Gilding the Lily

I've just come in from the First Annual New Mexico BodyPainting Festival, which is ongoing this weekend in Albuquerque.

I have long been attracted to bodypainting; there is an annual festival in Austria and I have spent hours on their website, going over the galleries of photos. As someone who does massage, and just as someone who appreciates the human form, it is delightful to see bodies used as canvases.

And it is just plain fun. It was as interesting to see who turned up and to watch people watching, as it was to see the artists and models at work. There was a good deal of energy in the room, and there was lots of smiling.

If you have never encountered bodypainting, people (mostly women, some men) get transformed into a variety of fantastica by artists using colors brushed and sprayed on. There are a number of themes, including freestyle, and it is a true art form and not just a curiosity. Artists may spend 4-8 hours creating a piece which will only be on stage for a few moments.

But it is also an audience-friendly event. People wander from station to station watching the work being done, taking photos, and talking with the models (the artists are usually too absorbed in their task). I am reminded of what someone once told us, a Pueblo Indian about their performing traditional dances: "It is important that we do it, but it is important that you witness it." And that was the atmosphere - what would the point of doing it be, if no one were to look?

And I have to contrast the look-at-me attitude of the models with the sneak-a-look approach so common in our culture. After all, the models are almost naked (they wear pasties and at least g-strings, and sometimes more substantial panties, so as not to run afoul of local laws) and there could be a prurient interest at work. And there is an undeniable attraction in looking at attractive almost-nude models. But unlike tittie bars and porn and gratuitous nudity in B-movies, there is a delightful innocence at a bodypainting event, a sense of fun which is lacking in those other areas. It is in fact a pity that people under 18 were not allowed into the event, because I think children would think it was a blast - a non-sexual view of naked people, with a strong dose of play. (I think all kids enjoy the thought that adults can still appreciate play.)

Americans tend to sexualize nudity. Yet we are oddly puritanical about nudity and sex - we use sex appeal to sell everything from toothpaste to cars (especially cars), but at core are uneasy about our bodies and recognition of people as sexual animals. Don't get me wrong: there are other cultures even more body-shy and uptight than ours. But our messages versus our actualities seem especially hypocritical. Those Europeans I have encountered seem far more practical and direct about their bodies, and the annual World Bodypainting Festival in Austria not only attracts more than 30,000 people each year but is family-friendly, with free entrance for people under 14! Quite a difference.

Again, the non-ashamed, non-commercialized, innocent and fun approach to nudity was a fresh breath. We have teen movies which go out of their way to show skin. We have horror movies where it seems that women cannot be slaughtered when clothed. We have websites devoted to up-skirt shots and "voyeur cams" and long-lens shots at nude beaches. We have all these, and many another perversions of the very natural desire which people have to see other people unclothed.

And in contrast we have these attractive young women and men who are patiently standing for hours while they are transformed into fanciful new images just so others may admire them. And instead of it being dirty or mercantile, it is serious/silly fun. Instead of a girl having her picture snapped unawares while she is sunbathing topless, here is a girl frankly saying, "You want to look at me? Fine - I'm nice to look at! A picture? Sure!" Instead of men sitting around a stage watching a stripper (You ever been to one of those places? Most of the men never even smile - they sit there like zombies, their faces frozen.) there is a mixed audience mingling about, talking with the models and dealing with them as human beings.

Having an event like this brings me hope that we may someday grow up and get beyond the lewd sniggering and reach a mature and healthy view of our bodies. I have long wanted to attend the world competition in Austria, and still plan to make it someday, but I am very grateful to have had an event closer to home. And I'll be there at the next one.

New Mexico BodyPainting Festival

World Body Painting Festival

Postnote: It was very interesting to see how perceptions changed over the course of the evening. Just as at a science fiction convention where the many people in costumes seem to become the norm, so did naked people covered with paint seem to become the "normal" ones, and we the observers the oddballs.

After the runway show, the models went back to a photography room where professional shots were being done. Amateur shots were going on in front of a curtain just outside the photo room. (And I never saw any model refuse someone a photo, except when posing would interfere with the artist doing the design.) In the hallway near the photo room was a shirtless man. I thought at first that he was just getting into the spirit of things - some people who show up at these events end up being impromptu models - but it turned out that he had lent his shirt to one of the models so she could cover up and pass through the public area of the hotel to get to a bathroom. Gentlemanly, not freaky.

Then as I was leaving the hotel, a man wearing shorts and an open shirt and 3 small boys wearing only trunks walked across in front of me - they were passing from the pool area to the elevators.

And as I walked to the car and drove home and even now, I was ruminating on the seemingly-arbitrary but actually culturally-enforced norms regarding nudity. And appropriateness. And where we are on the continuum between body-shy and body-proud.

The man who lent his shirt to the model was appropriately (and gallantly) exposed in the context of the competition. But if he were to walk through the lobby like that (even though male skin is less disruptive in our culture than female) it would not be long before a hotel employee discreetly came up and "assisted him from the scene". Similarly, the exposed skin of the family coming back from the pool was socially tolerable in that circumstance, but they would have trouble getting into the hotel restaurant that way. Exposed skin is about context and appropriateness - there are no absolute proscriptions, and the proscriptions vary widely between cultures. So there is no universal human nudity taboo, whatever some people may insist.

I used to play hackeysack a lot and still do when I can get some like-minded people together. (And when I can't get folks assembled I sometimes freestyle alone, though kicking one's sack by one's self isn't half as much fun...) We had a largish group going on the athletic field one warm summer afternoon; one of the guys peeled off his shirt, and the rest of the males soon followed suit. One of the women playing said, "It's not fair! - I'm hot too, and I can't take my shirt off even though I want to!" A couple of the guys said "Yeah, you should!" in automatic male lewdness. But I knew what she meant, and told her so - it wasn't fair, and it still isn't. And as much as I enjoy female breasts they were just another part of her body, and that we males should be able to strip off with impunity and she could not without attracting trouble was, objectively and practically speaking, ridiculous.

When we have shifted and expanded our definitions of when nudity is appropriate - personally, I think being clothed anytime you are in water is vaguely sinful - then I think we may have finally matured as a people. Until that occurs, I shall seek the company of those who have already set sniggering aside and know that skin is no sin.