At the confluence of the internet age and the #MeToo movement, revisiting John Berger's book Ways of Seeing and its discussion of nakedness verses nudity is a conversation that needs to be had. Not only because he articulated the predominance of the male gaze and discussions of power, but because he referenced Walter Benjamin's Art in the Mechanical Age. Namely that, through reproduction, when art is removed from its intended location of contact with the public, it takes on different meanings through recontextualization, -- the intrinsic location of artwork lending some of the meaning overall (part of the psychological pilgrimage to approaching art). And today, because of the internet, images that were once only seen in situ or even in hard-copy reproductions are now potentially more ubiquitous -- visual art is not only reproduceable, it is portable -- on the internet, on screens, in your pocket, in your hands: the in situ is you. Looming large and adding to this are issues of surveillance, that go hand in hand with the internet, so that you have a recipe for a very different set of circumstances than what Berger had in mind when he wrote his famous book. Nevertheless, his discussion of naked verses nude is still a useful starting point for looking at empowerment and meaning in this day and age.
How are we to navigate any nudity and nakedness in art, or in anything else for that matter, on the internet, which has become synonymous as a catalyst for porn -- and all of the baggage that this word conjures? But it's ridiculous to assume that all nakedness on the internet is synonymous with porn, nevertheless this is a response I got, this year on Facebook to the following image:
It should be obvious that the photo has nothing to do with any sexual activity, so it must have to do with nudity. So what is nudity I asked, according to Facebook? This was their response to me:
In the photo, there are no "genitals" showing, there is no "sexual activity" -- the people are dying, -- there is no "sexually explicit language," and I could find only one "female nipple" -- on the child in the bottom right corner. They say in the rules that "[w]e have one set of standards because we want everyone on Facebook to feel welcome.[sic]" But I certainly do not feel welcome on Facebook, when voicing historical concerns over genocide are being trivialized by puritanism. Whatever values exist behind this kind of censure are chilling and they don't make me feel safe at all. In fact, where is the humanity here? The humanity that is supposedly protected by blocking a few darkened pixels. My intended point -- about 3 million people's tragic demise -- is wiped out by policing female nipples. A bipolar world is created online, between porn and puritanism, excluding a third dimension of nakedness with its other associations. Does the voyeurism and privacy of screen viewing automatically shape how we see all nakedness, turning it into potential porn? In the minds of Facebook, clearly it does.
Anonymous meme from Facebook.
Speaking of female nipples in the real world: criminal charges were filed against Tilli Buchanan of West Valley City, Utah for bearing her chest in front of children.[1] She had been installing insulation with her husband in the garage, and afterwards, -- in their own home, -- they both took off their shirts to get rid of the itchy material. Her stepchildren subsequently came down the stairs and were embarrassed, but Tilli explained that if they could see their Dad's chest, then seeing hers shouldn't be a very big deal. She now faces three counts of lewdness involving a child, which could land her on the sex offender registry for 10 years. Her husband, being the same state of undress, engaging in non-sexual conduct was not charged, as male nipples are not considered lewd in the state of Utah. The urge to "protect" becomes the urge to impose overreaching belief structures and the urge to control, and, of course, controlling women's bodies is nothing new.
In order to unpack what's going on online, we have to take apart attitudes that precede the internet. I remember taking my kids to the beach when they were really small and letting them splash naked in the water. I'd get only a few dirty looks, which I generally ignored, until a lifeguard told me that I needed to dress my children in swim-clothes. I complied, after some consternated words that tipped at the edge of getting kicked off the beach. Part of living in America: the land of gratuitous screen violence, but where naked preschoolers tear at the threshold of decency (snark).
It wasn't until some years later that, running around on the same beach with their long hair flying in the wind, my two children (properly clad or so I thought) raised hackles yet again. "Those girls need to be wearing tops," I was told. At this point, my younglings were about 6 and 4 years old, and my answer always evoked the same embarrassed responses, when I would say: "but they're not girls, they're boys." This got me thinking again about John Berger, about nudity, about being visible, about nakedness, and what was, pardon the pun, underneath it all.
