The Naked Child Growing Up Without Shame
<< Chapter IV >>
Conflicts and issues
Dennis Craig Smith
The test that suppresses a cheap tract today can suppress a literary gem tomorrow. (Justice William O. Douglas)
The photo was of two small boys standing before a painting on a wall in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. One of them had turned and leaned his head next to the ear of his friend. The painting that loomed before them was titled, “Nude Seen From the Rear” by an unknown 19th-century French artist. It was, we felt, a charming record of two young lads’ introduction to art.
A week after this photograph appeared in the Museum of Art Supplement of the Santa Barbara News Press, a letter to the editor called it “in very poor taste.” The writer went on to link the picture to missing children, child abuse, and sexual molestation. “Of all the hundreds of art pieces in possession of the Museum, that picture,” she wrote, “indicated insensitivity to a serious problem in our society today.”
Most thinking adults recognize that abuse of children and sexual molestation of children are both serious problems in our society. The morgues are full of young victims of such mistreatment. So are courts and jails. Our streets are filled with youthful runaways, many of whom are seeking only to escape mistreatment at home.
Repeatedly, newspapers and magazines are filled with letters from citizens who are convinced that child molestation and sexual abuse are firmly linked to nudity. Many judges agree. They equate exposure of the human anatomy with indecency, immorality, and criminal behavior.
Similarly, many lawyers and others in the legal profession believe that being nude in a family or social situation is a criminal act. Yet few base their opinions on much more than assumption or, possibly, some article written by an “authority” such as those we spoke of in Chapter Two.
The writer of the letter about the photograph in the Museum supplement does, however, raise a very important question for which any thinking parent needs an answer. Does seeing a century-old painting of the nude buttocks of a woman do any harm to our children? Many in this society conclude that it does. They do so without any proof. Like Anthony Comstock a hundred years ago, their minds are made up and they have no wish to be disturbed by facts. They are convinced that human nakedness leads to wickedness. Yet, acting on such assumptions can cause endless trouble and some cruel abuse.
A family is torn apart
On a March night in 1981, police entered the home of Ken and Marie Atwood with drawn guns. (Atwood is not the real family name; it has been changed here to protect their privacy.) They arrested the couple and a male friend who was visiting. Then they took the two Atwood children into “protective” custody. The children — Robert, six, and Denise, eight — were questioned until one in the morning, at which time charges were filed against the friend for child molestation and the parents for child neglect for allowing their children to be sexually aroused by their friend.
It took three painful years to resolve an ordeal that began with an anonymous tip. A caller who refused to leave a name told the police, “Lewd things are going on in there,” and gave the address of the Atwoods. The informant claimed that an unhealthful environment existed in the Atwood home and described how the adult male friend was “playing with the children in the shower.”
Nine months later, the friend who was arrested with the Atwoods was found not guilty. The case, however, continued to have a tremendous negative impact on his life. He was a teacher and, despite the acquittal, his school board chose not to renew his contract. The State of California Credentials office revoked his teaching credential, thereby denying him any possibility of finding a position in another school district. He continued to fight the matter for years and feels the effects of the incident to this day.
When their case went to court, the Atwoods were advised by their lawyer to plead “no contest” to the charge of child neglect. She suggested that they had made a serious mistake when they allowed the friend to be in the area where the children were bathing. “Admit poor judgment and submit to counseling and that will be the end of it. Fight it,” she warned, “and you’ll have to justify your lifestyle.” It was clear that she had no sympathy for their family nudity, which she considered “suspect” at best. It’s possible that she even hoped that after some counseling with a court-appointed psychologist they might alter their behavior.
However, the Atwoods continued to fight. Their children were kept from them for nearly a year. During the thirty days the children were kept in McClarin Hall, Marie and Ken were allowed a monitored visit for one hour each weekend. After a few visits, however, they were informed that they had hugged the children too long and the visits would no longer be permitted. The children, however, were told their parents did not want to see them anymore. Robert and Denise reported this to their parents later, but the Atwoods, when they questioned the authorities on the matter, were told the children “must be lying.”
The two children were placed with their paternal grandmother for eight months, and the weekend visits were again allowed. But the accusations continued. Ken and Marie were charged with sanctioning sexual contact between their children and the male adult who had been visiting them. Even after he was acquitted, the case against them went on. The Atwoods were accused of being guilty of something another court had decided had never happened. They were ordered into therapy, and the children were once more placed in McClarin Hall in Los Angeles, California. The family was literally ripped apart, emotionally.
There were many conflicts in this case. More than once, the “experts” disagreed. Reports from the social workers and the psychologist filed early in the action were later thrown out because, in subsequent investigation, a new team of psychologists found that in the previous interviews, the children had been subtly lead into making statements they did not mean to say.
At the end of nine months, the children were returned to their home on the recommendation of a court-appointed psychologist who felt the children were being harmed by the separation from their parents. For two hundred and seventy-three days, the Atwood family had been separated because of an event another court had not verified as ever having happened.
But the difficulties did not end there. The original court order stated that, after the children were returned to them, the Atwoods could not continue with their nudist activities if Robert and Denise were present. They could not be nude around their children, nor could the children be alone with any male — except their father. The Atwood’s maternal grandfather and uncle were, because of the wording of the court order, denied, along with all the other males the Atwoods knew, the right to be alone with the children.
One must remember that none of these individuals had been charged with “being sexual” in the presence of the children. But the same civil rights are not guaranteed to cases in the juvenile court as would be applied in a criminal case. No proof need be supplied to back up an accusation in juvenile court. Suspicion — the possibility that something could happen — is reason enough for such an order. As happened in the Atwood case, parents simply need to be accused and children can be taken out of the home.
The tragedy became even more complicated after the children were returned to their parents. Later on, in the year following their going back home, Denise and Robert Atwood were once more removed from their family. This was the result of conflicting court orders.
