Global Politics of the Breast

Any of you out there who have been near a newspaper or a television over the past week have undoubtedly been subjected to some discussion of the fact that Senator Hillary Clinton showed a hint of cleavage one day. Not since Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" has there been so much-ado-about-nothing when it comes to the subject of the female breast.

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes has an essay up on The Moderate Voice that rambles a bit but manages to make some good points about how we, as a society, have turned human body parts into products to be marketed and consumed along with soap products.

What kind of culture is it that discourages us from being immersed in the mysteries that will take us the farthest and turn us toward an open sea instead of into a mere pothole filled with water… what kind of culture encourages us to treat the body as stupid, dumb, a slave to be exploited for one kind of flat gain or another, not central, not holy, too hungry, a know-nothing, something to be sublimated, or made into someone’s idea of a perpetual motion machine with one excitement point only, having parts that can be judged like animals at a stock show? There’s a difference between playing games to entertain our isolation, and reaching out to live a true sane and sensory life.

A sane and sensory life is an apt definition of what a nudist or naturist is trying to achieve. The more we struggle with the idea of the human body as an object of mass consumption, the more we should be coming to the realization that the only way out of the cultural morass is to simply reject the idea, to strip away the false trappings of society and get back to something of what we all really are. Getting naked is not only primal, it is healing, it is truth personified.

No, nudism is not the cure for all the ills of society, but it's a start.

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