Nudity

Summary

Articles of Interest: Episode Summary – "Nudity"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Articles of Interest
• Host: Avery Trufelman
• Episode Title: Nudity
• Release Date: March 20, 2024
• Description: Articles of Interest explores facets of what we wear, delving into the cultural, historical, and social implications of clothing and nudity.

---

Introduction: The Unexpected Naked Comedy Show

00:00 – 02:25

Avery Trufelman opens the episode with an anecdote about attending a naked comedy show alongside producer Will Coley. Initially presenting the show as a straightforward exploration of nudity, Avery playfully reveals their discomfort with the experience.

Avery:
"This was the most uncomfortable experience I've ever had. I've never been so excited to put my clothes back on."
(00:49)

Will Coley:
"I did not trick you. I maintained that I did not trick producer Will Coley into getting naked at this clothing optional comedy show, but I definitely bullied him."
(00:51)

Personal Experiences with Nudity

02:25 – 09:08

Avery and Will discuss their feelings of unease despite both being generally comfortable with nudity. They explore how context and social norms influence their discomfort during the comedy show compared to other settings like yoga classes.

Will Coley:
"I feel like my whole body is blushing."
(02:40)

Avery:
"I felt my personal space rapidly expand. I did not want my knee to brush against Will's knee."
(03:05)

Sociological Perspectives: Understanding Nudity and Social Norms

09:08 – 17:39

The conversation delves into the sociological aspects of nudity, featuring insights from sociologist Barbara Grnica. They discuss Norbert Elias's theory of the civilizing process, which explains how societies develop intricate social norms around clothing and behavior.

Barbara Grnica:
"A culture without clothes is still a culture. One that has its own silently agreed upon codes of conduct."
(10:44)

Will Coley:
"Norbert Elias coined the idea of first nature, the animalistic part of being a mammal, and second nature, the socially regulated behavior."
(14:23)

Historical Context: Nudity in Colonialism and Culture

17:39 – 45:51

Philippa Levine, a retired professor, discusses how European colonialism imposed strict clothing norms on indigenous populations, using clothing as a marker of civilization. This section highlights the racial and cultural implications of clothing norms.

Philippa Levine:
"When the British arrive in New Zealand, the Maori would not have seen themselves as naked in the way that the Europeans define it."
(40:47)

Avery:
"In many colonial situations, the distinction of race was created and used to decide who's native and who's civilized."
(38:53)

Contemporary Implications: Nudity in Modern Society

45:51 – 50:14

Dr. Ian Gilligan offers a critique of modern nudist colonies, arguing that while societies may appear unclothed, psychological barriers persist. He emphasizes that societal norms around touch and personal space remain ingrained, even in ostensibly naked communities.

Dr. Ian Gilligan:
"Nudist colonies are an absolute failure because we are still clothed in the mind."
(47:20)

Avery:
"If we really, really shed everything we've learned, we would interact with each other totally differently when we're naked."
(48:37)

Insights and Conclusions: The Complex Relationship with Clothing

50:14 – 51:36

Avery and Will reflect on their exploration of nudity, acknowledging that deep-seated cultural norms and psychological conditioning make shedding physical clothes insufficient for genuine liberation from societal constraints.

Dr. Ian Gilligan:
"We are attached to material rather than to the naked skin of others. That's why I think we love material things."
(49:43)

Avery:
"I wish that I could get away from all and shed my hangups and shed my cultural baggage by simply shedding my clothes."
(46:53)

Will Coley:
"It's probably just because we were doing this for you, dear listener, instead of ourselves."
(50:35)

Conclusion: Clothing as a Cultural Construct

Avery concludes the episode by acknowledging the multifaceted role clothing plays in our lives, from practical functions like warmth to complex social signals about identity and propriety. The exploration reveals that while clothing norms are deeply entrenched, questioning and understanding them can lead to a deeper awareness of our cultural and psychological landscapes.

Avery:
"We are living through a pretty rocky present. Maybe the past can help."
(06:17)

---

Notable Quotes:

• Avery (00:49): "This was the most uncomfortable experience I've ever had. I've never been so excited to put my clothes back on."
• Will (02:40): "I feel like my whole body is blushing."
• Barbara Grnica (10:44): "A culture without clothes is still a culture. One that has its own silently agreed upon codes of conduct."
• Dr. Ian Gilligan (47:20): "Nudist colonies are an absolute failure because we are still clothed in the mind."
• Philippa Levine (40:47): "When the British arrive in New Zealand, the Maori would not have seen themselves as naked in the way that the Europeans define it."

---

Further Engagement: Listeners are encouraged to explore more stories and articles on the Articles of Interest website and subscribe for exclusive newsletter content. Stay tuned for the upcoming episodes in Avery's book series!

---

This summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the "Nudity" episode of Articles of Interest, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened.

Transcript

[Avery]

Hey, it's Avery. So someone reached out to me, and they're like, I'm so sorry. The show is over. The show is not over. I just. Okay. I was trying to be coy about it, but I'm on book leave. I'm writing a book, so I'm not gonna make a lot of episodes this year. These things take forever to make. But I am gonna make three this year. The first one is happening now, so this is a little triptych. Enjoy. Will. Will, we have to go. Oh, my God. That was. That was the most uncomfortable experience I've ever had. I've never been so excited to put my clothes back on. This is a story about nudity. Okay, wait, wait. So what did we just do? What just happened? Just to. To recap, we just went to a.

[Will Coley]

Naked comedy show, and you tricked me into getting naked.

[Avery]

I did not trick you. I maintained that I did not trick producer Will Coley into getting naked at this clothing optional comedy show, but I definitely bullied him.

[Will Coley]

This is the news section.

[Avery]

Yeah. I thought this was optional, but it means we're doing it.

[Will Coley]

I didn't know that this was gonna happen. When I pitched this idea to you.

