Thursday, October 25, 2007

Brattleboro Newspaper Supports Anti-Nudity Ordinance

An editorial today in the Brattleboro Reformer supports a town ordinance against public nudity. The state of Vermont does not prohibit anyone from walking around without any clothes on, but some communities have passed regulations requiring clothing in public. Brattleboro is now poised to follow suit.

The heart of this issue is this: Is being nude a basic human right? After all, most people believe in God, and that God created humans in his own image. If people truly believe this, how can they possibly believe that God's creation is obscene? Certainly humans are capable of performing obscene acts, but is the naked human form in and of itself something that should be considered offensive?
It's been a longstanding principle that when one goes out in public, one does so with clothing on. A person may currently have a legal right in Vermont to walk around naked. However, in terms of public decorum, not to mention practicality, it's not a particularly good idea.

Everyone involved in the nudity issue has let their emotions get the better of them. It's time to step back, take a deep breath and think about what is being discussed here. We are talking about a simple ordinance, something that many other towns in America have, that states that if one is in a public place, one should be clothed. People that choose to flout this rule would first get warned to put their clothes on and be fined if they refuse.
But is this really a "simple" ordinance? Brattleboro is about to consider a law that states that the human body is offensive. Vermont is one of the last places in America where a person can be truly free, by skinny-dipping in a pond, or sunbathing. The more time I spend on this issue, the more convinced that being naked is a basic human right and should not be suppressed. We are well on the way to having a national dress code, with some communities even now dictating the type of clothes a person can wear in public by banning droopy pants, or prohibiting any exposure of underwear. Not only is the body considered offensive, now some of the coverings are also being tagged as "disrespectful" and obscene.

I understand fully that in our society, the majority rules, and some things that are considered offensive are banned, such as smoking, dog poop, excessive noise, etc. It's just baffling to me sometimes how something so natural, so beautiful, and so unique as the human body has become such an object of scorn. People seem to be more afraid of a naked human than they are of getting into an automobile, an act which kills tens of thousands of people each year, or of food poisoning, which claims 5000 lives each year. As far as I know, nobody has ever died from looking at a nude human being.

In the grand scheme of things, a naked human being once in a while in a quiet Vermont town is nothing to get too excited about, but it seems to be all they are talking about in Brattleboro. Even with the legal freedom to walk down the street naked, 99.999% of people in this country still will not do it. We are so hung up about our bodies that we simply are not going to just suddenly shed our clothes and become a naked society. Oh sure, people will gather en masse to pose nude for Spencer Tunick, but those same people put their clothes back on and get back to home and work. We need to get to the point where people who pose for Tunick leave their clothes off when they get home. It is only when we begin to accept our own bodies as being good in everyday situations, and not just photo ops, that we will begin to shed this irrational gymnophobia.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"It is only when we begin to accept our own bodies as being good in everyday situations, and not just photo ops, that we will begin to shed this irrational gymnophobia."

I appreciate your comment. It directly concerns also your renaming of the movement to Free Body Movement (see also the Body Freedom Collaborative). Presently, we are not free except in out of the way places where we who prefer to be naked can hide ourselves. Given that there are those who don't like words that end in "ist" or "ism" a new name is appropriate, but educating the closed minded is essential as well.

Anonymous said...

I think we need to be careful and not come across like extremists that have lost perspective. An ordinance that limits public nudity to appropriate areas is a reasonable accommodation. When we oppose even reasonable laws, we risk coming across like folks in the gun lobby (NRA) that oppose even common sense limits on guns.

It might be better to use the audience with the Brattleboro ledgislators to designate a section of public lands (park, lake, beach) for nude use.

Nudiarist said...

I agree that more clothing-optional areas are needed. The problem is that when anti-nudity ordinances are passed in areas where it really is not a problem, it criminalizes the human body and makes it more difficult to achieve other goals. If nudity is illegal in Brattleboro, it makes it harder to argue that there should now be designated nude areas. A nude person by law is equal to sex offenders, drug pushers, thieves, and other criminals, and now you want a beach or a park to take your clothes off? Fat chance.

You have to ask yourself the question "who was actually harmed by the few people who went nude in Brattleboro and Huntington Beach?" The answer is nobody, the uproar is caused by only a handful of people who managed to convince the politicians to pass an ordinance.

A true advocate of nudism, or The Free Body Movement, cannot accept any law against nudity as being reasonable. I do agree that it is unwise for anyone to walk naked down a main street in any town, even if it is legal, because that will only cause people to overreact. The issue here is not whether the naked people in Huntington Beach and Brattleboro were unwise. The issue is whether or not passing a law is necessary, and if being nude is a basic human right. Once you acquiesce and accept laws against nudity, you surrender that right.