Naked Rugby in New Zealand

[rawTOP]

Geez... why can't more of the world be this accepting of nudity?

http://www.3news.co.nz/VIDEO-Nude-Rugby--naked-haka-contains-nudity/tabid/317/articleID/219706/Default.aspx

[Hotload84]

Back in the late 70's I studied abroad in Rome. It was nothing to see huge photographs of nude men and/or women advertising one product or another. In contrast about the same time, here in Pennsylvania there was a push by some of the more puritanical legislators to remove, on the basis of indecency, certain the nude statute groups, The Giants, by George Grey Bernard that flank the doors of the Capitol Building in Harrisburg. Eventually the sculptures were given odd-looking loin covers lest the world see (shocking!) penises and scrotums. [sigh] Fucking ignoramuses.

[asaphx]

I agree... nudity is art. The body is a beautiful thing and should not be censored. Maybe the US (and PA) will see th light...

[Belfast-Bottom]

Interesting link! I've just been watching a documentary on the Vatican Museum. It seems that Pope Pius V had all the genitals painted out in Michaelangelo's "last judgement" fresco in the Sistine Chapel. He also had people apply stone and plaster fig leaves to the genitals of the antique statues in the Vatican collection. True story: an order of nuns bought a Georgian mansion in Ireland to turn into a convent. Some of the marble fireplaces featured nude cherubs. The nuns had workmen apply plaster loincloths to the cherubs.

"Geez... why can't more of the world be this accepting of nudity?" Short answer - RELIGION

I've looked at the debate Pope Pius was dealing with, and from what I've read he was generally opposed to painting over the genitals in the Sistine, and did so only because in so doing he could preserve the frescoes from even greater damage. In addition relatively few of the figures were painted-over - apparently the committee that the Pope appointed to decide which would be painted-over was under orders from the Pope to minimize the affected figures. Somehow, Belfast-Bottom, it seems odd to place a blanket blame on religion for repressing nudity, when the Church, for instance, commissioned both the Sistine ceiling and the Sistine last judgment. Moreover, in my many trips throughout very Catholic Rome I have seen more nudes in various churches and in church-owned museums than I have ever encountered in the secular world. As to the nuns in Ireland and those statues which received fig leaves - I've always taken the view that some people, religious and secular, are more tight than others. Here's an interesting story about a copy of Michelangelo's David that was made for Queen Victoria, and her reaction to his genitals. I've been to the Victoria and Albert Museum, but don't remember if the fig leaf on which she insisted has since been removed. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/d/davids-fig-leaf/

Edited August 7, 2011 by Hotload84

[Deaner]

Yet the fat, greasy bitches in self-propelled shopping carts are allowed to breast-feed three kids at a time in the middle of Walmart...

[ez.charlie]

yeah we're pretty chilled out in nz haha.

i went to a nude blacks game a few years ago. kinda awkward when some of them get hard though... =S

[Belfast-Bottom]

To Hotload84:

while I agree that the attitude of the Catholic church to nudity has fluctuated widely over the centuries, there is little doubt that from the reign of Pius V onwards, nudity became much less acceptable.

We are born naked. Our early ancestors lived and died naked ( except in those regions where climate dictated covering ). There is really no reason for people to wear clothes in much of the world today - except for social convention. When closely examined those social conventions are always rooted in religion. The Old Testament is particularly concerned with nakedness. Judaism is the parent culture of Christianity and Islam - which explains the West's and Islam's preoccupation with clothing.

There is no question that the Irish nuns who defaced the marble fireplaces were motivated by religion.