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During the Bush 2.0 Administration, pious Christian Nationalist and Attorney General John Ashcroft demanded that two nude statues, called Spirit of Justice and Majesty of Justice, in the Great Hall be covered up with blue drapes, because he deemed the human nudity “indecent” and “distracting”.
These were works of art created by C Paul Jennewein in 1933, and were considered perfectly valid portrayals of freedom and justice—even back when most would consider the society to be far more conservative.
The educated, cultured, travelled elite who were the power players in Washington DC passed by those works of art for generations and saw them in the light intended by the artist: inspirational, liberating, defiant and the epitome of human resistance against oppression. So, what changed?
Were the nude statues always inherently indecent, or did they become indecent by projection of indecency through the eyes of a specific beholder—who projected his own values onto them because they sparked evil lust in his own heart?
Is the naked human body inherently indecent? Well, according to the lore of Abrahamic religions, it is. As the popular, written mythological legend goes, the discovery of shame about being naked happened after the fall of man when they ate of the Tree of Knowledge.
I was raised in a particularly legalistic fandom of Abrahamic lore, called the Jehovah’s Witnesses—I am deeply familiar with policing of the human body utilising shame. Entire sermons on the evils of tight pants were common.
The justifications given for the obsession over cleavage, skirt lengths, bulges, camel toe, and butt outlines, were that it was to safeguard fellow brothers and sisters from stumbling.
I would come face to face with this policing when I was pulled aside by a married elder when I was 15 years old and told that my skirt which was just above my knees and which my parents approved of for me to wear to the Kingdom Hall, was giving him “issues”.
This was somehow my fault despite the admonishment by Christ for men to pluck their own eyes out, if they were lusting after a woman in their heart (and therefore committing adultery). Nowhere did he say bother women with their lust-struggles and make it their problem or restrict their freedom because of it.
Of course, I was not as emboldened back then, so I humbly took the elder’s creepy scolding and swallowed the absolutely icky feelings of having a grown-ass, married man making his boner over my 15-year-old body my problem.
Thinking back on it now, it may not have even been him who sparked the confrontation. His frumpy wife was known to bully the younger sisters in the congregation over their dress.
My family would switch congregations (for unrelated reasons) later, and I would wear the same outfit without problems. Somehow, it did not cause any of the elders (or their wives) there to have any “issues”. My exposed knees were perfectly acceptable in the San Fernando Kingdom Hall but not Cocoyea Kingdom Hall. How could that be if the knees were inherently indecent?
They weren’t. No part of the human body is.
Nor is an obsession with how much of it is exposed an indicator of superior ethics or even safety for women and children. As most probably already know, the religion I grew up in and would eventually become an apostate of has a record of being a hotbed of child sex abuse in not just one but several countries around the world.
I always say, if the more developed markets in which it plies its trade—the countries with more gender equality, awareness, robust child protection, swifter justice systems and less deference to religion—have uncovered not hundreds but thousands of victims in the JW organisation, can you imagine what the paedophiles in that sect get away with in developing markets where there is much more misogyny, less awareness and child protection, a laughable justice system and a lingering, underserved deference to “religious people”, and the assumption they are somehow more moral?
In the early 2000s, a dance troop from Swaziland would visit Saint Lucia, where I lived, as part of a cultural exchange to perform the Umhlanga Reed Dance. Their traditional dress was one where breasts are bare. They felt no shame about this. They had no stigma about it.
But Saint Lucians did. The staring, the juvenile jokes, the blocking of children’s eyes, and the hullabaloo made had nothing to do with the breasts themselves being indecent but with people having indecent mindsets, ridden with both shame and objectification.
In 2006, I spent a year in the UK, in Brighton in particular. An extremely progressive, bohemian place. Rainbow flags, vegan cafés, and hipsters (before the term was even coined) everywhere.
There was a nude beach. I would go there with some friends and as the saying goes: “When in Rome…” My goodies were in the breeze. I was completely safe. Not a single bit of sexual harassment. People maintained eye contact during conversations and were non-plussed while thangs were thanging and swanging. How come?
