I posted that picture of myself because I felt like it.
In the morning, I wondered whether I should have. I then thought 'sod it, why not?' I deliberately put it as pop-up rather than embedded.
All that aside, if another Blogger (okay, maybe not Pinky...) had posted such a picture, I would have been at least surprised, and depending on my mood, maybe even disapproving.
I have long been interested in society's attitude to nudity. Around us our culture bombards us with images of nude or partially nude women, from The Sun and Star newspapers to advertisers - often 'ironically'. The models are usually anonymous and objectified. If a 'proper' celebrity poses, or is clandestinely photographed, nude a wave of false shock reverberates around.
I have often wished that it was normal for women to remove their tops in environments where men do. In Britain, you rarely see a woman topless even on the beach, and then it's discreet.
The societal norms are to separate tits and people. Intelligent women don't have tits. Women who pose topless don't have a brain.
There is also the thorny issue of beautiful=young, not young=ugly/keep under wraps. Although I'm the same age as Kylie I'm well past the prime of my looks. Even as a young adult I never traded on my looks or body.
Not that I'm ashamed of the way I look, I just feel that I never fitted society's ideal Body Beautiful. Even though I know that few human bodies lack beauty, and all are intrinsically ugly.
I suspect that society doesn't distinguish properly between different reasons for portraying nudity. A deliberately provocative pose, even if done Sun-style, is different from something done for Art, which is different again from nudity for documentary. We live in an age of relatively open sexuality, and yet, because nudity is so closely associated with sexuality, it is an uncomfortable subject. The majority of us snigger at, and some disapprove of nudist colonies and naturist beaches. We think of them as weird. We use the word nude euphemistically when we want to say 'naked'. Naked is lacking, and we feel uncomfortable about 'lacking'. I think that many of us do not feel comfortable with our bodies.
