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| In Portland there is an annual nude bike ride |
Carol Forsloff - Several years ago The National Examiner looked at Sharon Stone through the journalism lens for a great close-up at a special gal. Stone's stripping for a photo brought the actress in the news. Still if nudity is “no big thing,” how about for the rest of us?
The movie star that raised eyebrows in the movie Basic Instinct, where the lovely lassie, well clothed up front, showed a flash of woman’s most intimate area while crossing her lovely legs. It was enough to make the audience particularly interested when they saw the film and looked especially for the daring scene. At age 51 the sexy film star was doing it again, after three children and a film career that has shown her to be out-of-the-box with her thinking. But with many other people nudity is something that continues to create shock and awe in different areas of the world while in others it produces only a shrug.
Running around bare naked, or next to it, will get you in the news. That’s particularly true if you do something else out of the ordinary while in the buff, like stealing or preparing for trouble, as reported in About. Earlier this year Steve Whitten was caught with his pants off---literally wearing only a thong—while breaking into a woman’s home in Minneapolis. The public is fascinated when someone runs around naked in circumstances where clothes would be more appropriate. But then the public is fascinated with much more than that.
In Portland, Oregon there is an annual nude bike ride when people travel across a downtown bridge as people gawk and laugh. No problem with nudity on such a special occasion.
On the beaches and around the swimming pools of Spain, for the past twenty years folks could sit bare-breasted for fun in the sun, no problem. Around the fine hotels of Morocco, they were able to do that as well. While visiting both countries in the 1980’s, I watched all this with glee. My husband was fascinated as well, but for an entirely different reason. For Americans it was unusual to see women, naked just to the waist, sitting out for all to see endowments not displayed in public places, outside of movies, in most places in the United States. Spain has cemented its reputation as the desirable place for sunbathing, according to nudity news because of its free-for-all show of bare bodies on the beaches.
Still even in Spain some folks have their limits. Cadiz, a haven for nudity, has banned nudityon its beaches recently. This was a place where the entire body would be exposed on the beach, but now folks have to pay a fine if they seek to bare it all in public. Some members of that public, however, are up in arms at the very idea, given the freedom Spain has allowed people on beaches to sit naked for fun. Those in favor of the law said nudists have driven off some tourists from the beaches who were offended by nudism. Others declare tourism will be damaged by the new law forbidding it.
In the United States there are different cultural codes, depending on the region of the country or the particular orientation of an establishment, such as a spa or dressing room. In the South, for example, women will take their clothes into an area where they can dress and undress without other women around. But in Oregon and Hawaii, most women wake around naked in front of one another in the locker rooms. There are, of course, individual differences, but for the most part the Southern part of the United States is more inclined to cover up and to resist the temptation of going naked anywhere.
That’s the bare naked truth about nakedness in the news for a light-hearted look at lifestyles from Hollywood to the beaches of Spain where the human body continues to be discussed in all its wonders.
