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Playgirl’s Out of Style, But Naked is Still In

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Crazy Jane

Naked has been on my mind lately. Firstly, because the blustery days of winter have come, bringing with them streaking season. And secondly because Playgirl, women’s first answer to men’s pornography, has folded. I would mourn, but this supposed bastion of women’s nudie mags has always puzzled me. It was founded as a feminist response to Playboy, but it is an uncreative one. It mimics rather than invents, as if to say that women like making people into sex objects just as much as men. Nudity, re-imagined by feminists, should speak from women’s experiences and also subvert the patriarchal power structure. As we all know, Naked happens in more than just porn. Naked reveals itself in mainstream popular culture, dance, and daily life. So, you ask, how does one tell when naked bodies are progressive, versus when they perpetuate degrading and exploitative norms? Like telling “good” cholesterol from “bad” cholesterol, it’s a subtle but potentially life-changing distinction.

I bought my first, and only, issue of Playgirl to celebrate my 18th birthday. It was disappointing — not only because they didn’t card me, but because it just was not that hot. By the time I bought it, of course, it had veered considerably from its feminist origins. In early years, it included content by the likes of Raymond Carver and addressed abortion rights. Over the years, it became increasingly more popular with gay men than with women — raising a chicken-and-egg question of whether content or readership changed first. My issue, circa 2005, featured over-tanned, pumped up men lounging on sand dunes and duvets. It probably seemed strange to me partially because images of men in such passive poses are rare. I would also like to think that I required more to turn me on than a superficial incarnation of a Ken doll. The men in Playgirl were not offering me anything human. They were static, two-dimensional. That’s the bad kind of Naked.

Two good representatives of Naked in pop culture are Britney Spears and Pink. Both appear unclothed in their recent videos — Spears in the one for “Womanizer,” and Pink in the one for “So What.” But Spears’ nudity, like most of the video, runs contrary to her supposedly anti-sexism anthem. She perches delicately on a bench, using her legs and arms to cover herself. If her facial expression is seductive, her body language is meek. This is a stark contrast to the attack-dog maliciousness of her other personas within the video. The best explanation for the nude scenes is that they are supposed to boost her back into the pop icon limelight. She had babies, she shaved her head; so now we must be reminded she is still youthful and traditionally feminine. And that means motionless, powerless, vulnerably naked instead of powerfully naked. Bad Naked.

Pink’s nudity, however, is anything but those things. In her video, she dances around on a red carpet in front of cameras, flaunting her body with the abandon of a teenager mooning from a car window. Clearly, she is going for something other than come-hither sexiness. It is telling that she does this in front of press cameras. Rather than living up to the naked body that they want, she defies them. She is not the feminine ideal: her breasts are on the small side, her hair is short, and her screaming chorus is all but sweet and empathic. But rather than hide or change anything, she embraces it. Her belligerent dancing challenges a media that reduces women to bodies and then tells us exactly what that body better look like. And that looks great naked.

Nudity as confrontation, rather than sex appeal, is often used in performance art and modern dance. My first encounter with this was a one-man performance piece in Buenos Aires called “The Wolf.” It consisted of a naked man in a bathroom leaping, rolling, and contorting, in the throws of heartbreak. And man, were his flopping genitals distracting. But they also made the piece interesting by challenging cultural norms of “decency,” and making the audience re-examine its own reaction to nudity. That nakedness certainly spoke a hell of a lot more than Playgirl had three years before. A dance performance at the Schwartz center earlier this year used similar ideas — which according to The Sun, caused most of the audience to walk out. Such nakedness — whether it suits your tastes or not — is valuable because it challenges the norm.

Some might protest that so far, my examples of positive nudity are not exactly sexy. I would first point out that nudity does not always mean sex, and sex does not always mean nudity. This is easy to forget. Perhaps our forgetfulness comes from the fact that sex is presented to us so often as bodies — usually female ones — instead of as human interaction. The very notion that “sex sells,” applied to everything from watches to detergent implies that sex can be transmitted via a picture of a woman in lingerie, or a comparable lonely image. Sex, as a human rather than animal act, is multi-dimensional in a way that Playgirl, Playboy, and advertisers, cannot reproduce. It is far more than an unclothed body.

There are some instances in which nudity and real sex are still presented together. Some feature films, especially those directed by women, show realistic sex. Such scenes progress more slowly and less smoothly, and the woman tends not to have screaming, flailing orgasms of the “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion” kind. I have heard that a new brand of porn, labeled feminist porn, gets closer to real sex. I cannot confirm this, due to my incompetence at surfing the web for porn (I know, I know, you would’ve pegged me for a pro), but the reports are inspiring.

In the examples above, as well as in everyday life, it’s not just being naked that counts: it’s about how you’re naked. How we view nakedness in others, whether they are porn stars, pop stars, or dancers, informs how we view our own nakedness. Women tend to be more critical of their bodies, and less comfortable being naked, largely because of the emphasis put on the ideal female body in the media. Most women just do not see bodies like theirs represented as sexy, except for one or two Dove ad-type exceptions. And plenty of men have doubts about their bodies, too, although it tends to be less damaging because their self-image is tied less tightly to the physical. All this means that it can be a struggle to just be comfortable in our skin, whether alone or around others. So, Playgirl’s folding is not a tragedy. Women can do better than mirror a shabby male-created version of Naked. Naked exists in many more forms than a glossy centerfold — just ask a streaker.

Jane P. Riccobono is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at jriccobono@cornellsun.com. Crazy Jane appears alternate Wednesdays.

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