There are so many things wrong in this scenario, that I don't know where to start, but first: what is the difference between a 4 or 6 year-old boy's chest and a girl's of the same age? Of course absolutely nothing, visually. But everywhere on the beach were little girls and infants dressed in bikini tops, covering cleavage that wasn't there, -- referencing cleavage that wouldn't exist until almost a decade later. Or course, it hit me: these bikini bras are sexualizing the girls' chests as different from the boys' -- who are allowed to be bare chested. The girls' nipple sounds an alarm, the boys' nipple does not. How very imposing it is for society to saddle future bodily development upon an unsuspecting child. Practically speaking, bras are for adults, so why do undeveloped kids need them? Of course, little girls quickly learn (before they can speak apparently) that their bodies aren't neutral; they learn to cover up -- out of "modesty." Girls become keen aware of being seen (of "being sights" to quote Berger). So much so that they are expected to be ill-at-ease when topless even at 4 years old.[2] Cute and frilly (non-cup) bikini tops are a tradeoff: a distraction for not questioning gender roles (and it doesn't stop: they'll get to dress as meringues when they get married). If children make choices to cover themselves (for whatever reasons), that is one thing, but when it is imposed on them, fueled by gender conformity it's another issue altogether. The rationale to cover up little girls' chests is all part of "protecting" them: protecting them from sexual abusers. It's part of an oppressive, gendered status quo that victimizes society by teaching children unspoken cues: that even though their breasts are undeveloped now, they will be developed one day, and that's enough to make sure they are covered in childhood. There is an un-asked-for sexuality visited upon young girls by merely being seen.
Here is a photo, by Margaret de Lange, of her two children playing. Let's do an experiment. Does it change when you think of them as two little girls? Play the switch back and forth in your mind's eye, see them as: "two little boys, then two little girls, then two little boys . . . ." Do they change when you think of them as different genders? If they do, don't worry, you are only registering existing messages out there. But what a world it would be if we could think beyond the binary. Are girls, because of the "necessity to protect them," therefore more sexualized? And if more sexualized, in our mind's eye, are we really protecting them? Are they doomed to never be "naked as they are?," to quote Berger's definition of nakedness as the freedom to be who you are.
John Berger's Ways of Seeing was written in the 70s, generally speaking to existing binary assumptions of male / female. He spoke of women being before anything else a "sight to behold," delineating the difference between being "naked as one is" and "nude as one is seen" -- the latter being a gendered and sexualized costume that "cannot be discarded." The reflex that little girls' chests need to be covered up, when they are not different from little boys', is a projected costume that cannot be discarded. Berger was able to discuss the male privilege of being the spectator owner in art and symbolic imagery, something distilled through the literal history of art ownership. Little girls learn to navigate this minefield of visibility as normalcy, but boys, trans, non-binaries, and others are also expected to accommodate themselves to the existence of this gendered minefield that imposes itself as the world. It oppresses all though not equally. That the meddling people on the beach in my account were more embarrassed of having called my son a female, -- as if this were a bad thing, -- than they were of enforcing a pervading status quo is also telling. It seems to me that what Berger initiated was a discussion that was meant to be continued, and how necessary this is today in an age of #MeToo. At a time where women (but not only women) should be empowered to protect themselves, there are those who would protect them, by dictating morality when it comes to nakedness and nudity. But this has always been, what's different is that there is a new set of tools: online social forums that surveil us like never before. And surveillance is at the heart of it all.
In the name of protecting vulnerable children, society often deems any image of their nakedness as perverse. Why: the potential imposition upon them by adults or other children? It is often difficult to wrap one's head around the notion that children are themselves sexual beings, but at their own limits, not at the frontiers of any others'. But the sight of a child running around naked is the ultimate metaphor of freedom and innocence, and, of course, innocence needs to be protected. That's a reflex. But this is a topic to be approached dialectically: when is curtailing innocence itself an abuse of imposing societies sexual "norms" (fraught with anxiety and control)? We are rightly shocked and infuriated by the sexual abuse of children (of anyone), but do we then let predators (and fear of predation) determine what is acceptable. That's a lot of power. After all, in the real world, predators follow clothed children, predators preach celibacy in churches, predators also skillfully navigate the minefields that have kept "women" as sexualized sights instead of being read as whole beings. To paraphrase Berger, women are categorized according to what can be done to them. Horrifyingly, this has also been applied especially to the violence visited upon trans people. But to reiterate, to let perpetrators determine how anyone is seen is a lot of power. Society dictating gendered norms, against what is healthy, is predatory. Visibility is a minefield where excessive protection becomes abuse. In Berger's discussion he presumes a binary, male-dominated world, and of course, some women are enablers to this status quo, but all of society suffers. Society resists talking about how little boys are also victims of sexual abuse. Thus the double standard between "boys and girls," regarding covering-up the pre-pubescent naked chest, is actually incidental to "safeguarding" anyone in the real world.
