“Her ass is a song”
NOTE: YOU MUST READ THIS POST ONLY AFTER YOU’VE UNDRESSED.
There is all of this fear about the naked body. Although it’s gotten better over the years a single breast or a hint of a landing strip can still incite fear and rage. Marina Abramovic’s exhibition at Moma features two naked women acting as a threshold into the exhibit. And despite everyone having a body and occasionally being naked, the physical state of these two women incited so much anger that the news stations have picked it up. So have the newspapers and blogs. And then there’s all of this talk about model Rie Rasmussen calling Terry Richardson out on his sexually-charged photographs and accusing him of exploiting young girls. And now even, model Jamie Peck is accusing Terry Richardson of taking advantage of her when she was nineteen. All of this hostility towards an incredible photographer stems from fear of the naked body. Fear of sex. Fear of cocks. Fear of pussy. Fear of breasts. Fear of moaning and groping and touching and licking and kissing. Fear of some of the most natural verbs and nouns in existence. It’s gotten better over the years, I think. But the context in which sex or anything sex-related is allowed is very random and sporadic.
I just finished watching And God Created Woman, Brigitte Bardot’s twelfth or thirteenth film and it got me thinking about the naked body. Specifically naked women. I feel detached from my body. Sometimes I look in the mirror and don’t recognize my skin. I see birthmarks that I haven’t noticed until now. And it’s people like Terry Richardson and Brigitte Bardot and Marina Abramovic that remind us all that we have bodies. We have breasts and cocks and stomachs and feet.
The body is everything to fashion. You can put two girls in the same dress and the mood of the dress will change so much from one girl to the next. The body is everything. But when my friend sees a naked model in Vogue Italia she will say, “It’s porn. Nothing but porn.” And when I introduce her to Terry Richardson she will say the same thing. And when I show her the Purple editorial with a very naked and very beautiful Freja Beha she can barely look at the page. This is, mind you, the same friend that is terrified of belly buttons and has never masturbated (NOTE: someone needs to find a prettier word for masturbate. It sounds too much like masticate and berate).
And when I see the same Vogue Italia editorial or Terry Richardson photograph or Purple editorial I can’t see anything but beauty and freedom. The body as identity. As the greatest tool to ever be created. As something other than the end of everything that is good and wholesome in the world.
The body is everything to fashion. Fashion needs bodies. Hard, naked, limber bodies. When sales people from Barney’s and Saks Fifth Avenue visit a showroom to see a collection they don’t just look at the clothes hanging on the racks. They pick the looks that they want to see on a model and out she comes. She gives the look a certain life and vitality that they wouldn’t otherwise have on those hangers. And even when a model is naked and not wearing much you can still see how a pair of tropical wool pants would fit over her thighs and down her legs. How a silk top would hug her shoulders.
Feet.
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