assumption that is not shared by all cultures, nor by all members of our personal culture.20
18. There's evidence that modesty is just not related to nakedness whatsoever, but is quite a response to seeming
Distinct in the remaining social group--for instance, outside the approved customs of clothing or adornment.21
For example, indigenous tribes naked except for ear and lip plugs feel immodest when the stoppers are
removed, not when their bodies are exposed.22 Additionally, a girl feels immodest if seen in her chemise, even though
it's far less revealing than her bikini.23 This also explains why clothed visitors to nudist parks feel uneasy in
their state of apparel. Shrink Emery S. Bogardus writes: &Nakedness is never shameful when it is unconscious,
Which is, when there's no consciousness of a difference between fact and the rule set by the mores.& In other words,
for first-time visitors into a nudist park, there is no hint of humiliation after an initial reticence, as it's not
contrary to the moral standards.
19. Shame comes from being outside mores, not from special activities or conditions. Because nudity is
unremarkable in a nudist setting, nudists may even forget that they're naked--and frequently do.
20. Mental research show that modesty need not be related to one's state of dress in the slightest. For the
nudist, modesty is not spill with one's clothing; it merely takes a different form.24
Emotional studies by Martin Weinberg reasoned that the basic difference between nudists and nonnudists
lies in their differently-assembled definitions of the situation. It's not that nudists are immodest, for, like
non-nudists, they have standards to regulate and control immorality, sexuality, and humiliation. Nudists simply
Take the body as natural, rather than as a wellspring of embarrassment.25
21. Many indigenous tribes go entirely naked without shame, even now. It is only through expanded
contact using the &modern& world that they learn to be &small.& 26
Paul Ableman writes: &The missionaries were generally disconcerted to realize that the biblically advocated
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Tuvalu_Funafuti_atoll_beach.jpg" />
Action of 'clothes the naked', far from producing an improvement in native morals, nearly always resulted in a
deterioration. What the missionaries were accidentally doing was recreating the Garden of Eden situation. Naked,
the primitive cultures had revealed no prurient matter with the body. . . . the ethical motive was generally geared to the
naked state of the culture. The missionaries, with their cotton shorts and dresses, disrupted this. Nude people
actually feel shame when they're first dressed. They develop an exaggerated consciousness of the body. It's as if Adam
and Eve's 'aprons' created the 'knowledge of good and Top Free In Central Park! than being its effect.& 27
Many Amazon rainforest people still reside clothes-optional by choice, even given an option.28 The
same holds true of the aborigines of central Australia.29
22. Even in North America, nudity was commonplace among many indigenous tribes prior to the entrance of
Europeans.
Lewis and Clark reported nearly-nude natives along the northern Pacific coast, for instance,30 as did
visitors to California.31 Father Louis Hennepin in 1698 reported of Milwaukee-place Illinois Indians, &They go stark
Nude in Summer-time, wearing only a sort of Shoes made of the Skins of [buffalo] Bulls.& He described several
other North American tribes as also usually dwelling without clothing.32 The natives of Florida wore just
breechclouts and sashes of Spanish moss, which they removed while hunting or gardening.33 Columbus wrote of
the Indians he encountered in the Caribbean in 1492, &They all go around as naked as their mothers bore them; and
Additionally the women.& 34 The Polynesian natives of Hawaii wore little clothing, and none whatsoever at the shore or in the
water, until the arrival of Christian missionaries with Captain Cook in 1776.35
23. For some native tribes, nudity or near-nudity is an essential part of the culture.
Paul Ableman clarifies, overall, four out of five Americans don't object to naked sunbathing on beaches as long as are absolutely nude. They nearly always have ornamentation or
Body modification of some sort, which plays a essential part in their culture. . . . Into this simple but successful
culture comes the missionary, and obliterates the vital hints beneath his cheap Western clothing. Among many
primitives, tattooing, scarification and ornamentation convey tremendously elaborate information which may, in fact, be the
central regulatory force in the society. The missionary therefore, at one strike, annihilates a culture. It was probably no
less traumatic for a primitive society to be abruptly clothed than it'd be for ours to be unexpectedly stripped
naked.& 36
24. Yet missionaries have consistently sought to inflict their own notions of &decency& on other cultures,
Dismissing the elaborate cultural conventions regarding dress already in place.
Bernard Rudofsky writes: &People [in other cultures] who traditionally don't have much use for clothing are
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