The online world is however another issue. We can speak to every vulnerable person, whether it is because of gender, age, and/or mental health. If we speak to childhood, we can get to the heart of the metaphor of nakedness vs. nudity. There are real problems with childhood nudity online, -- in Berger’s sense of the nude as a sexualized costume. First of all, nude images of children come from somewhere, and abuse has had to occur for the images to exist in the first place. That is uncontested in my argument. Why I contest that naked images of children in art constitute something else, has everything to do with reclaiming the whole person in the healthiest sense possible and rebuking the status quo that has so ravaged ideas about the body, sexuality, the individual, and society. Can images of nakedness be abused online. Of course, but to eradicate all that "nakedness" conveys is a lot of power to give to "moralists" and perverts, and yes, in my mind these are flip sides of each other, feeding off of each other’s influence.
Seeing children naked, especially their genitalia, can cause anxiety in adults. That's probably an evolutionary thing and something we should be either reflexively uncomfortable with or entirely unmindful of. I think it is an ongoing effort (given everything that some of us have to unlearn) to try and see a whole person in their nakedness instead of dehumanizing them into "parts." Being able to attach a humanizing context becomes part of the puzzle.
An artist who used her daughter's unclothed image was American artist Alice Neel [1900-1984]. I find nothing "perverse" in Neel's painting of her daughter, Isabetta, except that they were estranged and the image may play some role, before or after the fact. The image itself is stark, in Neel's typical style, and there is nothing of the cloying, sexualized costuming but neither is it entirely unsexual. The sexuality of the model exists but at its own level, alongside hints about the personality of her daughter through her gaze, stance, and unabashed confidence. Artists often portray what is familiar to them, should this whole range of naked childhood and all that it conveys be rendered permanently invisible, just because it makes people uncomfortable? Isn't that what art does?
I do not mean to suggest that people who have suffered the imposition of adult sexuality upon their childhoods, in whatever form, have no say here. Surely, many of these images might trigger ranges of traumatic responses, but discussions around everything that bodies of children convey needs to be broached in discussions of art, as art is uniquely suited to start these discussions.
A major focus of photos by Norwegian artist Margaret de Lange [1963- ] are her daughters, a subject matter with which she is deeply familiar. In fact she waited and sought her daughters' permission before she later published them. The words of her de Lange's daughter Jannicke convey how the images precisely avoid artificiality for the sake of the spectator (turning them into nudes in a Bergerian sense):
When most people see a camera pointing in their direction, the response is almost always the same. They'll turn towards the camera, put on a big grin and most likely hug the person next to them. They might even make bunny ears over that persons head when they do so. That's not my response. I noticed this for the first time when I went on a trip with my friends. One of them was a hobby photographer, and had brought his camera. Whenever I noticed the camera pointing in my direction, I didn't turn towards it and smile. Instead, I kept on doing exactly what I had been doing when my friend turned his camera towards me. I must have been doing something interesting when he noticed me, I thought. That's why he wants a picture right now. I'll ruin it if I put on a fake smile.
This is the result of growing up with a mum who's a photographer. When the camera is suddenly brought out, I know I'm doing something particularly interesting that has captured her imagination, that there was a picture somewhere in my actions. I know that she's seen a moment in my life that she wants to preserve, and so I keep doing whatever it is I was doing when she first spotted it, be it playing in our garden or cuddling a dog. I know my sister Catherine feels the same way. I know she reacts the exact same way to cameras, and I know that she, just like me, love seeing moments captured on film, the way they are in our mother's pictures. She has preserve random pieces of our childhood, and we treasure those moments. 26 January 2009.[3]
"Putting on a fake smile," is part of the costuming that Berger talks about -- knowing that you are being seen and changing yourself for the viewer. The "costume" that is nudity, as portrayed in European oil painting, has been involuntary, responding so as to be pleasing, acceptable, and charming to the historically male hierarchical structures in societies. It is like asking someone how they are, and expecting them to say "fine." Socially photography seems to require the pose and smile response. It is the self-imposed selfie. It's part of some expected/projected identity. But artistically, nakedness can say so much more.