During that year, a second court document, which did not include the ban on family nudity, was given to the Atwoods. After speaking to a court-appointed psychologist concerning this, Marie and Ken thought the matter had run its hideous course. They were told by the doctor that he saw no reason for the children to be excluded from nudist events and practices that had been part of their parents’ lives since before they had the children.
Finally feeling good about the future, the Atwoods took Denise and Robert to a birthday celebration for children of members of a clothing-optional retreat just outside the Los Angeles area. Like most parents at birthday parties, they took pictures of the affair. There is certainly nothing abnormal about this. All parents take photographs of their children, especially at fun events. But there was one major difference. When non-nudists take pictures of their children in pools wearing bathing suits, society approves. But when nudists take pictures of their children, some uninformed persons consider that the photos are taken only to cater to prurient interests. What people who are not nudists do not understand, say the Atwoods, is that nakedness is so natural for nudists that they do not find it the giggling, sexual matter “dressed” society assumes it to be.
The photos taken at the Atwood children’s party were stolen from their home in September of that year and turned up in the possession of the police. The party was in May. The only person the parents knew who had access to the photo album was a maid who suddenly resigned shortly before the pictures surfaced. The birthday-party photographs were labeled by the police as pornographic and the Atwoods were again arrested. This time, they were accused of violating the court-ordered ban on nudity in the vicinity of the children. Later, the beleaguered parents were told by the judge who wrote the second order that she had meant to include it and they should have known it was still in effect. Because of her error, they spent one week in jail and their children were taken from them for another nine grueling months.
In October of 1984, a social worker reading the records of the case found there to be no mention of a ban on nudity in the second court order, and, because she felt the family should not be penalized for a court error, she took steps to return the children to the Atwoods. It appeared, once more, that the ordeal would come to an end.
The social worker questioned the presiding judge about this omission, but the expected results were not forthcoming. Instead, this conscientious individual was replaced on the case by still another social worker for the Department of Protective Social Service (DPSS). Back came the frustrations that had plagued the Atwoods for such a long period of time.
After the Atwoods were released from the week in jail, they were placed under DPSS supervision for twenty-six months. Then, following intensive hearings and appearances at the Los Angeles County Court House, Ken and Marie Atwood’s ordeal finally ended. But to this day they suffer from the results of the unjust accusations. In all, the children were twice removed from the home, each time for a period of nine months, and Marie and Ken spent a week in jail. They had been subjected to a total of three years of hell. Their business was nearly ruined, their children have been brutalized by confusing and frightening separations from the parents they need, and Marie Atwood has lost her license to operate a social club which had been a family-run business since 1919. The Atwoods and their children have been twisted emotionally by the very system that was trying in its well-intentioned but incredibly misguided way to protect the people it was injuring.
Following the nightmare that started in March of 1981, Ken and Marie Atwood began to work on behalf of others accused unjustly of crimes against their children. Now they are working with a national organization called Victims of Child Abuse Legislation (VOCAL). Anyone interested in contacting this group may call 1-800-4 VOCAL, or write to VOCAL, P.O. Box 4503, North Hollywood, CA 91607.
Our society does not understand what sexual openness means. It equates being nude with sexual activity. Unfortunately, our society considers it “normal” for people to be uncomfortable about their anatomy, unresolved about sexuality, and confused about what constitutes actions that lead to destructive behavior. “Normal” people remain clothed at all times. There are, therefore, no provisions in our legal system to deal fairly with those individuals who believe differently.
This confusion regarding morality and normalcy has existed for years. Ever since Comstock — the argument over what is pornographic and what effect pornography, whatever it is, has on individuals has reared its head like a monstrous dragon. We can only hope that some day sanity will come to bear on the issue, and that those people who fear the sight of photographs depicting the unclothed human body will recognize that all body parts are equally acceptable.
Immorality is like a vulture which steals upon our youth, striking its terrible talons into their vitals. (Anthony Comstock, 1873)
Anthony Comstock was born in Connecticut in 1844. By the end of his life, in 1915, Comstock had drawn blue lines through the American legal system, the U.S. Mails, and the art and literary world. He left a pious legacy that influenced our society for the next one hundred forty-five years. During his testimony supporting passage of anti-pornography legislation, Comstock presented to the Congress an assortment of marriage manuals, revealing pictures, and French art works. He described these as immoral. He addedd: “Imorality is like a vulture which steals upon our youth, striking its terrible talons into their vitals.”
The Comstock Act, as it was called, was passed in 1873 and signed by then President Ulysses S. Grant. The bill passed with the support of such notable backers as Samuel Colgate and J.P. Morgan. Morgan possessed a pornography collection of his own but was publicly against the “devil’s filthy work.” When it left Congress, the bill banned from the mails “every obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publications of an indecent character.”
The crusade against “filth”
Just months later, the organization that Comstock founded — the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice — was given police powers by the state, and he himself was given the right to carry a gun. Armed with this new authority and might, his society caught literally hundreds of people in a righteous crusade against “filth.” In the process, they violated the legal rights of many free citizens. Most of Comstock’s convictions were attained through entrapment, but that did not disturb him. He and his associates would pose as customers and offer to buy or sell what they considered to be “pornographic material.” If they got a favorable response, they would make the arrests. On one occasion he entered a brothel and offered three women fourteen dollars to strip naked, then arrested them when they did. Their convictions wreaked havoc in the lives of many hardworking citizens.
In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court sustained the conviction of Lew Rosen for publishing a magazine which contained photographs of “lewd” women. This became the first federal conviction under the Comstock Act. Ida Craddock was charged by Comstock’s society with publishing a marriage manual called The Wedding Night. Walt Whitman was dismissed from his government position in the Interior Department for writing an indecent book called Leaves of Grass.
