Evan, Thank you for this thoughtful article. Let me go back 125 years.
In April 1900, a little after the first anniversary of the production of "Physical Culture" magazine, an editorial likely that John Russell Coryell wrote, was the reply salvo to a reader and those of like mind who were asking that nudes not be used in the publication. In the reply to the letter from the Physical Director of the Y.M.C.A. (Young Men’s Christian Association) in Easton, Pennsylvania, which included 92 signatures and called for "Physical Culture" to stop publishing nude photos, the elegant two-page response was a very clear, “no.”
The editor most sincerely appreciates the spirit which has prompted this criticism. He believes that it is made solely in the interest of the future welfare of PHYSICAL CULTURE. But, dear friends, with all due respect to you and your opinions, the writer believes most emphatically that no magazine which is designed to grow big and broad, and to be of mighty influence, dares to follow narrow policies. One of the principal causes of physical weakness and ugliness at the present time is lack of respect for the human body – is the idea that it is something vulgar to be hid and despised. Why should we be ashamed of our bodies? Are we so much inferior to other animals that we must hide every part of our own physical proportions?
The writer ventures the assertion that not a single one of our friendly critics would acknowledge that the nude to them, if beautifully proportioned, is a vulgar display. Their principal complaint is that it excites the baser passions of others. If this be the case, then is it not evidence of the necessity for reformation in those thus affected, and not of the necessity for despising, degrading and vulgarizing the human form divine?
If a corrupted, immoral mind, festered with sores of vice and sin, sees in a beautiful, wholesome human body that which excites the lasciviousness and vulgarity of his nature, is that the slightest excuse for branding this beautiful figure with the words, “Vulgar display?” If some continually gormandize and thus deprave their bodies, is that an excuse for depriving all of food? Would it not be far better to raise the standard of the human mind until it can appreciate the nude – until there is developed at least the same respect and admiration for a beautiful human body as is extended to dogs, horses and other animals when beautifully formed.
Prudery portrays nudity as a stimulus for sexual lust. That’s exactly how pornography sees it, too. This pair—born from the same sex-focused conception of our fleshly embodiment—are twins. Both views obscure a holy vision of the physical human form by their unrealistic fantasies. As two sides of the same coin, together they purchase an ungodly distortion of our “fearfully and wonderfully made” anatomy. Prudery hides the body, calling God’s “temple” a lustful indecency. Profiting from that definition, pornography flaunts the Creator’s handiwork in order to stimulate the lust that prudery predicts. Both ways of treating the body are unnatural, unrealistic and abusive. Purported to be opposites, they are conceptually identical. Both of them dishonor God by turning the incarnation of His image into a lustful temptation.
This is truly excellent writing, Evan. I so appreciate your measured response in the wake of absolute tomfoolery!
The part of this that I simply can’t understand is the basic premise that humans are attracted to (sometimes aroused by) one another, clothed or not. That perpetuates the human race.
So how then do we contextualize the long standing appreciation for the beauty of the human form, and why are we so hung up on sculpture (where the subjects are typically not well hung! 🙄)
Regardless, you present a compelling case that calls out the author for their predisposition to demonize at will. Really? The Romans and the Greeks??!! Get over it!
It irks me that these little people get traction with their fearmongering and the great glory of naturism is sullied by their filthy fanaticism. Great piece.
Excellent article calling attention to another of the growing challenges to how we are being told we should think, which are being used to threaten our freedoms, in speech, thought, and reasoning. The Administration in Washington is putting a much stronger emphasis on reshaping the arts, and education, in a way which is intended to divide society, and further marginalize diverse groups, and methods of thinking and learning. This has already been given a trial-run in many states, and local communities, especially school boards, with censoring books, and films, and classroom curriculum, as well as public funding, and support for the arts, and groups in the arts.
The take-over of the Kennedy Center for the Arts, in Washington, D.C. with new appointees who are pushing a very exclusionary agenda, while falsely claiming they are fighting past exclusionary policies, (which never actually existed, nor where ever practiced.) This, along with the neutering of the Dept. of Education, and National Endowment for the Arts, are examples of an increasingly aggressive push for censoring ideas, images, words, and speech which the current Administration feels threatened by, while pushing their own partisan cultural agenda through arts, education, and media. They're trying to make a lasting impact on society which will go well beyond the next four years of this Administration.
These prudes are afraid of a penis and that in art it actually turns them on specially if the penis is bigger than their spouse!
Oh for the love of life, these people need to actually get a life 🙄
I love this article so much... but I will argue that art IS addictive.
Back in the late 80s, while servine in the Marine Corps, I spent an entire day in the L.A. County Art Museum.
I wandered from frame to frame, looking for that next "jolt". I needed the next piece to make me pause, make me think, make me wonder.
I have heard the phrase "chasing the dragon" used, historically, about opium use.
