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Neo_Crimson posted:Also it could be that attractive people (women especially), stay away from nudist hangouts due to fears about sexual assault. That doesn't explain why guys exhibit the same apparent fear of nudity in male-only spaces (unless they are afraid gay people will attack them and rape them or something...?).
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Sep 29, 2016 20:20
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PT6A posted:That doesn't explain why guys exhibit the same apparent fear of nudity in male-only spaces (unless they are afraid gay people will attack them and rape them or something...?). Homophobia, I believe.
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Sep 29, 2016 20:22
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Or you're not homophobic but you really just don't want to see other dude's dicks.
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Sep 29, 2016 20:24
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So why does it matter if they're looking at your dick? Just keep yourself at eye level.
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Sep 29, 2016 20:30
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PT6A posted:That doesn't explain why guys exhibit the same apparent fear of nudity in male-only spaces (unless they are afraid gay people will attack them and rape them or something...?). A lot of homophobia is couched on the assumption that gay men insatiable sexual deviants that can and will gently caress any man they can given half the chance. Further tying into the concept of predatory male sexuality. So yes, there is definitely a fear that gay men will rape them, and fear that they will be seen as such by others.
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Sep 29, 2016 20:36
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Flannelette posted:Male humans (don't know about other primates) are genetically predisposed to be attracted to females with less body hair, it's a "built in feature" of all men Can you back this up with anything but your own anecdotal experience? Things like shaved legs and armpits are quite recent, as I understand it, and far from universal. Sounds like  to me
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Sep 29, 2016 21:28
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Neo_Crimson posted:A lot of homophobia is couched on the assumption that gay men insatiable sexual deviants that can and will gently caress any man they can given half the chance. Further tying into the concept of predatory male sexuality. While this may be true in extreme cases I think the more prevalent (if subconscious) fear is that looking at dicks will awaken something in them they'd rather lay dormant. The fact that something like 40% of British teens say they aren't strictly heterosexual only confirms that in my mind.
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Sep 29, 2016 22:34
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A Pale Horse posted:The fact that something like 40% of British teens say they aren't strictly heterosexual only confirms that in my mind. Those are just the ones comfortable enough to admit it, just imagine what storm of forbidden desires is raging in the rest.
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Sep 29, 2016 22:46
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Can you back this up with anything but your own anecdotal experience? Things like shaved legs and armpits are quite recent, as I understand it, and far from universal. The scientific voice on it seems to hover around "don't know sorry" for why people prefer complete hair removed. The theories for why humans started to preference less body hair before they even had the brains to care about it are things like parasite control (and being able to see the skin for signs of disease easily) and heat control (clothes that you can take off and put on is more versatile than permanent fur which could cook your big human brain and make it harder to hunt). But why would men prefer pubic hair removal now when humans wouldn't have had a way to control this for all the time before civilization and pubic hair is a sign for mates of sexual maturity, the things I've read on it basically dance around "It helps stop parasites or men have pedophilia tendencies for some reason". Things like that and the other complete hair removal preference things would be where I'd look for evidence of a clothed civilization messing with human sexuality (but I don't think anyone's surveyed the remaining naked tribes what their preference of pubic hair is yet).
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Sep 30, 2016 02:19
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I don't like being naked around people, but I don't really think it's to do with people coming to rape me. I think it's to do with America being a very anonymous culture. I class that in with the fact I'd prefer to not know my neighbors or see or talk to them. There is a feeling that there is just a bunch of randos around everywhere all the time and they come and go and it's not a community and you just talk and interact with your friends and family and everyone else you run into is someone that it's weird to talk to or look at or interact with and that extended to cover doing anything even remotely private around them. Stuff like crying in public is super weird in the US as well. don't ask, don't tell on anything even slightly even a little bit private. If you go asking or poking into anything even mildly private that is weird, if you share anything private that is weird. Americans don't want to interact or share anything even superficially private with other random americans. Dongs fit in the mildly private category.
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Sep 30, 2016 02:37
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Flannelette posted:The scientific voice on it seems to hover around "don't know sorry" for why people prefer complete hair removed. Not having pubic har was for a long time associated with prostitution in many countries and the big bush look was fashionable as recently as the 70s in America dude
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Sep 30, 2016 04:06
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More specifically (because it makes it even worse), not having pubes was an indicator that you had syphilis and were treating it with poisonous remedies like mercury that made your pubes fall out. Body image and beauty standards are almost completely arbitrary. Ever seen a Peter Paul Rubens painting? In his day, it was considered fashionable and beautiful for women to be what would nowadays be considered quite overweight, with droopy butts and cellulite everywhere, and he painted their fatness in exquisite detail. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 04:11
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I always thought Rubens was a bit of an outlier even in his time.