An artist credited as the first woman to paint herself naked, is German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker [1876-1907]. She also made naked studies of children, as well as of a mother and child. While intentionally presenting herself as lovely in a lovely garden, her style was expressionistic enough to not fit the definitions of pornographic cosseting. The act of painting herself this way was ground-breaking and bucked the status quo: by painting herself, using her own gaze, she supplants the male gaze, -- a revolutionary act on many levels. It must be noted that it was her class background that allowed her to get away with having an art vocation. A woman from a lower class might have had her "virtue" questioned, as no doubt some may have been scandalized and questioned Modersohn-Becker's, but as a Modernist, she was nevertheless legitimized artistically.
Paula Modersohn-Becker
In my work as an art instructor, I have had some students through the years who balked at the requirement of using a naked model for drawing classes. Usually for religious reasons or extreme teachings about "modesty:" the common denominator has been fear, responding to the body primarily in sexual terms. Primarily is ok, but I would argue that singularly is potentially problematic. How is one examined by a doctor if she/he/xe sees people's bodies as sexual only? The possibilities are rife with potential abuses. The body is many things, it's the seat of all our ills, it's a time reader, it's our health, strength, and weakness, it's a metaphor, it's our awkwardness and happenstance. These are all linked in our physicality. And we need to be reminded of these things and share these references with others' experience to live fully as human. In most cases, if my student could be convinced to try life drawing, they, in every case, came away realizing that the anxiety concentrated in the first few minutes could be allowed to pass, allowing for other associations -- that already existed -- to flow. Reducing the body to sexuality only, is to cut at our totality.
In my twenties, immediately after coming into contact with Berger's essays, I came across an image of Wendy O. Williams [1949-1998]. To me, she was instantly empowering. Despite the overt sexuality of her appearance, I did not read her as if her as wearing costume imposed upon her. There was something whole about it. I remembered that in Berger's essay, he didn't include the possibility that some women like to be on display. But his argument is still valid as a springboard, inasmuch as he stressed the importance of the imposition of power relationships. I learned that Williams had been a shy girl, who obviously never fit in while growing up, because while in school, in her own words, she liked "furious sex." Her career as lead singer for the rock group the Plasmatics front lined her choices to appear naked in a costume of her own making. Charged for indecency on stage for being topless, she soon chose to wear tape and or clips across her nipples in lieu of the choice she legally didn't have -- of putting herself on display. In her own words, she says: "[u]sing sex to create the law is so stupid, and I'm not the kind of person who walks the middle of the line, . . . We're not out to pick fights. But then the essence of what we do is skaking up the middle class; I think if you don't do that with your music, you're just adding to the noise pollution."[4]
Like Modersohn-Becker, but in a different era, Williams chose to put herself on display in her own terms, and the sexual nature of her performances is attached to entire political, ecological, and social set of reasoned opinions. Real choices to determine the costume that one wears is a form of nakedness, metaphorically, and, as such, is empowering. When one cannot eradicate the dominant discursive norms, one can compete and shout over top of them. Sadly, Williams committed suicide, and in her words on the subject she reiterates the importance of self-determination:
I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me, much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm.[5]
In seeking to protect (which we ought) the vulnerable among us, without respecting the right to self-empowerment, there can emerge an overprotective puritanism that imposes itself. Psychological imposition is a metaphor of rape culture, because the flourishing of every naked soul requires self-actualization. Art can let us see nakedness, can let us see the human and discussing nudity, in John Berger's initial sense of the word, can help us deconstruct the status quo. We should always question nudity-costumes but covering up nakedness without exception is entirely missing the point. This will always require dialogue and discourse, rather than an online algorithm.
Endnotes
[1] Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune, (30 September 2019).
[2] Approaching puberty, children are aware of their changing bodies, and have definite, individualistic opinions about privacy and the visibility of their bodies -- as necessary expressions of their own control.
[3] Margaret M. de Lange, Daughters, (Great Britain: Trolley Books, 2009),
[4] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/plasmatics-wendy-o-williams-commits-suicide-187613/
[5] Plasmatics & Wendy O. Williams Unofficial Website. April 7, 1998.
Laura Fair-Schulz is an artist and an adjunct professor of Fine Art in Potsdam, NY, and part of the Red Wedge editorial collective. Social media splash image by Adam Ray Adkins.