Although “everybody” supposes Helen Mirren is the cat’s meow, she strikes Nudnik as a bore. She was allegedly the sex goddess of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which isn’t saying much. She got an Oscar and a heap of other awards for playing Queen Elizabeth II in the tedious The Queen. In case you live on Mars, the movie is about poor, put-upon Queen Liz II having to cope with a global outpouring of sorrow over the suspicious death of Princess Diana. Because Liz loathed and snubbed Di, the People’s Princess, she had to pretend sorrow and mourning to salvage the monarchy. In life, the Queen got her priorities wrong, and for Nudnik’s money so did the movie: the real queen of a woman was Diana. Still worse, Mirren got a TV Emmy for playing Queen Elizabeth I as though she were an incarnation of Margaret Thatcher! Give us Bette Davis in Elizabeth and Essex for a gut-wrenching rendition of the historical monarch who could love, hate and rule at the same time. When, in a fit of fury, Elizabeth smacks her lover Essex in the face, she actually sent Errol Flynn’s head spinning. There’s a woman! There’s a Queen! It would be interesting to see shots of the younger, actually cute, Bette Davis in the nude.

Mirren with drown ducks

Now, Mirren at 64 has posed topless (sort of) for a publicity puff disguised as an article in New York magazine. She is promoting her latest flick, Love Ranch, in which she plays opposite Joe Pesci as the couple that owned a booming seventies Reno whorehouse. As a madam, she’s still playing the boss. Says New York, “She presides over the brothel with such swagger that Pesci shouts, ‘Who do ya think you are, the queen of fuckin’ England?’” This “swagger” consists of making bad dick jokes, having an affair with a big, young lunkhead, and stomping on the  throat of a whore who is supposedly out of line. Admits Mirren, “I’m still the good girl who wants to be a bad girl.” Providing her husband, Taylor Hackford, directs the movie and she doesn’t have to spend even one night in the Nevada brothel she visited for “research.” Finally, the lady admits, “I’m too fearful, too much of a wimp, really.”

So what does she look like topless? At her age not bad. Dame Helen is still an attractive woman in a sterile way, and the shots in question are appropriately taken of her in a bathtub. In the shot that shows her breasts, she is mostly submerged. Her wrinkles are what catch the eye, and not surprisingly in the Net comments on the New York piece, there is back and forth about age and whether that issue matters or not. Nudnik thinks she is still a pretty woman, just not a sexy one. Says one comment: “She looks nice and clean. I bet she smells fresh too!” Reader, if this is your ticket to an erotic night, go to! As for you Dame Helen, you never were a bad girl, you never could be. That’s why you married the producer/director and he’s named Taylor Hackford. Nudnik hopes this is the last we will have to see of your classically trained boobs.

We might have known it: Dame Helen adores Lady Gaga, a really bad girl. At least, Gaga is a serially topless, underwear-prancing girl, if indeed she is a  girl. The rumor persists that, before a sex change, Lady G. was Mr. G. Nudnik finds it interesting that G. is constantly stripping but never goes all the way–so what’s under there?

Gaga to her fans

Leave it to Gag to blur the line between dressed and undressed. At a Mets’ game at Citi Field the other week she arrived late, fussed about the attentions of the paparazzi (as if she minded), disappeared, then reappeared in Jerry Seinfeld’s box wearing nothing more than her brief, beaded bra and bikini panties. To remind her fans that she loathes them–she best understands their bad taste–Gag “flipped the double bird,” as the New York Post put it. In plain English, she made the “Up yours” gesture with both middle fingers to the entire stadium. It takes balls, to be sure, and Gag’s keen appreciation of the inherent masochism of groupies, rock fans, and assorted admirers of her very ordinary body. Gag just ain’t got it–she’s short, kinda homely, with a very unappealing ass. According to the Post, Gag “went up to the box and said, ‘F— you! F— you!’ to the photographers.” Nudnik recalls that the “F” word is supposed to be about sex not animosity. Nudnik’s plea: “Gag, keep your private parts, however acquired, private. They are already way overexposed.

Moss on the beach

British Kate Moss is one of the most super of fashion models. Born in 1974, she has appeared on over 300 magazine covers and in innumerable fashion advertising campaigns. A top earning celebrity model, she can easily make $10,000,000 per year, despite being rather short for her trade. She has that waifish look and figure, combined with a flair for high-profile romantic relationships, not to mention cocaine scandals that endear her to the tabloids. Various nitwit men’s magazines have chosen Kate as their Sexiest Woman, apparently impressed by her list of rock ‘n’ roll boyfriends. In a recent appearance on the Howard Stern Show, Courtney Love gabbled that Moss had chased her around the room and bed and had intercourse with her, and that all of Love’s lady (sic!) friends in London had relations with Moss. If you believe Howard and Courtney, Nudnik knows of a well-known bridge for sale. Reader, if you think Kate is SEXY, especially nude, hang on.

Nudnik finds Kate as sexy as a broomstick. Well, some like “It” hot, and some like it skinny. Speaking of which, a 1993 photo contact sheet of supposedly nude shots of teenage Kate were recently auctioned off at Christie’s. The photographer is the well-known Albert Watson, famed for his black and white shots, and the 14 photos went for 30,000 pounds. Claimed the Daily Telegraph, “There is an intimacy between the photographer and his muse.” Allegedly, the shots “draw you in.” Replies Nudnik, “They turn me off.” As the British newspaper admits, “[Kate] is crouching trying to hide as much of her body as possible.” Crunched up like a clam, she is plain hiding out, and what you mainly see is a thigh and a knee, stringy dark hair, and a pouty puss. Ms. Moss, unhappy and underfed, reminds Nudnik of photos of concentration camp survivors. This stuff could give child porn a bad name. Kate, here’s a kibitz from Nudnik: If you got “It,” strut it. If you’re a beanpole, go into fashion modeling. Oops, guess she did. Which points out that hi-fashion is not about showing but hiding.

