Art would never exist without naked beauty as a subject. Italian Americans have a great love for the human body. This love has its roots in ancient Rome and is reinforced by the classical and sacred images that haunt our consciousness today. They strongly believe mens sana in corpore sano, a sound body is the foundation of a healthy mind. Let’s see, there were many artists, Michelangelo, DaVinci, Raphael, Botticelli and many others. Their ideas of the “perfect” body were muscular, sensuous, graceful and plump. They were also tender, elongated, angelic, maternal, earthy, mysterious, powerful, dignified and heroic. The commercial demand for images of nude celebrities has made Playboy infamous. Check out http://www.ehow.com/how_2059477_photograph-implied-nudity.htm, How to Photograph Implied Nudity. As social creatures we not only want to see naked art but we want to taste its earthly pleasures with all our senses in photography and film. John Donne, the writer, says “Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.”  

Maybe full nudity can be uncomely but where there is no feeling of self-reproach, there can assured be no shame. Yet, Julia Roberts says, “I wouldn’t do nudity in films. To act with my clothes on is a performance. To act with my clothes off is a documentary.” Many enjoy being nude when making love. Others enjoy bathing and sleeping in the nude. The duration that a person is nude varies per situation and circumstance. People have strong views on nudity turning them into issues of modesty, decency and morality. At the same time, the erotic aspect of nudity has attracted an audience at all times in human history. It seems to me those who so dislike the idea of being nude will find something indecent in all naked truths.

We all have images in our minds of who we’d like to look like. I wrote the poem above for all those Marilyn Monroe want-to-be’s. So few of us are happy with our bodies even our men. Television commercials want men with an alluring mystique of six-pack abs, muscles, and dimples in the back and front. Personally, I think it is really sexy when a man can wink in more ways than one. Our young women want to be perfect and go to the extreme to get that way. Unfortunately, no matter how perfect we think we are, all our bodies will age naturally, and at some point will no longer do or be what our minds want. Who’s to say what perfection is? ”Dare we reveal our true selves to the world?” says Fritz Perls, ”If we do, we’ll have to “Take responsibility for our every thought, our every feeling, and our every action.” (Perls 1978) Robert Bresson says, “In the nude, all that is not beautiful is obscene.”