Nudity is a Privilege, Not a Right

ONE WAY TO LOOK AT IT-I’m tattooless. 

Whatever fleeting notion I may have once entertained about adding ink to my body was forever dismissed two decades ago in the men’s locker room at the Burbank YMCA. 

Grizzled members of the Greatest Generation and veterans of Pork Chop Hill during the Korean conflict would parade by to or from the showers in various states of undress. Once proudly waving tattoos of Old Glory had been lowered by birthday candles and gravity to half-staff, and those matching bicep grass-skirt-clad hula dancers that seemed like a great idea after a few drinks in 1945 now looked like a couple of Du-par’s waitresses carrying laundry baskets. 

We all enter this world naked. Some of us even leave it naked, mostly when caught in the wrong bed with someone else’s wife. Still, for the majority of us, public nudity is to be avoided at all costs. 

Frankly, at this point in life even private nudity is discouraged. I speed dry after a shower hoping to towel off before the mirror unfogs. 

Of course not everyone shares my hang-ups. 

Melissa Diner is a Venice council community officer ­­— whatever that is — and a leader in the fight to return topless sunbathing to Venice Beach. 

“We shouldn’t be ashamed of the human body,” she said during a recent interview on my radio show. I offered to show her why we should be ashamed but then remembered I’d have to move 500 yards from the neighborhood school. 

“It’s a matter of equality,” she argued. “If men can go topless, why can’t women?” 

And she has a point — in fact, two points. I’ve seen guys at the beach that make Sofia Vergara look like the Olsen Twins. 

“Topless bathing is commonplace in Europe, and Venice is modeled after Venice, Italy,” said Diner, whom I assume by now you’ve already checked out on Google Images. 

Americans do have a schizophrenic relationship with the human body. We’re the sons and daughters of Puritans, one of the most sexually repressed people in all of history. It’s actually a miracle people so uptight they put buckles on their hats ever managed to reproduce at all. 

Today we’re still embarrassed to talk honestly to our kids about sex, yet we gladly shell out $85 a month for ShowTime. And don’t try telling me you’re a big fan of “Inside the NFL.” 

I was raised in a sexually repressed Irish-Catholic household typical of the early to mid-60s where every baby seemed to be a case of Immaculate Conception. 

Before Instagram and Tumblr, porn was the bra section of the Sears catalogue or my father’s Julie London album covers. My mother actually took a magic marker to Herb Alpert’s “Whipped Cream and Other Delights.” 

That seems like another world. 

Today they actually sell a thing called the “Selfie Stick” so people can take pictures of their ass. Oddly, the beach is often the place where Southern Californians wear the most clothes. Fear of melanoma and premature crow’s feet have women more covered up than they were at the prom. 

Despite Melissa Diner’s best efforts, it’s highly unlikely the LA City Council and the County Board of Supervisors will lift the ban on topless sunbathing at Venice Beach. It’s been 40 years since LA allowed nude sunbathing. Everything has its time and place. 

Sadly the time I looked good naked had a shorter shelf life than the tilapia special at Ralphs. Small wonder The Wife is forever misplacing her glasses.

 

(Doug McIntyre is morning radio host at KABC and writes for the Daily News  … where this column was first posted. Doug can be reached at: [email protected])

-cw

 

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CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 37

Pub: May 5, 2015