After Anthony Comstock’s death, many other groups that he had inspired aimed their energy and cutlasses at America’s “immoral” element. The Watch and Ward Society of Boston and the Chicago Law and Order League were among the more powerful imitators. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence fell victim to this campaign when it was labeled obscene in America for thirty years. It wasn’t until 1959 that a federal judge rescinded the ban on this book and said for the record that he personally thought Lawrence was a genius — not a pornographer.
The Supreme Court decision that influenced this change in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover ruling was Samuel Roth v. United States of America, in 1957. It was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in April of that year. After two months the ruling was written, though the court was not in agreement. Justices William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, and John M. Harlan favored releasing Roth, but the five remaining justices and Chief Justice Earl Warren endorsed the conviction. Roth, who had been sentenced to five years and fined $5,000 for violating the federal mail statute, had to serve his sentence.
Roth had been arrested earlier for distributing copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and had first been jailed in 1928, when police raided his publishing company and took the printing plates of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which had been banned previously. Later, Joyce’s work became regarded as a literary masterpiece, but under the Comstock scrutiny it was “filth.”
The double irony of this case is that, as Roth served out his sentence in the 1960’s, court rulings opened up the obscenity laws to such a degree that Roth could have purchased openly in any bookstore all the material that he had been sent to prison for publishing just a few years before.
The important factor in the Roth decision, even though he was not released, was the interpretation of obscenity written for the case by Judge Brennan in the majority opinion. The test he devised for obscenity was to determine “whether to the average person, applying contemporary standards, the dominate theme taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.”
Enter good of prurient interest. It may not sound so wonderful by today’s standards, but it was liberal enough to apply for the first time a definition of obscenity that took into consideration the entire work being evaluated. Most importantly, it said that even if a small portion of the work was judged obscene, the work as a whole had to appeal to the prurient interest or it was not unlawful material. That opened the door for many of the titles previously banned under the Comstock Act of 1873. During the Roth case, Justice William O. Douglas wrote words we would do well to remember. “The test that suppresses a cheap tract today can suppress a literary gem tomorrow.”
Of course, this didn’t end the pornography witch hunt. The near hysterical climate against anything sexual, or anything showing naked flesh continues even today. This fixation on the sinfulness of the human body is in direct conflict with our advertising policy. Sex sells nearly everything. Even trucks are displayed with semi-nude girls standing beside them.
In our personal lives, the contradiction becomes even more troublesome. “Decent” men and women are expected to publicly denigrate the very acts that comprise their strongest expressions of love. Every individual becomes a battleground for the fight between his/her natural instincts and the morality which he/she has been taught to revere. This dichotomy creates situations in which the same people who admire nude statues, paintings, and photographs proceed to carp at real people who wish to sunbathe nude at an isolated beach or in their own backyards.
In 1953, the Chicago Tribune denounced Dr. Alfred Kinsey as a real menace to society, nothing more than a pornographer. This accusation came in contradiction to all that was known about the man. Actually, Kinsey was quite conservative. He objected to the publication of material of a sexual nature and was just a bit scandalized by nude paintings. In fact, he was asked by Samuel Roth to appear in his 1957 trial as a witness for the defense, and he refused, saying, “I could not support obscenity.”
But the question still remains. What is obscenity? Much of the material referred to as obscene from the time of Comstock to the conviction and sentencing of Samuel Roth were literary works like Ulysses or Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre, and pieces of art by such “pornographers” as de Vinci, Raphael, Ingres, Renoir, Manet, Courbet, or Goya. These artists, who painted life with joyous celebration, taunted the Comstocks of the country with their outrageous depictions of nudes. Goya’s Naked Maja, with her pubic hair showing and her “seductive” look horrified the crusaders for “decency.” Courbet’s two nude women in bed embracing, or Manet’s nude young woman who has the “audacity” to look directly at her viewer were more than “decent” people could accept. They felt it their duty to deny others such sights.
But, in spite of the do-gooder’s efforts, the public not only saw nudity but clamored for it. In the 1930’s, Life and Look magazines shocked the nation by publishing photographs from the movie Ecstasy of actress Hedy Kiesler swimming nude. One of her nipples was showing, evidently to prove to the public that she was truly “naked.” That scene turned a mediocre movie into a box office hit. Miss Kiesler went to Hollywood and became Hedy Lamar. The movie became a classic, not because of any artistic merit, but merely because of Hedy’s one peek-a-boo nipple.
Why are parents so anxious to make children self-conscious about their bodies?
Over the years, some of the strong feelings against nudity have softened. But they are not gone. Although relaxed, the deep-rooted prejudices and misconceptions still remain. Dr. Ralph G. Eckert asks, in Sex Attitudes In The Home, “Why are parents in such a hurry to make children self-conscious about their bodies?” Much of the fear of pornography is gone today, but what lingers now is an increasing distrust of physical intimacy. This is not surprising, in a society that contradicts its own practices at every turn. The fight for “purity” continues.
Working with the same conviction as Anthony Comstock, our law-enforcement agencies jump to conclusions as to what is deserving of prosecution and what isn’t. Often the decision is made on the basis of what might offend a child. Yet there are no good studies regarding what would harm a child — or offend a child, for that matter. Maybe it’s time we looked again at the photograph of two boys in the art museum. We must keep in mind that while we are considering the “danger” some experts say is inherent in nudity and the viewing of pictures of nudes, law enforcers, filled with good intentions and eager to save innocent children from corruption, often let down all restraints as they punish the very people whom they believe they are trying to protect, stepping in on a suspicion and causing irreparable damage.
Heaven help innocent parents who are falsely accused of indulging in sexual acts with their children. The Atwoods can testify that such things happen. But is such an “error” unusual? Unfortunately, no. The ranks of VOCAL are growing daily. But, even if such an occurrence were rare, should that change our opposition to it? Of course not! However frequent or infrequent it is, such an invasion of family life becomes a frightening reality for those who are accused unjustly.
Teachers are as vulnerable as any group. Witness the Mc-Martin Preschool case in Manhattan Beach. Even those accused who were later released because there was no evidence against them (the majority of the original defendants!) could not return to life as usual. The pretrial alone cost them their savings, their homes, and their careers.
