"indigenous nudity"

[MoBeck]

I found this on a & thought it was pretty funny:

Indigenous nudity

  	 			  			August 13, 2008 @ 2:56 pm· Filed by [Arnold Zwicky](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?author=5) under [Prescriptivist Poppycock](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=5),  [Semantics](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=19),  [Syntax](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=20)  						
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  		Caught on-screen in an episode (set in Namibia, a re-run from some years ago) of Anthony Bourdain's *No Reservations*, a travel-and-food [television show](http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdainhttp://):

This program contains indigenous nudity. Parental discretion is advised.
It’s a warning that there were to be (female) breasts and (male) penises on display, though surely only fleetingly or out of the main focus of the camera, combined with the reassurance that the people whose bodies are (however negligently) on display are indigenous peoples — “primitives” and not “full people” like you and me, the viewers (or like Janet Jackson). That’s the social point, which has been commented on on the net by a fair number of people, and about which there’s a gigantic literature having to do with the attitudes and stances of people in dominant, urban, colonializing, modern, Western, literate, largely white, and/or “civilized” cultures towards the Other, the Exotic.

I remember reading somewhere that the first magazine in the US to print photos of naked females was . . . National Geographic, in 1901. More than 100 years later the same principle seems to hold, Third World nakedness doesn’t count.

 

[Sr_Sally]

That is funny. I read a book by a missionary to New Guinea where he talked about how the tribe he worked with (who wore gourds over their privates), decided that another tribe (who just wore strings around their waists) needed to start wearing gourds if they wanted to convert and be baptised. to his credit, the missionary dissuaded them and the nakedness went on.

I think my issue with weastern nakedness is that we usually dress that way specifically to be provocative. ie–I doubt we’d start going to the store in a sarong and no top at all unless it was considered the latest sexy fashion statement. Now obviously, the women (and men) in each indigenous culture have ways to make themselves more attractive, but it seems that it usually involves jewlery or other adornments, not just going topless.

And truly in our culture, naked women pictures are meant to arouse and sell something (cars, beer, women), not just be the background to a travel documentary.