[Avery]

Will had pitched me this story about why we wear clothes at all. And so I was like, oh, let's go method. Let's see what it's like to do a fairly normal thing just without clothes on. And at this naked comedy event, all the comedians are naked. Nightmare. And all the audience members sitting in the first two rows have the option to be naked. Why do naked comedy? We tried doing it clothed and charging less, and y' all didn't show up. That was the organizer, Billy. We charged more and took our clothes off, and we have two sold out shows tonight. It's an expensive ticket. It's true. People were lining up around the block to pay $45 to go to this thing. Okay. And even though I talked a big game to Will when it was actually time to take off my underwear in this crowded, mostly clothed room, I kept chickening out. Okay, okay, okay. I'm so scared. It's, like, so scary. I'm like, I'm going to take it off now. Dear listener, I did not.

[Will Coley]

Are you waiting on me or what are you waiting on?

[Avery]

I'm scared.

[Will Coley]

Oh, see, I thought you were getting.

[Avery]

No, no, I'm scared. Yeah. Let me reiterate that no one was forcing me to do this. I was imposing this on myself and on Will. And when we finally summoned the courage to get naked, it was, like, not a Liberating experience. When does the show start?

[Will Coley]

I know. It feels like forever. Why didn't we bring drinks? Michelle?

[Avery]

I didn't. I really needed. This is like a bad dream. I'm living in, like, a circle of hell. Love seeing some nudity in the first two rows. Give it up for them, huh?

[Will Coley]

My whole body is. Washington goes. Off with the hand.

[Avery]

Feet. Okay, it's hard to hear that, but Will hit the nail on the head. He said, I feel like my whole body is blushing. Which is exactly how I felt. Like I felt warm all over. I feel physically ill. No, no, don't touch me. I felt my personal space rapidly expand. Like I did not want my knee to brush against Will's knee. In fact, as soon as we both got naked, we, like, shimmied away from each other and only stared straight ahead.

[Will Coley]

I know, that was really funny because we were like. We were sitting there, like, right next to each other, like, talking to each other. And as soon as we took our clothes off, we were just like, straight ahead. It was just so uncomfortable.

[Avery]

Okay, so may I just say, this is not my first rodeo. Like, I've been in naked situations. I even worked as a figure model in college. Like, I've been naked in front of strangers before. Nudity is not new to me, and it's not new for Will.

[Will Coley]

I've been in nude situations, you know, socially nude, whatever. Yeah.

[Avery]

So can you tell me a little bit about how this began for you?

[Will Coley]

Well, friends of ours, we're hosting, like, a weekly yoga class mainly for gay, well, gay men naked. And then it's like a group of friends, they've gotten to know each other. You know, it's non sexual, so it's kind of not quite a Bible study, but it's sort of. It's sort of like a thing to see people, you know, so.

[Avery]

But it must matter that it's naked. Like, you could do anything with a group of friends. Does it make you feel more bonded or something? Welcome, everybody. If you will just take a comfortable seat. I view it just as community building, honestly, a community of mostly gay men who wish to have some social time together when they can be in the nude.

[Will Coley]

I have a clip from one of the teachers who says that he sees a level of connection that doesn't happen in other classes.

[Avery]

Lift up through the top of your head. There's something about the clothes being gone that also sheds a whole bunch of.

[Will Coley]

Other mental, emotional walls.

[Avery]

Guys who really started out as shyer.

[Will Coley]

Or more nervous once the clothes came off. And we just did A class. And they realize that they were not.

[Avery]

The only person sweating and huffing and puffing. And we're just kind of all humans.

[Will Coley]

In this together doing this wacky, weird thing. They really just blossom, you know, it's also a social thing, too. Like, people bring food and afterwards. Yeah. And talk.

[Avery]

I mean, I have to ask, because the only time that I see people naked in life, like, walking around is in the Castro. Like, why is this a gay thing?

[Will Coley]

You know, it's funny. I was thinking about that. I don't know. It's something about self acceptance, I think, because it's like you're willing to be that vulnerable or uncomfortable in front of other guys who have had that similar experience kind of thing. I don't know.

[Avery]

And I also do think it's important context for the naked comedy show and why we felt uncomfortable. Because you're not like, oh, my God, naked people. Like, you spend time around naked people.

[Will Coley]

Yeah. I guess in some ways I thought I wouldn't be weirded out by it, but I was, in a way. I don't know why it was this. I'm still still not sure why that was.

[Avery]

We're not prudes. I don't know why. Clearly there was something else happening. The discomfort is not just about clothes or lack of clothes. And that's the thing that we should say is, like, I thought the comedy was quite good. It was like a good night of comedy.

[Will Coley]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Avery]

If I wasn't so uncomfortable.

[Will Coley]

Yeah, no, it's true.

[Avery]

So we made a whole show about it to get to the root of why we wear clothes at all and what makes us so frightened to take them off. We're living through a pretty rocky present. Maybe the past can help. Check out Radiotopia's this Day, hosted by Jodi Avergan with historians Nicole Hemmer and Kelly Carter Jackson. Three times a week, they take you into one story from that day in U.S. history. From Eisenhower's weird vendetta against squirrels to the time we accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on North Carolina, to the women who fought against the right to vote. It's smart, surprising, and actually fun. This is a big moment for history. Next year is America's 250th birthday, and, well, look around. There's lots of history being made. Subscribe to this day for your historical perspective, wherever you get your podcasts, as well as YouTube and Instagram. Growing out my hair, which I've been doing since the pandemic, has felt like a long journey. In fact, my buddy Vivian Le once teased me That I started growing out my hair because I don't have a pet. And it's true, sometimes my hair does feel like my pet. What can I say? I love to spoil her. The way that I'm going to treat her this summer is by using Nutrafol. It's the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand trust trusted by over one and a half million people. Anything truly worthwhile takes time and effort. And with Nutrafol, see thicker, stronger, faster growing hair and less shedding in just three to six months. We all dream of a pet who doesn't shed. While many supplements rely solely on ingredient studies, Nutrafol clinically tests final formulations to ensure their efficacy. In a clinical study, 90% of women saw overall improvement in their hair after taking Nutrafol Women's hair growth supplement for six months. And. And it's not just for women. Everybody can enjoy Nutrafol for a limited time. Nutrafol is offering listeners of articles of interest $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. When you go to nutrafol.com and enter the promo code articles spelled N U T R a f o l.com promo code articles. That's nutrafol.com promo code article articles of interest is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. So why were Will Coley and I, two people who are more or less comfortable with nudity, suddenly so shy?