Let’s close with the query: Can a clothed woman appear more naked than a nude one? Take the case of Debrahlee Loranzana, a bank officer no less. To quote the estimable Maureen Dowd, “A knockout in New York, Debrahlee Lorenzana, a 33-year-old single mother, filed suit against Citigroup, claiming that she was fired in August from the Citibank branch at the Chrysler Center for looking too sexy.”

The bank complained that, in the clothes she chose, she distracted the male workers in her department. A bra size 32 DD, the Puerto Rican native claims to be skinny, and that her mode of dress–turtlenecks, tailored jackets, pencil skirts and stiletto heels–is modest. Unlike some tellers who wore low-cut tops, snug pants and hot boots, she never showed cleavage. Yet the guys she worked with, especially her bosses, could not keep their eyes off her. To them, in their minds, she was stark naked.

Debrahlee’s bosses at Citibank told her that her female co-workers could wear what they pleased because they were nothing to look at in the first place. But her well-tailored clothes, especially tight turtlenecks, emphasized her “hourglass figure.” Then there is the way she walks, holds herself, and speaks in a breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice. “This is genetic, what am I supposed to do?” complains Debrahlee.

Sometimes, she says, she wished she looked more ordinary so that she would be judged on her hard work.

Folks, nudity is all in the head. In the Garden of Eden, after Eve got caught conniving with the Serpent, and Adam had eaten of the apple, he grew ashamed of her nudity. She had to put on a fig leaf or two. Yet every classical painting shows an Eve that looks plenty nude to Nudnik. Maybe Eve should have emulated Debrahlee and sued her boss–Jehovah–and the Serpent and Adam for good measure. And as to what Debrahlee ought to do–get out of banking! Maybe you could become . . . a model?

NEXT TIME OUT NUDNIK WILL RANT ABOUT NUDITY WE LOVE TO SEE.

“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.

Of all the countries Harris visited, Japan was his favorite. On several visits beginning in the late 19th century, he admired Japanese courtesy and manners, “the astonishing politeness of the people.” He was struck by their no-nonsense attitude toward sex and their casual acceptance of nudity. On his first visit, out in the country, his rickshaw was stopped by a bunch of naked girls and women who came out of a bathhouse. “They all wanted to see if I was white all over . . . They were of all ages and all absolutely nude.” The crowd grew, and when Harris touched the breasts of a pretty girl, “She seemed pleased and the whole crowd laughed as at a good joke.” Harris favorably compared Japan with France, not only for its lack of sham modesty but in the people’s love of art and appreciation of artists. The connection is clear, when we recall that the naked human form is the greatest subject of the master painters.

We wonder, how could the same courteous people, or their army, be responsible for the horrors of the Rape of Nanking, during the 1930s Japanese invasion of China, which led to World War II in the Pacific? Nanking, then the Chinese capital, was overrun by the Japanese army by early December 1937. There followed a six-week period during which some 57,000 prisoners of war were tied together and machine-gunned, hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered, and up to 80,000 women, from children to matrons, were viciously raped by soldiers of the victorious army.

Japan, unlike Germany, destroyed all its war records before formal surrender in 1945. Still, the repeated, gory massacres and massive, non-stop rape were witnessed by missionaries and American correspondents, and the facts sufficiently established by The International Military Tribunal convened by General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allies in the Pacific. The atrocities committed by the people Frank Harris found to be astonishingly polite are astonishingly grizzly and needn’t be gone into in detail. War turns men into devils. Murder and rape become deadly weapons to be used against the enemy. The image from the Rape of Nanking that haunts us is a photo of a Japanese soldier thrusting his bayonet into the dead, nude body of a woman, as though she were hamburger.

We find American soldiers in Iraq employing nakedness as a weapon.

In Abu Ghraib prison, Iraqi prisoners were stripped and stacked on top of each other to form naked pyramids, or forced into sexual acts. The snapshot of Pvt. Lynndie England holding the naked prisoner “Gus” by a leash became an icon of the war. The French social theorist Jean Baudrillard defined this as “war porn,” a genre that has grown popular on the Net. American military police, guarding male and female Iraqi prisoners, stripped them naked, forced them to masturbate, and even, at times, raped them. Oddly, like good scouts, the captors documented their behavior with snapshots, so that Major General Antonio Taguba could state, “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.”

To some degree, the American MPs understood that, given the Islamic morality of the prisoners, getting them naked in public, humiliating them, and documenting their disgrace was itself a form of torture. This was a criminal offence, which led to several MPs being court- martialed and sent to prison. But War Porn had been born, and it flourishes on the Internet to this day. The footage has grown bloodier and shows naked, headless corpses, severed limbs, and the like. The fellow with the leading website has stated, “It was a view of war that had never been seen.” Possibly, but it was anticipated by Norman Mailer’s novel of WW II, The Naked and the Dead.

Fortunately, nudity can be used for peaceful, positive purposes as well. A classic example is Lady Godiva’s ride through 11th century Coventry–stark naked except for her flowing locks. We owe the story to Roger of Wendover, who in the 13th century wrote his Flowers of History to set down main events in English history to that date. Godiva (literally “God’s Gift”) was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who married Leofric, Earl of Mercia. The couple was generous with gifts of gold, silver, gems, and costly garments to monasteries in the West Midlands. Leofric was not so generous with the heavily taxed people of Coventry. Godiva many times begged her husband to lift these onerous taxes, but the Earl steadfastly refused. Finally, exasperated, he told her: “Mount your horse, and ride naked before all the people, through the market of the town, from one end to the other, and on your return you shall have your request.” To Leofric’s surprise, Godiva accepted his challenge.

