Philosophical question?

[Ed]

How do you feel about performers stripping completely naked when the audience includes children?

The responsible adults don’t look that surprised by the nudity.

Would your answer be different if the performer was male?

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[Ed]

By the end, the two kids look bored out of their minds!

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[Anonymous]

Well,

• Adults want to protect children from all manner of threats
• Some adults see any kind of nudity as a threat (because it’s about sex? because it’s disgusting?)

On the other hand

• We all have bodies
• They probably see family members naked occasionally
• People at the beach wear very little
• Presumably kids are welcome at naturist venues
• Far too many people have “issues” about their own bodies
• (Just my own experience) my daughter never minded seeing topless women on the beach, even close-up, when she was maybe around 5. (In Bournemouth, of all places!)

So I do understand why some people think differently but I have no problem at all with people of all ages seeing each other naked, in fact I think it’s positively beneficial. On the other hand, I do have a problem with people inflicting artistic performances on children who were inevitably going to get bored. Seeing naked people won’t put them off nudity for life but being so bored could easily put them off theatre 🙁

 

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[Anonymous]

And I’ve also just remembered an art gallery exhibition I went to a while back which featured a picture someone had made by taking small photos of every part of her naked body and sticking them all together. I was surprised to see a sign on the door saying something like “Contains nudity. parental discretion advised.” I don’t know why parental discretion was being advised.

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[Sangroid5k]

If the authorities want to keep creating neurotic children with fascination with pornography and furtive sexuality, they can keep this stuff on the high shelf.

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[Anonymous]

I get it that some people, probably a lot of people, find nudity problematic. I also get it that people have a strong need to protect children from all sorts of risks. I especially get it that if people associate nudity with sex, they’ll be alarmed at the thought of children coming into contact with naked people or naked images. I can see why television programmes sometimes (quite often actually!) start with warnings about language, violence, nudity, drug taking, northern accents or whatever the controversial content may be, and I can see the sense of having a watershed at 9 or 8 or whatever time it is these days.

I’m less clear on why nudity in live performances or art galleries is seen as a problem. A child wouldn’t attend on their own, and an adult who had a problem with nudity would want to be warned about it on their own behalf, not the children’s. It almost as if “parental discretion” is giving people an excuse for feeling shocked. If the children in this audience are anything to go by, the nakedness of the performer had no significance to them.

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[Anonymous]

Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 today had a piece on attitudes to nudity. I don’t know if it’s available outside the uk. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mlv7

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[Sangroid5k]

It’s clear that adults who would never attend such an event are terrified that they’d finally enjoy themselves.

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[Author]

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