Summary
NUDITY – Laurie Taylor explores the cultural history of nudity and its impact on ideas about the body from the early twentieth century to the present. He talks to Sarah Schrank, Professor of History at California State University, about the unusual eras and locations in which it thrived - from Depression-era collectives to 1950s suburban nudist communities—as well as the more predictable beaches and resorts. They’re joined by Barbara Górnicka, Assistant Professor in Sociology at University College, Dublin, who asks why we find exposing bodies shameful and draws on her own participation in a nudist swimming club.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:36.2 | I'm Laurie Taylor and this is a Radio 4 podcast for thinking aloud. |
| 0:41.4 | By how much would taking off all your clothes and dancing around naked in the countryside |
| 0:48.0 | improve your sense of spiritual and intellectual well-being. Find out here. Although novelists and |
| 0:57.0 | biographers have repeatedly chronicled the sexual trials and tribulations of |
| 1:01.2 | boys growing up in the 1940s, 50s and early 60s, few have captured |
| 1:06.3 | the sheer intensity with which those boys sought out images of naked women. |
| 1:12.3 | I mean they found them in the strangest places in |
| 1:15.2 | X-rated naturist films like Harrison Marx's naked as nature intended in which |
| 1:21.0 | a flock of personable young women gall about around the countryside and the seaside in the virtual altogether. |
| 1:27.5 | Lots of bottoms and breasts, but no absolutely no full-frontal. |
| 1:33.0 | And when X-ratings denied them access to such cinematreates, these determined young men |
| 1:47.6 | resorted to the relatively worthy health and efficiency magazine where the full frontal nakedness of the happy |
| 1:53.8 | romping nudists was denied by a photo-shopped layer of skin, an anatomical |
| 2:00.0 | detail that must have engendered some anatomical puzzlement in many a growing lad. |
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