According to Roger, Godiva “loosed her hair and let down her tresses, which covered the whole of her body like a veil, and then mounting her horse and attended by two knights, she rode through the market-place, without being seen, except her fair legs.” Since the whole town was out intently watching, Godiva was seen all right. “Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity,” wrote the poet Tennyson, which is all she wore. Godiva is usually pictured as blonde, but a painting of 1898 from John Collier shows her hair as auburn, and it covers little of her pale skin. Leofric was sufficiently impressed by his wife’s audacity that he did indeed lift the townsfolk’s taxes. A later, made-up addition to the story claims Godiva requested the townspeople to remain indoors, shutters closed, during her ride. Only one fellow cheated by boring a hole in the shutter and peeking. He was struck blind. His name was Tom and this is the origin of the Peeping Tom. Instead of cleaning up Lady Godiva’s ride, the notion adds an element of voyeurism, not to mention a vicious morality.

At the time of the American Civil War, the wildly popular actress Adah Isaacs Menken gave us the nude ride of Mazeppa, from a poem by Lord Byron. The historic Prince Mazeppa fought the Russian Tsar for his tribal people. In the play, soldiers capture the prince, strip him bare, tie him face up to a wild stallion, and send him up a mountain to let the wolves and vultures have him. Adah wore a sheer bodystocking but to the audience she looked stark naked, and she became known as The Naked Lady. Since the stage mountain was four stories high and the ramp narrow, the performer was in danger of actual injury, and eventually Adah was badly hurt, leading to her death at thirty-three. The drama was such a hit that other actresses imitated Adah, and they too were maimed and one killed. Here, in mid-Victorian times, we have the elements of cross-sexuality, violence, and resistance to tyranny added to nude titillation. Sounds like an afternoon at the movies.

Mazeppa was performed throughout the 19th century. Then, after WW II, it became a popular item in the countries of Eastern Europe because it was about resistance to Russia. Where the drama couldn’t be performed, it was at least surreptitiously read. Again, The Naked Lady rode up the stage mountain in the name of freedom. In today’s America, freedom is once again threatened but from a different quarter. Democracy is threatened by heavily armed so-called citizens who menace our elected officials with insults and spit and stage gun-toting rallies on the edge of the nation’s capital. Sooner or later that sort of agitation leads to political assassination, as it did in the murders of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. It is well that the Texas based, alterna-soul singer Erykah Badu, who sounds like an etheric Marvin Gaye, reminds us, through the use of nudity, of what happened to our 35th President in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

In April 2010 Dallas police charged Badu with disorderly conduct after she performed a public striptease for her latest music video, “Window Seat.” Badu stripped at midday in Dealey Plaza, where JFK was gunned down. In the video, she walks through the square, removes her t-shirt and pants, then her underwear, while curious passers-by look on. The singer then falls to the ground to the sound of a gunshot. The attractive mother of three claims her point was not simply publicity but to remind people of what happened to JFK. “John F Kennedy was a revolutionary,” she told a TV interviewer. “He was not afraid to butt heads with America, and I was not afraid to show America my butt-naked truth.”

A Dallas police spokesman said they had received calls from people across the country complaining about Badu’s behavior. Also that there were children nearby when she stripped. Thus Badu was fined $500 for showing her ass. Here’s the rub: How did those people “across the country” know about Badu’s performance? They must have been forced to watch her “Window Seat” video on YouTube–quickly, before it was censored by the YouTubian Puritans. No doubt the offended citizens were held at gun-point by their neighbors. Or maybe it was the children in the Plaza who complained? In our humble opinion, Ms Badu deserves a medal.

As do the brave strippers from PETA, whose motto is “Bare Skin, Don’t Wear Skin.” PETA is the acronym for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. With a two million plus membership it is the largest and most active, at times outrageous, animal rights organization in the world. PETA members can often be found nude, or clothed only in a statement banner, in the middle of cities large and small. They realize that nudity makes a crucial point: Humans are another animal species, and to an animal its skin means what our skins mean to us: life. PETA’s purpose, its crusade, is to save the lives of our fellow creatures, and to make their point the PETAs are willing to show it all in public, right downtown.

For now let’s focus on two members who bared all in Brattleboro, Vermont, which has lenient laws about nudity. The ladies–no, too young for that–girls–no, not girlish, too mature for that–chicks--no, too Vermont for that–these two females, one brunette and one blonde, were partially covered by their banner, bearing the motto above. Their backsides were not covered at all, and their behinds, their best feature, might have been given more emphasis.

Viewers’ comments to photo documentation of the Brat Baring on The Peta Files website was largely favorable to the young women and thankful for their courage in exposing themselves on an autumn day in Vermont–they call that “Stick Season,” because anyone who hasn’t already headed south is probably stuck for the winter. There were a couple of punsters, such as “It’s so em-bare-assing!” Yuk! Yuk! And one male nincompoop compared the PETAs unfavorably to brave American troops in Iraq, and insisted, “[M]en only care about the t & a and don’t give a crap about your messages!!!!!” Well, the Nude News does care about exhibitions of breasts and rear ends, especially when they are shown off to a higher purpose. We agree with the suggestion that female nudity might be accompanied by a video or brochures showing how animals are routinely tortured and killed. Concerning our troops, the “Nude News” is certain they have caught onto the shows of pulchritude on PETA, and they too are grateful to the dolls whose life and limb and other parts they would gladly defend, if only they weren’t so far from their front.

***

Michael and Barbara Foster are authors of the upcoming definitive biography of America’s first superstar Adah Isaacs Menken called A DANGEROUS WOMAN.

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.

William reversed an old public speaker’s trick: If you are intimidated by a distinguished live audience, or an interviewer and his/her TV cameras, just imagine the lot in the buff. The fear is gone and you feel cozy, or at least on the same level. This is the power of imagination. All forms of seduction make use of the leverage of imagination: the striptease most obviously, beginning in ancient times with Salome and her dance of the seven veils. The historian Josephus tells us that Salome (her name derived from shalom, Hebrew for “peace”) was the daughter of Herodias who divorced her husband and married his brother, King Herod of Galilee, who ruled as a Roman puppet. Salome, then, was both Herod’s stepdaughter and niece. The king lusted after her, while her mother used her for revenge on John the Baptist, who had denounced her divorce and remarriage.

