Jacks and Dianes

There are arguments for whether the artful use of a body is beautiful or desperate or a tease, but these arguments miss the point.

Boobs and butts should be boring, but Miley Cyrus’s latest video “Wrecking Ball” is catching a lot of flak because what she perceived as a metaphor for her exposure to pain is “gross.”

Honestly, the criticism should be that using nudity to construe vulnerability is cliché.

Being “stripped away” visually to communicate your naked emotional state is tired. If an artist decides his or her derriere’s debut is indeed “art,” it should at least be innovative.

The wasted potential of Rihanna’s “Stay,” a song ripe for storytelling and heartbreak, is a montage of unexciting, repetitive shots of her in a tub. It uses the exact same symbolism as “Wrecking Ball,” but didn’t spawn near the same level of controversy.

People didn’t view it as inherently sexual.

Whether it’s Katy Perry lying “cute” on a cotton candy cloud or sweaty, “sexy” Britney in a sauna, the real issue people seem to have with nudity is context.

If Miley wanted to make something purposeful, something meaningful, she should have
used that wrecking ball to more creatively deconstruct the stigma of nudity.

It’s 2013. Naked bodies should not still be able to catapult someone to the top of the charts because Americans have the inability to progress beyond the mindset of a giggling sixth grader.

The biggest demonstration of America’s susceptibility to cheap ploys for plays this summer goes to the supermodels prancing around in “Blurred Lines.”

Feminists’ keyboards broke under their owners’ urgency to blog about how the models were obviously exploited as status objects, dancing playfully and bare-breasted among fully clothed men. Though the men kept their hands to themselves, they were accused of disrespecting these women.

But being naked is not degrading.

The discourse surrounding bodies is so negative and controlling that being naked is literally a crime.

We are born and shower naked — why is morality applied to the most natural state of being? There’s a distinction between erotic nudity and plain old regular Tommy Pickles “nakie.”

Even before puberty begins, people learn to cover themselves.

The existence of a group of people called never-nudes should be a testament to how much cultural anxiety and shame this inspires.

The fact that there are specific spaces reserved for the freedom and empowerment of the naked body, like nude beaches, is kind of ridiculous.

The body can be symbolic, but it doesn’t always have to be sexual.

­— ashhendri@indiana.edu