Why is public nudity illegal?

[jbeegoode]

MAybe not as relevant with the new Brit isle laws enforcement, but I like this woman's line of arguement and thinking.
Why is public nudity illegal?

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3Fterm%3Dbudgie%2520smugglers%26amp%3Dtrue?client=safari

6 Answers
Melinda Gwin
Melinda Gwin, Studied philosophy in college, continued independently.
Updated Jun 18, 2017 · Author has 1.4k answers and 6m answer views

My family lived in Germany when I was a toddler. At the time, nudity[1] was an ordinary part of that culture’s day-to-day life. Particularly when we went to the park, we would often see nude people walking around or sunbathing. Seeing people doing the same in the yards of their homes was common.

My brother and I were instructed not to stare, but also not to think it strange: There was nothing to be ashamed of in being naked. They weren’t wearing clothes, that was all.

As a consequence, I’ve always found the sexualization of nudity incomprehensible. In my head, people look the way they look when they’re naked. Clothes hide or accent that appearance, but they don’t transform an indecent, sexual thing into a decent, socially-acceptable one. The body was respectable from the beginning.

Civilization disagrees. David and Charles are right to ask, “Why?”

Well, what good are clothes? Why would we have begun to wear them?

Clothes:

    Protect from sunlight.
    Conserve body heat.
    Help maintain cleanliness.
    Protect high-contact body parts (gloves, shoes).
    Are decorative.
    Conceal unappealing body parts.

The first few items on this list aid species-level survival. With them, man was able to explore and settle in areas that are too hostile to be endured by an unclothed man.

The second two allow for improvements to quality of life that would have been difficult or impossible naked. Farming, manufacturing, and construction are particularly aided by such niceties; these would allow cultures that adopted them to increase their infrastructure and technological knowledge more quickly.

The last two points increase man’s ability to reproduce sexually by allowing them to appear more attractive to potential mates. Primitive cultures often possess this form of clothing without needing or employing the utilitarian applications of attire. As I saw in my German youth, the people are similarly without shame or lust when surrounded by nude and mostly nude bodies.

Given these facts, it seems clear to me that clothing began as an idea adopted to aid in mate acquisition, and the need for humans to cover more ground to sustain their populations led to more utilitarian applications as time passed.

Civilization’s continued growth would require more clothing to be worn to sustain and maintain growth, especially in hostile climates. This necessity would create the cultural norm of wearing clothing in the majority of the civilized world. People simply couldn’t go about their daily activities without it.

As the norm in those cultures is being fully dressed when exposed to the elements or tasks that might dirty or harm the body, seeing a naked human would become an event reserved for private company only.

What happens in private? Yeah, that.

The only way nudity could have become associated with sexuality, in my humble opinion, is within cultures where nude adult bodies are only seen during intimate encounters. Once a culture has normalized an association, that society perpetuates the idea through shame and instruction alike.

In the developed world, we consequently associate nudity with sex. As we associate nudity with sex, and sex is (almost) universally considered to be a private matter, we require people to be covered in public. Otherwise, when confronted with nudity, most of us think about sex, forgetting the work and play we ought to be doing with people who aren’t our partners.

Short answer: People are dumb. To stop them from acting dumb, we prevent people from doing things that predictably incite stupid behavior.

Footnotes

[1] Getting naked in Germany: A local reveals all
4.2k Views · View 37 Upvoters · Answer requested by David Moore and Charles Ventin

Jbee

[Greenbare Woods]

The link went somewhere else.

Ms. Gwin rationalizes the cultural demand for clothing but her arguments are pretty much nonsense.  She exhibits a lack of historical knowledge and a lack of practical thinking. 

Melinda Gwin
Melinda Gwin, Studied philosophy in college, continued independently.
Updated Jun 18, 2017 · Author has 1.4k answers and 6m answer views

Clothes:
    Protect from sunlight.

Ridiculous. People who live in equatorial latitudes have dark skin sufficient for protection from sunshine.  When ancestors moved north the need was for MORE sunlight, not less. Higher death rates of dark skinned ancestors turned northern latitude dwellers white.   Even today the only people who need protection from sunlight are those of the north who habitually wear clothing so their skin is unaccustomed to sunshine. 

    Conserve body heat.

Arguably a sufficient reason during winter in northern latitudes, or late a night,  but not during summer.   Neanderthals apparently wore no clothing at all.   

    Help maintain cleanliness.

Nope!  Until quite recently, clothes were too expensive for the laboring class to wear while working when the expensive clothing would get dirty or worn out.  Clothes trap and hold filth against our bodies.  They do not make our ancestors clean.

    Protect high-contact body parts (gloves, shoes).

Nope!  Shoes are mostly another fashion accessory that cripple feet more than protecting feet.   Gloves are used occasionally when protection is needed, but shoes are just worn for fashion.

    Are decorative.

Arguably this is the only valid reason.   But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and many clothes are just UGLY. 

    Conceal unappealing body parts.