Now, parents everywhere are looking at every move their children’s teachers make. Rightly so. Child molestation certainly is no joke. Accusations of child molesting must be taken seriously, and those who commit this crime should be punished severely. But is it not unfair to punish adults who are unjustly accused? Whatever the number of people who, like the Atwoods, have been destroyed by the hysteria that many today have described as a “sexual witch hunt,” it is too much.
“Did he put his hands down there?”
At a preschool in San Luis Obispo County, California, a four-year-old named Beverly was in the habit of masturbating almost daily, during rest time, and while the other children were at play. The teachers would try to distract her from this behavior. But they were always careful to take special precautions so she would not feel she was being punished for doing something wrong. “Beverly, would you like to help Miss Sue and me put away the golden beads?” or “Beverly, let’s go read a story. You don’t seem to be tired right now,” they would say.
The teachers felt Beverly’s behavior was not appropriate for school time, but they also did not want to overreact and turn the situation into something a four-year-old child could not understand. They did tell Beverly’s mother about the child’s habit, but, like most mothers, she was hesitant to believe such a thing about her daughter. It was equally difficult for the teachers to believe that the child’s parents had never noticed this behavior.
One evening, while giving her daughter a bath, Beverly’s mother discovered a scratch on the little girl’s vulva. Her voice reflected her concern. “How did you get this scratch?”
The child thought her mother was angry and hung her head.
Her mother persisted. “Did somebody do this to you?”
Beverly raised her head. “Yes.”
“Why? Who did this? Who scratched you?” The questions tumbled out, for the young mother was nearly frantic.
“Tommy did it,” she said, avoiding her mother’s wrath.
“What did he do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Did he put his hands down there?”
“Yes.” The story was started and now it couldn’t stop. Beverly just wanted her mother not to be angry at her. But she was backed into a corner and could not get out of it without additional lies.
“Did he put something inside of you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell the teachers?”
“Yes.”
“What did they do?”
“Nothing.”
“Who did you tell about this?” Her mother’s rage was nearly out of control. “Who would do nothing about it?”
“Miss Sally.”
In her attempt to squirm out of an uncomfortable situation, Beverly had implicated two people. She did not make up the story, her mother did. Beverly just agreed to the leads she was given. Her mother’s fear supplied her with all the details. Her choice of names was purely accidental. Those were the first two people she thought of when her mother asked for specifics.
Beverly’s mother reacted predictably enough. She accused Tommy’s parents of not being able to control their son. She attacked the school for not doing something about this “vulgar act.” Then, she threatened all involved with legal action, since she was convinced that everyone involved had contributed to this bizarre sexual aberration. She was certain that this situation could scar her daughter for life. She felt she had to try to “make right” a happening that was outrageous at best. But, in this case, her attempts were met with unusual resistance. The two “perpetrators” did not fit the patterns she expected of them.
Little Tommy, the boy accused by Beverly, was an autistic child. He sat by himself, usually in a corner, and rocked. He had nothing to do with the other children or, despite their efforts, with the teachers at the school. He had not been anywhere near Beverly the day the scratch occurred. His was just a name that came to the child’s mind when she was pressed to supply one.
When Beverly and her mother got to the school the day after the scratch was found and it became obvious that Tommy could not have been involved, the little girl changed her story. When her mother and the teachers questioned her, she now said, “Yea, I think it was Bobby.”
The teacher she had named, Miss Sally, offered a slightly different problem. Miss Sally had not been at school at all the day in question, since her own child had been sick and she’d stayed home to take care of him. Beverly’s mother was embarrassed. But, aware of the reality of her daughter’s scratch, she was still angry, although now she wasn’t sure just who she should be angry with.
The fact was that Beverly most likely scratched herself while she was scraping at her vagina with her finger. Still, the important element here was the leading questions the young mother offered her child in a well-intentioned attempt to find out what happened. Also important was the mother’s unwillingness to admit that her daughter might be masturbating. Her daughter was “a good girl” and wouldn’t do such a thing. But among life’s realities is the fact that children do masturbate. What we as parents, teachers, and interested citizens need to realize is that what little Beverly was doing didn’t contradict the fact that she was a good little girl.
Some of Anthony Comstock still lives....
Even though the attitude about nudity and sexuality in America is slowly changing, some of that liberalization only serves to make more apparent the gap between awareness and understanding. Recently, Canoe Magazine ran a short article on “Canuding” down the Colorado River. When out away from civilization, canoeists sometimes strip down to the bare essentials; canuding is the term coined to describe this combination. The article was accompanied by what the magazine considered discreet and in “good taste” photos showing only back views of the nudist/canoeists, with an equal number of men and women in the pictures. There were people of all ages, sizes, shapes, and colors, either sitting in their boats or wading down the banks of a sand bar far out in the center of the waterway.
Months later, a reader wrote that she was cancelling her subscription. In her letter, she called the report on the trip “garbage.” She closed by saying, “I refuse to have blatant pornography in my home.”
Some of Anthony Comstock still lives in many of us. The seriousness of the problem is accentuated when a “decent” woman labels nude people on an outing with their families as pornographic. She may find the trip offensive and not what she would choose to do — and that she obviously did. But when we permit a person to self-righteously accuse another of lewd or immoral conduct based only on the fact that she would not do the same thing, we step on shaky legal ground. There is no burden of proof put upon the accuser. Such unjustified statements are, certainly, the worst form of libel. They can be as damaging as legal accusations based only on prejudice.
Mark and Linda Schuyten are naturists. They believe the nude body is not lewd. They also believe that family nudity helps their children develop a healthy attitude toward their bodies. They feel, however, that the wearing or discarding of clothing should be an option for everyone. Just because they are comfortable with nudity does not mean that everyone should be made to participate.
