The Daily Newds

• Woman poses naked on car at Detroit Auto Show. [link]
• Authorities in India emptied a village of its male residents to enable women to walk naked in an age-old ritual. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Opera singer thinks that "Americans have a weird reaction to nudity". [link]
• Legislation in Mississippi will protect a mother's right to breastfeed. What an odd world we live in where laws are necessary to protect the most basic of human rights. [link]
• Happy 300th birthday to Ben Franklin, closet nudist. [link]
• Top topless beaches 2006. [link]
• Nudist photo of the day. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Classical nude drawings removed from library after a maintenance worker complained. [link]
• Hindu holy men roam around naked smoking marijuana and offering blessings. [link]
• "Christian nudism might sound like an oxymoron, but for thousands of devout followers, living and worshiping naked is at the core of their faith." [link]
• Diana Payne Myers has sat naked in the Tate Modern gallery with a sign saying "Please touch". [link]
• At show in Louisville focuses on the male nude. [link]
• Actress Maria Bello is matter-of-fact about her nude scenes. "Emotional vulnerability is harder than nakedness - I mean, we're naked every day, right?" [link]
• A Salt Lake City Tribune columnist has catalogued the sex scenes in "Brokeback Mountain" down to the second. He does seem to be supportive of "that kind of honesty" in films; however, I find it disturbing that this sort of clinical dissection is done for a movie about love and not done for movies with gratuitous violence. [link]
• Nude painting returned to shop window after outpouring of support. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Students bare all in annual Polar Bear Run. [link]
• A high school art teacher has been suspended for merely recommending nude figure drawing classes to his students. Four of the students enrolled in classes, but the school board allegation is that the teacher did not involve any parents and that the students were too young to be drawing nudes. As someone points out in the article, on the stupidity scale of 1-10, this is an 11. [link]
• In Michigan, there is no free speech for the penis. [link]
• Why does God ask questions if he already knows the answers? Perhaps we should ask God why he made us all naked if he wanted us to be ashamed of our own nakedness. [link]
• Will stripping naked in an airport get you a free ticket? Yes, to jail. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Art historians assert that nudes speak a universal language. [link]
• Naked anti-fur protesters brave Canadian Winter. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Woman asked to stop breastfeeding at Michigan YMCA pool. Words fail me on this one. [link]
• Naked nurses calendar is good for what ails you. [link]
• Penis too much for Swedish sex exhibition. [link]
• Artist employs "working girls" as nude models. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Naked News is coming to Japan. Canadian-born presenter Lily Kwan has been peeling off her work clothes for five years and described the experience as "liberating."
  "I love being able to go out onto the streets and take my clothes off," she said. "While we have been in Tokyo, people have been very surprised to see us with no tops on, but they're very happy and interested in talking to us." [link]
• An Escondido gallery removed a male frontal nude painting from its window because it offended one person, who deemed the image close to "pornography". When the gallery replaced the painting with another male nude, this one with a rear view, the person complained again and once more the gallery removed the painting. People, we have to get over this phobia, there is nothing pornographic about the nude body. [link]
• The Lexington Art League is presenting its 20th Annual Nude International. [link]
• London rail station to digitally "strip" passengers in the name of security. I guess we're all naked now, anyway, so why not really take off your clothes and enjoy all the freedom. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Here's a short article on the clothing optional "Little Beach" on Maui. [link]
• "We don't really want to show political art, and right now, we're not accepting nudes," Bronson said. "Even though it's all acceptable in the art world, Vista is a sensitive community." [link]

The Daily Newds

• Does Islamic law prohibit nudity during the sex act? The debate is on. [link]
• Nudist resort soaks up publicity. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Nicole Garcia’s photographs explore people’s perceptions of "the nude." [link]
• Artist began her nude life drawing classes at the age of 13. [link]
• Stage production in Salt Lake City features seven actors who appear in the nude. [link]
• Revival of Burlesque in Toronto includes social satire. [link]

The Daily Newds

• Give a nude photo of yourslef for Valentine's Day. [link]
• Naked men in the movies is still a novelty. [link]
• Public advertising in Prague features nudity. Good thing they don't have Jerry Falwell over there. [link]
• In Las Vegas, a play featuring male nudity is shut down. This in a town where tits, booze and gambling are the main attractions. If you can't bare it all in Sin City, where can you? [link]
• Sexy new computer game strips you nude. [link]
• What sort of person would answer an ad, promising no money, to pose for a female photographer? [link] and [link]

The Man in the Shower

Recently my wife and I joined a local YMCA, mostly for the swimming. We go mid-day so the facility is not very crowded, and usually when I shower I am alone or there is one other guy in there with me. Today I sauntered in to find a man, who looked to be in his late twenties, showering with his bathing suit on.

