First, permit us to introduce Nudnik, who is the perpetrator of Nudnik’s Nude News. A “nudnik” is defined by The Joys of Yiddish as “a pest, a nag, an annoyer . . . a persistent, talkative, obnoxious, indomitable and indefatigable nag.” We’ll do our best to live up to the praise. If in our ramblings on Nudity we agree with any mainstream critic or journalist, or with the dead body of accepted wisdom, we’ll know we have failed at nudnikism.
“Naked Is As Naked Does…”
Lady Godiva’s ride through 11th century Coventry–stark naked except for her flowing locks.
Frank Harris (1856 – 1931), author of the infamous My Life and Loves, a five volume autobiography completed in the1920s, is the poor man’s Casanova. Born of Welsh parents and raised in Ireland, Harris first emigrated to the American West and became a cowboy. The movie Cowboy, starring Jack Lemmon, is about Harris’ love for a Mexican señorita. Later, he became editor and owner of several politically influential periodicals, which included London’s Saturday Review. Before and after the turn of the century, Harris knew everybody of importance in Britain and France, and he would meet the leading figures of half the world during his global travels. A short, spry, muscular fellow, dapper, mustachioed, easy to caricature, Harris fancied himself a great lover and wrote explicitly about his sex life, which tended toward teenage girls. Harris’ Life and Loves was banned practically everywhere, and in Britain possessing a copy became a criminal offence. By now, the lengthy memoir seems merely interesting and, on the whole, innocent. Harris’ main crime was to reveal down and dirty pastimes of the British political class, which retaliated with venom.
The Nude News is back from not-so-sunny Florida! Once again we are for the birds. Along with our gorgeous feathered friends–blue herons, art deco anhingas, motherly storks, dive bomber pelicans–we have chattered away the winter on the edge of the Everglades. Birds have their secret flirting, matings, and their raucous squawky fits, but unlike humans they can’t take off their outer garments, their shell. We will never know the naked truth about bird land. So, come spring, we have returned to New York, center of the gossiping universe. We have some naughty nude tales to tell. Let’s start with royalty. It happened a summer ago but it still tickles us.
Prince William, handsome, twenty-eight, second in line to the British throne, attended a party for a charity that helps the homeless. A young woman of eighteen was introduced to the prince, to tell how the organization helped her off the streets. Shy, she could only stammer. William leaned forward, smiled, and said, “Don’t worry . . . just imagine me naked.” Tall, slender, a sportsman and rescue helicopter pilot, William resembles his father Charles, Prince of Wales, rather more than his mother, the legendary Princess Di. However, he seems to have inherited something of the latter’s charm. The young woman told reporters, “I imagined him naked, of course.” She immediately felt at ease, chatted with the prince and hoped to meet him again. Hmm.
A new German E-book has just come out by Ernst Probst from München / Wiesbaden (internet-zeitung): Superfrauen aus dem Wilden Westen. Among the high-profile women described in this wild west biography are: Calamity Jane, Katharina Tekakwitha, Lozen, superstar Adah Isaacs Menken, Mohongo, Queen Anne, Annie Oakley and Pocahontas.
Als Superfrauen aus dem Wilden Westen werden vorgestellt: die Scharfschützin Calamity Jane, die selige Katharina Tekakwitha, die Kriegerin Lozen, der Showstar Adah Isaacs Menken, die Sachen-Ehefrau Mohongo, die Anführerin Queen Anne, die Meisterschützin Annie Oakley, die Indianer-Prinzessin Pocahontas, die indianische Volksheldin Sacajawea, die Banditenkönigin Belle Starr und die Zirkuspionierin Agnes Lake Thatcher. Der Titel Superfrauen aus dem Wilden Westen ist unter der Internetadresse http://www.grin.com/e-book/133029/superfrauen-aus-dem-wilden-westen als E-Book im PDF-Format oder als gedruckte Taschenbuch erhältlich.
“In the 19th century, Adah Isaacs Menken set a template for women bohemian authors in America. In the stage show Mazeppa, Menken showed off her body in flesh-colored tights, while in lush poetry books she showed off her soul.” The above is from a review in New York’s Village Voice, circa mid-last year, of Reverend Jen’s tell-all book Live Nude Elf, in which the “popular downtown scenester” relates her numerous “sexperiments.” You couldn’t talk about such things in Adah’s day, not even at Pfaff’s tavern (located on Broadway in today’s SOHO), the leading Bohemian hang-out where you could find Walt Whitman in his cups. Of course, intimate Victorian details surfaced to public view via gossip or court trials, but you wouldn’t blatantly advertise them to sell a book. Yes, nudity or its appearance attracted an audience then as now. But nowadays, to paraphrase Cole Porter, too much goes. Taking it off has even elected a one-time hunk to the U.S. Senate–from formerly Puritan Massachusetts!