The Schuytens belong to an international network of like-minded people who work for the legalization of this choice. But they do not wish to be known as nudists. They want others to know that they are more than “people who run around without clothes on.” They prefer the term naturist, since they feel it shows their regard for the naturalness of being nude in nature.
Like the Atwoods, the Schuytens have two children. Like the Atwoods, the Schuytens are very involved in the lifestyle relating to their beliefs and in the political struggle to educate others to the wholesomeness of the ideas that mean so much to them.
In their naturist organization, Mark and Linda initiated a family special-interest group for parents who feel the family unit is of major importance to the naturist/nudist movement in America. Most of their energy over the past few years has gone into promoting this family emphasis through their organization. They spoke at conferences, sent out hundreds of letters espousing their ideas, and addressed what they felt was the major issue for parents. They read, researched, and put into print their feelings that nudity was healthful and worthwhile for children raised in loving homes. They opposed kiddie pom with a vengeance and wrote many times about the dangers of being careless about nudity with outsiders who showed an interest in their children. They believed that since it is not easy for parents to be sure of the motives of such people, special precautions should always be in effect.
In the early 1980’s, Mark and Linda began putting their ideas together for inclusion in a magazine aimed at similarly minded people in the naturist movement. The focus was to be on family oriented material and the magazine was named Families/Naturally. Beyond serving as a newsletter, it offered to network parents who felt as strongly as they did about the importance of the family in a healthy society.
Their intent was to bring the issue of family to the center of the discussion of a clothing-optional society. Mark and Linda did not feel that any organization involving clothing-optional living was secure unless it had strong loving families as a fundamental part of its structure. This notion is certainly difficult to oppose. But there were some people who did question the sincerity of the Schuytens and asked: Are they genuinely concerned with children? Or is the philosophy they espouse in their publication simply a cover that allows them to distribute pictures of naked children? When we began research for this book, we decided to get some answers to these questions.
We met the Schuyten children before we met their parents. We were impressed by both of them. They were so open and friendly that we had a good feeling about the family that had, obviously, given them what we could see was a sound beginning. They not only possessed an air of self-reliance, but they were polite, well mannered, and extremely bright.
We were impressed with how stable the family was even before we met the parents. After being introduced to Mark and Linda, we were even more convinced of their sincerity. We were convinced that this young couple was dedicated to doing the right thing for their children. It was also clear that they had given years of thorough and considerable research to determining just what “the right thing” was. We felt their interest in the matter was not only genuine, it was also their passion.
Others, however, did not reach the same conclusion. On September 7, 1984, Riverside County Sheriffs officers broke into the Corona, California home of Mark and Linda Schuyten. Their children were taken into protective custody, the material for their Families/Naturally magazine was confiscated, and the two would-be publishers were put under arrest for being pornographers. Like the Atwoods, the Schuytens were accused of actions dangerous to their children’s well-being.
Local papers simply reported that a Corona couple was arrested for running a child-pornography ring and that hundreds of sexually explicit photographs had been seized in the “raid.” The community, no doubt, felt safer knowing that such depraved persons as these were removed from their children. But people who knew them did not share that opinion. They were aware of the bitter irony in the arrest as child-pomographers of two people who had worked so hard against those who exploit and abuse children.
The case did not drag on for long. One month after they were arrested, the Schuytens were released, the confiscated files were returned, and the family was reunited. No charges were ever filed against Mark and Linda. But the damage done by their arbitrary arrest cannot be erased. Mark and Linda Schuyten considered filing a $50,000,000 lawsuit against the county of Riverside for false arrest. They are still thinking of such an action at this writing.
This time we see perverts under every rock
In America, we are in the middle of a new, hysterical witch hunt. Now we look wildly about for child molesters, pornographers, and sexual deviates of all kinds. In the course of this search, we do irreparable harm to the Atwoods, the Schuytens, and the school principal in Anaheim, California who was accused (and then acquitted) of molesting a five-year-old student at his school. We ruin the careers of the preschool teachers who have been unjustly charged with sexually abusing children. We destroy the lives of the nudist parents who have been accused of wrongdoing merely because of their lifestyles.
But the damage is not limited to people who face false accusations. All those teachers who now are afraid to show affection toward their students for fear of serious repercussions are also victims of this new witch hunt. No one denys that child molesters, and pornographers who prey on children should be treated harshly. But our fear is creating a new form of McCarthyism. This time, however, what we see is perverts under every rock. The suspicion and distrust brought on by our fear of Communism almost ruined our country once before. Now that same kind of an epidemic has returned. Only the target of our search has changed.
These authors are not building a case for the innocence of the McMartin preschool defendants, for example. They have been indicted and should be punished severely if found guilty. Those last three words are critical. Far too many preschool teachers are found guilty only by association — or because someone has, with no basis in fact, pointed a finger in their direction. We must protect these innocent teachers along with the children.
At present, many teachers do not dare to give as much of themselves to their children as they have in the past. They are now afraid of being accused of “molesting” a child because they touch him with affection. Our educational system, which will become less effective because of this paranoia, and those we are trying most to protect — our children — will be harmed in the long run. Certainly we need to assure the safety of this nation’s children, but we have to do it with sanity, not hysteria.
Our muddled attitudes about nudity and sexuality
Even though we use sex and seminudity to sell practically everything, our society is not consistent in its reaction to the human form or to human sexuality. Vanessa Williams was deprived of her title of Miss America because she posed nude with another woman for Penthouse magazine. The claim was that she “exposed her genitals” too flagrantly, and that was considered “reprehensible.” She is a live human being, and live people are not afforded the same rights given to works of art. Seven-foot bronze statues of naked athletes stand at the gateway to the Coliseum where the 1984 Olympics were held in Los Angeles, California. Sculptor Robert Graham created them anatomically correct in every detail except that they are headless. The penis and scrotum of the male, as well as the labia of the female are in full view. People who look up at the sculptures see images that symbolize humanity and the beauty of the human form. That is acceptable — it’s art.