Salome is represented in dozens of guises–paintings, movies, novels, opera–but what did she do to drive King Herod so wild that, according to the Gospel of Mark, he burst out, “Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee . . . unto the half of my kingdom.” The king was eating and drinking with his officials on his birthday, when Salome began to dance, to lasciviously contort her body, to slowly, rhythmically remove one by one the veils covering her assets. It was not merely the spectacle of her quivering bosom, heaving belly, rounded thighs tossed in the old man’s face, but what lies beyond that dissolved his will: the promised pleasures of flesh spiced by sin. It is not what Salome delivered that counts but what Herod imagined he might gain–bliss–and would lose–care, grief, restraint. Salome embodies, as did the naked Eve before Adam, the root of seduction and thrust.

The lush Rita Hayworth in her 1953 movie Salome performs our favorite portrayal of the Biblical stripper. Minus six of the veils–as nude as the Production Code allowed–she glides up a row of steps to fling herself at the feet of Herod, played by Charles Laughton, who oozes lust. Rita glows while Herod imagines bedroom delights. Then, goaded on by her mother, she demands the head of John the Baptist. Herod, frightened, complies to save face, still hoping to possess Salome, which he never will. His imagination exacts his damnation. What of Salome? She married Herod’s son and gave birth to three boys. And what of Rita? In that fiction called real life she married, unhappily, Prince Aly Khan, best known for his two signature remarks: “Wine for everyone!” and “Where are the girls?”

Sometimes it is the dancer who must pay.

Daredevil performer

Adah Isaacs Menken (1835 – 1868) became known as The Naked Lady during the American Civil War. She was born “a colored girl from New Orleans” (NAACP’s The Crisis) and married upwardly mobile. Her third husband (out of five) was the world heavyweight, bareknuckle boxing champion, and to the Union, he was a national hero. He deserted a pregnant Adah, she lost the child and attempted suicide, and the affair became an international front-page scandal, which trumped news about the war. Recovering, Adah played the Cossack prince Mazeppa, a freedom fighter leading his tribe against the oppressive Russian Tsar. She toured the country to great success, from a Broadway theater to California’s Gold Coast. The role of Mazeppa, previously played by a male actor, was dangerous, and other actresses who imitated Adah were maimed or killed. In the crucial scene Mazeppa is captured by enemy soldiers, stripped naked, and strapped to “an untamed steed,” then sent into the mountains to perish.

In fact, the horse was trained by Adah, the mountains were a four-story stage set–enough to make a fall from the narrow ramp perilous–and Adah wore a sheer body stocking as well as a tiny garment at the crotch. The latter was compared to a diaper by cub reporter Mark Twain, who covered Adah’s triumphal tour of the West. In the glare of the footlights and the charge up the mountain, past effects such as waterfalls and attacking wolves, Adah appeared naked to the audience. Here is sexuality spiced by real danger. Adah packed in the crowds, made more money than any performer before her, and sooner rather than later paid with her life. She died at the height of her fame, only thirty-three, broke in a garret in Paris. Longfellow wrote her a last love poem as she expired. The Naked Lady has since been immortalized in opera, film, and novels.

Though unaware of it, today’s Lady Gaga–not yet queen but a princess of pop–is one of Adah Menken’s lineal descendants. From the Roman Diana, goddess of both childbirth and virginity, to the 19th century’s royal courtesan Lola Montez and following her Adah Menken, who acknowledged Lola, from Hollywood’s blondest Jean Harlow to diamond-friendly Marilyn Monroe, to Madonna who acknowledged Marilyn, and again to Princess Diana, a woman is crowned by her epoch. As The Love Goddess, her looks, smile, style, temperament, and body may be worshipped but are no longer her own. She is owned by the crowd. She will be adored, desired, if lucky loved, but stripped naked by the omnipresent media that feeds the public maw. Finally, her insatiable fans will eat the Goddess alive.

Lola did a spider dance that drove the men from Paris to Sydney wild. Today it might seem ridiculous, or worse, harmless. Adah, dressed as a sport, began on the New York stage performing song, dance, and repartee in The French Spy. Marilyn, singing about diamonds, shimmied and shook her world-class curves. There was never the slightest doubt about her sex. Those who have come after, including Madonna who credits Marilyn as her inspiration, and certainly Gaga, cultivate their androgyny. Perhaps, our collective imagination has grown jaded, and it takes a more kinky experience to awaken it. And the audience has changed: The wannabe goddess is appealing not to males, not to grownups at all, but to teenage girls. She is what they hope to become: famous. Not even rich–for men, money and sex are joined at the hip, that’s why Marilyn sang about diamonds–but for today’s media-crazed teenage chicks, fame is the object. A figure whose sexuality is both blatant and twisted, a tarty advertisement, who is literally a fame monster, has become their role model.

Lady Gaga

Gaga acknowledges her debt to Madonna, and both come from proper Italian American families. Madonna’s Material Girl video was a remake of sorts of Marilyn’s “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The arc of the Goddess is continuous but ever changing, and Madonna is the incarnation of a bitch goddess. She has been contrary from the start, but in an ambiguous way, cleverly employing Catholic symbols and references in her songs, the most obvious being “Like a Virgin.” She also employed style (we won’t call it fashion) effectively, such as her trademark bustier. Shmuel Boteach, author of Hating Women (2005), credited Madonna with erasing the line between music and pornography. He wrote, “Before Madonna, it was possible for women more famous for their voices than their cleavage to emerge as music superstars. But in the post-Madonna universe, even highly original performers such as Janet Jackson now feel the pressure to expose their bodies on national television to sell albums.” Oh no, Shmuel, taking it off goes much further back. Recent pop nudity has been rather limited, consisting mainly of breasts and thighs, rather like the chicken counter at the supermarket. Mid-Victorian Adah Menken showed more and better.

