
Naked Europe covers up - kylebarron
https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/09/01/naked-europe-covers-up
======
joshuaheard
I lived on the French Riviera in the 80s. Nearly all European women were
topless at the beach, and in St. Tropez, there was full nudity. I recently
visited, and the only topless women were older. None of the youth went
topless. Fewer exposed breasts in advertising as well. No idea the cause,
probably, instant global media has made them self-consciously realize few
countries are that permissive.

~~~
Fnoord
Seems the United States of America is going for a cultural victory [1],
doesn't it? Imagine, that you'd walk with your toddler on the beach in St.
Tropez and your kid would see a nipple. That'd be downright traumatising. I
mean, the deprivation of milk... Heck even Louis de Funès movies which took
place in/near St. Tropez contained nudity. Now those would be 18+. A shame.

Although I don't want my child naked on the beach (she's half a year old) not
because I mind someone seeing her naked but because of all the
cameras/smartphones. The loss of privacy is real, and its a direct effect due
to the common practice of taking your smartphone -with quality camera these
days- with you everywhere.

[1]
[http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Cultural_victory_(Civ5)](http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Cultural_victory_\(Civ5\))

~~~
sixdimensional
I'm going to make a very controversial point for the sake of argument, not one
I am even sure I agree with.

In my line of work, I don't see an increase in privacy happening, I see
exactly the opposite despite increasing privacy measures.

In fact, I see observation (video, audio, etc.) devices are literally going to
be everywhere. They are in our devices, homes, cars, transportation vehicles
(aircraft, public transit), cities, streets - there is nearly nowhere to hide
- for any of us.

Whether this is right or wrong may not matter any more unless it can be
controlled. Can it be controlled?

If it cannot be controlled, I see only one other option - and this is the
sticky point...

..we have to be ready to face ourselves and each other publicly at all times.
There will be little to no way to hide, to maintain privacy, etc. Our cultures
will have to adapt, perhaps, at first, by trying to hide, enacting laws, etc.
However, if it is inevitable that privacy cannot be maintained, then I argue,
our culture will have to evolve.

Perhaps the culture of the future will protect your child from sexual
predators in a different way. Perhaps we will have equal potential to be seen
naked publicly whether on the Internet, a nude beach, regardless of age,
gender or ethnicity.

To ensure the safety and security of society, people will have to change, even
if our accepted norms of nudity, sexuality, etc. change. I can only hope that
we as humans will be able to evolve to handle the changed paradigm and still
ensure reasonable safety and security of society.

I will say, I believe people today globally already have to be extremely more
open-minded than ever before, on average, just to mentally cope with how we
have changed as humans.

Feel free to debate me here.. as I said, I am not sure if even I believe what
I'm writing, but.. I'm trying to be open-minded about it.

~~~
Fnoord
Yes, the elephant in the room is that the trend is inevitable. However the
severity of it is the arms race.

For myself, I'm cool with a lot of that. My partner will have to decide for
herself. Though it might affect me since we live together and have a child.
We're adults though. Our child, however, is _our_ responsibility and if I can
protect her privacy in cases which are likely to backfire later on, I should,
IMO. Don't get me wrong: I don't have the illusion I'll be able to protect her
in every case in this regard but I believe this to be one of those examples.
Another one is where your child did something stupid (such as breaking the
law) and you documented it. Don't shame your child in public!

What's going to happen is that there will be documented cases of what children
did in their youth which were not acceptable. But because roughly all children
have that, its kinda OK. "We all were young" will have public sources to back
it up, if they're searched for.

However not doing _anything_ is a defeatist approach to the problem IMO. In
that light, I find your post defeatist itself; instead of being open minded
about this I suggest being _pragmatic_ ; a slightly different angle, also less
extreme one way or the other. We still have some privacy left. You can, for
example, wilfully leave your smartphone _home_ as Bruce Schneier wrote in his
latest book _Data and Goliath_. We have that _choice_. His essay _Data Is a
Toxic Asset, So Why Not Throw It Out?_ [1] also covers this very topic.
Because that also covers how _others_ should treat your private data,
something the EU is far ahead on with privacy laws, right to be forgotten,
GDPR, accountability on losing private data, etc compared to the USA.

[1]
[https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_t...](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic_asse.html)

~~~
sixdimensional
I agree that I did sound defeatist a bit. My reasoning for that is I am
directly working in an area where I'm literally watching the technology be
employed, and workarounds being created to "protect" privacy, for example,
employing machine learning on a device to do image processing so the raw input
data never leaves the device.