But our schizophrenia continues. At nearly the same moment as the Olympics began, Nikki Craft was being arrested for going topless to protest laws that discriminate against women. She claimed it was illogical for the law to allow men to go topless and deny women the same privilege. In California, during that same summer, people were arrested for sunbathing nude on isolated beaches and in hideaways far up in the mountains.
There are good signs on the horizon
Even though Robert Graham’s statues caused a small flurry of protests initially, the opposition died down and the bronze torsos remain in public view and are seemingly accepted. People did not stay away from the Los Angeles Coliseum during the Olympics because of them. On any day that summer, people could be seen strolling under the arch without protest. There may to this day be a few die-hards who object to the statues, but the hue and cry has died down and the naked figures survived the clamor. The question is, when will the objection to live human nudity receive similar treatment?
We know that today if an individual disrobed near the archway and stretched out on the grass to sun in the nude, he or she would be arrested. Even though there are very naked forms cast in bronze not thirty feet away, showing their genitals more blatantly than any sunbather possibly could, most members of our society would still claim there was something obscene about “real nakedness” and nothing wrong with naked art.
However, slowly — very slowly — our awareness is changing. People are becoming more and more accepting of their physical reality. Gradually, the situation is improving. Once a person could be jailed, as was Samuel Roth, for publishing Joyce’s Ulysses, or, for that matter, for even possessing it. Once, what two people did in their own home was considered everyone’s business. Law prescribed that only face-to-face missionary sex was legal. In many states a person could be prosecuted more severely for what he or she did sexually with his/her married partner than for sodomizing animals. Unwittingly, many happily married couples indulged in “illegal” sex acts that could have caused them to be brought to court. Some few, spied upon by meddling relatives or neighbors, suffered because of this law.
Today, however, sexual matters are generally considered personal and private by most of our authorities. In this, society has come a long way. But the struggle for the right to personal choice is not ended. Many honest, sincere people still accept Comstock’s philosophy. A new surge of conservatism, coupled with a new religious militancy has brought many into the fight against “filth.”
But the definition of “filth” is still the same as Comstock gave a hundred years ago. With renewed zeal the “antismut” groups, who see no difference between family nudity and sexual molestation of children, have taken up the fight. Convinced that they have the same commission as Comstock and the same divine subpoena, they carry on the struggle to eliminate “evil.”
But is family nudity evil? Does it cause children to become preoccupied with sex? Many nudist families say it is just the opposite, and point to their children as proof of their belief.
“...free from the dangerous preoccupation with the mystery....”
Many of the nudist families we spoke with believe it is the forbidden quality of nakedness and sexuality in our society that causes so many of our problems. The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate of any country in the developed world. We also commercialize sex far more than does any other nation. We profit by using sex to sell almost everything, but we also are fascinated by its mystery. We behave like “rubes” turned barkers at a circus, responding with a sophomoric, giggling, carnival-sideshow attitude titillated by the very thing we’re exploiting inside the tent.
The painter Paul Gauguin, speaking of the natives of the South Pacific, once wrote, “Their continual state of nakedness has kept their minds free from the dangerous preoccupation with the mystery....” He also commented that “Among peoples that go naked, as among animals, the difference between the sexes is less accentuated than in our climates....We have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman.”
Margaret Mead believed, as did Gauguin, that we are doing a disservice to ourselves if we don’t recognize our naturalness and stop giggling at ourselves in the mirror. We think of women as second-class citizens. Far too many of us believe that our bodies and our natural instincts are controlled by the devil. Both of these beliefs have roots in our sociey’s puritanical base. But those attitudes produce serious side effects. One of the most serious of the troublesome difficulties we face is our inability to relate to each other. Europeans, in general, do not seem to have this same emotional reaction to human nudity.
Yet, Europeans are not a breed apart. Many of us have cousins, brothers, sisters, and even children who live in Europe. How, then, do these close relatives of ours deal with human nudity?
Time Magazine, in August of 1981, reported how Germans, famous as nude sunbathers when on vacation, but rather conse-vative at home in their own cities, were moving into the parks of Munich. It began in 1979, in the 600-acre Englishe Garten. Young people started disregarding STAY OFF THE GRASS signs and began to picnic and relax on the park’s greenery. Shortly thereafter, Time reported, a few students “...shed their bras. Panties followed, and some men ’forgot’ their trunks. Dips in the park’s crystal-clear waters became skinny-dips.”
That was in 1979. By the summer of 1981, Time continued, “at least 400 nudes sprawled provocatively along the park’s main path.” There was outcry. Many German Catholics protested. Words and editorial letters were exchanged. The nudists in the park became a major tourist attraction, “even threatening,” noted Time, “to rival the rosy Rubens’ nudes in the city’s Alte Pinakothek.” One student, Lia Walden, asked, “Why don’t those pious Catholics take offense at the naked putti and angels that dot our churches?” Another said, “The majority of the passers-by seem delighted to see us.”
The important thing here is the official reaction to all this. Assistant Lord Mayor Winfried Zehetmeir said, “Surely there exists a certain polarization between the ashamed dressed and the unashamed undressed. If there are no indecent actions, nothing can be legally done.” [Italics ours]
Step-by-step
There are some liberal thinkers in America who grow impatient with the slowness of change. They look back at Comstock and ask why it takes so long to reverse his destructive influence. It’s difficult to answer that question. People resist change unless they are frightened into it. Comstock had the fear of God on his side. The supporters of body self-acceptance have no commensurate threat with which to rouse the public.
Nevertheless, changes are taking place. Fewer and fewer Americans are shocked by the sight of the human anatomy. More are accepting the reality of the bronze statues at the Olympic Gate in Los Angeles and other art of like kind. Fewer are outraged by what others do in private. A 1983 Gallup poll showed that 72% of Americans answered no to the question, “Do you think that isolated clothing-optional beaches should be against the law?” However, only about one third of those questioned said they might try going to one, and in a 1985 Roper poll only 18% said they had ever gone swimming nude with a group.