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Sep 30, 2016 04:55
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I went to high school in the 00's and honestly no one showered because there was no time. We barely had time to get dressed and get to our next class as it was.
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Sep 30, 2016 05:33
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OwlFancier posted:I always thought Rubens was a bit of an outlier even in his time.
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Sep 30, 2016 05:44
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned economic history as an explanatory parameter. The US grew affluent before most nations, and Americans had access to (1 and several) private bathrooms earlier. Being naked comfortably around others depends much on what you are accustomed with. With access to a private bathroom you do not have to go to a public bath to wash yourself and your children after a week of toil. A public bath that would not offer the luxury of private booths. Seeing a shift amongst young here in Norway too, coinciding with growing up at a time when houses and flats are being built with more than one bathroom.
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Sep 30, 2016 19:47
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Andy Warhol proves that men in the 60's preferred their women painted in multicolor. Nobody describes women as "Warholesque" but Reubens' work did inspire a description of a particular body type in women.
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Sep 30, 2016 20:13
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Andy Warhol proves that men in the 60's preferred their women painted in multicolor. DeviantArt proves that men in the 2010s prefer women to have asymmetrical proportions, an off-center mouth, and random animal body parts.
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Sep 30, 2016 21:29
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Cat Mattress posted:DeviantArt proves that men in the 2010s prefer women to have asymmetrical proportions, an off-center mouth, and random animal body parts. The ideal man: 
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Sep 30, 2016 21:39
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Panfilo posted:Nobody describes women as "Warholesque" but Reubens' work did inspire a description of a particular body type in women. I think that was a rather after-the-fact term used to describe fat women in a more polite way. Not that Rubens invented fat women and made them popular.
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Sep 30, 2016 21:40
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don't like being naked around people, but I don't really think it's to do with people coming to rape me. I'm pretty sure this post is the answer to the question I was asking. You're absolutely right that Americans are weirdly standoffish about certain topics. You can't ask people how much money they make while this is a common question in some other countries. It's weird that we don't talk to our neighbors as well. Americans have all types of weird rules about public behavior. Nudity just became off limits at some point along the way. I think it might also have something to do with "stranger danger". It's our generation which was told that everyone was out to rape them and then the same generation is petrified to be nude amoungst their peers. I think there's some connection. Also, people say someone was being "creepy" all the time these days if they do things that would have been considered totally normal in the past. Like a guy could be called "creepy" just for showing interest in a girl while not dressing cool or being slightly unattractive. AARO fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Oct 1, 2016 |
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Oct 1, 2016 03:07
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AARO posted:I'm pretty sure this post is the answer to the question I was asking. You're absolutely right that Americans are weirdly standoffish about certain topics. You can't ask people how much money they make while this is a common question in some other countries. It's weird that we don't talk to our neighbors as well. Americans have all types of weird rules about public behavior. Nudity just became off limits at some point along the way. I mean ugly guys constantly coming up to them to flirt is a good reason why girls would want to just head down and walk on through and try to make it through the day with as little interaction as possible with street randos.
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Oct 1, 2016 03:19
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Mange Mite posted:Not having pubic har was for a long time associated with prostitution in many countries and the big bush look was fashionable as recently as the 70s in America dude I'm talking about people 5000+ years ago and why they'd do it not recent fashion trends.
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Oct 1, 2016 05:04
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AARO posted:Also, people say someone was being "creepy" all the time these days if they do things that would have been considered totally normal in the past. Like a guy could be called "creepy" just for showing interest in a girl while not dressing cool or being slightly unattractive. This is universal. Being ugly or old is creepy by itself, and talking to people only makes it worse.
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Oct 1, 2016 06:58
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OwlFancier posted:I think that was a rather after-the-fact term used to describe fat women in a more polite way. The point is that at certain cultures and certain points in history the beauty standard for women (and in certain parts of the world, still is) was considerably larger than today, often to the point what many modern Westerners would think of women they consider(ed) beautiful as overweight. Beauty standards are arbitrary and constantly change, the closest thing to a constant being "whatever is unattainable to the poors" (being big when food is scarce and expensive, being thin when the poor subsist on cheap high-calorie junk food, being pale when commoners work in the fields all day, being tanned when commoners work inside at sedentary jobs, being white in a society with systemic racism, etc.).
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Oct 1, 2016 19:26
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There was a guy in my middle School class that refused to shower. He was taunted mercilessly for that. We called him "stinkyboy What ended up happening was that a teacher intervened. And he was allowed to go shower after the rest of the class. Today our"stinkyboy" would have been the normal well adjusted one. I was suprised to hear later that while we boys had no problem showering together throwing water in eachothers faces ,slapping eachothers bottoms with wet towels while drying off etc the girls would go in one at a time. For some reason i assumed girls would a lot more chill and mature about being nude then we boys.
