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Copyright © Oggbashan June 2006
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This entry is not eligible for the Nude Day Contest 2006 as I am a recent contest winner.
Each essay is exactly fifty words long, excluding the title.
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1. Semantics
What is the difference between naked and nude bodies?
A murdered corpse is naked. A work of art is of a nude.
Are aesthetics and attractiveness the only differences?
Is a naked body subtly less desirable than a nude one?
I have no answer. You must work out your own.
***
2. Surrender
Nakedness is vulnerable. The act of enforced stripping a prisoner or slave commands the acceptance of helplessness, the loss of individuality, the reduction to a bare, status-less vulnerable being.
Voluntary nudity before a lover is an offering of the whole being, a surrender so complete that nothing else can compare.
***
3. Skinny Dipping
It was a hot sunny day on Dartmoor. Our mixed group of ramblers paused beside the pool in Tavy Cleave. The water looked cool and inviting.
'Last one in is a cissy!' Someone shouted.
We stripped and jumped in. Almost immediately we scrambled out again.
Dartmoor streams are icy cold.
***
4. Perfection
I had never seen a woman nude. Had I been a virgin too long? My naked body cringed before her watching eyes.
Her form was nothing like the beautifully presented images of the top-shelf magazines. Faced with mutual imperfection, my desire shrivelled.
Our loving touch proved that reality is unbeatable.
***
5. Tiny Hairs
I love the tiny blonde hairs on her lightly tanned forearm.
Those hairs seduce as she gestures. When she is fully covered I can still see them at her wrist. They are enough for my adoring eyes to visualise her body displayed nude.
A few tiny hairs imply that much.
***
6. Persephone
Bernini's Rape of Persephone in the Borghese Gallery in Rome is worth visiting.
Her abductor's fingers press into the rounded skin of her bare thigh as they struggle. Bernini shows that Persephone was beautiful enough to attract a God.
What amazing art to make seductive flesh from cold unyielding stone.
***
7. Bernini again
Apollo and Daphne, also by Bernini, shows a nude Daphne metamorphosing into a tree to avoid rape.
While that might be an impossible feat for potential victims, Bernini's art has made the impossible a tangible reality, showing, as the work is viewed in the round, the start of the transformation.
***
8. Acceptable if Art?
The Victorians loved art works showing nude women but needed the justification that the nudity was artistic.
Artists such as Alma-Tadema met the need with nudity in antique settings such as 'In the Tepidarium'.
Had it been contemporary it would have been obscene. Classical and Art, it was beyond reproach.
***
9. Modern is rude
Modigliani painted nudes in his own particular style but represented real, not idealised, women.
His paintings caused a scandal when exhibited. Unlike Alma-Tadema's classical purity, his paintings showed nude women in contemporary domestic settings.
Nudity couldn't be modern without being pornographic. Yet Paris was the home of the dirty postcard.
***
10. David
Michelangelo's David is the archetype of the nude male statue.
Apart from its colossal size what makes it more important and iconic than any other?
It certainly isn't the size of David's manhood.
Perhaps it is the perfected realisation: an informed understanding of how muscle and sinew move under skin.
***
11. Interesting?
Victorian and Edwardian ladies protected themselves from the sun. Suntan and bronzed skin were the signs of a woman who worked on the land. Ladies were pale and interesting.
Has the increased incidence of skin cancer changed attitudes?
Will the bright noonday sun be shunned; and pale become interesting again?
***
12. Preferences
Do you like your lover to have lighter parts untouched by the sun?
Or do you prefer that both of you have an even colour throughout?
Is what is usually concealed more attractive if only you see it?
Why not ask each other before assuming that all over is good?
***
13. Jealousy
Do you burn or do you tan?
Are you jealous of those who turn a golden brown while you become cooked lobster-pink?
Do you peel in unsightly patches while your friends compare depth of browning?
Outdoor nudity can be unfair to those of us with reddish hair and prominent freckles.
***
14. Examination
Do you look but not see?
Can you describe your lover's nude body in intimate detail with all the flaws that make up the perfection of the covering of the person you love?
Look, examine, touch, caress, stroke, kiss, nibble and study until every part is familiar, recognised and adored.
***
15. Celebration
The nude body is wonderful. Throughout history artists have attempted to show the nude they saw.
If you love, celebrate the delight of your lover's body with what art you have.
Your talent may be with words, with paint, with a camera, or just with loving touch.
Tell your enjoyment.
*****
Some of these are more effective than others, but I admire your patience in painstakingly counting the words, etc.
When I did my piece I thought I would be alone in contemplating nudity as asthetics and philosophy not just as a sensuality.
I am honored to be in such grand company as the great Og writing more about what nudity means than how it arouses.
Oggbashan is prolific, writing tens of thousands of words in over a hundred stories.
Oggbashan is skilful: his tales are a joy to read.
He can be succinct, inventing a story format that uses exactly fifty words (excluding title).
It's amazing what talent, hard work (and a cake) can achieve...