Said as if ugly fabric is better than the beauty of a human body.   Somewhere a couple thousand years ago some perverted priests decided that normal functional body parts and normal body functions are "unappealing" or even "obscene."   Our children get taught that misanthropist message, our bodies are obscene or at least unappealing.  The whole idea is harmful, hurtful, and insulting to children and other humans.     

[BlueTrain]

Beats me. All I know is that I lived in Germany (Augsburg) for nearly two years and never saw any naked people outside. However, beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder and some people are just plain ugly. Beauty is only skin deep.

Did I tell you about the treatments I'm undergoing for skin cancer?

[Greenbare Woods]

However, beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder and some people are just plain ugly. Beauty is only skin deep.

Teaching us that our bodies are obscene or UGLY is a conditioned response to control us and force us to cover our bodies with dirty fabric..   Its really a sick way to respond to our own species.

Did I tell you about the treatments I'm undergoing for skin cancer?

We have been lied to about sunshine and skin cancer for decades. 

[dbwvogel]

Hey, everyone! Long time, no see!

I hesitate to reply here - I've been silent for so long. But I have to say I responded a bit differently to the article than Bob did (thanks, jbee). While the "reasons" for clothing Ms Gwin listed are not universal, I would not dismiss all of them out of hand. Protection from sun? I accept the age-old wisdom of middle-east nomadic keepers of the flocks. Extreme heat and blistering sun are not healthy, so in that place the wearing of robes (and nothing else) blocks the sun while permitting a flow of air. I'd say that's an appropriate reason for clothes. Sure, growing up in northern Minnesota my only concern about sun exposure would come in the spring, when on the first warm day our shorts were off and our too-pale skin would burn. Sunburn is never a good thing; what we lost there is the sensibility to re-accustom our skin to the sun.

Agree on the temperature issue - when time and place suggest it, clothing can make sense. It will top out at -2F here tomorrow, a good day to stay bundled up. But the Yaghan people, who lived on Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America, wore essentially no clothing (before contact with Europeans, sigh) - so there is evidence that nude living can occur even at very low temps.

Generally, I agree that shoes are a terrible invention. However, the idea posed was that feet and hands are sometimes asked to do extreme things, so having protection at those times is good for those in an industrialized culture (not saying that's necessarily good...), even for those who have well-tempered callouses. Think of firefighters entering a building for purposes of rescue and other high-temperature situations, or warehouses where steel toes just might save one's foot from crushing. On the other hand, I also agree that we over-use gloves, keeping our hands so soft that they almost cannot do hard labor - and right now I couldn't handle a rope for more than a couple minutes without my skin wearing out, but sailors worked for hours on end with just their hands.

Decorative? Not saying they're ever better than skin, but clothing can do things skin alone can't do. It has been said that no community in history has been truly nude, but that even those who traditionally went about without covering genitals would wear beads, body paint etc. for the sake of establishing status, worship, etc. It's in our genes, I suspect. Concealing "ugly" body parts? I don't know what THAT's about.

Yes, we have been fed false information about sun exposure & cancer for far too long. A new voice of reason is being heard, though, so we can hope! As well as hope that BlueTrain's prognosis is good!

[jbeegoode]

I'm enjoying the conversation here, I even have to agree with Bob, except the part about light from a guy in a hat. Just kidding.

I think that I mistakenly read protection for "light" but saw heat. Interesting to see that Bedouin thing in there and think it out, thank-you.
Jbee

[BlueTrain]

The treatments I've had for skin cancer are nothing. Five minutes and he's done. However, I am a member of the fair-skinned race. I was born a redhead and had a few bad sunburns before I was out of school. So that increases the chances that I would have a problem. But I'm in my 70s and it took a while. I have no idea what lies we've been told about skin cancer since I've never heard much of anything about it.

I suppose not wearing clothing would be a good idea for those who are especially sensitive, which some have described themselves. As far as ugly goes, if there is no ugly, there is no beauty, either. Ugly also applies to things other than appearance, too.

My father, who did not dispense advice much, said not to wear gloves too much because they would make your hands soft. But most people have soft hands only because they do no manual work at all, not because they wear gloves. I often wear plain cotton gloves to keep my hands clean when handling greasy or oily things. But otherwise, I haven't done much manual work in my life to speak of. I did work on a tobacco farm one summer. The tar they speak of is real and comes off on your hands. But nobody wore gloves.

[Davie]

The public have I believe over-reacted to the threat of skin cancer and being out in the sun to the extent that rickets have been reported something unheard of for years. On the other had the sun can be dangerous. I nearly got caught out in New Zealand and having been on a beach we left to get some lunch. As I covered up I found I was on the verge of burning. The locals are very aware .

I'd be interested to know what lies we've been told and the evidence of that so I can make an informed decision about the dangers of the sun and skin cancer.

Davie 

[BlueTrain]

You are correct; I haven't heard of it.

[Greenbare Woods]

The sunshine avoidance thing takes judgement.  Dark skin Africans and Australians are adapted to direct sunshine all day every day.   Redhead northerners are adapted to capture more sunshine during brief days of spring and fall in the far north.  Both groups can run into health problems caused by too much or too little sunshine if they relocate to a different latitude. 