All over Europe, women were sunbathing in the nude. People share saunas nude. Children see adult genitalia in changing rooms normal, normal.
Sex scenes are on television during prime time. Sex education videos are explicit and comprehensive, so much so that an American doctor was shocked at how explicit they were. To make political statements, women would protest nude.
(via BBC.)
If the people who raised me were correct, a nude body, especially a female nude body, is supposed to turn a man into a hungry beast. For so weak, undisciplined, and inept are men over their primal urges.
Yet the sexualization, fixation, indecency just isn’t there in certain contexts. Although no society is perfect and all societies are still struggling with sexual predators, the evidence shows that spikes in sexual assaults in these typically body-liberal countries only happened when people from far more sexually conservative, religious, misogynistic cultures were in higher numbers.
Sadly, this became fodder for xenophobic arguments against immigration rather than an opportunity to truly deconstruct whether modesty actually curtails misogyny, predatory behaviour and objectification or reinforces it.
Brazilian Carnival takes place at the same time as ours, and I have been watching videos of perfectly sculpted (surgically or otherwise) dancers of every hue, their glistening nyashes palpitating to the music as they volta and bota foga to the beat. What is more interesting is you don’t see the Brazilian men around them losing their cool, drooling and acting “tusty” or treating the naked female form as an invitation.
T&T Carnival has gotten progressively more unclothed over the years, catching up to Brazilian Carnival’s costuming where thongs are the de-facto choice of female samba dancers.
I won’t get into the lack of creativity and sameness of bikini and beads, or the exorbitant prices and classism ruining a festival that is supposed to be populist. That is another discussion.
We chase Brazil’s model, and though we have dropped the articles of clothing, we have not dropped our hangups about the body.
The context of Carnival is “free up yourself”, and “leggo”. So, it is not a time to be conservative if you don’t want to be. It is not a time to uphold convention but to mock it, rebel against it and unleash yourself.
You can do that fully clothed if it is your choice. You can do it as close to naked as possible if it is your choice. Both are valid expressions of freedom.
Within the context of Carnival, just like the context of a legally designated naturalist beach, a political protest, a sauna, or a statue representing liberation, nudity does have valid time, place, and space.
I would concede that most of the masqueraders in these bikini and feather party bands aren’t thinking that deeply about it. Most are just doing what is popular and chasing Instagram clout by flaunting their flaps and tempting wardrobe malfunctions.
But let’s say a respected mas-maker of the highest artistic integrity and roots deep in the Emancipated African Ritualistic meaning of the festival were to bring out a presentation where nudity was intentionally part of the portrayal and every masquerader was covered in nothing but body paint and the barest of genitalia screens, and it all was to send a profound message, say about human trafficking and missing people.
Would that also be indecent?
What exactly would be indecent about it? Human anatomy or the minds of the viewers and what they project unto it? Can a barely contained vulva violate someone’s human rights?
Are the wining, bare bamcees and barely-covered, jiggly nips and helicopter shlongs responsible for the annual floods, youth men shooting up each other in the street, corruption as a default public servant value, shocking exam failure rate by students, bullying in schools, high rates of GBV and growing class inequality?
Or do society-destroying problems stem from systemic injustice, greed, survival desperation, generational trauma, lack of regard for the environment and the embrace of trite religious sentimentality over evidence, insight, and critical thinking?
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Jessica Joseph is currently the Creative Director of Accela Marketing St Lucia/Canada. She is a multiple ADDY Award Winning Trinidadian national, Pop Cultural Anthropologist and Humans Rights Activist.
She blogs on Huffington Post and alieninthecaribbean.blogspot.com.
Any time unreasonable restrictions are placed on sexual behavior or even simple nudity, expect people, especially male people, to behave badly. I’m not excusing them, but that’s what happens.
Excellent, thought-provoking commentary! A must-share!