The mature Madonna, acting motherly in both the philanthropic and adoptive sense, appears to us more attractive than her earlier, combative version. Perhaps Gaga will mature as well, but we doubt it. Rather homely under her plastered-on makeup, she wallows in ugliness in her songs. The line “I want your ugly; I want your disease” in “Bad Romance,” one of her top hits, says it all. Gaga’s presentations feature tidbits such as “He ate my heart” and “Take a bite of my bad-girl meat,” as well as denigrating an injury or handicap: “I can’t believe how you slurred at me with your half-wired broken jaw.” We might say the same about her singing. Gaga is not loath to use four-letter words in cursing at her audience, including the teenage girls who idolize her. We tag her the wretch goddess.

A piece in the British Telegraph caught our eye recently. Gaga had posed topless for the cover of a music magazine, and he asked his readers why they supposed she had done it. He ranged through the possible answers: money, attention, so-called empowerment, just plain fun. But to quote Gaga on another occasion: “I don’t give a f*** about money. What am I going to do with a condo and a car? I can’t drive.” She is already getting the attention she craves, and if she ever had fun we would be surprised. The readers who responded, mostly male, were not attracted by Gaga or her tits. They used euphemisms for breasts new to us, including “hooters,” “kajungas,” and “bazookas.” Our own suggestion about her motive comes from Gaga, the line from “So Happy I Could Die”: “I touch myself, can’t get enough.” Like any adolescent, Gaga’s object of desire is herself.

When Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he risked his life to become the first man to climb to the summit of Mount Everest, he famously replied, “Because it is there.” In Gaga’s case, she posed topless to prove she is here. Only by seeing herself on the cover of a magazine or in a video or on a TV monitor can she believe in the existence of Lady Gaga. She is a dreamed-up entity that, however, leaves nothing to the imagination of her audience. She is naked all right.

Nude News’ next outing will be to explore nudity and politics–stay tuned.

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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.

That’s the secret–found exclusively on the Nude News–of Scott Brown’s trouncing the Democrat–what’s her name anyway?–to capture Ted Kennedy’s lifetime seat in the Senate. Oh, let the pundits rant about populist feeling against the Health Reform bill, or about voters being broke, jobless, and kicked out of their homes, but that penny-ante stuff didn’t elect an admittedly conservative Republican in hardcore liberal Massachusetts. No sir, it was that Cosmo centerfold, snapped when Scott was a mere twenty-two, that elevated a near unknown to the august body of solons. In fact, it was Scott’s bod, which Cosmo claims he made no bones about showing, that first and last got him elected. The mag first elected Scott “America’s Sexiest Man,” a well-advertised tag that, in the Senate race, started him out with 50% plus of the votes, because what woman is going to vote against America’s sexiest man? It would be unpatriotic.

The centerfold shows a moderately hairy young bachelor, nude, leaning on a cushion. Smiling teeth and biceps are on view. One arm covers his private parts, which in any case are planted in the fold of the centerfold. After all, you’ve got to allow a budding politician something to hide. Cosmo wrote that “adorably sexy” Brown likes “slinky girls” and goes to the beach to search them out. By now, at fifty, he’s a happily married dude, father of two daughters (one an American Idol contestant), and he even admits to sometimes doing the wash. A reserve army officer, Cosmo continues to call him by a pet name: “Scott Six-pack.” The guy is awesomely normal.

But let’s suppose that a female candidate for the Senate, perhaps a slightly more adventurous Sarah Palin, had once posed nude for a glossy magazine—could she be elected? Of course not, because she couldn’t get nominated in the first place. Never mind how youthful she had been at the time, never mind she had to pose nude or starve to death, no photographed naked woman is going to the U.S. Senate or House—in fact, she couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Alaska. When it comes to nudity, the double standard rules: what’s sauce for the politico gander, would poison the goose.

Take the case of Michelle Obama’s exposed arms, which caused some grumbling a while back. Would anyone object to President Obama’s rolling up his sleeves, showing his biceps? Of course not, because we voters want a muscular president who gets down to work. Even in the skin game—and we mean beauty pageants—taking off too much can finish a girl’s chances. Blonde, bathing beauty-type Carrie Prejean, Miss California and almost Miss USA, both being franchises owned by Donald Trump, was dethroned due to a flap about her posing “partially nude.” Once the years earlier photos surfaced, Prejean, despite her uptight political leanings, was no longer fit to represent the state that gave us Hollywood and countless movies featuring “partial nudity.” The shots, taken from behind, show mostly Carrie’s back with a hint of bosom. And when Janet Jackson showed more breast than that, she stopped the Superbowl. Why are we Americans afraid of showing off our women’s natural (not to mention motherly) assets?

Nude News suspects that Puritanism lurks in our national unconscious. That it applies unequally to male and female is a vestige of Victorian propriety, when women were considered weak, innocent, and in need of protection. Those who still promulgate this nonsense have never been jostled by the “weaker sex” on the streets of New York, or beaten hands-down to a taxi. We will close with a prediction: Scott Brown will be the Republican candidate for U.S. President in 2012. Whether he wins or not, depends on the votes of our womenfolk—single, married, motherly, and sexy.

“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.

PETA protesters will strip naked from New York to Barcelona at the drop of a fur stole (http://blog.peta.org/archives/naked/).These peaceful guerillas have been getting nude in a bunch in highly public places to protest the wearing of animal skins. Being an animal with a skin, it’s a cause we support that deserves a post on its own.

Finally, New York’s Metropolitan Opera recently showed a new production of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman that featured stripper-like chorus girls, g-strings, pasties and all. However, the girls were covered up when the opera was shown on closed TV in various movie houses. Don’t they know how much skin the movies already show? The decision to jazz up old Offenbach but afterward to dress up the girls for select movie houses is simultaneously a blow for everlasting American Puritanism and bad taste—a natural pair. Please read on–

The Egyptian story, according to the N Y Times, is about “an intensifying struggle between the moderate Islam championed by the state and a populace that is turning to a stricter version of the faith, whose most visible hallmark is the niqab — the dress that covers the entire female form.” A woman dressed in this outfit looks like an ambulating pyramid—nothing shows. The article cites one Fatma al-Assal, 22, who has a veterinary degree but has been refused a job. We are not told how she proposes to treat animals while dressed in the awkward, confining garb. She is not getting near our cats—she would frighten them.