Middle latitude people have skin that adapts rapidly to increased sunshine in summer and to less sunshine in winter.  However a middle latitude person who stays covered up most of the time and then suddenly spends an entire day uncovered at a beach in mid-summer has not adapted slowly during the spring so its sunburn time.   The times that people get cancer from are when they stay covered and suddenly get too much sun.   The danger is from rapid increase in sun, not from being adapted to all day sun.     

[Greenbare Woods]

However, beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder and some people are just plain ugly. Beauty is only skin deep.

Not to pick on you, but this comment that, "some people are just plain ugly," goes against the universal nudist teaching that all bodies are acceptable.    I just can't let that go by on a nudist discussion board. 

Some diseases may be ugly, some prejudices may be ugly, but we are the most beautiful species.  Every normal human body is beautiful. 

[BlueTrain]

Yes, I understand that's the latest craze and it's contrary to the original principles of nudism, not that such things are important any more. They used to be, a long time ago, very concerned with health and fitness. "Body acceptance" was not part of it and that's why I keep mentioning it. Don't mean to offend anyone.

There are some beautiful hippos, no doubt, but a 400 pound human?

[John P]

Not to pick on you, but this comment that, "some people are just plain ugly," goes against the universal nudist teaching that all bodies are acceptable.    I just can't let that go by on a nudist discussion board. 

Some diseases may be ugly, some prejudices may be ugly, but we are the most beautiful species.  Every normal human body is beautiful.

I entirely agree with Bob here. Naturists shouldn't be dividing people into the acceptable and the unacceptable groups. In fact I'm not sure that the concept of human "beauty" is useful at all--even when it's expressed as "Every normal human body is beautiful". If that's true, then it might make us wonder what beauty really means, whether it can still apply if it's universal. Don't we require something exceptional? As in, "If everybody's somebody, then no-one's anybody". I'd rather say that there's room in the world for all of us, and not make any judgments.

When I've been to nude beaches or gatherings, I've thought about what I feel, and I would say it's "affection". All that diversity, all those individual characteristics on display! It's wonderful.

[BlueTrain]

My comments need elaboration, lest I get thrown off the board for being politically incorrect or something like that.

There is such a thing a beauty. I see beautiful things often, though perhaps not often enough. The ancient Greeks had an idealized concept of beauty. That is, they had the notion that, referring to the nude human form, the ideal body looked a certain way. In fact, the ideal changed somewhat from the pre-Classical to the Classical period, although that was more likely a development in art. Other cultures did the same thing, more or less, although artistic conventions were sometimes present that apparently overrode naturalistic depiction, (I mean the way Egyptian wall paintings showed very square-shouldered people) but otherwise irrelevant to my point. It is interesting that at some point in a culture's art history, mostly, nudes were freely depicted and usually with little variation in the ideal figure over time and across cultures.

Variations on a theme abound, of course, including rather comic juxtapositions. There is a stature in downtown Washington just south of the White House that depicts a Boy Scout in the uniform of the 1950s and 1960s leading a classically-styled couple, the man nude but with sufficient clothing draped to cover his genitals, the woman dressed in fairly revealing draped clothing--with a flame in one hand. I once learned that the same sculptor had done the statue of the Mountaineer that stands in front of the Student Union Building at West Virginia University, where I went to school. He is an idealized mountaineer in buckskins and with a rifle, but not idealized in the same sense the figures in the other sculpture are. Anyway, the nude has long been a popular subject for public statuary, though not without occasional controversy, even in the relatively Puritan United States. Most of it is of an idealized form, too, some nearly perfect, although none are in life-like colors and the bronzes all discolor. They would all offend the Taliban.

Of course, there are exceptions, not all of which are recent. A local cemetery, of all places, if full of nude sculpture, all by the same artist and the figures are of all ages. And frankly, just like me, the man in the mirror, the figures of older individuals are hardly idealistic. Not anymore. The sculptures were by Carl Miles. All are realistic (and anatomically detailed), some are idealistic but I think they all represent real people. Given that they are in a cemetery, they are less happy than they might otherwise be.

There is a larger than life size statue of an obese man in the basement of a modern art gallery in Washington, seated on the floor. So it cannot be said that all statues are idealistically beautiful.

It is difficult to not make judgements and there are lots of beauty contests. The only person I can think of who ever actually owned a beauty contest is Donald Trump. Be that as it may be, I will only add that the anonymous nature of a forum like this makes it easy to say a lot of things, partly because you can't instantly gage a reaction (and apologize if necessary) and mostly nobody knows you from Adam. Too bad you can't invite people out for a drink afterwards to discuss an issue, although I actually did meet someone and had lunch with someone I had corresponded with through a nude hiking forum years ago. We realized we worked literally around the corner from one another. I thought he was the ideal nude hiker, even though he wasn't nude when we had lunch.

I didn't mean to say that much but I was all warmed up.

[jbeegoode]

Woohoo! That's a freegin' boy scout memorial with lady liberty and some nude dude chaperoning a boyscout!! No denial of it, nude was never a sin, nor rude during the golden days of scouting!!!

What is that guy carrying, a stick, or a gun, Bluer train? How is the backside dressed?

Jbee