Naked Fear: Anti-Body Myths, Phobias, Delusions, and the Madness of Modesty (2010) is the full title of the second book from Dennis Craig Smith, his first being the Naked Child: Growing Up Without Shame (1981), which is known for its informal study Smith performed interviewing adults who had grown up in naturism to dispel stigmas associated with child exposure to nudity. Naked Fear could be seen as the flipside of the earlier study: the book takes an exhaustive look at the anti-body culture that has been established by western civilization, highlighting specific people and organizations responsible for such repressive attitudes and how these attitudes are maintained. Aggressive in tone and fragmented feeling at times, Naked Fear is otherwise an informative book on the history of western colonial society’s efforts to censor the naked body and avoid any discussion of its parts and functions. However, at least for me, it had a few other issues. 🪐
‘Naked Fear’ book review