Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Naked Barbies at the Bus Stop

Tuesday Morning, May 6, 2002

Kate, my 4 year old, crawled around the corner pushing a big, grey toy horse with a shaggy, black mane. A naked plastic woman was bent backwards across the saddle of the horse with her large, plastic breasts pointing up and out into the parlor. Unlike her limbs, her breasts were immovable. I was amused by the way Kate had the doll face-up over the horse instead of draped face-down as "in reality."

Morgan, my 9 year old, stares.

"Oh, my God," she blurts out. "A naked Barbie!"

Hmmnn, not only is my third grader a self-professed Atheist, who like many Atheists continue to use the Lord's name, but she has become increasingly self-conscious about her pre-budding figure.

"Kate, are you ready to go to the bus stop with me and Morgan?" I asked.

"You are not taking a naked Barbie to the bus stop!" Morgan declared.

"Aw, shoot, Morgan. I'm gonna take us all to that nudist colony at Snoqualmie this summer so we can all walk around naked with everyone else. There's nothing wrong with being naked. There's nothing wrong with your body. Old people. Babies. Fat people. Skinny folks. All walkin' around naked."

"Yeah!" Kate goes. "We all walk around naked inside our house anyway."

"Eww! Gross!" Morgan makes gagging sounds.

At first I thought it was funny. Then I wondered if I was being disrespectful of where Morgan was in her development. My agenda was for her to feel that our bodies were natural, normal, and healthy as they were and that nothing was wrong with nudity. I didn’t stop and think at the time that maybe there was nothing wrong with wearing clothes, either. I just want people to get that there are choices, not moral issues.

There was a time at Orca Landing, an urban cooperative my family used to live in, all the members walked around naked from time to time, some more so than others. Then gradually we started wearing more and more clothes. Things like having children around with grandparents and other relatives popping over to visit them. An incident occurred at a party with children around where two men and a woman had sex out back in our hot tub. The resulting uproar motivated us to shake our heads as such irresponsible and disrespectful behavior, especially considering the professions of at least two of the folks involved, and caused us to implement new rules regulating open nudity. We banned sexual behavior out in the open in our common areas including the hot tub for sure.

We used to let Morgan play naked in our front yard. Then one summer Gwen decided to make Morgan pull on underwear whenever the child went outside. At first I disagreed, and then I relented. Fear of sexual predators cruising by. An article had come out in the daily paper that our Greenwood neighborhood had one of the highest concentrations of relocated "sexually disturbed" men. A housemate remarked it was "socially and developmentally appropriate" for Morgan to now have to wear clothes outside. Morgan, still a preschooler, was deemed "too old" to run naked out of doors.

Is Morgan's newfound self-consciousness with her body a normal, healthy developmental phase where the biological organism instinctively seeks to protect itself, or is it inculcated from social and cultural conditioning, including what many alternatives consider the aberrations and distortions of mainstream culture? Isn't peer pressure but the reflection of mainstream culture and media indoctrination, or is it a normal, biological herd-and-pack mentality to protect the vulnerable at a crucial phase of development? Or, the ultimate cop-out answer, "both?" Because if it is "both," then so what? What then?

I realize that one thing I appreciate about sex-positive culture is that it honors the body and all body types. Yes, I know, we should not equate nudity with sex. But that is not my point. As human beings have a body, and human beings are sexual beings from before birth to (after?) death, I seek to instill respect, honor, and self-love for the human body as a whole even in minors.

And yes, a naked Barbie ... and a naked toy horse both made it to the bus stop. But all the real people wore clothes. And not just because of protection from the elements or from imagined predators.



William Dudley Bass
May 2002



(C) by William Dudley Bass

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