Brief History of Nakedness

The naked human body evokes powerful and often contradictory feelings and ideas: it can thrill or revolt us; it can signal innocence or sexual availability; honesty or madness; oneness with nature or separation from society. Advertisers and the media are aware of the complex and ambivalent associations that most of us have towards the subject, and use images of bare skin or simply the word naked to compete for our attention, while mystics have used nudity to get closer to God, and political protesters have discovered that simply baring all represents one of the most effective ways to gain publicity for their cause.§A Brief History of Nakedness traces humanitys preoccupation with nudity in three distinct areas of human endeavour: religion, politics and popular culture. Rather than studying the history of the nude in art or photography, or detailing the ways in which the naked body has been denigrated or denied, this book explores new territory: revealing the ways in which religious teachers, politicians, protesters and cultural icons have used nudity to enlighten or empower themselves, or simply to entertain us.§From the naked sages of India and St. Francis of Assisi to modern-day witches and Christian nudists, and from Lady Godiva to Lady Gaga, via The Full Monty and Calendar Girls, A Brief History of Nakedness surveys the touching, sometimes tragic and often bizarre story of our relationship to our naked bodies.