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Oct 1, 2016 21:25
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Baudolino posted:There was a guy in my middle School class that refused to shower. He was taunted mercilessly for that. We called him "stinkyboy What ended up happening was that a teacher intervened. And he was allowed to go shower after the rest of the class. Today our"stinkyboy" would have been the normal well adjusted one. Women are actually evil heartless monsters to each other so no
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Oct 1, 2016 21:45
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Can you back this up with anything but your own anecdotal experience? Things like shaved legs and armpits are quite recent, as I understand it, and far from universal. That and there's a big diff between "women need to remove lots of hair to attract a mate" and "women need to remove lots of hair to be considered decent by society." Remember the ladies razor advert where the woman trying to hail a cab gets mistaken for a man in a dress because she only shaved her armpits the day BEFORE and not mere seconds before stepping out? We are now in a state where women are required to remove massive amounts of their hair in order to not be declared gross and indecent by society. When I shave my legs in the morn, I'm not trying to attract a mate. I'm avoiding the sneering bitchy face of the woman in line behind me at the grocery store who thinks I'm gross for having hair follicles in my legs.
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Oct 2, 2016 11:49
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Cat Mattress posted:DeviantArt proves that men in the 2010s prefer women to have asymmetrical proportions, an off-center mouth, and random animal body parts. Science has proven that men have a natural inclination towards Sonic recolors of Rouge the bat.
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Oct 2, 2016 11:52
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A trend I've been noticing in films with regard to nudity is a reversing of how we associate male and female nudity. Now, for a long time male nudity was seen as comical, the punchline to a joke, while female nudity was seen as sexual (we had discussed this in a thread about film censorship). If you saw a guy's butt, it was humorous, but a girl's butt was meant to have very different associations. Recent films have switched this around. Films are now showing more male nudity in a much more sexual way (split second wiener shot in 50 shades of Gray, for example). Female nudity is now being played up more for gags (Both Mike and Dave need Wedding dates and Bad Moms feature women with excessive pubic hair as a gag). The former also has a scene where a woman gets an 'erotic' massage which consists of the masseuse doing all sorts of goofy stuff to the bride's butt, which is supposed to be erotic but its obviously plays for laughs *rubs butts together*. I think this is kind of significant because up until recently it seemed like the only way you had female nudity as a gag in a film is if the woman in question had the 'wrong' body type (There's Something About Mary where the PI sees the landlady's wrinkly tits by mistake), if the woman is old or very fat. So for example Melissa Mcarthy could theoretically have a scene where she's naked and fighting with another woman, crashing through some conference room AKA Borat, but it would be the fact that she's fat that would make it funny; if she was skinny the same scene would seem much more sexual. SImilarly, it would probably be much harder for people to associate a scene in a film where an older or heavier nude woman was played up in an erotic context. The reason I think this is significant is because we tend to sexualize bodies very differently. Nudity in young, thin women get sexualized far, far more than fat or old women, and I think its part of why people get so creepy and/or judgemental about a woman breastfeeding in public (if she has a baby, then she's on the younger side of things, so any 'implied' nudity or exposure is seen as much more sexual to some people). This might also be the reason I tend to see typically older, heavier women being more comfortable in nude-friendly spaces; society sexualizes them much less and so they're probably less likely to get gawked at. Americans tie up a lot of sexuality to nudity itself, but keep in mind this is often limited to their own 'ideal' looks.
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Oct 2, 2016 18:39
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Zachack posted:Regional differences aside I think few if any people showered at my HS because no one did, essentially self-fulfilling. People didn't shower because people didn't shower, and at that age no one is going to risk peer issues to try breaking that trend. This is back in the early 90s. Something presumably started the trend but there never seemed to be a specific pressure not to. I think this is the key reason why, a going with the crowd effect. If nobody is showering, then you would be shining a big attention spotlight on yourself if you became the first one to start doing it. And if you've ever been bullied/mocked previously in your childhood, you're usually perfectly happy to not draw extra attention to yourself in a locker room. It's largely a self-replicating pattern at this point. My junior high and high school had similar weird time problems. Gym class would send us to the locker rooms with like 10 minutes before your next class started. That's enough time to get changed and slap on some deodorant, but adding in a shower would have been really difficult so most people didn't.
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Oct 2, 2016 20:08
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Americans who are afraid of nudity are afraid of it for the same reason Saudis are afraid of nudity: abrahamic religious body shaming of women. Islam and Christianity have that poo poo DOWN. Although it's worse when Christians (whites) do it, of course.