In spite of the small, vocal minority who still follow Comstock, additional “nude” beaches are being established and the ones already in existence are growing in popularity. People are gaining personal experience with a more casual attitude toward nudity from many sources in our society. For example, what we see in the media influences what we accept in our lives. Magazines and movies have, perhaps, the greatest influence in this area. Over the past two decades, the movie industry has become much more willing to include nakedness in its films without using it as a major advertising gimmick. This contributes greatly to the nation’s tolerance and eventually acceptance of nudity as a natural part of our lives. Movies, we feel, have helped many individuals in our society feel a little more comfortable about seeing other humans without clothing.
Europe shows the way
For many years, it has been evident that Europe, as a whole, has a more casual attitude toward nudity than exists in the United States. In the 1920’s through the 1950’s, many films produced in this country had to be made with at least two versions; one to show in European markets, and a tame version for American audiences. Censors denied American audiences the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wanted the films that were common fare in Europe. That usually meant the U.S. film had no nude scenes, only hints of sex, and stilted language. It was a requirement that the movie industry accepted, although it meant costly changes and much wasted time.
Finally, sometime in the late sixties, American filmmakers began reading their own newspapers. They discovered that nudity was far more accepted in this country than they had realized. The European influence was being felt on the beaches and in the back country of the U.S. Nudist camps were growing in popularity. Slowly, films began to reflect what the industry was coming to understand: Americans as a whole were not as puritanical as the film producers had assumed them to be.
Then, in 1972, the Chad Merrill Smith case in California changed the definition of indecent exposure. In 1973, Eugene Callen, in Los Angeles, California, founded a national nude-beach advocacy group, which he called Beachfront USA. From that point on, films and social developments changed together. As the Comstock-type controls over film content weakened, Americans who wanted more reality in their films and their lives became more vocal.
Landmark films that carried the message of change
Does society affect what appears in films? Or does the cinema influence changes in society? These are questions that may not be answered for a long time. However, changes do occur, and it appears possible that one could answer yes to both questions. Prior to the establishment of a film board of censors, films were more open, showing nudity, even of some stars. The Catholic Legion of Decency put an end to that, and the Citizens for Decent Literature, established in the early 1950’s and backed by Charles Keating, kept the control in force. But these organizations were losing power during that decade, primarily as a direct result of the Supreme Court decisions handed down in the late l950’s.
Movies have come a long way since the peek-a-boo nipple of Hedy Kiesler and her swim through Czechoslovakian Ecstasy in the 1930’s, but each step has caused some repercussions. Even Disney’s Fantasia was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency because of the “lewdness” of the fairy creatures who had nothing covering their tiny breasts but fairy skin.
In 1957, a French film entitled The Game Of Love was brought to the Supreme Court because it had nudity and implied intercourse. The Court ruled the film was not obscene, based on the previous Roth decision, and the gate opened a bit more. In that same year, Brigitte Bardot burst on the scene in Roger Vadim’s production of And God Created Women. She bared more flesh than America was used to seeing and caused another lasting impression. In 1959 a Russ Meyer film, The Immoral Mr. Teas, taking advantage of the recently liberalized obscenity law, displayed bare breasts and buttocks of young starlets.
One of the important films for nude scenes in the United States was a 1955 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It did not contain a single nude at least not for the eye to see but it was clear that nudity existed. In the little-known film, The Trouble With Harry, John Forsythe, acting a painter, tells an alluring but wistful Shirley MacLaine that he’d like to paint her nude. “Not now,” she replies casually, and it was that casualness and that mental picture that titillated the imagination of the American movie public.
The foreign influence, previously barred from American films, grew stronger. The opening sequence of French-Italian Barbarella (again by Roger Vadim and starring a pre-Vietnam Jane Fonda in a space-suit striptease) gave American audiences a look at what their European cousins had been seeing for years. In 1959, Ronald Neame directed Academy Award winner Maggie Smith in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. In it, a teenaged Pamela Franklin posed nude for painter Robert Stevens. Although the American version showed less of Miss Franklin than the original British version, it did give the United States a view of nudity without it being used (as Vadim so often had done in the past) as a selling point, a focal point of the story. In Prime the nude scene had to do with the story, it was not the whole show, and it did not look like nudity for nudity’s sake.
Movies that contained nudity (but that were not centered around sensational ad campaigns showing naked actresses jumping from bed to bed) began to appear in American movie houses. In 1969, a brief but sensual scene with Robert Blake and Katherine Ross caused very little stir in the film Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here. The advertising for that film virtually ignored the nudity, and, as a result, its inclusion in the film went almost unnoticed.
The 1970’s brought further change in what motion pictures presented to moviegoers in America. The very first year of the decade gave us what was to be the most blatant, undisguised nudity. Candid Camera’s Allen Funt produced and directed What Do You Say To A Naked Lady? and audiences watched housewives and repairmen unexpectedly encounter naked ladies in elevators, on ladders, and along the roadsides. The film contained some funny vignettes. But more importantly, it showed how people could accept being in the presence of “real naked humans.” In the sequence where Funt had a class of students in a local college taught by a naked female professor, the viewer got to compare the reactions of students and their parents to the same situation. Also, in a very telling scene, ladies “diverted their eyes” as they sat one at a time in a room with a nude male artist’s model who finally asked them, “Does it bother you that I’m nude?”
“No,” most of them answered self-consciously as they continued to divert their eyes, but the camera recorded the sly attempts they made to catch quick glimpses of the model.
One film, important for its open use of nudity, was the Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Joseph Heller’s novel Catch, 22. The nude scene was in a dream sequence. Paula Prentice walked naked toward the camera/viewer with her arms outstretched. The camera showed full frontal nudity in just an incidental part of the film, but it was a major motion picture. Prior to that, only sex films showed full frontal nudity. Prentice’s walk aunaturel down a floating dock in a pilot’s dream left a strong mark on American film.