A remark by Ms. Assal gives away her real purpose: “Dressed that way, I feel respect. I don’t have anyone looking at me. Islam says all the woman’s body is a temptation.” As a matter of fact, dressed like a tent in Cairo among more usually dress women will naturally cause people to stare, so more rather than less people will be looking at her. Which we suspect she wants. She is making a silent but loud statement: Islam demands this sort of dress, and you women who dress in Western garb are no better than whores. As for any part of a woman being a temptation, we wonder which part of which woman? We are reminded of Oscar Wilde’s quip that the only way to overcome temptation is to give into it. Having given into tempting women many times, we are no longer intrigued by their random parts. The ”full monty” might be something else.

Back home in Old Virginny, according to the AP, “As Erick Williamson, 29, sees it, being naked is liberating, and if passers-by get an eyeful while he’s standing in front of his picture window, that’s not his problem.” One of those passers-by, a librarian (what else?) named Joyce was driving to work when she heard loud singing. As she drove past Erik’s home, “she saw him naked, standing directly behind a large picture window.” While she fails to mention he was dressed in a hard hat, we presume Joyce slowed to gawk. Knowing librarians, we are certain she was offended by his singing, and that given the chance, she would have shushed him. Instead, she called the cops.

A few hours later, a housewife named Yvette was walking her 7-year-old son to school past Erik’s home. She heard a loud rattle and saw the culprit standing naked, full frontal, in a side doorway. “He gave me eye contact,” said Joyce, but he made no gesture toward her or her son. The noise was caused by Erik’s packing up his belongings to leave town, which explains his need for a hard hat. Yvette also called the cops. In response, Erik claims it did not occur to him that people outside his home might see him naked. We don’t buy that—he was showing off. Whether or not he had anything worth showing, we aren’t informed.

Under Virginia law, the charge of “indecent exposure” requires “an obscene display or exposure” and must occur in “a public place or a place where others are present.” At the trial, Erik’s defense attorney argued that “Nudity in one’s own home is not a crime.” The prosecutor argued that Erik’s intention was to expose himself to the women by making a loud noise such as singing. Obviously, the prosecutor was no music lover. What tipped the scales was the prosecutor’s claim that “No one deserves to see it [nudity], certainly not a young child.” Egad! How would you like to be this uptight schmuck’s son? The judge found Erik guilty but suspended his prison sentence. The offense could have cost him a year in jail. The moral: In Virginia, it’s illegal to get naked in your own home unless you pull down the blinds—but it’s fine to be a peeping Tom and a snitch.

Today’s  final bone to pick is with New York’s august Metropolitan Opera House. The new production of Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman features “partial nudity.” We don’t like the phrase, feeling that being naked is like being pregnant—either you are or not. You may have a few tatters of clothes left on, but if you feel nude, there you are. It’s a thing of the spirit. Stripper Gypsy Rose Lee took off less clothes than other girls working the ramp but she left the audience feeling they had seen all of her. She did not tease, she entertained. The Met’s very slightly clad chorines—now you see them, now you don’t—are mostly tease. This is not the wide-open New Burlesque but a tip of the hat to Offenbach’s day when Napoleon III ruled France and Queen Victoria presided over the British Empire and tits were kept just slightly covered to titillate without giving anything away. Our plea to the Met’s directors and chorus girls: Honey, take it off!

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.

Watson hastens to inform us that his idol was not in love with “the well-known adventuress,” merely in awe. For she alone had beaten him at his own game.

You might also ask–we surely did–who is Rachel McAdams? The up-and- coming actress, a spunky, natural blonde of Irish background from Canada, would seem a surprising choice to play the brilliant, scheming, blackmailing, brunette Irene. In the original story, the stand-offish King of Bohemia has come to consult Holmes, and he describes Irene as having “the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men.” There is a photograph of the two of them cozy together, and Irene threatens to make it public to derail the King’s marriage to a Scandinavian princess. Actually, the King remains in love with Irene, saying, “I wish she had been of my own station! What a queen she would have made!”

In the new movie Irene is Sherlock’s former and wannabe girlfriend, and Downey has bulked up to play Sherlock as a martial artist. Some way to treat “the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen,” as Watson calls him. The movie’s director is Guy Ritchie, Madonna’s ex-husband, otherwise known for caper comedies. He probably needed his karate training to deal with the movie’s nine producers. We look forward to watching the Sherlock flick and its proposed sequel: Sherlock Holmes In Space.

Now we must confess: Having read the entire Holmes canon, we are going to especially miss two Sherlockian giveaways: his plaid cap with the little peak and the big flaps (it’s gone), and his cocaine habit (Downey, former drug addict, has become an incredible hulk!). It all sounds like good clean fun: Holmes and Watson save Britain from being destroyed (Gordon Brown may yet accomplish that). Alas, there is no scandal, no Bohemia, no dummkopf King, and no lowdown Sherlock trying to steal a photo memento of love from sexy, clever Irene. So there follows a backstory that would make, if not as obvious a money-maker, a better movie.

Arthur Conan Doyle was a young lad in Edinburgh in the 1860s when Adah Isaacs Menken, aka The Naked Lady, was the toast of London and toured the British Isles. Photos showing poses from her daredevil melodrama Mazeppa, shot by the first celebrity photographer, Napoleon Sarony, were in every bourgeois household’s parlor album. Posters of her scantily clad atop an untamed stallion were plastered all over the major towns. Then there were the front-page scandals about Adah and her numerous husbands and lovers, including novelist Alexandre Dumas, bareknuckle boxing champ John Heenan, and Charles I, King of Württemberg. No doubt Arthur’s straight-laced parents tried, and failed, to keep from him the outrageous doings of The Royal Menken (another nickname) before sending him to a Jesuit school. By fifteen Arthur had graduated, rejected religion, and declared himself an agnostic. He was at heart a romantic who would have one great love affair in his life.