However, the ultimate goal of this technology is to uniquely identify you for
the sake of personalization, tracking, etc. There's an implicit grant being
invoked that if anonymized properly or if certain measures are taken, then the
privacy breach is ok.

I'm reminded of some culture I heard of once that refused to have photographs
taken of themselves out of fear that it would steal their souls.

Any case where data is harvested via observations of you in which that data
that represents you is not controlled by you or you are not aware of, seems
like a breach of privacy.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm not defeatist, I believe we have the
power to change things. But, I'm also saying, I'm not sure, for a variety of
reasons, we'll ever be able to rollback the concept of pervasive survellaince
because, it is starting to become part of technological advancement - for our
technology to recognize and work with us better, it must observe us. So long
as that is the case, that ability can be abused unless it is protected, and,
as security experts like Bruce Schneier have said, there is no such thing as
absolute security, only security that lasts for a certain period of time [1].

[1]
[https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychol...](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychology_of_se.html)

------
thaumasiotes
Interesting contrast within the article:

> Today, nudists complain, it is more difficult to separate nakedness from
> sex. French nudists say their movement’s younger members are overwhelmingly
> men; women are leery of being leered at. “Parts of Cap d’Agde have been
> completely sexualised,” says Wim Fisscher

> If any space is more embarrassing for non-European tourists than a French
> nude beach, it is a German or Dutch sauna. They are unisex and naked by
> default. All bodies, thin, fat, young or old, are treated non-judgmentally.
> The one thing that will earn a disapproving stare is wearing clothing,
> because such modesty implies an inappropriate level of sexual consciousness.

But then:

> But the vision of nakedness as a demonstration of freedom and equality seems
> to be faring less well. Nudity has been central to European culture since
> the Greeks first sculpted Hermes.

Hermes was a great choice for this sentence, but it makes me wonder whether
the writer knew that. Representations of Hermes were often naked, or at least
displaying genitals, but they certainly weren't conceptually separated from
sex. A Herm had a large erect penis. There was a statue of ithyphallic Hermes
in a famous temple of Demeter, and an accompanying legend saying that he'd
gotten into that state by seeing Persephone.

~~~
firasd
Also, at least in the last couple centuries, the most famous 'nudes' in
Western art depict women. The gender disparity suggests to me that sexuality
and nudity is not completely separate...

~~~
abrowne
Yeah, it's more like the context of "fine art" painting made inages of
sexualized nude women acceptable in "polite society".

------
belorn
The change is very noticeable in public bathhouses here in Sweden. It used to
be that one day in the week had bath clothes as optional, while now we have
instead separate men and women days in order to be more inclusive to cultures
where women don't feel confident to be in swim clothes in the same building
(The official written statement).

As the article points out historically nudism used to been a progressive cause
where the conservative right was against it, while today those positions has
almost switched sides. I have yet to see a Swedish politician that both
support nudist and Muslim to choose what clothes they want to use in public
spaces, even if occasionally someone slip their tongue and say things like
"Neither government or corporation should decide what clothes people should
wear".

