“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!
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.
