Flashing flesh

A Brief History of Nakedness. By Philip Carr-Gomm. Reaktion Books; 286 pages; $29.95 and £19.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

WHEN, where and how much you take your clothes off matters a surprising amount. A plunging cleavage is nothing remarkable in the right circumstances. Elsewhere it can get you fired—or stoned to death. Nipples are fine in parks in northern Europe (and many Mediterranean beaches) but not on American television, even when covered with a tassel. Male genitalia are OK in the greatest works of classical sculpture, but not, even when they measure just one millimetre, in children's books. The female pudendum is strictly for pornographers, gynaecologists and feminists trying to make a point. Given that everyone ran around naked only a few thousand years ago, and that we all look more-or-less similar once unclothed, this is quite puzzling.

One reason is that nakedness signals real or perceived sexual availability. The undressed form, especially for people who are unused to it, is distracting, or worse. Another is that it signals vulnerability: the annual World Naked Bike Ride gives cyclists a chance to highlight their fragility in the unequal tussle for road space with motorists. Nudity strips us of clothing-based social signals such as wealth or poverty. Leave it to Rudyard Kipling to explain: “The colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins.”

Philip Carr-Gomm's lushly illustrated book takes a long and enthusiastic look at the politics and culture of nakedness. Nudism attracts eccentrics, and their stories, he feels, deserve to be told. But his po-faced treatment of their antics can be unintentionally comic. Mr Carr-Gomm is a self-professed Druid and a practitioner of Wicca (a modern form of paganism that can involve a lot of larking around naked) and enjoys stripping off his clothes during country walks. Halfway through the book many readers will feel they have read quite enough reverential descriptions of naturist and pagan cults in 1930s Britain.

He chronicles the breaching of taboos about public nakedness on stage and screen, and the increasing use of nudity in political protests. It is tempting to see a convergence. Once actors, ballet dancers, film stars and artists have performed naked, the human form is less shocking. But what is the point then of stripping off clothes to make a political point? Calendars showing tasteful tableaux of jam-making housewives, women footballers or soldiers' girlfriends have been a fine way to raise funds for good causes in Britain. But when people yawn at nakedness rather than smile, we will know that the novelty has worn off.

The book is thought-provoking, if somewhat frustrating. It is short of interviews with real people. The chapter on streaking retells the well-worn stories of long-ago escapades at sporting events, but the reader longs to hear from the participants. Most of them will still be alive: why not track them down, then? Mr Carr-Gomm makes no mention of the steam baths of Russia, Turkey and northern Europe—an integral part of life involving unremarkable and regular nudity. Shamefully, the American photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, gets only a solitary mention. In the cultural history of nakedness, he matters rather more than the Druids.