The smartphone argument that the article brings up sounds wrong. While it
could be true for a beach, not many would voluntary bring expensive
electronics to a sauna and most bathhouses has now days a ban for it anyway.
Relax areas want to keep noise and photoing down, while other areas which
allow kids want parents to keep track of their children and reduce the risk of
drowning. If smartphones with cameras was a major contributors to this
cultural change then we should expect to see a much small impact for saunas
and public bathhouses that forbid smartphones, and yet I doubt the data
support that.

~~~
dorchadas
> not many would voluntary bring expensive electronics to a sauna

You haven't seen the people who use the sauna at the gym I used to go to,
then. They always freaked out at me for not bringing my phone/headphones in
and just using a small hand-held timer to make sure I didn't stay too long...
They also got mad because it made me want to talk too.

------
coldtea
> _The home continent of public nakedness is growing more body_

Well, prudery is contagious, especially when it emanates from a dominant
culture...

------
thedevil
Anyone have a plausible hypothesis on what's driving the trend?

The Economist is claiming "Today, nudists complain, it is more difficult to
separate nakedness from sex." which seems plausible enough, but what would
drive the change?

~~~
nerdponx
Prudishness, imported from America. Here, nudity == sexuality.

~~~
WillPostForFood
I’d go with the importation of Islamic values. American media isn’t that
prude, and not much else cultural is imported from the US.

~~~
nerdponx
They appeal to sexuality specifically because it is edgy and shocking to a
large percentage of the population. American media is quite prude on the
whole.

Don't forget that many of the early settlerd in the USA were literally
Puritans. Hard-right moralizing Christianity has always felt at home here.

Also, as stated in many other places in this thread, it's ridiculous to
ascribe to change to Islam.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Do you think islamic values are more or less prude than American values?

~~~
nerdponx
That's a non-sequitur. You're comparing a religion with a continent or a
nation-state, depending on what you mean by American. If you mean Christian
values, then no, they seem about the same. But I'm not a theologian and my
opinion is uninformed and irrelevant.

Either way, it's clearly not because of Islamic values.

------
blattimwind
> In Germany it was everywhere: the country’s Freikörperkultur (“free body
> culture”, or FKK) encourages stripping off while gardening, playing sports
> or taking lunch breaks in the park.

This seems rather uninformed to me.

~~~
mcguire
Gardening? Nudity and lawn tools seem a bad combination.

~~~
dan-robertson
This is a “common sense” suggestion that falls at the first bit of actual
common sense.

The risk with tools is usually the fingers (ie near the sharp bits of the
tool). I don’t know how you do gardening but I think one could garden in the
nude for a lifetime without accidentally cutting something off. The other
common tool would be a lawnmower and it’s quite common to mow the lawn wearing
eg flip flops or sandals even though your feet are close to the blades. I
don’t think they protect much compared to being barefoot.

Protective clothing is different. But I think gardening nude is about
replacing wearing shorts and maybe a shirt, as opposed to replacing wearing
long sleeved clothes and thick gloves.

~~~
mcguire
It may just be me; I was crawling around under the rose bushes yesterday.

------
MrQuincle
I don't think so.

In the Netherlands you can still go to sauna as usual. There are plenty of
nudist beaches and campings. A few months ago I went to a party in a club
where in the end it was encouraged to wear as little as you'd like. You have
still plenty of nude advertisement on television after midnight. You have
billboards with nudes. There are TV programs like Adam zoekt Eva (Adam
searches for Eve). There are popular clip sites (bit like ridiculous, but
without being prude) like dumpert.nl with weakly "vrijmibo" with nudes. Two
weeks ago I was in Zierikzee. Mayor was judging nudes with bodypaint. A lot of
kids run around naked as well in the backyards when it is hot in summer. No
big deal.

No, there is no such thing as the North American shame for genitals or being
nude.

~~~
eesmith
I believe a more relevant observation is: How many women go topless in non-
nudist areas?

In Florida, where I grew up, it was common in the 1980s to hear about European
women visiting the beach and not realizing that women were required to cover
their breasts. From what I understand, it's now uncommon in many parts of
Europe where it once was common.

What you describe is not casual nudity that Europe (in my American viewpoint)
was known for. Compare what you wrote with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freik%C3%B6rperkultur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freik%C3%B6rperkultur)
\- being nude without direct relationship to sexuality. As the Economist
writes, "stripping off while gardening, playing sports or taking lunch breaks
in the park."

Advertisements, judging nudes, etc. are saying that being nude is not usual.

