The Daily Newds

• Young American Bodies is a series of twenty-something soap opera-type short films by filmmaker Joe Swanberg. While the content is primarily sexual, the nudity is quite natural and uninhibited, a quality that is missing from today's Hollywood offerings. Hopefully someday soon a filmmaker will explore the world of nudism with a similar eye.
• Did you know that Paul Charlton, the US attorney for Arizona, who was recently fired by Alberto Gonzales as part of the Attorneygate scandal, was recommended for dismissal because he lacked enthusiasm for prosecuting adult porn cases? Brent Ward, Gonzales' pick to run the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, urged Charlton's removal.

  As Utah's US Attorney during the 1980s, Ward prosecuted phone sex operators, shut down Utah's last two porn theaters by nailing their owner on tax charges, and tried unsuccessfully to force nude art-class models to wear bikinis. When Gonzales tapped Ward as his top porn cop in 2006, the Christian right's confidence soared.

  Who are these people and what gives them the right to legislate their own personal visions of "morality"? Ward represents what has become our own American Taliban.
• A Bay Area columnists writes about her naked locker room experiences in high school, and more recently when she cashed in her gift certificate for a spa experience. Unfortunately, her irrational fear of her own body completely overshadowed any pleasure she might have gotten from the massage and steam.

  I almost made it. By the time I was told that a massage involved changing in a locker room, it was too late to back out. I smiled gamely as the manager showed me how to work the lock, pointed out the whirlpool and the steam room, and handed me a thick terry cloth robe and slippers. This locker room had mirrored walls, which were not conducive to relieving stress. My classmates back at Lincoln Junior High would have died of embarrassment at the number of body parts brazenly exposed in this room. Also, there were toddlers running around — dozens of them. The place was a beehive of women running from tennis lesson to dance class to yoga session while juggling hairdryers, gym bags and babies. And me? I was struggling to get undressed underneath the robe...

Tags: nudism, naturism, nudist, nudists, naturist, naturists, nudity, nudes, bare, au naturel, nude, naked