This was not just to rinse off the chlorine, he was soaping up his upper body. In all my many years of group showers or other locker room experiences, I have never seen a man shower in anything other than his birthday suit.

Since I did not follow him out of the shower, I was left with many questions. Was he just shy, or ashamed, or something else? Was he going to wear his wet bathing suit under his pants or was he going to take it off first, in which case he would be exposed anyway? He certainly looked normal, he was nice and trim, apparently no reason to be modest, but there he was in his dripping suit with a bar of soap.

When I got home I started surfing the Internet for anyone else who might have experienced a clothed shower mate. Apparently it is not uncommon to find men showering in their underwear, or keeping a strategic towel handy, or, worst of all, not showering at all after exercising.

Now it's just common knowledge that one has to clean the nether regions after vigorous exercise lest the bacterial armies will overrun the fortress. Not to mention the odor problems. So what would possess someone to be that hung up about his own body that he would risk his own personal hygiene?

Something has happened to American Society over the last 30 years. When once boys and men would swim in the nude at the Y, sexual integration called for mandatory bathing suits and the end of healthy skinny dipping. Where it was once mandatory for males to take group showers in high school after gym class, civil rights activists forced the courts to stop the schools from requiring the kids to strip and clean. With the rules removed, high school students have stopped taking showers, even to the point where hot and sweaty football players would rather go home and shower rather than strip in front of classmates.

I went to high school 1968-72, an all-male Christian prep school, and we were all required to strip and enter the gang showers. I will admit that it was intimidating, and I do not recall ever enjoying the experience, but at least I can say today that the sight of many nude male bodies in the shower is neither something remarkable or stimulating - to me it was and is just part of life.

Today, as someone who is a professed nudist and spends nearly all day naked, I realize that all that intimidation was wasted emotion. Being nude alone or with others is natural and comfortable. But in this society we clothe children from the moment they are born, we teach them to cover up and never let anyone see the "private" parts, we censor, we overprotect, we shield, we hide, we dehumanize. At the same time advertising and popular culture uses the human body to sell products, music, books, movies, etc., so on one hand we are de-sexualizing at home and over-sexualizing everywhere else. It is no wonder that kids are terrified that their own bodies will not measure up to the nipped, tucked and airbrushed fantasies that are so prevalent. And who can compete with the Viagra engorged penises that everyone is exposed to with the mainstreaming of pornography.

So while sexual activity begins at a younger age and oral sex is no longer considered "sexual relations", we are increasingly becoming a people with a fear of being naked.

The man in the shower wearing his bathing suit is a manifistation of something terribly wrong with our society, that we as a people have an irrational fear of who we really are. Nudity is not sex, nakedness is not exhibitionism, and nude men in a public shower is not homo-erotic or something to be feared. Was the man in the shower afraid of gay interest, or does he feel inadequate in some way? Or is he simply neurotic from the mixed messages handed down by a schitzophrenic society that elevates porn stars to cultural icons yet comdemns the brief exposure on TV of a female breast, or that sells cars, clothes and everything else with sex yet covers up a nude statue in the Justice Department?

The next time I am at the Y I will think about the man in the shower, perhaps I will see him again, but I sincerely hope that he is the exception and that most people in the locker room have a healthier attitude over what is normal and healthy when it comes to something as simple as taking a shower.

The Daily Newds

• New play about George Bush and Martha Stewart is performed in the nude. [link]
• Nude Olympic luge babes on thin ice with officials. [link]
• "There is no body of work anywhere that shows the sexuality of human flesh as truthfully as Schiele's". [link]
• There's divinity in a nude painting. [link]
• Are we nude in the afterlife? [link]
• Teenage girls are receiving mized messages. On the one hand, popular culture oversexualizes the human body, while parents and other adults tend to infantilize children with overprotection and censorship. Seems to me that if we all were more open about our own bodies, and if nudity was a part of everyday life, there would be a healthier attitude towards sex and sexuality. [link]
• The naked truth about male stripping. [link]

The Daily Newds

• New book recounts the experiences of the world's most unlikely stripper. [link]
• Sculptor takes about the meaning of nudity in his work. [link]
• Polina loves to swim naked. [link]
• Shere Hite believes that we are entering a new era in which our sexual creativity will fly free. [link]