“Nude Is In the Eye Of the Beholder”
It’s shortly after the New Year’s holiday and Nude News has been on the road. As we welcome in the New and Nude Decade from a tropical (but chilly) garden, nearly as far south as you can get in the U.S., we glance at late ’09 stories about nudity that prove our main points concerning the subject:
1. Nude is hot. There is a constant flow of stories in the media for us to comment on. Newspapers, TV, the Net report and communicate these events without knowing their meaning in the epochal struggle between dress and undress, nature vs. artifice.
2. In the 21st century there is still no agreement among persons or cultures about who or what is nude, or for that matter lewd. Our story out of Egypt makes it clear that to some Moslem women the showing of any flesh whatever constitutes both the nude and lewd. Our story out of Virginia shows that to one dude wearing nothing more than a hard hat means he’s doing what comes naturally, at least at home. Nude means that which people think it means. Our own stance is: Naked is as naked does.
The new, updated, totally pop Sherlock Holmes opens in theaters across the Ailing Empire on Christmas Day, 2009. Possibly visible among the mayhem created by nearly 100 special and visual effects technicians and artists will be the stars: Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock, Jude Law as Dr. Watson, and Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler. Who’s that last, you ask. If you were a devotee of the Holmes canon, an avid reader of the adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective of late Victorian times, you would know. For Watson opens the intriguing tale “A Scandal In Bohemia” with the following:
To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.
Continue reading ‘Sherlock Holmes meets his match: Adah Menken’
New York: November 23, 2009
The nude news most gabbled about in the press makes even less sense than usual. We learn that Carrie Prejean, the once-upon-a-time Miss California and more recently poster girl for the religious right, made a “solo sex tape” that she sent to her boyfriend and then conveniently forgot. Earlier, she forgot a panty ad photo that she had posed for, showing most of her, including one-half a breast and the arc of her buttocks. Maybe she should be dubbed Carrie Nojeans? The rude reminder of the solo sex tape–guess what was she doing? –took place during settlement negotiations between Prejean and Miss USA Pageant execs. She claimed the pageant had denied her the title because she spoke out against gay marriage, and she was suing for a million or so. Those mean execs ran the tape in front of Carrie, her mother, and a lawyer or two. Reports TMZ: Mom “instantly turned sheet white as she watched her daughter give herself a hand.” Continue reading ‘WACKY NUDE NEWS’
The rather staid British Telegraph recently ran a front-page story, “Caught on Camera,” about the embarrassing photo of “love cheat Sun Meng,” a decent looking chap of 25, who was caught stark naked on the outside of the second floor of a modern apartment building in Chengdu, China. He had been in bed with a married woman, makin’ whoopee as Edie Cantor used to sing, when her husband came home. Enraged, hubby threatened violence. Sun, thinking fast, scrambled onto the balcony, too narrow to hold him, and next onto a nearby protruding air conditioner. From there, too high up to jump, he had nowhere to go. A “startled neighbor” took the shot as Sun balanced on the two-foot square hunk of metal. The good samaritan neighbor posted the photo on a community website and soon the naked Sun went round the world on the Net. O tempora, O mores!
The OED defines “swanky” as stylishly luxurious, an ostentatious display of wealth or sophistication. If so, Academy Award-winning Hilary Swank is a misnamed movie star. Swank may be her real name, but its Cole Porter connotations live in a different world from Hilary. She is famous for her androgynous roles in Boys Don’t Cry (a transgendered teen) and Million Dollar Baby (a pro boxer). As a heavy-handed publicity ploy for her upcoming release, still another biopic about Amelia Earhart, Hilary coincidentally confessed to Marie Claire (not quite “swank” but trying) that she sleeps in the nude. We quote:
My boyfriend’s son is six years old, and you wonder at what age you should stop walking around nude. Every morning he comes into the bedroom, and you’re just nude. But he doesn’t look twice; he doesn’t think about it yet.” Continue reading ‘Nude Swank’
