Beautiful nudes made it possible for us to contemplate our sexuality in safety. -Martha Mayer Erlebacher
[one_half padding=”4px 8px 0 4px”]”Don’t tag me in these, my family wouldn’t understand.”
I’ve gotten that request often from models since social media became prominent, and not always in regard to nudity. There have been times when the request came simply because the person feared her family’s response to her modeling. Other times because the clothing was so very different from what they normally wore. And at least one time because the model feared her family would think she wasn’t taking her college courses seriously. Social media’s ability to expose our “secrets” to the rest of the world has had a dramatic effect in how people behave, or at least choose to present themselves, when they’re online.
Not that such concerns are entirely new, mind you. Horst P. Horst related the story of one instance where a husband became very upset that Horst had taken pictures of his wife and threatened to kill both the photographer and the wife. This was back before professional models existed, forcing photographers to pull from their social contacts for subjects. Horst had photographed the young woman unaware that her husband had any concerns. Once the photo showed up in Vogue magazine, however, the husband was outraged and accused his spouse of having an affair with the photographer. What made that accusation all the more outlandish was the fact that Horst was unapologetically gay and everyone knew it. Eventually, cooler heads prevailed and no one was harmed.
Still, public reaction to anything remotely resembling nudity is surprisingly severe given how we’re supposed to be so incredibly “enlightened” now. Just this past week, I observed a comment under the photo of a young woman in a relatively modest bikini chastising the girl for “lowering” herself by posing in such a way. The model was, understandably, offended and quickly corrected the commenter. Other friends have had pictures of them nursing their newborn reported to the morality police. Instagram even removed fashion week runway photos if there was a hint of nipple exposed. Social media has become the arbiter of a false morality that works against the very idea of an open and well-educated society. We find it much easier to respond from ignorance than to seek understanding.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 8px”]I am convinced that the major reason for such excessive reaction to tacit nudity is that images remotely focusing on the human body stir questions of one’s own sexuality within those who have never fully dealt with the subject. For those raised in sexually oppressive environments, the mere thought of anything sexual scares the living shit right out of them because they don’t have the emotional or intellectual tools necessary to even begin dealing with the subject. People sexually oppressed, whether due to social constraints, religion, or any other number of factors, fail to understand sexuality as anything more than a means of procreation. Therefore, anything that creates any kind of emotion outside that very narrow realm must, in their minds, be wrong.
We are afraid of ourselves. We’re not really afraid of gays as much as we are afraid we might be gay. We’re not really afraid of those who are sexually open as much as we are afraid of our own rampant promiscuity being let loose. We’re not nearly as offended by public displays of affection as much as we struggle to control our own desires to do the kissing. How many dozens of times over the past ten years have we seen instances where legislators who have been most boisterous in their railing against gays and lesbians are later caught in a same-gender relationship? How many hundreds of times have those who preach against promiscuity been caught having affairs? We understand so little about our sexuality that it frightens us to violence against it.
America needs to get itself to a therapist. What we fear in ourselves ultimately does harm to others. In fighting against what we refuse to honestly confront we oppress others who have a need and a desire to learn. When we prevent people from understanding more about themselves we limit their potential in all areas of their lives. While one might make the argument that they have the right to screw up their own lives, one absolutely does not, under any circumstances, have the right to screw up the lives of others.
Get a grip, America. Face your fears. The world is tacitly naked and that’s a good thing.[/one_half_last]
Self
The Beauty In Nature (2009)
Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.—Golda Meir
[one_half padding=”4px 0 px 0 4px”]Over the years, I think more has been written about the self than any other topic. Self-worth, self-esteem, self-identity, self-loathing, self-love, and self-help are all topics that have lined bookshelves and stores as long as humans have put ink on parchment. We are very concerned about ourselves and have little difficulty discussing ourselves endlessly, especially now that we have social media so that we can broadcast every ridiculous and trivial detail about ourselves to the entire world. With the advent of  phones with cameras, we’ve even started taking voluminous pictures of ourselves, and call them selfies. We are, and always have been, quite full of ourselves.
What has been born out by countless research, however, is that for all our bravado, we really don’t like ourselves all that much. How one sees one’s self determines to a large degree how one sees others. Where we are unsure of our own qualities we find fault in others in an effort to compensate for and distract from our insecurities. We don’t like our bodies, so we shame the bodies of others. We are embarrassed by our own sexual proclivities, so we express outrage at the sexual identities of others. We feel inadequate in our own understanding of a subject, so we refer to those who are experts on that subject in as unflattering a way as possible.Every negative we see or imagine in ourselves we reflect back in some way negatively on others. [/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]For several years, self-help and self-improvement books and audio tapes have been one of the world’s best-selling genres. We understand that our view of ourselves is inferior and misguided, but we are unsure how to best address the issue. Then, studies have shown, once we purchase the book and begin to see what is required to change, we give up and stop reading. We want to improve ourselves without having to make any significant changes or sacrifice to our current lives. If possible, we would happily take a pill to make it all better, but to have to actually work toward improvement is something very few of us are disciplined enough to actually do.
So, we continue, from one generation to the next, parent to child, handing down the same foibles and shortcomings that have limited us since the dawn of our existence. We fight the same wars, often with the same group of people, we have the same arguments, we battle the same ghosts as everyone who has gone before us. We blame others for refusing to change, to grow, or evolve, not wanting to realize that the problem is more with us than with them.
We talk a lot about improving the world, but we must first start by improving ourselves.[/one_half_last]
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