[Will Coley]

Well, I. You know what? I even said it that night. I think it was something about the. We didn't really understand the rules. I mean, they kind of told us.

[Avery]

I just have a few general ground.

[Barbara Grnica]

Rules for the night.

[Avery]

Relistening to the tape. They do say the rules. And the rules are, first of all, absolutely no phones. No phones.

[Will Coley]

Photographs.

[Avery]

Yeah. No phones, no heckling.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

Try not to heckle the comedians.

[Avery]

And don't spill your drinks because then I have to glean that later. Be mindful of your drinks.

[Will Coley]

Oh, okay.

[Avery]

But there were no codes of conduct stated for us, the audience, about how to interact with each other, which I suddenly badly needed. Like, I didn't know how to comport myself or how to interpret anybody else's actions because what was appropriate and what wasn't was suddenly totally different. Without clothes on.

[Will Coley]

You know, like there was those guys, those single guys who Came in and sat down with their beer.

[Avery]

Multiple men made comments to me that probably wouldn't have offended me if I were wearing clothes. They would have been relatively innocuous, but. But without clothes on, suddenly it felt like invasive. Same with another couple's pda.

[Will Coley]

The couple in front of us started getting all touchy feely kind of thing. And then there was that guy that came in late who like made this whole production of taking his clothes off, you know, like so made sure we all witnessed and it was this kind of just not antisocial but just this kind of being weird.

[Avery]

When the clothes came off. It felt like the social contract was shattered or maybe that a different social contract was being made. It was a new clothes list society, which I think still needs rules, even if they like to insist that they don't have a lot of rules, even.

[Barbara Grnica]

Though they say there's no rules because they're supposed to be so easy peasy about everything. Because this is all natural. I found many rules. My name is Barbara Grnica, or Gronica as they call me here. I'm a sociologist in University College Dublin.

[Will Coley]

Barbara was also talking about like she had this experience about wanting to explore nudity and what it meant.

[Barbara Grnica]

I was a young sociologist who wanted to go out there and do proper field work like. Like it used to be done immersive all in. And boy did I immerse.

[Will Coley]

She joined a nude swimming club which was co ed. They had like lots of rules, like no single men could come and all this kind of stuff.

[Avery]

And then she talked about going to that party where everyone had their own personal towel.

[Barbara Grnica]

If you're visiting somebody else's house, you don't want to put your bum on somebody else's sofa. It was actually interesting dance because even when you were getting up people would like, without forgetting, they would just immediately grab their towel and move away. So it became quite. It was like a habit that they did. I didn't question that it's something you do that clearly they had to learn.

[Avery]

A culture without clothes is still a culture. One that has its own silently agreed upon codes of conduct.

[Barbara Grnica]

And that's what Elias called habitus, which is that innate part of our behaviors and that we do not question.

[Will Coley]

She was talking about Norbert Elias. I guess he came up with the first nature, right?

[Barbara Grnica]

So Norbert Elias was a Jewish German sociologist who actually just by chance happened to hail from the same part of Poland where I am from, which was German at the time.

[Avery]

Norbert Elias had to flee from Nazi Germany to the UK and So he became fascinated by the little changes that occur from one culture to another.

[Barbara Grnica]

He looked at importance of microsociology instead of looking just as kind of large processes, our laws, our governments and market and stuff like that. He said, okay, what about interactions between human beings? What is impacting how we behave?

[Avery]

Elias spent a lot of time studying manners, customs, little forms of interaction.

[Barbara Grnica]

He looked at the most mundane and everyday things about our human social lives, whether it's using fork or. Or the setup of our houses. And he used those to actually create this massive, complex theory to help us understand how we developed.

[Avery]

Developed, not necessarily improved.

[Barbara Grnica]

He uses the word social development. He never uses social evolution.

[Avery]

And Elias called this development process how a group of people learns to interact with each other, the civilizing process, which is a terrible name for what Elias was trying to describe.

[Barbara Grnica]

There's a lot of misunderstanding surrounding civilizing process, civilization, civilizing someone. It already comes with this very negative connotation of we are superior to someone and we are going to teach you our ways. Or it's about progress. Elias never meant it that way because.

[Will Coley]

He'S not really saying civilizing like in this sort of like Eurocentric civilization thing, but civilizing in the sense of almost like socializing into human society. Like it's like this process of turning a child into a member of. Of the human community.

[Avery]

Yeah, it's like creating a culture like that. Even the idea that the nudists carry a little towel with them is part of the civilizing culture for them.

[Barbara Grnica]

Yeah, there's no one civilizing process. That's another thing. Okay, so he says that each society has its own civilizing process. He focused on the Western Europe because that's all he had access to.

[Avery]

And so Elias coined the idea of.

[Will Coley]

First nature, the first nature being like your animalistic part of being a mammal. All the urges and bodily processes that come from being an animal.

[Avery]

In Elias's observation, Western Europe saw the body as something that must be tamed, something that is first nature and therefore embarrassing. And so one must cultivate second nature.

[Barbara Grnica]

He said first nature is, let's say, it's an animal. You're born, you have your first nature, but it doesn't last because the minute you are born, you're socialized into your society. You socialize by your family, what's okay, what's not okay. It starts very simple, and then it gets more complex as you grow up. So you almost immediately turn into. Go into the second nature. You are trained on the psychic level by your parents, who do not always realize that this is just about the use of fork and knife. This is about bodily proximity. You know, there. It's not okay to take your pants off and, you know, touch your willy in public in the middle of a class. It's. No, no, no.

