The BBC's take on nudity and shame

Or as the BBC says, Grin and Bare it (that should be our motto).

I thought this was an interesting article where the BBC has a TV show about nudity and how we can unlearn our shame of it.

The premise is that we are ALL ashamed to be nude. Humans have learned this from thousands of generations (wrong). What an interesting point of view which is pretty much British and American only. Go to Spain, all beaches are topless and many of the best beaches are nude. I am sure Margaret Meade would highly disagree with this show.

It is interesting, but I disagree with a lot of the show. I bet the reason humans lost their hair had to do with Vitamin D being an antioxidant and those people who could produce the most Vitamin D reproduced the most. And the less fur you had, the more Vitamin D you produced.

I am sure the show is right that with less fur, humans sweat more which cooled us down.

Here in Palm Springs, the Agua Caliente Indians wore animal clothes in the winter, but were naked until the white man arrived in the 1870's. The missionaries taught them shame, it was not a natural concept to them.

I am sure English people will watch this show, but in my opinion a lot of it is wrong.

Finally the biggest pushers of clothes is obviously the fashion industry. For instance now a days more young French women sunbathe topless instead of nude as they want to wear fashionable bathing suit bottoms.

Here is the story:


"Can people unlearn their naked shame?


One of the experiments carried out for BBC's Horizon programme looked at people's preferences for hairy or hairless bodies


Once we were all happy to walk around naked, now we're not. But can an experiment in nudity help us understand why we are so embarrassed by being seen in the buff and help shed our inhibitions?

It's a classic anxiety nightmare - you're standing in front of a room full of work colleagues, your boss is there, maybe even that new colleague you've been trying to impress. And you're stark naked. Ouch.

Why are we so ashamed of being seen naked? Is there something deep in human nature that finds naked skin abhorrent? Some prudishness inherited from our Victorian ancestors? FIND OUT MORE...
Horizon's What's the Problem With Nudity? is on BBC Two at 2100 GMT on Tuesday, 3 March

And how can you explain the rebels who shun convention to spend their weekends hanging out with similar-minded nudists, insisting nothing could be more normal?

Eight ordinary people - none of them nudists - were recently brought together for an experiment filmed by the BBC's Horizon programme, to test some of the scientific theories that explain why naked bodies make us so uncomfortable...

And of course, a naked human is just that bit more naked that other primates. We have only minimal body hair, they have fur. Why?

It's one of the greatest mysteries in evolution, and even bothered Charles Darwin. One of the theories is that we lost our fur as a way of dealing with the heat of the sun. It's controversial, as most mammals use fur to protect them from the sun. But some anthropologists believe our ancestors' unique ability to sweat, along with their upright stance, meant we could cool quicker without fur - prompting the onset of human nudity.

They reckon that evolutionary step towards nudity had huge implications for the human race. With a souped-up cooling system, our ancestors could afford to develop ever-bigger brains - leading to culture, tools, fire, and language.

"Really, without losing hair, without our sweatiness, we wouldn't have been able to evolve the big brains that characterise us today," says anthropologist Professor Nina Jablonski of Penn State University. "Essentially, being hairless was the key to much of human evolution."

So there's reason to believe our nudity arose out of practical need, but that doesn't answer why we're so ashamed by it...

Learned shame
... Over a couple of days, the volunteers had unlearned many of the social conventions that normally govern their life, and reached a new consensus that permitted them to be naked in each other's company.

It chimes with the psychologists' theory that we are not born with a shame of nudity. Instead we learn it, as an important behavioural code that allows us to operate in human society...

But as this code of conduct is something we learn, rather than are born with, we can re-learn it, if common consensus allows. As Phil reflected: "One thing I think I'll take away is how easy it was to bond with complete strangers in what should really be an artificial environment and one that by all society's standards we should feel uncomfortable with."...

Comments:

...It seems obvious to me. Humans invented clothes - at first simple animal skins, to protect them from the environment (cold mostly). Then, as we got better at making clothes and invented weaving etc, we became able to make clothes better fitting and began to make them more elaborate and ornate. Soon, clothes became a symbol of status - the more powerful you were the more able you were to have better clothes made for you. If having very good clothes was a symbol of status or honour, then wearing no clothes became a symbol of poverty and shame.
Tim Hellis, Cardiff"

For the full article click here

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