~~~
MrQuincle
At times it is usual, at times it is casual, at times it is sexual.

Nice perspective:
[http://theswaggernews.typepad.com/mothertongue/2014/10/why-t...](http://theswaggernews.typepad.com/mothertongue/2014/10/why-
the-dutch-go-topless-and-americans-dont.html)

~~~
eesmith
That link agrees with the Economists' observation of the decline in casual
nudity: "I still live in Holland, but very few women go topless anymore.
Topless just isn't cool. It's not considered very classy, much less sexy or
erotic in any way. Although the topless trend has subsided greatly since I
first came to this country, the Dutch attitude about the human body has not."

The author writes "Our Anglo-Saxon squeamishness with nudity and bodily
functions started sometime between the Middle-Ages and the Victorians and it
has continued ever since." and "I still get a wee bit queasy when the soccer
coaches require the 9 and 10 year olds to take group showers after the games."

I do not believe the author is aware of changes in US views of nudity even
over the last couple of generations. For generations, children swam nude in
indoor pools in the US. Quoting from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_swimming#Indoor_pools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_swimming#Indoor_pools)
: "The 1937 Administration of Health and Physical Recreation training manual
stated, "Nude bathing for boys is practiced universally, in a few schools
girls may swim nude and this is the most sanitary method."

Elsewhere on that page points out "In America, skinny dipping by boys [in the
late 1800s] was common."

It also suggests that the 'squeamishness with nudity' was due to the 'rise of
the influence of Christian Evangelicals' during the Victorian era.

------
sandworm101
Lol. An article about changing attitudes re nakedness, but no mention of hair
or shaving.

Young people today shave more than any past generation. Just look at the
magazines. So a young person today, unclothed, is that little bit more "naked"
today. It makes a difference twofold. Firstly, naked+shaved people are more
exposed to everything from eyes to sun. Secondly, young people don't want to
be naked when they haven't shaved. So getting naked is something you have to
prepare for in a way past generations did not. A swimsuit is far easier than
re-trimming every day.

It is probably a bigger thing for guys. Hairy chests are larger than armpits.
Hairy backs are ... difficult. T-shirts are more acceptable at the beach than
bears.

~~~
anothergoogler
> Young people today shave more than any past generation.

Do you have a source for this?

~~~
sandworm101
If you are going to ask:

"But an increased focus on hair removal has curbed cases of lice dramatically.
In Australia, Sydney's largest sexual health clinic has not seen a case of
pubic lice among women since 2008, according to Bloomberg."

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brazilian-bikini-wax-making-
cra...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brazilian-bikini-wax-making-crab-lice-
endangered/)

"During the same 10-year period, the self-reported incidence of total pubic
hair removal increased from 19% to 31%, and partial hair removal 23% to 56%."

[https://www.wired.com/2014/09/pubic-lice-still-not-going-
ext...](https://www.wired.com/2014/09/pubic-lice-still-not-going-extinct/)

~~~
anothergoogler
Your sources do not support your assertion that young people today are the
most prolific shavers in history.

------
antisthenes
With the obesity rates being what they are in the developed world, I'm not
sure that's quite a bad thing.

I have a few theories on why more people are covering up, but I'm going to go
the self-censorship route here on HN and avoid stating them to avoid a flame
war.

------
pjc50
The smartphone has to play a large role in this. You can't guarantee that
you're not going to end up on the internet forever.

The politics is also different; nudism is no longer either associated with
either progressive liberalisation or the vaguely fascist/eugenic parts of the
physical fitness culture. It's just not an issue any more.

------
21
Some part of it (older people versus prudish younger people) was hilariously
captured in Gym Wildlife:

[https://youtu.be/n1GUQVo1Lps?t=235](https://youtu.be/n1GUQVo1Lps?t=235)