[Avery]

And this is the fascinating part to me, social behavior gets so ingrained that the body can learn how to regulate itself in society.

[Barbara Grnica]

It became innate. Blushing is a clear example of how something that we consider very physiological and biological is actually very much connected to our social rules.

[Avery]

Because Barbara talks about how shame is a physical reaction. You know, you blush, as you said, you felt like your whole body was blushing, but you blush. But it's from learned behavior. You know what I mean? You get a physical reaction to social rules.

[Barbara Grnica]

We blush when we transgress the social rules. I blushed when someone. Someone catches me on a lie or, I don't know, somebody pays me a compliment or something like that. This is sounding like therapy now.

[Avery]

But anyway, almost every single person I talked to brought up Adam and Eve.

[Barbara Grnica]

Yeah, we're talking about Adam and Eve.

[Avery]

Yes. This story tells us that shame happened, and so they put on leaves. But really, you know, look at evolution. It was the other way around. Like, clothes invented shame. Shame didn't invent clothes. And it's this idea that shame is a social regulator, you know, that we. We are almost internally monitored now by what is considered correct and. And what isn't. And then the galaxy brain moment is that once you get so well behaved, so proper, so accustomed to your second nature, that your body can blush when you make a faux pas. This phenomenon happens where you are then permitted to actually transgress back to first nature.

[Barbara Grnica]

After such a long process of informalization, our societies, the Western societies, start to be more permissive because we could allow it.

[Will Coley]

Now, this idea that you're able to be in situations where first nature would take over, but it doesn't. And, you know, like, if we were animals, you know how like dogs, they just. They want to eat everything that they can. Like, we're able to control that. Because you're civilized enough and can control yourself.

[Barbara Grnica]

It's a bit like drinking alcohol in public. We go, well, we, the Irish, we go to a pub. And everybody really knows their limits. But you will always push it. Like, if I have another one, I'll get very messy. I might throw up. And that's going to be transgression. But you still, you play with the idea of it, and it's fun. Why we do sports, we enjoy them because it's a form of release. That we used to have from violence without actually transgressing.

[Will Coley]

So it's sort of like we're able to control that. And what was the other one she talked about?

[Avery]

Dating strip clubs?

[Will Coley]

Yeah.

[Barbara Grnica]

Kind of the way we look at striptease and the whole titillation because they get to almost break certain norms.

[Will Coley]

Yeah. Like, you're right up against it, but you're able to control yourself in a way.

[Avery]

It's interesting, though, especially when you think of the example of a strip club is, like, how much does our animal nature need to be regulated? You know, do we need to have laws that say, don't take your clothes off? I interviewed this burlesque performer named Fancy Feast. My name is Fancy Feast.

[Fancy Feast]

I'm gonna catch my breath for a moment.

[Avery]

And she was telling me about how she has to change her routine in different states.

[Fancy Feast]

In New York, we have a pretty open ability to be fairly nude on stage, though oftentimes, like at bars, you can't be fully topless or fully bottomless if there's alcohol being sold.

[Avery]

I mean, if you remember that the comedy club was byob, because there are all these rules about, like, oh, can. Can we trust people to mix?

[Will Coley]

Well, strip clubs in New York, you can't have alcohol. Or is it California? There's some states where you can't have alcohol in a strip club, But a.

[Fancy Feast]

Lot of places that have alcohol licenses also have statutes for what you can and can't show.

[Avery]

You know, burlesque laws didn't allow drinking with topless dancing because they just were like, people won't be able to control themselves.

[Fancy Feast]

And so there would be police raids of burlesque houses and strip clubs in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and performers were required to wear something that would clearly indicate that it wasn't nipples.

[Avery]

That's where the pasty came from.

[Fancy Feast]

So then performers started creating pasties made of the same material as their costumes. Because it's like, if we have to do this, then we may as well feature it and flatter it with faceted rhinestones or with tassels that twirl.

[Avery]

And it now calls more attention to the breasts than ever before.

[Fancy Feast]

What I really appreciate is the way that strippers of yore have harnessed this thing that was enforced on them that was a symbol of shame or policing or surveillance and turned it into something that itself was salacious.

[Avery]

But avoiding nudity laws can sometimes go way beyond pasties. Like, regulations can change from state to state and county to county. And as Fancy Feast has found out, these laws can sometimes more or Less design your outfit for you.

[Fancy Feast]

Yes. So I performed in Tennessee, and Tennessee has rules that that whole under boob area has to be covered, as well as an inch and a half on either side of your butt crack and then an inch and a half underneath. Like on top of the cleft of the buttock.

[Avery]

What?

[Fancy Feast]

You can't see any folds of the body.

[Avery]

Fancy was telling me if she performs in Tennessee and her pasty falls off, she gets fined, like, a thousand dollars.

[Fancy Feast]

And so it's. The onus is on this tiny piece of fabric to hold the weight of all of this cultural expectation.

[Avery]

Oh. And then the interesting thing was when I met up with Fancy later, I'd just seen her multiple times on stage, and then we were alone, and she taught me how to make pasties, and she was, like, putting them on under her shirt, like, suddenly so shy. May I just ask? Yes. Why did you bashfully put it on under a shirt?

[Fancy Feast]

Ah, I don't know. You go to the. The tit show and then tits are out, and that's fine.

[Avery]

Right.

[Fancy Feast]

But we're just chilling in my living room having tea, so I think I'm being a little more coy about it.

[Avery]

It's so interesting, and it made me think of you. I was like, what is this? What makes it totally okay in some contexts and then totally weird in others?

[Will Coley]

I don't know. It's the sort of thing. Cause I was trying to make the connection to when we went to the comedy night, you know, like, I appreciated the fact that the audience could be naked, but I think the fact that there wasn't a requirement that everyone be naked, that kind of made it just, like, voyeuristic or just, I don't know, odd to me, which, in a funny way, is like, how Alan. Alan Rakins. How do you say Rakin Rackins?