At that time, it was still quite unusual for a major star to appear nude; it was virtually unheard of for a major male star. In the 1970 production of A Man Called Horse, directed by Elliot Silverstein, Richard Harris not only ran naked into the river to bathe but was pulled just as bare from the water at the end of a rope by unfriendly and unscandalized Indians. The Indians were not bothered by his lack of dress and neither, it seems, was the American filmgoer.
Marlon Brando went ten steps further when in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 film Last Tango In Paris, he exposed himself not only to indignity but to the audience as well. His nudity became a major aspect of the film. Intrigued by the movie’s blatancy, audiences flocked to see Brando in one of his most compelling roles. One critic wrote, “This is not a sex film; yet it is the first sex film.” Both Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando appeared nude periodically throughout the film. It was a breakthrough motion picture because of its honesty and straightforward presentation.
That same year, a gentle movie out of Australia presented low-profile nudity in the swimminghole scene from Walkabout, which gave American audiences a look at a charming, natural moment in a trek across the Outback. Again in 1972, director Guillaume Martin Aucion took the theatrical production of Oh! Calcutta and showed it to American moviegoers. It showed the filming of a stage production of the long-running theatrical revue spoofing sex and sensuality, featuring naked choreography and actors running bare through Central Park In some cities, Oh! Calcutta was only aired as a closed-circuit videotaped telecast. However, since the photography was so murky and grainy, the most exciting thing about the film was the idea. People seemed to be much more interested in the nudity before they saw the production than after, since they could actually see so little of it during the show.
In the late seventies, movies used sex and nudity as their central draw with silly “nudeploitation” epics like “10,” and the 1979 wet-T-shirt ad campaigns for Peter Yates’ The Deep with Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte.
The eighties began with a bang as the remake of The Blue Lagoon featured a naked Brooke Shields (her double, not Brooke herself) and Christopher Atkins swimming naturally through coral reefs in an island paradise. In the swimming scenes the nudity was open and complete, as it was when the characters were shown as preteen children. But upon reaching adolescence, Atkins and Shields discovered modesty, and the audience was spared anything more risqué than breasts amazingly covered by just a few well-placed strands of Brooke’s lovely hair. Director Randal Kleiser gave just enough skin to obtain a sellable “R” rating and to stay away from the troublesome “X.”
In John Landis’s American Werewolf In London and Ken Russell’s Altered States, nudity was again used rather naturally and unsensationally, but it wasn’t until the 1982 import Quest For Fire that nudity became as natural and unassuming as it had been all along in the National Geographic. With Rae Dawn Chong as an early woman, dressed in mud paint and knotted hair, director Jean-Jacques Annaud gave us humankind’s quest for fire without the usual loincloth uniform required in movieland’s previous attempts at depicting early man and woman. The only problem was that the camera saw more of R.ae Dawn than of any of the often animal-skin-covered males.
In 1983, Jamie Lee Curtis casually bared her breasts in Trading Places, and even Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews) went topless for the camera as her real-life husband, Blake Edwards, showed us what he could do in S.O.B.
It was not until the arrival of a film about women in athletics that nudity was treated in American films as just another aspect of people being people. In Robert Towne’s Personal Best, Mariel Hemingway and her teammates sit nude in the steamroom and casually discuss the business of the day. The scene was easy and natural. Full frontal nudity was finally treated as it should be in a place we knew it belonged. No longer did women sit with towels pulled around them in locations where towels seemed out of place. The camera angle in the sauna scenes was fixed and made no attempt to center attention on the alluring aspects of these naked women. It simply recorded naked people sitting and talking
Personal Best showed filmmaking at its natural best. It was a very important film, contributing to the maturing of American audiences. Later, when Barbra Streisand had Mandy Patinkin casually walk naked across the screen as he and his friends swam nude in Yentl, or when Tom Howard had Daryl Hannah stroll bare bottomed toward the Statue of Liberty in Splash, American audiences weren’t shocked or scandalized. But neither did they see the films only because of the nudity. In fact, the ads for both of these pictures didn’t even mention it.
There have been some backward steps, not unexpectedly. The 1984 version of Fletcher Christian’s adventure on the ship of the same name, The Bounty, proved once again that naked Polynesians are much more acceptable than naked American or Australian actors. Mel Gibson stayed dressed while all the island women went topless.
Sometimes, the inhibitions are less obvious. Producer Hudson remained true to jungle lore when he kept young Tarzan naked, at least through his teenage years, in Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan. As a small boy in the ape world, Tarzan romps totally clothesless. It does boggle the mind a bit why, after such a beautiful and shameless beginning, Tarzan has to don the old loin cloth outfit for the final hours of his jungle life. Here, once again, is an example of Hollywood’s inability to face reality and treat it with respect.
One of the most recent films to portray people as if they really did have bodies under their clothes was John Boorman’s Emerald Forest. In a review in the Contra Costa Times newspaper, July 18, 1985, Beverly Borgan wrote that she had seen Emerald Forest and regretted having passed up, some years before, an invitation to visit a Santa Cruz nudist camp named Lupin Naturist Club. If this movie has made one newspaper writer more relaxed about being in a place were other people are nude, it has done a great service to that person’s self-awareness. If the film, and films like it, can make Americans more relaxed about their physical selves, then it has done more than entertain us; it has educated us in the process.
Another sign of our maturing is a gradual shift from simpering, sophomoric humor about nudity to open, frank amusement. When Erma Bombeck wrote about being surprised by nude beach bathers in a recent column, she treated with humor and a little insight a subject against which our society has been covering its eyes for too long a time.
The future seems bright. The statues that stand at the gate to the Olympic Coliseum in Los Angeles remind us that the bodies we have are not indecent. It is good to see that the movies are also beginning to let us know how preposterous it is for us to be ashamed because we have bodies.
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