Naked Girls Reading impressions

Naked women reading in a bar, four things the Taliban are against. If we oppose any of these four things…then the terrorists have already won.

I find it disempowering when others flaunt their literacy at me. Their tight grammar, accurate pronunciation and intonation; their informed choice of texts to suit the development of an intellectual discourse; their broad understanding of the milieu in which their reading and storylines will be interpreted, their development of responsive sub-narratives and juxtaposition through body language, audience interaction and facile expression, and their smooth tonal control and contrived sub-lingual resonances. You cannot tell me that’s not just exhibitionism. I could never do that.

Some thoughts.

Barcham said :

I think the purpose/intent of the nudity is slightly different for each girl/chapter. I’ve heard talk of the idea that having nude performers creates an instant intimacy for the event which makes sense, I’ve also been told that fro some the goal is to take the human body away from something we only see in porn and show it doing something normal and natural.

It helps to understand what pornography is, i suppose – for me, one of the crucial aspects of it is that it replaces a something directly lived (sex) with a representation. This isn’t a moral point (or at least not a prudish one) – it is a social one, and goes to our experience of life. Unless you’d make the argument that there is nothing wrong with this separation of the human from human experience, we have the basis for mounting an argument about why pornography is, at least, banal and, at most, harmful.

So now we’re in a position to talk about why Naked Girls Reading doesn’t fit into the definition of the pornographic (or at least, how it might not). I didn’t go to this, but conceptually it’s pretty clear that the intent isn’t to replace some form of lived experience with some kind of representation. You are actually living a particular experience which is derived from the tension between sex and literature – and maybe even throwing into high relief how the text being read does (or doesn’t) call our attention to the physical and active possibilities of art. That being said, I could see how the form potentially could be used simply to titillate. I’d have to think more about that before I could argue whether that would be pornographic, but it still might not.

Barcham said :

Some just want to sexy-up literature, which does in the end fall roughly into the realm of pornography.

Still that’s cool too. Their bodies, their choice, and power to anyone who wants to make porn into beautiful intelligent women classical literature instead of pool cleaners having their way naughty housewives.

This is kind of less interesting. “My body, my choice” is a good slogan but it doesn’t stand for much. After all, while people have agency they are also bound by structure. That is to say, the choices are in many ways defined for you. Others have talked about this as the “rigged game” of official culture and that metaphor probably serves to illustrate what I mean sufficiently. We can respect bodies, choices, people, and still have the right to positions on those choices, why they were made, what coercive forces were in play. For example, ‘my body, my choice’ seems like a pretty sick joke if we’re talking about some Chinese dude selling his kidney because it’s the only way he’s going to afford that month’s groceries after the harvest fails.

Barcham said :

In the end, like I said in the review, I don’t feel like it added much to the event, but that’s just me and what I took from it doesn’t necessarily reflect what they tried to do with it.

Maybe, in the end, all it served was to attract a few gents who wouldn’t have otherwise bothered like you suggested, but maybe it did more than that for some audience members.

I don’t know

I can tell you that the audience was largely couples, or mixed sex groups of friends, for what that information is worth.

The important issue here is that whatever their goal, we shouldn’t be “slut-shaming” these women by calling them sexist, or insecure, or accusing them of just pandering to lonely men, simply for choosing to use their bodies and sexuality differently than we use ours. When we shame women for going against the patriarchal ideal that a woman’s body should be kept hidden her whole life until she gives it to her husband, it’s like we’re suggesting that it’s not actually hers to do with as she pleases and instead she’s merely the caretaker looking after it until a man turns up to claim it, and that’s kinda ****ed up.

See above, I guess.

Barcham said :

I don’t know what’s more hilarious and offensive, the idea that men are powerless when presented with naked girl flesh, or the idea that women are actively conspiring to rule over us using their mind control tits.

You may scoff at the power-imbalance that is created by female nudity, but it does exist, and female people do use it to their advantage.

It appears from your scoffing that you are somewhat sexist. Or, more likely, you have been indoctrinated by powerful strippers.