[Alan Rachins]

My name's Alan Rachins. I'm an actor.

[Will Coley]

He was in LA Law. Did you know that?

[Avery]

Oh, no, I didn't.

[Will Coley]

Yeah, he was like one of the lawyers in LA Law.

[Alan Rachins]

But today we're talking about Ocalcutta. That one thing.

[Avery]

What is O? Calcutta?

[Alan Rachins]

The opening song has a nice dark feeling to it, but it's a quiet. Oh, Calcutta.

[Will Coley]

I always thought it was a weird title. It's supposed to be a play on a French word saying, you have a nice ass.

[Avery]

Really?

[Will Coley]

Yeah. Because that whole Broadway show is predicated on the idea that the performers are naked and the audience is clothed.

[Alan Rachins]

We were all about, Ooh, the nudity.

[Will Coley]

That was what I was interested in hearing from him because you're putting yourself on display.

[Alan Rachins]

This was just like the first kind of thing we can put something nude and sexual on the stage.

[Will Coley]

It was like one of these plays from back in the 70s where people were completely naked on stage.

[Avery]

One of.

[Will Coley]

Yeah, because there was hair, but there was. Apparently that was like one scene. But this show was. People were naked throughout the entire thing.

[Alan Rachins]

I hear all the guys in this show are gay.

[Philippa Levine]

I better take off ten pounds before.

[Avery]

I take off my clothes. I hear the opening of the show is all the guys stand in a line and come into the audience.

[Will Coley]

It's a lot of crap just to see everybody take their clothes off.

[Alan Rachins]

You know, as. As one of the women in the cast said, you know, Alan, you're not the most likely person for doing something like this. Because I'm from Boston, I'm kind of on the conservative side. It was uncomfortable for me.

[Avery]

But the thing that really stood out was we asked him, would it have been easier if the audience was naked? And he was like, no, not at all.

[Alan Rachins]

Oh, that would have been such a breach.

[Avery]

It wouldn't have felt like solidarity. It wouldn't have made you more comfortable if everyone was, are you kidding?

[Will Coley]

He talked about how the cast had really spent a lot of time getting to know each other.

[Alan Rachins]

And this whole process, exercises, group exercises. How do you free people and create a group so that they are bonded?

[Avery]

The cast of Ocalcutta, over the weeks and weeks of rehearsal, basically went through their own civilizing process. They built up their own distinct culture of nudity.

[Alan Rachins]

I mean, first we started with the clothes like normal people, and then we worked toward putting these robes on. And so that was a lot of.

[Avery]

The rehearsal just being silly and horsing.

[Alan Rachins]

Around with robes on, making bizarre sounds or anything you want to, moving any way you want to. And the idea is just to free you up so that you're not embarrassed. And then there was the big day where 1, 2, 3, and like, they. In college, they throw their hats in the air. Well, we took the robes off and threw them in the air, and there we were finally.

[Will Coley]

So they had kind of bonded as a group. So there was this familiarity that they were doing this and didn't matter what the people out there were thinking kind of thing.

[Alan Rachins]

I mean, the first night or maybe two, the police were in the back of the theater. Because if there was any kind of genital to genital touching, they were going to shut us down.

[Avery]

But they didn't shut them down. And Alan was in the show for a year and a Half.

[Alan Rachins]

There was a lot of good things about it, but there was a certain discomfort level about it as well. Both things can exist simultaneously, you know, but there is that fact that you're going to work, you're taking your clothes off, it's the everyday thing. And you didn't get the best reviews for this whole production. And you're naked, you're vulnerable, you're with these people a long time, but you don't necessarily have a satisfying, intimate, personal relationship with them. You have a professional relationship with them. And it's not like you're best friends. So there's a certain block of not being able to express yourself fully as you do in some other arenas.

[Avery]

You remember Alan was talking about this, about how there was that like, wall even in this tight knit group that they like couldn't really get that close because they had no clothes on.

[Will Coley]

Yeah.

[Alan Rachins]

You can only go so far. There's also a certain amount of loneliness for me.

[Avery]

And so you think if you were all wearing clothes you'd be able to.

[Alan Rachins]

It would be different, but I have no idea how it would be different because you wouldn't have had that deep bond if that wasn't the case, you know?

[Avery]

No. That's really interesting though, because you also, you know, when everyone's not wearing clothes, you can't interact in the same way. Like, it's harder to actually just touch each other. Like I can, I feel more free to touch you because we're both wearing clothes. Right. And do you think that's also part of the distance?

[Alan Rachins]

I do, I do. There's a different kind of. Yes.

[Avery]

Like, do people hug? Like, do people touch, like at yoga and stuff?

[Will Coley]

Yeah, people hug it. Yeah. But it's also kind of like that hug, which is like, you know, shoulders, you know, where you kind of like bend like that, you know, like that's.

[Avery]

A very particular kind of naked hug.

[Will Coley]

And maybe that's what it is too, because the yoga classes and things like that, there's like a, a familiarity and you get to know people in a way. But when we went to the comedy night, we just had no connection to anybody there.

[Avery]

Although. But then that doesn't explain why spas feel okay.

[Will Coley]

Yeah, that's true. And I was not like a nudie. It was funny because I talked to this friend of mine, Monona, who's Taiwanese American, and she didn't grow up going to spas, but she went to one of the Korean spas in la and then here in New York. That was my first experience of seeing a lot of naked Asian women, which I realized was, like, the first time in my life I'd ever seen naked women who looked like my family members at all different ages. And I would recognize, like, oh, there's my tummy, or that's my mom's tummy, or that's what my grandmother looked like when she was naked.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

Oh, my God.

[Will Coley]

And my mind was really blown. But it also was really sort of comforting imagining all my foremothers being the ones in the pools that were naked, and they were totally unselfconscious. But you hadn't grown up going to, like, spas or anything like that? No, never.

[Avery]

Never.

