We British have a very strange attitude to the human body and showing it in public. I’ve never quite understood why. Perhaps it’s an innate puritanism that runs through our society, alongside a rather quaint hankering after Victorian times where a woman exposing a bare ankle was enough for her to be branded a brazen hussy. I’ve always wanted to use that phrase in an Attitude column. I can now die happy.
The majority of Britons imagine that you have to wear a swimming costume in a sauna, conveniently ignoring the fact that wearing anything which gets between the heat and the skin completely obviates the whole point of being in a sauna. On the continent everyone lets it all hang out without worrying a jot about what anyone thinks. Indeed, if you walk into a sauna in swimming trunks or a bikini you’d attract some very odd looks and certainly in some countries it’s obligatory to take your clothes off. Neighbours think nothing of taking saunas together completely in the ‘nud’. You’d never get that in this country unless it was all part of the foreplay for a swingers party. Not that I would, ahem, know. Obviously.
There is still a prurience about nudity in Britain. Why is it, after all, that many of the pictures in this magazine and others depict people who are semi-naked, but only semi. In Germany, even some mainstream magazines have no hesitation in showing the full naked human form and most of their readers don’t bad an eyelid.
Recently Rita Ora got into trouble for appearing on The One Show for wearing a dress with a bit of cleavage showing. The fuss that arose was astonishing. This wouldn’t have happened even ten years ago, I don’t think. It wasn’t as if she was flaunting her breasts. There was no nipple in view, but even if there had been, so what? What on earth is wrong with showing a nipple? It’s a part of the human body, just like a kneecap. Everyone has two of them, so why are they considered off limits in the world of newspapers and magazines?
It wasn’t that long ago that an erect penis wasn’t allowed to be shown on screen in this country, even in a pornographic film. A woman’s body could be shown in all its glory. You could have close ups of a gaping vagina, yet a full view of an erect penis was considered too much by the censors. That ridiculous rule was scrapped some time ago, but you’ll still rarely catch of a glimpse of a cock, flaccid or erect, on TV, although full female nudity is considered fair game. It’s a sexist old world.
All this brings me to the latest government initiative to restrict our sexual freedoms. In future, no British porn film will be allowed to depict some sexual practices which are perfectly legal for people to undertake in the privacy of their own homes. I’ve never quite understood the desire of anyone to be pissed on, but some people apparently get off on it. Well, it harms no one, so fair enough, I guess, but you won’t be able to look at a British made film which depicts it any longer. The same goes for inserting non dildo pieces of equipment into various orifices. Fisting is out. Again, not something I’d either want to try out or watch, but there are those that do. This is the Nanny State writ large and I hope there will be enough MPs who will speak out and get this proposal consigned to the big tissue bin of history. Credit to the LibDem MP Julian Huppert for being the first to try to persuade the Home Office to withdraw it.
Essentially, this is a proposal designed to wreck the thriving British porn industry, because if people can’t watch what they want to watch on a British made film, you can rest assured they will find their monkey spanking material elsewhere. Chris Grayling’s role as Justice Secretary is not to be the Mother Superior of the Nation, it is to defend our freedoms and civil liberties. And one of our basic civil liberties is to watch completely harmless porn in the safety of our homes. Not that I do of course. Oh no. No Sireeee! Never let it be said!
This article first appeared in the March edition of Attitude Magazine
