Tag: male nudity

A nude photo in a gallery window

I found the below article on artnet. Isn’t it bizarre how much difference there is between perceiving a female or a male body? This has to change!!

Nude Photo in Gallery Window Gets a Rise Out of Neighbors

The photograph in question by Bek Andersen, in the window of Rivington Design House. Photo via Bowery Boogie

Lower East Side gallery Rivington Design House is in hot water with its neighbors over a photograph of a nude man displayed in its front window. Despite the fact that the image is not sexual or vulgar in any way, neighbors accused the gallerists of being unaware of or indifferent to the fact that many children pass by the Kenmare Street storefront every day.

The nude photo is the work of artist Bek Andersen, and is part of a show entitled “Clothed Female/Naked Male,” which seeks to shift the paradigm of nudity in art. “There is nothing pornographic or offensive happening in that photo,” Andersen told Gothamist. “It’s a portrait of a man. He is naked, but doing nothing indecent. We see naked women all the time in photos where they are highly sexualized and people don’t notice because they are desensitized.”

The backlash from community members only confirms Andersen’s point—that we are so accustomed to artistic nudity being limited to portrayals of women that we find it offensive when the male body is put on similar display.

Despite the wave of complaints, there are no reports that the work in question has been removed from the storefront. You can see the photographs, as well as the offended passersby, until August 15.

Discrimination against the male body?

A little while ago I wrote a blog post about clothes and not wearing any. In that post I inserted a small nudist image of myself that I took on my vacation in England. I stored that image on Photobucket.com, a place that usually is quite good about storing images with undressed people. However, when I looked at the blog post a day later, the image was gone. It was replaced by a placeholder stating that the image was removed as it offended against Photobucket’s regulations and national laws.

The offending image in question is this one (original size too):

Deleted by Photobucket.

(obviously no longer hosted on Photobucket)

As you see, there’s nothing explicit or offending in it (at least, I think so). The interesting bit is that Photobucket doesn’t have any qualms about hosting a picture that shows a woman with full frontal nudity:

Nudist surfer photo nudist001_zps0d7f2986.jpg

(Image linked directly from Photobucket, same image, original size as well.)

Is it really so horrible and offending to look at a nude man that ‘national law’ makes them take down that picture? Or is this more something that Photobucket themselves enforce without being honest about it? I can imagine that there are more men working there than women, and most of them probably aren’t nudist or naturist, nor understanding of that. Am I wrong in assuming that they’d rather see a naked woman than a naked man, just because the emphasis is on ‘naked’? Probably not.

My picture does not show child-porn, it’s not explicit in any sexual way. I’m simply leaning on a wall and look out over the area. And I’m wearing no clothes. In the other picture a woman is walking over a beach and carries a surf board. And she is wearing no clothes.

I dare state that accepted nudity would eliminate this discriminatory problem. After all, nude is nude, regardless if it concerns a man or a woman. As long as nudity is considered something to be secretive about, the general public will never be educated and nudism will never become a normal (accepted) thing.

This is probably better for Photobucket.

It’s too bad that the definition of norms always rests with a majority. After all, a majority can mean that all the fools are on one side…

Male nudity and the collective unconscious « home clothes free

Via male nudity and the collective unconscious « home clothes free:

I have been thinking about the greater amount of men versus women who are practicing nudists. After viewing a couple of vintage videos that showed that up until recently is was much more socially aceptable for men than women to participate in nude activities.  I wondered if male nudity is something embedded deeply in the collective unconscious of humanity.

The collective unconscious is a concept developed by psychologist Carl Jung. It posits the idea humanity has collective unconscious mind that independently shapes and organizes human experiences. This consists of universal inherited preexisting forms, images and representations shared by every culture and group of people in human kind. When these representations are personified Jung calls them Archetypes. Following that thought I am suggesting that one of those universal representations is the nude male.

Read the entire post at: male nudity and the collective unconscious « home clothes free.