[Will Coley]

So how did you know what to do when you got there? Did people tell you what the rules were you just kind of observed or what? Yeah, it's not complicated to figure out, because I was, like, asking them questions about rules, like, how do you know where you're supposed to be naked and where you're not? And they're like, well, we just kind of know, you know, and you could observe what people were doing, but you had this sense of where you were supposed to be. You know, like, the only thing they said where the rules were, where you were supposed to Supposed to be naked, you had to be naked kind of thing.

[Avery]

But it's interesting because I feel like it goes back to the idea of the civilizing process. You know, like, there's the culture, there's spa culture, and people are, like, learning how to be in the spa. And then even with o Calcutta, they developed a cast culture. You know, they. They figured out their rules together.

[Will Coley]

Yeah.

[Avery]

And perhaps the comedy night was just too brief for us to, like, understand how to be.

[Will Coley]

I don't know. I mean, it was disappointing that we were so weirded out by it.

[Avery]

So why were we so weirded out by it? Like, how did Will and I, in our civilizations get so accustomed to wearing clothes that we developed all of these hang ups?

[Will Coley]

I mean, that's been a little bit of my worry about this whole project is sort of like, some people be like, duh, yeah, you wear clothes to stay warm. And then, of course, we're going to feel embarrassed when we take our clothes kind of thing.

[Avery]

I mean, it's true, and it's not true. Yeah, you're right. The answer is, like, for warmth. But that's just the beginning of it. Can you explain, like, how do clothes work?

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

That's something we take for granted, Avery, is that clothes keep us warm. But the key to clothing is not the material itself.

[Avery]

So I talked to this Australian author Dr. Ian Gilligan, who wrote this book about clothing and keeping warm.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

That book is published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. It's entitled Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory.

[Avery]

So the way clothes work is that they trap body heat.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

The material traps air close to the surface of the skin, and what it does is slow down the loss of heat from the body surface. When we're naked, the body heat is just lost from the skin surface.

[Avery]

So the interesting thing to really think about is a question of, like, well, we need it to keep warm. But then it's like, well, why do we need to keep warm? Like, why don't we have fur? Yeah.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

So in that sense, whether or not we wear clothes, Avery, we are biologically naked. We're one of the few mammalian species that have lost our fur cover.

[Avery]

As far as mammals go, there's like, okay, elephants don't have fur, but they're huge. You know, they have enough body mass to.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

We are very poorly adapted to cold environments, even as a mammal, because shivering is a desperate attempt to generate more body heat, literally by movement. Whereas animals that are. Species that are better adapted to the cold don't shiver. It's a sign of failure.

[Avery]

And the question is, why don't we have hair?

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

There's various theories as to why.

[Avery]

One of them is because we're bipedal. Our backs don't face the sun, and so we don't need as much protection from it, and we have only retained hair.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

Where the sun hits, we're standing upright, which is why we still have head hair. So that's why we have head hair, even though we are generally denuded or naked.

[Avery]

But my favorite answer, and Dr. Gilligan's favorite answer also, is that we are basically babies. We have developed, over time something called neoteny, where we have extended our lives. Like, we live longer by slowing our.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

Own growth, by slowing down brain development. Our period where we're most open to learning is extended.

[Avery]

And part of that is so we live longer. But also part of that is because we keep learning. Like, our brain stays plastic for longer.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

So we're able to actually become more social because our brains remain more childlike. We're more able to learn as the brain ages.

[Avery]

And if you look at the way we actually look like ba. If you look at a baby monkey, we look like baby monkeys.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

So hominins tend to retain more childlike features, even as adults.

[Avery]

We have, like, bigger eyes. We've basically, like, baby eyes ourselves.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

We are biologically childlike. And one of those childlike features is less body hair. So, yes, I think there's some truth in that.

[Avery]

So there are all these interesting reasons for, like, why we don't have fur. And then it leads to the question of why we started making clothes. It's hard to trace when people started wearing clothes because most of it obviously disintegrates and we don't have it. But the way they found how old clothing is is by looking at lice. When head lice branched off into body lice.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

That gives us a figure that split genetic split of clothing lice from head lice for when clothing was first used on a regular basis.

[Avery]

Modern clothing license are around 80,000 years old. So you could say that's how long clothing has been worn on a frequent daily basis. But Dr. Gilligan thinks that clothing was worn infrequently for even longer.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

It may well be the case, as I think it was, that over hundreds of thousands of years and going back more than a million years, different hominin species probably did adopt clothing at different times, but it never got to the point where clothing became a social necessity.

[Avery]

Before, clothes were worn every day for reasons of shame or modesty or fashion, clothing was just a tool. You know, like, we don't have fur and we needed it.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

There are periods where our ancestors did not need to wear clothing, but depending upon what part of the world they were living in, or even what part of Africa, they would have needed clothes at some time.

[Avery]

And arguably, Dr. Gilligan says, I mean, this is what helped us beat out the Neanderthals, was that we could conquer the world and go to colder climates, especially once we developed, like a needle and thread.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

That's what's allowed Homo sapiens to remain in Eurasia during the coldest part of the last age, around 20,000 years ago. That's where we have become, not biologically, but technologically adapted to living in colder environments.

[Avery]

So Dr. Gilligan has this thesis, it's not like widely spread, but it's his thesis, and I kind of buy it, that clothing created agriculture, if agriculture was.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

A good idea, as a way of getting food. And I don't think compared to hunting and gathering, it was a good idea in the early stages. But if it was, it should have started in many parts of the world much earlier than it did. But it didn't.

[Avery]

Like, when you think about it, hunting and gathering was a really efficient lifestyle for what you needed. And if you did it well, it meant you only did it for like a few hours a day, rather than which is so laborious. Like, why would you need that?

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

That agriculture isn't just about food. We tend to define it as food production, but it's not just about food. The other major resource produced by agriculture are textile fibres for clothing.