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Oct 4, 2016 18:06
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:Female bodies are the bee's knees, very well designed. Not a great fan of male bodies though. It's not like they are disgusting or anything, but they are aesthetically not as pleasing and there is all kinds of weird poo poo going on like all that hair on the butt, the useless nipples or the huge wrinkly ballsack just hanging around like a spoiled dried out fruit. male nipples and balls are fine, and the entire "male bodies are not as aesthetically pleasing as female bodies" thing is pure bullshit. we aestheticize the female form in ways we don't with the male form, or compare an idealized female form to a "normal" male form. if you look at any media that does treat the male form as beautiful, including modern gay art or classic stuff, this is really apparent.
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Oct 4, 2016 18:29
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Periodiko posted:male nipples and balls are fine, and the entire "male bodies are not as aesthetically pleasing as female bodies" thing is pure bullshit. we aestheticize the female form in ways we don't with the male form, or compare an idealized female form to a "normal" male form. if you look at any media that does treat the male form as beautiful, including modern gay art or classic stuff, this is really apparent. I agree with this, but balls (well, properly, the scrotum) is pretty weird looking if not necessarily gross. Of course, you could argue the same thing about female genitalia as well -- there's a good reason why most depictions of the naked figure of either sex that aren't sexual in nature don't focus on the genitalia.
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Oct 4, 2016 19:43
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Some comedian (Dylan Moran I think) described the male genitalia as looking like a bit of loose meat hanging out the side of a shark's mouth and another comedian (can't remember who) the female genitals as someone kicking a hole in the side of a rotting pumpkin. Neither is aesthetically pleasing unless you're into it is what I'm saying.
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Oct 4, 2016 20:07
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I love that thing where people do the "My culture has drilled something into my head from birth but weirdly I just came up with the exact same opinion totally independently by my own objective thought!" and don't even notice they are doing it.
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Oct 4, 2016 20:17
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I don't see how genitals are worse aesthetically than, say, ears and noses and mouths.  Oh gross! Nosehair! Saliva! Earwax!  The real difference is that we see people's heads every day in just about every setting. I'm sure if you find one of the few remaining communities where people live naked all the time, they won't go "you know, it's kinda ugly when you're not feeling horny".
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Oct 4, 2016 20:46
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I don't recall any classic paintings of earwax or nose hair.
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Oct 4, 2016 20:47
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A Pale Horse posted:Some comedian (Dylan Moran I think) described the male genitalia as looking like a bit of loose meat hanging out the side of a shark's mouth and another comedian (can't remember who) the female genitals as someone kicking a hole in the side of a rotting pumpkin. Neither is aesthetically pleasing unless you're into it is what I'm saying. Y'all motherfuckers need Georgia O'Keeffe.
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Oct 4, 2016 22:01
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AARO posted:At one point it used to be totally normal for people of the same sex to shower together after sporting events or gym class or after going swimming. But by the time I was in high school, this had changed. No one showered after gym at my school and people who even changed completely (changed into new underwear) were called gay by the other kids. This rarely ever happened. Everyone knew the unwritten rule that it was absolutely forbidden to let other people see you naked. My classmates and I just put on our other clothes covered in sweat after gym. Some of the kids just wore shorts and a t-shirt under their normal clothes and then put their other clothes back on on top of them after gym. For reference, I graduated high school in 2001. Forcing kids to shower and all that seems like it would put schools at a big risk of being sued when some kid slips and gets hurt in this day and age, unless the schools also went and shelled out a lot for anti slip surfaces all over. And of course you answered why swimming nude isn't done anymore, classes aren't sex-segregated anymore outside of certain very weird schools. But it's also still pretty uncommon for a high school to even have a pool in the first place. They simply cost a lot to keep maintained let alone get built in the first place. But your schoolmates sound pretty weird? I graduated high school in 2006 and most people changed everything or just about everything. But the only thing that was actually required was to wear a white shirt and black pants or shorts, so lots of people were too lazy to do more than put those on. And the primary reason we didn't shower is because you weren't really going to get super sweaty in gym class if you weren't also going to get sweaty in class (the school didn't have a/c in half the school). And the shower room for each locker room was only built for like 12 people to shower at once even though each gym class would have easily 50 people of each gender, so you simply wouldn't have time for everyone to shower. The result of this is only a few people ever bothered to shower, but it's not like anybody cared about it. Mostly they got used by the after school sports team. There's also a pretty big difference between "the 1960s and before" and now as far as high schools go: It was still very common to not go to high school at all up to the 50s and 60s, or to go but only for a year or two before dropping out. Thus high school populations were even less than you'd expect just for the population at large being smaller, and it's a lot more comfortable to shower in public if it's not also going to be super crowded. In 1960, 27.2% of people who entered high school dropped out before graduation for the nation at large, and it could exceed 50% in some states and areas. In comparison, only 7.4% dropped out in 2010! And consider this: in 1960 43% of rural people of high school age were not in school and 37% of urban people of the same age weren't in school. In comparison, it's about 6.5% of high school age people not in school in both rural and urban areas as of 2012.
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Oct 4, 2016 23:08
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