On Nudity

I live near Baker Beach in San Francisco.  On sunny days, I like to pull on my neon yellow swimsuit and red flip-flops and take a five-minute stroll down to the ocean.  I pack a sandwich, a book, and occasionally a bottle of wine.  I lie down on my palm tree beach towel and stare out into the ocean, which looks like "The End of the World" at the horizon line, like the planet really is flat, and it just drops off right there at the point where I can't see any farther.  The waves beat the shore in time with my own heartbeat, and it's nice to breathe in the salty air with the Golden Gate Bridge looking like a toy that I can just reach out and take if I want.

Hot guys and girls walk by, checking each other out.  Hippies walk by, playing their guitars and smoking pot. Families walk by, warning their toddlers not to stray into the waves and sometimes speaking in languages that I know by ear, like Japanese or German, but not by heart.  I like to sit near the north side of the beach, just short of the imaginary point where public nudity becomes acceptable.  I glance over and see the old men walking along the shore in the distance, sporting nothing aside from shoes and the occasional hat.  Sitting far enough away, I can watch them and pretend that I'm just looking at the fog rolling under the bridge.  From the front, I can't even tell that they're naked.  But once they turn around, their pale, saggy cheeks scream at my eyeballs.

This habit of mine may be creepy, and it's definitely voyeuristic, but it mainly springs from my self-conscious discomfort around nudity.  As an artist and painter, you are expected to be nonchalant, even brazen, when faced with the nude body.  But let me explain a little: I grew up in a fairly religious household in which nudity was not only uncommon but seen as shameful and forbidden.  After all, Adam and Eve were forced to clothe themselves to hide their shame from God, and thus we should follow suit and do the same.  When I was a student artist in college, our figure models wore skimpy bikinis instead of nothing (if I had enjoyed figure drawing at the time and continued on with the courses, I could have eventually "graduated" to the 3rd and 4th levels of the class, which were clothing-free).  But as it was, my Baptist-affiliated university did not deem my novice-artist-eyes appropriate enough to take in a naked body.  Which is confusing.  I had been studying art history since my senior year in high school, and we all know that the history of art is filled with more nudity than SF's Folsom Street Fair (though, of course, not quite as sexually hardcore!).  But even then, I can't remember my seventeen-year-old self having to get a parent to sign a permission slip to take the AP-level class.

Titian, Venus of Urbino, Oil on canvas, c. 1538.

So where is this arbitrary and ultimately pointless line that exists between "acceptable nudity" and "uncomfortable nudity"?  And what is the root of society's discomfort as well as my own?  Is it American Puritanism?  Insecurities about our own bodies?  Why is it more appropriate for a high school student to study paintings of naked women (let's face it: the number of naked men included in the canon of western art history is negligible unless you count Robert Mapplethorpe) than it is for a college student to draw from naked women in real life.  Does it always come back to religion?  I'm not so sure.

Screenshot from Desperate Housewives, Season 1, Episode 3: "Pretty Little Picture", 2004.

I recently watched the final season of the primetime soap opera Desperate Housewives.  As part of her storyline, one of the housewives, Susan Mayer, takes a painting class in the hope of transitioning her artistic career from that of an illustrator to a fine artist.  Now, on the show, Susan is no stranger to nudity: in an infamous scene from season one, she locks herself out of her house while fully naked, runs across her yard ironically covering herself only with a bush, and is eventually discovered by her crush (and future husband), Mike Delfino.  While embarrassed by the situation, Susan plays it relatively cool when compared to how a real person would likely react.  So her attitude towards nudity seems quite strange when we fast-forward to an episode in which her teacher brings a nude male model to the painting class: she becomes extremely flustered and is the only student who can't contain her giggles.  Keep in mind that the character of Susan is not overly religious (that role goes to Bree Van de Kamp) or prudish (throughout the course of the show, she is shown in bed with several men) and is also pushing fifty.  Why would a completely mature, adult woman who is clearly familiar with the male body have the reaction of a child?  I'm fully aware that this is a poor example due to its fictitious and comedic nature; however, I also think that in general, TV tends to reflect the attitudes of contemporaneous society from which it springs.  On an unrelated yet related note, San Francisco, which is not a religious city by any means, is currently grappling with the issue of its longtime openness and embrace of public nudity.

Screenshots from Desperate Housewives, Season 8, Episode 5: "The Art of Making Art", 2011.

Okay, okay: public nudity and nudity in art are two separate issues, but one got me thinking about the other and led to the discovery that the two are intertwined in my mind and reveal my own hypocrisy and double-standard on the subject.  To this day, I have not yet been able to re-wire my brain to keep from twitching slightly when I see a nude person in the street, on the beach, or in the drawing room.  And still, I don't give it a second thought when I look at naked figures in paintings or even when I paint them myself.  But I enjoy living in a city where people are free to do as they please as long as they aren't hurting others, and those screamingly pale, saggy cheeks even fill me with an odd sense of pride.  So I guess that's progress.