[Avery]

And he basically says, like, look at the first domesticated animals.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

They were sheep and they were producing wool, and if you want to get meat, you have to kill the animal. Whereas the point about domesticating animals is that humans are investing in keeping animals alive.

[Avery]

Look at the first domesticated cereals. They were grasses.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

Cereals are basically grass. That's what they're grasses. And what do sheep eat?

[Avery]

It was all about maintaining animals so that you could have garments that accommodated a wider variety of climates. Because once humans moved to colder climates and got so used to wearing clothes, they wanted to wear linens, woolens for other. For things that were not just extreme cold.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

So you've got this well documented transition in clothing material from hides and furs to textiles. It's a way of being able to keep on wearing clothes in warm and generally more humid environments.

[Avery]

They developed a farming agricultural lifestyle, which becomes the basis of, I don't want to say the civilizing process, but a civilizing process was kind of like rooted in clothing.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

But in other parts of the world, people didn't need to keep on wearing clothes. So they didn't need textiles, they didn't need agriculture.

[Avery]

And also, because it was so hand in hand with agriculture, there's this idea that, like, people who don't wear clothes, people who live as hunter gatherers, they're not using the land, they haven't cultivated it, they don't like, need, need it.

[Philippa Levine]

And so having no clothes on became a way to represent such peoples as Native Americans, Native Canadians and so on and so on.

[Avery]

And that's where you start getting into what we talked about with Philippa, the idea of the naked. The naked savage.

[Philippa Levine]

So clothing itself is important, and I don't need to tell you that who needs to teach their grandmother to suck eggs?

[Avery]

Right.

[Philippa Levine]

But not having clothing also then becomes, I think, a really important kind of feature, a kind of way of distinguishing between those who are civilized and those who are not civilized.

[Avery]

May I ask you to introduce your.

[Will Coley]

Yourself?

[Avery]

Sure.

[Philippa Levine]

My name is Philippa Levine. I used to teach at the University of Texas at Austin, and I very happily retired in the. At the end of August.

[Avery]

I mean, you said that in trying to figure out how to process the concept of nudity, that really the most viable lens is through colonialism.

[Philippa Levine]

Yeah. For the later period, certainly, when once European start to Travel and start to get this idea of colonizing other parts of the world. Then I think what happens is that the lack of clothes, the absence of clothes, becomes a way to make a distinction of the native, the person who isn't us. We're civilized, and we dress.

[Avery]

Which you could totally flip on its head. Right. You could say that we developed clothes because we're unfit and physically weak and can't live in our environment. And people who don't have to about worry, wear clothes are like the fittest for their environment. But that's not how the Europeans interpreted it.

[Philippa Levine]

Essentially, white people wear clothes, but that person walks around naked. And of course, in fact, most people don't anywhere.

[Avery]

It should be said. It's not that people didn't wear clothes. I mean, they, like, wore clothes. It just wasn't, you know, wovens, it wasn't cotton.

[Philippa Levine]

When the British arrive in New Zealand, the Maori would not have seen themselves as naked in the way that the Europeans define it. They would have seen themselves as fully realized because their tattoos were there. The British saw them without cloth and thus saw them as naked. So there's different definitions of what constitutes the naked. Right. And for the Europeans, cloth was important and not just any old cloth. So when missionaries get to the Pacific, they're not happy with the bark cloth, which is the local cloth that is used. Nope. They have to bring in cotton.

[Avery]

You know, they're like, oh, grass skirts don't count.

[Will Coley]

Right. It's like, yeah, these people were suited to where they were and they were living their lives, but they weren't part.

[Avery]

Of a global capitalistic system and they weren't Christian.

[Philippa Levine]

If you then adopt the Christian position, fundamentally, it's about shame. Right. Adam and Eve. What happens to Adam and Eve? They learn shame after they bite the apple. Right. If you're within that Christian tradition, then to be without shame means you're going to hell. You're going to hell, you're a heathen. That simple. So the missionaries are looking to save souls. And so there is this forcing of people into clothing that changes how people behave. It changes how people feel about themselves. It changes how they look at other people. Right. If suddenly everybody is in a different kind of clothing, not because they want to be, but because they have been forced to be by a colonizing presence.

[Avery]

And shaking off that colonizing presence proved exceedingly hard. It's almost like the European civilizing process was this disease that once people were brought in contact with, they could never get rid of it. The shame and propriety persisted, and the Lingering symptom was the clothing.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

I grew up in Sierra Leone, and in our house, there was a painting, a picture of my great grandmother, Anna Erskine. And so you can see what she's wearing. So it's a long Victorian dress, which, you know, this notion of civilization, respectability. Right. That's how my grandmother dressed.

[Will Coley]

So we talked to Dr. Nimada Blyden, who's a professor at University of Virginia. She's written a lot of books about African Americans and Africa and their relationship.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

I do have kind of a convoluted history. So I did grow up in Sierra Leone, and I have a father who's born in Sierra Leone. But anybody who's read my book can see it's more complicated than that because he has ancestors from Tennessee, from Virginia, from the Virgin Islands, because he's descended from people who had been enslaved, brought to the diaspora, and then later on their descendants made their way back to Africa, Liberia.

[Will Coley]

Interestingly enough, her great grandfather was one of the original settlers in Liberia.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

So this is a picture of him from 1918 51, when he was quite a young man. But he went to Liberia. He was born in the Virgin Islands, was denied admission to Rutgers, the seminary school at Rutgers. He was denied admission. And it was the 1850s where, if you know your history, the Fugitive Slave act had just been passed and blacks from the north were being snatched and taken down South. And so he took the opportunity offered by the American Colonization Society, this sort of rather controversial organization, to settle in Liberia.

[Will Coley]

I knew about the history of Liberia, but I always kind of thought it was sort of like, you know, freed slaves were like, screw this. We're starting over. We're doing our own thing. But in many ways, they weren't. You know, it's not like they were making Wakanda.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

So Liberia is this initiative that comes from a white New Jersey pastor who was the founder of the American Colonization Society, who makes this argument that white, well, blacks in the United States will not ever be allowed to achieve equality. So he proposes this idea of colonizing or sending them away. Right. So there's a mix of people who ended up in Liberia, formerly enslaved people just out of slavery, and then a lot of free black people, because of.