Conan Doyle was a failed eye doctor before he became the bestselling author of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and various sci-fi and historical novels. In his “Bohemia” tale, his first and perhaps best, there are numerous similarities between Irene Adler and Adah Isaacs Menken. First, the initials: IA vs. AIM. Second, both women are of Jewish descent. Whether Conan Doyle knew it or not, Adah was also part black. Third, each woman was the notorious sex symbol of her day. Fourth, the emphasis on a particularly scandalous photo of the King with Irene brings to mind the photo of Adah with the elderly, portly Dumas, both in what the Victorians considered undress. It went round the world, outraged the righteous and caught the attention of Mark Twain, a formerly hopeful admirer of AIM. Fifth, speaking of dress, both Irene and Adah (a good friend of George Sand) were blatant crossdressers at a time when it wasn’t done. Sixth, Adah, like Irene, had an affair with a handsome king, although Adah’s well-publicized liaison with King Charles of Württemberg was sexless, while Irene was in bed with the King of Bohemia. Charles was gay, and his supposed affair with Adah was a publicity stunt to distract attention from his actual affairs with various men. The king and the actress became close companions while she was getting over the split with her fifth husband, an American gambler and Confederate spy. Let’s quit with number seven: Both Irene and Adah were resolute, courageous, yet beautiful and very female. In fact, Rachel McAdams, who has dyed her hair dark for Sherlock Holmes, looks a good deal like Adah. Maybe casting did some historical research!

Do see the movie. Read Conan Doyle’s story to find out how Irene bests Sherlock. To learn more about the incredibly adventurous life of Adah Menken, visit our website: http://www.thegreatbare.com. You’ll find lots of interesting info about Adah and her guys, Sarony photos of The Naked Lady, our ongoing Nude News column, and even a screen treatment for an Adah Menken biopic. Also, see http://www.myspace.com/adahmenken at MySpace for her slide show, her blog and many friends. This woman was so far ahead of her time that she is totally now.

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.”  

Carrie and her counselor dropped the case. Now biblically correct outfits have begun to drop Carrie. Her own minister is more forgiving. Pastor Darren Carrington from The Rock Church in San Diego says, “Everyone is a work in progress,” adding everyone has “something we’re not proud of.” Here’s the rub: What’s to be ashamed of? All Carrie, no great beauty, has got going for her is her bod. The world’s largest porn company, Vivid Entertainment, has legally acquired the tape, but they want to do a deal with Carrie before releasing it. Rather gentlemanly of them. Our advice to Miss Nojeans: Sell your ass-ets, pronto. We understand you have a book coming out–all the better. Show ‘em what you got, girl, and you may become the next Sarah Palin.

Speak of the devil, Sarah’s former almost son-in-law Levi Johnston will NOT be showing the full monty in Playgirl‘s January issue. A spokesman for the mag said: ” “[Johnston] did not give ‘full-frontal’ as his manager reported he would. We’re thrilled with the photos we got, and are confident people will love them. Although there may be glimpses, we did not get full on frontal nudity.” Has Levi gone back on his word? He responds: “We don’t want no bad boy image. I don’t want to be looked at as someone who is getting naked for fame.”

Okay, Levi, you’re stripping for the money. That puts you in a grand tradition of taking it off, one that dates back to Adah Menken in Civil War days. She became the highest paid performer in the world just by running around in see-through tights. We see you’ve even learned the “tease” part of striptease. Could it be, Levi, you’re stripping less for the money than for revenge? That’s an even older tradition, dating back to Salome in the Bible, who had it in for John the Baptist.

Levi, where, oh where, is your book? If you’re not going to show all, at least tell us all. “She knows what I got on her,” the lad said about Sarah Palin. If you’re not just teasing, that we would like to hear. Off with her head!

Finally, a story that really interests us–from India. Bollywood, their film industry, reminds us of Hollywood some time ago. The stars, whose doings are on the front page of the Times of India, suffer scandals, enjoy triumphs, and live out their lives not only in public but for the public. It all seems so innocent compared to today’s Hollywood, where the survival of the shittiest rules. Looking at a recent cover of US Weekly, the story heads blare “Cruel Lies,” “Final Insult,” “Betray,” “Fight.” We prefer flight–across the world to the romantic subcontinent, where we breathlessly learn that Akshay’s chasing Katrina! And Shilpa ties the knot with Raj Kundra, while Hrithik, Suzanne and Barbara sport the same tattoo. This last is either a love triangle or a menage a trois or something in-between, nobody’s sure. Of course we don’t know much about these Bollywood stars, or care to. It’s a fantasy with song and dance, like one of their movies. They need this fluff to distract from bloody terrorism, the danger of atomic war, and the ever present poverty of the masses. So what’s the latest story on nudity from Bollywood? It’s the movie Kurbaan, in which the female lead Kareena Kapoor bares–her back.

The headline reads: Is Kareena’s bare back in ‘Kurbaan’ poster obscene? India’s religious right (Shiv Sena) thinks so, claiming “the supposed ‘nudity’ is against Indian culture.” In some venues they tied a sari round the poster, to cover up the so-called obscenity. Kareena replied: “If they are planning to gift me a sari, I’d like it as saffron is my favourite colour.” Two points appear obvious to us Westerners: First, Kareena’s co-star Saif Ali Khan shows more uncovered bod than she: frontal, down to below the belly button. And his intentions are obvious. Once again the old male/female double standard. Second, the comments by readers were split half and half on whether the poster was “obscene.” But as one smart cookie named Baapoo remarked: “She looks sexy. We the people will decide what is and what is not Indian culture. This is the land of Vedas and the Kamasutra. Please give us the liberty to act and think.”

