This is a comment by Anthony Tewfik on the post “I’m Stark Naked: Deal With It“.
“Last month I posted a photo on Facebook of my partner and myself, similar to this article making the point of how ashamed we are of our bodies, yet we all have penises, vaginas, breasts and that are bodies are different shapes, but never obscene. I am 56 and could loose a bit of weight, my partner 40 and is bulimic.
“I encouraged my Facebook friends to have similar courage and post their photos, but none did. (I am a painter and a number of them happily pose naked in front of my easel.) But I got a lot of positive comments and many ‘likes’. Socially, I had a few snide comments about penis size, to which I responded that my penis was larger than their brains.
“In Germany and Scandinavian countries they ridicule Anglo Saxons and Americans for our inhibited attitudes. Why is it that so many religious people, who believe that God made man in his own image find the naked body offensive? Do they think that God was a pornographer?”
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“In Germany and Scandinavian countries they ridicule Anglo Saxons and Americans for our inhibited attitudes. Why is it that so many religious people, who believe that God made man in his own image find the naked body offensive? Do they think that God was a pornographer?”
Exactly why then (if the body was created by God) don’t we think of the body and even the very sexuality that emanates from the body as something sacred rather than something to be ashamed of? And the attitude toward sexuality is sooo different in Europe – it is amazing. When I was in France I saw billboards for an ice-cream brand (Magnum) everywhere and they always showed a topless woman enjoying that product. I guess they were not worried that such a depiction would be harmful to minors- and when you think about why should it be?
As someone living in Scandinavia, I don’t think we so much ridicule Americans as we are simply baffled. US (and to some extend UK) reactions to the sex life of politicians (and other public figures), attitudes to sex education and teenage sex life, teen pregnancy rates, gays in the military and same-sex relationships in general, and, yes, nudity and sex in general. The cultural gap is huge – which comes back as a surprise over and over, since we’re all otherwise part of this thing called “western culture”.
A big element of this, I believe, is the role of religion in society. I don’t think it’s the only reason, and I’m not quite sure of the dynamics, but there’s clearly linkage. And the difference really is very big: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/06/25/religiosity-varies-dramatically-across-countries/
Anyway – it’s one of the things I try to remember – that despite shared cultural output, economic models, and much more, in a number of areas the cultural differences are so big that it really can be very hard to understand what’s going on on the other side of the pond.
It’s not as if all Americans have the same attitudes. I feel an immense cultural disconnect with my fellow Americans on the issue of sex. I think that beliefs about men as predators also have to do with how we think about these things though I think even that belief may be fueled by religious beliefs. I think that American capitalism is also involved. Americans do not feel any need to see ourselves as individuals in a community and that leads to a paranoid reaction to threat of the other. When Croatian philosopher Zizek “The liberal idea of tolerance is more and more a kind of intolerance. What it means is ‘Leave me alone; don’t harass me; I’m intolerant towards your over-proximity” I think America.