[Will Coley]

That, they were a threat to slave owners. So this was a way to get them out kind of thing.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

You know, they would have been provided for by the American Colonization Society, which probably have given them provisions, some clothes, and the men would be wearing suits and the women long dresses.

[Will Coley]

And so in some way, they. The settlers of Liberia weren't Starting over, they were still part of this global.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

System because in many ways they were kind of colonizers. You know, they were. Even though I don't think that they would have constructed themselves as such, they would have really seen themselves as civilizers because they were children, sons and daughters of Africa, right, Who were going to, you know, help to uplift and build this continent of their ancestors, right? This uplift, this, you know, civilizing mission which many of the settlers went with.

[Avery]

In many colonial situations, the distinction of race was created and used to decide who's native and who's civilized. But in Liberia, clothes became the means to make that distinction.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

Clothes was very important because if you were civilized, you wore clothes, right? And you wore particular kind of clothes. You had to wear Western clothing, you had to eat with a knife and fork, right? Those were markers of civilization.

[Avery]

And it's really important, important here to stress the American ness of the Liberia example, that these were American colonizers with distinctly American notions of nudity.

[Will Coley]

You know, how much of the world thinks that we're very puritanical in the United States about stuff?

[Avery]

Well, as Philippa reminded us, we were literally founded by Puritans.

[Will Coley]

We were founded by Puritans.

[Philippa Levine]

There's a strong streak of Puritanism in the American psyche. A very strong streak. She probably shouldn't use streak in this context, unfortunately. Let me rephrase that. I think the undercurrent of Puritanism that continues to define a lot of the American sensibility, a lot of American culture, complicates things here in a way that isn't necessarily the case in some other countries. I give you as an example of relatively contemporary evidence, that thing a few years ago when Janet Jackson's nipple was exposed for what, a microsecond? But that puritan streak, I think we see it in arguments around sex education in schools, the suitability of books for school libraries. Those are the areas, I think, where we see it really, really up close and personal.

[Avery]

There are so many times when the close mindedness and the puritanism of my culture feels suffocating. And I wish that I could get away from this all and shed my hangups and shed my cultural baggage and shed my lessons that I learned from my parents, and shed the shame about my body, and shed the shame about my history and shed the shame of the judgment of others and shed the shame of society by simply shedding my clothes. If only it were that easy.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

Nudist colonies are an absolute failure.

[Avery]

Dr. Gilligan said this thing, nudism is a Colossal failure, because he said, we are still clothed in the mind.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

One of my favorite books is published in 1982 called Anatomy of Nakedness. And the author who gives this description of visiting a nudist colony in southern France, it's quite a sophisticated colony that had supermarkets and so on. But he was noting how even in supermarkets, people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid touching each other. They couldn't accidentally bump into each other. So what he is saying is a nudist colony is a clothed society without clothes, but people are still mentally clothed.

[Avery]

If we really, really shed everything, we've learned all these things we've talked about, about power, race, perfection, all of it, we would interact with each other totally different when we're naked. Like, we would touch each other, you know, like our skin would rub on skin a lot more, and we'd have to be like, really okay with that?

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

Even in a nudist colony, we're not comfortable being naked because what nakedness involves is skin contact between people. Imagine being on the subway in New York if people aren't wearing clothes. You're touching people with most of your body. You can't avoid that. And we're not comfortable doing that. And the question is, why not?

[Avery]

And we're just not. Because it's not how we're raised. That's not how we've been quote, unquote civilized.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

So we can take off clothes as adults. It doesn't actually change anything because what nobody, Elias points out is that it's become internalized psychologically. Essentially, we don't have any contact with another human being. We're in contact with clothing. We get attached to the fabricated material of clothing. And I think that's one of the reasons why we become so materialistic. We are, in a sense, attached to material rather than to the naked skin of others. That's why I think we love material things.

[Avery]

It also makes me realize how deep it is in me. You know, it's like, yeah, I've been raised in this. And like, I like. I like clothes.

[Will Coley]

Of course you do. You have a podcast.

[Avery]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ian Gilligan]

Because our minds have become clothed, then it doesn't matter. And a certain amount of nudity can be tolerated because those functions have become internalized into our psyche. We are clothed, whether or not we wear clothes.

[Avery]

I don't know if that sheds any light on why comedy felt so different.

[Will Coley]

From yoga for you.

[Dr. Nimada Blyden]

Does it?

[Will Coley]

Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it was just because it was the first time and it was unfamiliar. I don't know.

[Avery]

And you were kind of ambushed.

[Will Coley]

Yeah.

[Avery]

I'm so sorry. I really am.

[Will Coley]

No, you're not. You always make good tape.

[Avery]

I'm so sorry, Will. I'm so genuinely sorry. But yeah, that's probably the answer. It was probably just because we were doing this for you, dear listener, instead of, you know, ourselves.

[Alan Rachins]

Excuse me. A naked comedy night. Well, I don't know why they're doing a naked comedy night, because there's no reason to do it, you know.

[Avery]

Again, it was a great comedy show. Thank you to Bailey Profetov, Naked Comedy Night, Yogi Michael Guyou and the Hamilton Heights Naked Yoga class and producer Will Coley. Thanks, Will. As ever. You can always check out images and [e-mail] I've also started posting stories that are just for the newsletter that are not going to be on the podcast. So sign up. I think some of them are really fascinating. And in the meantime, yeah, I'll have two more episodes out this year and this is the next one.

[Philippa Levine]

White people wear clothes and other people's don't. Or they wear too many. The Veiled Woman. Kind of a later phenomenon in terms of how the Europeans look at it.

[Avery]

Your next article of interest is Modesty Radiotopia from PRX.