element of the above analysis is in the mix there too.
This seems rather uninformed to me.
The risk with tools is usually the fingers (ie near the sharp bits of the tool). I don’t know how you do gardening but I think one could garden in the nude for a lifetime without accidentally cutting something off. The other common tool would be a lawnmower and it’s quite common to mow the lawn wearing eg flip flops or sandals even though your feet are close to the blades. I don’t think they protect much compared to being barefoot.
Protective clothing is different. But I think gardening nude is about replacing wearing shorts and maybe a shirt, as opposed to replacing wearing long sleeved clothes and thick gloves.
In the Netherlands you can still go to sauna as usual. There are plenty of nudist beaches and campings. A few months ago I went to a party in a club where in the end it was encouraged to wear as little as you'd like. You have still plenty of nude advertisement on television after midnight. You have billboards with nudes. There are TV programs like Adam zoekt Eva (Adam searches for Eve). There are popular clip sites (bit like ridiculous, but without being prude) like dumpert.nl with weakly "vrijmibo" with nudes. Two weeks ago I was in Zierikzee. Mayor was judging nudes with bodypaint. A lot of kids run around naked as well in the backyards when it is hot in summer. No big deal.
No, there is no such thing as the North American shame for genitals or being nude.
In Florida, where I grew up, it was common in the 1980s to hear about European women visiting the beach and not realizing that women were required to cover their breasts. From what I understand, it's now uncommon in many parts of Europe where it once was common.
What you describe is not casual nudity that Europe (in my American viewpoint) was known for. Compare what you wrote with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freik%C3%B6rperkultur - being nude without direct relationship to sexuality. As the Economist writes, "stripping off while gardening, playing sports or taking lunch breaks in the park."
Advertisements, judging nudes, etc. are saying that being nude is not usual.
Nice perspective: http://theswaggernews.typepad.com/mothertongue/2014/10/why-t...
The author writes "Our Anglo-Saxon squeamishness with nudity and bodily functions started sometime between the Middle-Ages and the Victorians and it has continued ever since." and "I still get a wee bit queasy when the soccer coaches require the 9 and 10 year olds to take group showers after the games."
I do not believe the author is aware of changes in US views of nudity even over the last couple of generations. For generations, children swam nude in indoor pools in the US. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_swimming#Indoor_pools : "The 1937 Administration of Health and Physical Recreation training manual stated, "Nude bathing for boys is practiced universally, in a few schools girls may swim nude and this is the most sanitary method."
Elsewhere on that page points out "In America, skinny dipping by boys [in the late 1800s] was common."
It also suggests that the 'squeamishness with nudity' was due to the 'rise of the influence of Christian Evangelicals' during the Victorian era.
Young people today shave more than any past generation. Just look at the magazines. So a young person today, unclothed, is that little bit more "naked" today. It makes a difference twofold. Firstly, naked+shaved people are more exposed to everything from eyes to sun. Secondly, young people don't want to be naked when they haven't shaved. So getting naked is something you have to prepare for in a way past generations did not. A swimsuit is far easier than re-trimming every day.
It is probably a bigger thing for guys. Hairy chests are larger than armpits. Hairy backs are ... difficult. T-shirts are more acceptable at the beach than bears.
Do you have a source for this?
"But an increased focus on hair removal has curbed cases of lice dramatically. In Australia, Sydney's largest sexual health clinic has not seen a case of pubic lice among women since 2008, according to Bloomberg."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brazilian-bikini-wax-making-cra...
"During the same 10-year period, the self-reported incidence of total pubic hair removal increased from 19% to 31%, and partial hair removal 23% to 56%."
https://www.wired.com/2014/09/pubic-lice-still-not-going-ext...
Lonesome woodmen are body-built and have their chest shaved. Post-apocalypse survivors and cavemen are body-built and have their chest shaved. Zombies are body-built and have their chest shaved. Pirates are body-built and have their chest shaved. I guess aliens and werewolves are body-built and have their chest shaved too.
They may have hirsute faces, but the torso is waxed.
Whatever the time (past, present, future), the culture, the living conditions are supposed to be; the directors, the casting directors, and the actors do not care a bit: they will all have their chest waxed. That it makes no sense at all and is beyond ridiculous doesn't seem to bother them a bit.
I'm very hairy. Chest, back, shoulders, you name it, to the level where shaving/waxing to keep a hairless appearance would be a major undertaking several times per week. I'm also balding, and I can't always be bothered to maintain a perfectly shaved head, so there's some good old male pattern baldness to enjoy, as well.
If anyone has a problem with me not wearing a T-shirt at the beach, they'll just have to look somewhere else, because this whole trend of being smooth and hairless is completely ridiculous.
I have a few theories on why more people are covering up, but I'm going to go the self-censorship route here on HN and avoid stating them to avoid a flame war.
The politics is also different; nudism is no longer either associated with either progressive liberalisation or the vaguely fascist/eugenic parts of the physical fitness culture. It's just not an issue any more.