Amen. The Hindu right appears as ignorant of their own traditions as the Christian right is of the Bible, that magnificent tale of lust, incest, adultery, and the Song of Songs, the sexiest thing ever written.

 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!

“My family is ashamed and none of my own neighbors will talk to me any more,” complained Sun. What’s to be ashamed of? Women began to appear nearly nude on the American stage 150 years ago, with the daredevil performance of Adah Menken, the Naked Lady. Adah appeared to clamorous, sold-out theaters from New York to San Francisco, and on to London and Paris, as Prince Mazeppa in a thriller based on a Lord Byron poem. A cohort of soldiers stripped her, apparently violated her, and sent her tied to a wild stallion up a four-story stage-set. The audience got to see everything except her groin area, covered by what then cub-reporter Mark Twain called a diaper. Nobody supposed she was a prince, rather a princess, and the suspense hung on whether she would live through the performance.

Nowadays we see lots of bared female flesh–on calendars, in magazines, on the beaches of the Riviera or California, not to mention, in summer, on the streets of New York City. Granted, we don’t as frequently see men in the altogether, but since the male striptease act in The Full Monty (1997), more often in the movies. Aside from obvious porn flicks, nudity is becoming expected, and to get a rise anymore, the scene needs to include spanking or some other s/m touch. Sun’s story, like Menken’s, is compelling because it involves sex–the love triangle–and danger.

“I was afraid he [the husband] would kill me,” a now-clothed Sun told the press. We haven’t a clue as to how he got down from his perch. But what really intrigues us, which has so far escaped comment, is the air conditioner. Here’s why: Letha Hadady, our contributing editor, visited Chengdu twenty years ago. Then as now it was the capital of Szechuan province, home of spicy food in China’s Midwest breadbasket, and Letha was on her way to Tibet. She was at work on her book Asian Health Secrets, which has since become the bible in its field of alternative medicine. China, still recovering from the Cultural Revolution, was a very different place. Then, Chengdu, cold in winter but hot in summer, had no air conditioners. How could poor Sun have escaped when caught in the act?

August, Letha arrived by train at Chengdu after two days of being packed in a way overcrowded compartment, the men smoking, arguing, and spitting, the women tending to their kids who wore, and peed through, pants open at the bottom sans diaper. Everybody wore worker’s blue. She stayed at the downtown JinJiang hotel for a few dollars a night for a basic room shared with four other young women and a bathroom down the hall. No towels or toilet paper provided. Of course, no air conditioning. Now, the JinJiang, recently remodeled, is a five-star establishment: “Set amidst elegant gardens, this striking Chengdu hotel towers over downtown.” Rooms with air conditioning, broadband, cable TV, and hairdryers start at $150 a night.

Letha went to see the Chinese Opera. She was taken there by a bicycle-propelled rickshaw. The audience of mostly men carried paper fans with which they cooled themselves during the performance. On the way back the rickshaw passed a dim, deserted square: In the center stood a massive statue of Chairman Mao, pigeons squatting on his head. Shortly after the American Civil War, Adah Menken played at the Theatre de la Gaite before an audience of sumptuously clad nobles, generals, men of affairs and their bejeweled consorts in Emperor Napoleon III’s Paris. It is this second Napoleon who built the city of monuments and wide tree-lined avenues that we know today. He may have been on the list of Adah’s lovers (aside from her five husbands), since she was the most desired woman in Paris and Emperor Napoleon slept around when Empress Eugenie wasn’t looking. Adah accomplished what the Kaiser’s armies failed to do a few years later: She took Paris by storm.

The Second Empire is gone and mostly forgotten, so is the Kaiser and so is Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Only adultery is eternal, and as long as there are adventurous chaps such as Sun Meng and his eager girlfriend and her bellicose husband there will be love triangles. Let’s hope the “love cheat” will always have a handy air conditioner to flee to. As Edie Cantor used to sing, “That’s what you get, folks/For makin’ whoopee!”

Michael Foster

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.”  

What surprised us was the tempest in a teacup caused by this rather innocent remark. Headlines depicted psychologists as either angry or upset with Hilary. Claimed one:

Hilary, you’re not this child’s mum. What if things don’t work out with your present boyfriend? Who knows what his [the son] psycho-sexual adjustment may be. It’s not a good thing.

We don’t get it. Is seeing his father’s lover in the nude, and presumably his father, bad for a young boy? Why keep him in the dark that women are built differently from men? Why hide the female body from the lad? When yours truly (Michael) was about four, I had two girl friends. We formed a petite menage a trois and explored what anatomical differences we could find. This did not turn me into a sex fiend, but it whetted my appetite. Which is what really surprises me: How come the six-year old boy “doesn’t look twice,” or “think about it yet”? We hope he isn’t erotically retarded. But our guess is that he does notice but just hides it. Maybe he is a better actor than Hilary!

Another take on the nude thing comes from Malina Akerman. The tall, blonde, Swedish-born actress usually plays what she terms “wild girls.” She grew up in Canada, became a celebrity model at seventeen, and then moved to Hollywood. She has taken some steamy parts, such as Silk Spectre in Watchmen, in which she wore a skin-tight leather outfit. She did a notorious menage a trois scene in an episode of HBO’s Entourage. In her latest, the widely panned Couples Retreat, Malina plays a soccer mom on vacation in Hawaii. It’s an update of the sixties Bob and Carroll, Ted and Alice, without the sex. Malina, we have some advice for you: Don’t play any more straight roles. Show that body. When asked by a reporter how she handles nude scenes with such ease, Malina replied:

In Sweden, nudity is natural. It’s not considered sexual. We’ve grown up with boobies on television. People are topless on the beach. My parents would sometimes walk naked from the bedroom to the bathroom. You don’t blink because it’s so natural.

We like that answer. It’s real swanky!