Fashion Media Nudity vs Social Conservative Values

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When New York Magazine loaded up the photos for this week’s fashion ‘Military at Ease’ photo story, they didn’t lead with ruffles, choosing a bare bottom instead. The mini feature says that the military trend has ‘staying power’ and we agree.

In commenting on the above photo Village Voice blogger Jen Doll gets in a bare-bottom germ tizzy, which leaves me nothing to say except that it’s a new day at the Village Voice. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix would roll over in their graves, reading the germ talk.

Women As ‘The Thinker’

We agree that the model looks like Rodin’s The Thinker. But rather than worrying about germs, we think she’s pondering the need for women to run the world — or at least have a major say in it — and whether cupcakes and macaroons can bring peace to the Middle East.

Nudity IS everywhere in fashion editorial this spring and not at all to our surprise. Knee-jerk reactions to nudity bring nothing but confusion to the subject because more than one trend is happening at the same time. Sorry, but the subject of nudity expressed in fashion is a far more nuanced topic than bad boy photographer Terry Richardson would have us believe.

Women As Slut Girls or Modern Muses

In our minds, the ‘slut girls’ have achieved nothing but heart ache and disrespect. Taking on conservatives, men in general, and the porn industry, young women saying they would own the name ‘slut’ as Blacks own the name ‘nigger’ has not born positive fruit, from our perspective. (See Women As Muses: What Is Our Place in the Modern World? Or Are We Just ‘Slut Girls’ Today?)

But nudity expressed by embracing the body is another matter. When confronting the conservative, fundamentalist, patriarchal forces in Islam, Catholicism, Jewish and Southern Baptist doctrines, voices pounding away in our psyches that female sexuality is the work of the Devil and a persistent evil temptation to men — enlightened women and men are pushing back by embracing the human body.

Attempts to cast the nudity trend as an automatic extension of Internet porn miss the larger point. Nudity is again becoming a political statement as it was in the 60s. Everywhere we see the scourges done to women’s bodies and their daily lives in the name of morality campaigns.

Nudity and Young People

Among younger people, nudity is just no big thing. They are multi-racial, bisexual, spiritually inclusive, environmentally aware, and nudity is part of their visual approach to lifestyle. The push forward to respect the earth and environment also feeds an interest in female archetypes from Gaia to Aphrodite.

There are pitfalls to this perspective, but generally there’s an emerging trend arguing that more feminine principles are the only hope of saving the world. The nudity trend is part of a power push from younger and older women for feminine principles. It tends to skip the moms and unites second-wave feminists with their granddaughters.

Enlightened men of every age support this movement.

Unlike conservative critics, we don’t believe that open-minded people are permissive and immoral. After all, conservatives consume more porn than any group, and that’s a fact. It’s the conservatives prurient interest in sin — and the fact that they do so much of it —  that traps women in their morality-driven, psychological egg beater.

Conservatives make women’s lives hell, because they can’t trust themselves to behave like normal, red-blooded gentlemen.

Carrie Leigh’s Nude Magazine

Tastefully executed, fashion editorial nudity may become a core part of media going forward, especially when executed by women like Carrie Leigh, perhaps best known as Hugh Hefner’s “First Lady of the Playboy Mansion” in the 1980s. Leigh launched her NudeMagazine in 2007. (See a later article about Carrie Leigh.)

Carla Johnson, the new managing editor of NudeMagazine shares her perspective: “I have a hard time with people’s attitudes toward nude art. It’s very difficult to talk about it and have it accepted as mainstream. The history of art is about the nude, and it’s not pornography. via Herald Palladium

Watching religious programs this week, we are reminded that nudity was everywhere in Michelangelos’s world and also that of the Vatican.

For many reasons then, nudity will become increasingly integrated into upscale fashion and culture media. People ask what brands are seeing, if models are naked.

A change of mindset is required.

If artistic nudity and flirting with sexuality become part of the editorial perspective, erase the assumption that the purpose of the editorial is to show the clothes. The editorial is trying to ‘engage the reader’ or titillate her. I see fashion evolving in the direction of engagement. 

As many brands define themselves within an artistic perspective, intelligent consumer voices understand that they, too, must contribute to the cultural dialogue. If brands are modern-day temples, what are they telling consumers?

My alma mater Victoria’s Secret isn’t having any high-fallutin’ dialogue around nudity and female sexuality but Louis Vuitton is. The new Louis Vuitton NOWNESS website is a wonderful cultural statement.

New Eroticism Is Not Pornography

We’re taking the New Eroticism trend far more seriously, believing that a feminine perspective will upscale the erotic experience and distinguish it from pornography. The world of bloggers and magazines covering nudity is a totally different cast of characters from the adult industry crowd.

The world of porn was a lot of small business players who couldn’t wait to walk the aisles of Las Vegas adult expos. When Louis Vuitton shoots nearly naked models with Elle magazine in Istanbul, we see complex, sophisticated editorial trends on the horizon.

Do not be mistaken. This is a serious fight here, one that the Vatican fears, in particular. Even David Brooks argues that the forces of secularism have gone too far. We argue that the real degradation in society is coming from the morality police.

Last week NOWNESS featured the work of Quayola, a digital artist whose work was immersed in a world of Renaissance art and architecture. Watch the non-embeddable video or share this Quayola video on YouTube. The seeming dislocation of modern culture from the Renaissance is activated by conservatives as much as liberals. Conservatives as fundamentalists want to return us to the Dark Ages.

155 by Quayola

Social Conservatives and the Dark Ages

Respectfully, but with intent this time, intelligent forces seek to smash growing, social conservative power. Ironically, I didn’t fear fundamentalism in the 1970s, even as I pushed aggressively for civil rights and women’s rights. Back then, I believed in people leading their own private lives. Today I understand that women’s bodies are back to being a state’s rights discussion with a desire for a federal takeover among social conservatives. 

Many people have entered the discussion about cultural institutions and their positions on morality and nudity in art. Liberalism is hardly perfect but we would never have burned the books in Germany or destroyed Mayan culture. Going forward, conservatives will find themselves on the defensive, when they’re largely been the aggressors since Ronald Reagan.

Business, brands and smart readers will process fashion editorial nudity through this filter — recognizing that there is growing number of talented artists who know what to do with a camera focused on the female body. Anne