My dragon was that next photo, that next sculpture, than next painting that drove some part of my mind over the edge into an oblivion of bliss.
It still is.
A great response to the premise of the article you mentioned and to the inherent bias of the Federalist.
Evan, Thank you for this thoughtful article. Let me go back 125 years.
In April 1900, a little after the first anniversary of the production of "Physical Culture" magazine, an editorial likely that John Russell Coryell wrote, was the reply salvo to a reader and those of like mind who were asking that nudes not be used in the publication. In the reply to the letter from the Physical Director of the Y.M.C.A. (Young Men’s Christian Association) in Easton, Pennsylvania, which included 92 signatures and called for "Physical Culture" to stop publishing nude photos, the elegant two-page response was a very clear, “no.”
The editor most sincerely appreciates the spirit which has prompted this criticism. He believes that it is made solely in the interest of the future welfare of PHYSICAL CULTURE. But, dear friends, with all due respect to you and your opinions, the writer believes most emphatically that no magazine which is designed to grow big and broad, and to be of mighty influence, dares to follow narrow policies. One of the principal causes of physical weakness and ugliness at the present time is lack of respect for the human body – is the idea that it is something vulgar to be hid and despised. Why should we be ashamed of our bodies? Are we so much inferior to other animals that we must hide every part of our own physical proportions?
The writer ventures the assertion that not a single one of our friendly critics would acknowledge that the nude to them, if beautifully proportioned, is a vulgar display. Their principal complaint is that it excites the baser passions of others. If this be the case, then is it not evidence of the necessity for reformation in those thus affected, and not of the necessity for despising, degrading and vulgarizing the human form divine?
If a corrupted, immoral mind, festered with sores of vice and sin, sees in a beautiful, wholesome human body that which excites the lasciviousness and vulgarity of his nature, is that the slightest excuse for branding this beautiful figure with the words, “Vulgar display?” If some continually gormandize and thus deprave their bodies, is that an excuse for depriving all of food? Would it not be far better to raise the standard of the human mind until it can appreciate the nude – until there is developed at least the same respect and admiration for a beautiful human body as is extended to dogs, horses and other animals when beautifully formed.
En excellent comment and rebuttal from (maybe) Coryell. Of course I’d expect nothing less.
Who Told You You Were Naked by David L Hatton
22.
Prudery and Porn Addiction
Prudery portrays nudity as a stimulus for sexual lust. That’s exactly how pornography sees it, too. This pair—born from the same sex-focused conception of our fleshly embodiment—are twins. Both views obscure a holy vision of the physical human form by their unrealistic fantasies. As two sides of the same coin, together they purchase an ungodly distortion of our “fearfully and wonderfully made” anatomy. Prudery hides the body, calling God’s “temple” a lustful indecency. Profiting from that definition, pornography flaunts the Creator’s handiwork in order to stimulate the lust that prudery predicts. Both ways of treating the body are unnatural, unrealistic and abusive. Purported to be opposites, they are conceptually identical. Both of them dishonor God by turning the incarnation of His image into a lustful temptation.
This is truly excellent writing, Evan. I so appreciate your measured response in the wake of absolute tomfoolery!
The part of this that I simply can’t understand is the basic premise that humans are attracted to (sometimes aroused by) one another, clothed or not. That perpetuates the human race.
So how then do we contextualize the long standing appreciation for the beauty of the human form, and why are we so hung up on sculpture (where the subjects are typically not well hung! 🙄)
Regardless, you present a compelling case that calls out the author for their predisposition to demonize at will. Really? The Romans and the Greeks??!! Get over it!
Thanks for this thought provoking piece.
It irks me that these little people get traction with their fearmongering and the great glory of naturism is sullied by their filthy fanaticism. Great piece.
Excellent article calling attention to another of the growing challenges to how we are being told we should think, which are being used to threaten our freedoms, in speech, thought, and reasoning. The Administration in Washington is putting a much stronger emphasis on reshaping the arts, and education, in a way which is intended to divide society, and further marginalize diverse groups, and methods of thinking and learning. This has already been given a trial-run in many states, and local communities, especially school boards, with censoring books, and films, and classroom curriculum, as well as public funding, and support for the arts, and groups in the arts.
The take-over of the Kennedy Center for the Arts, in Washington, D.C. with new appointees who are pushing a very exclusionary agenda, while falsely claiming they are fighting past exclusionary policies, (which never actually existed, nor where ever practiced.) This, along with the neutering of the Dept. of Education, and National Endowment for the Arts, are examples of an increasingly aggressive push for censoring ideas, images, words, and speech which the current Administration feels threatened by, while pushing their own partisan cultural agenda through arts, education, and media. They're trying to make a lasting impact on society which will go well beyond the next four years of this Administration.
Definitely not something to be taken lightly.