Talk:History of nudity

Paederasty
This article contains a coupe of irrevant references to ancient sexual practices. I propose to remove them. --rossb (talk) 05:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Removing section on Early Soviet Russia
I have removed the following section:

In the early years of the Soviet Union, an informal organisation called the "Down with Shame" movement held mass marches nude in an effort to dispel earlier, "bourgeois" morality. This group also sponsored "Evenings of the Denuded Body" in Moscow in the early 1920s, most held in 1922, encouraging the eschewing of clothing altogether.

Footnotes:

This is due to improper footnotes, which do not specify a page number. I have in my hands Siegelbaum's book, which does not mention either the "Down with Shame" movement or "nudism" or "Evenings of the Denuded Body" in the index; nor can I find any mention of these topics in the chapter "Living with NEP." While I do not personally doubt the existence of avant garde nudist movements in early Soviet Russia, I do believe it highly likely that these footnotes are fabricated. Please do not restore this material unless proper page citations are provided. Carrite (talk) 21:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 21:17, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Missing periods
Middle ages and renaissance are completely missing, I think we should at least create some almost empty sections with some links redirecting to other pages. Vitalij zad (talk) 20:03, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Medieval bathing suits deleted, etc.
There were no such things. As in antiquity, medievals swam nude. I didn't see the point of adding "citation needed" to a clearly false statement, so I've just deleted it. (No, I can't give you citations. But neither does the Net have any other references to swimsuits of the Middle Ages. Nor will anyone be able to find printed references.)

I have also adjusted the statement about bathing machines to match the explanations given in more than one discussions I've read, including the Swimsuit article in this Wikipedia. This fortunately allowed transfer of the bathing suits link from the deleted sentence.

GeorgeTSLC (talk) 17:39, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Ancient Egypt
The quote "with their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt" is given suggesting that the Egyptians went about naked. But surely the quote implies otherwise - that being uncovered they were shamed amongst Egyptians.Royalcourtier (talk) 08:02, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Europe
I question the claim that "in Europe up to the 18th century,...toplessness was widely accepted among all social classes and women from queens to prostitutes commonly wore outfits designed to bare the breasts". Such an unlikely claim needs good references to support it.Royalcourtier (talk) 08:14, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It does appear to be Original Research, but I think what is being alluded to is that one often sees paintings of very grand ladies with very low cut dresses and often the nipples are not covered. But it is a stretch to call this toplessness, the women did wear tops, just tops that didn't entirely cover the nipples. I do agree a reference for this does need to be found. Wayne Jayes (talk) 09:53, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed. It's a modern and rather American idea to call this "toplessness", but the underlying idea is correct. It was in fact common before the Victorian era for nipples to be visible, as we know from art and from written accounts, and this held true even in religiously repressive places like Ireland, especially among the the Anglo-Irish upper class, because the breast was not particularly sexualized (though not utterly unsexualized, either, especially among the lower classes).  The "among all social classes" statement in the quoted material is an oversimplification; there were in fact differences in the type of display and the reasons and contexts for it, as well as public and commentator reactions to it, and these also varied over time. It's a mistake to treat everything from the rise of Europe to civilization as one boundary, and "the 18th century" as another, and everything in between one long expanse of barely-changing sameness.  There has in fact been plenty of historical research on this stuff, and you can find your way into several pieces of it with a few seconds on Google; some mainstream-audience articles on the topic mention some sources, and with access to a journal site any of those open a river of additional citations.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:45, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Desmond Morris's idea is worth mentioning
In The Naked Ape, zoologist-cum-anthropologist Desmond Morris hypothesizes that, breasts aside, humans pretty much universally cover their genitals except for particular reasons and in particular contexts, and have done so since the paleolithic, for an additional reason beyond sheltering their junk from the elements: strife reduction. Exposure might inspire sexual aggression on the part of males, and infidelity on that of both sexes, as well as a general productivity decline as people's minds bent more frequently and intently to sex instead of work. I've never seen another academic mount a refutation of this idea. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:36, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Unsourced material
Lots of unsourced material in this article. SunCrow (talk) 06:55, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Replaced section
I replaced the "Paleolithic" section with the Prehistory content I created for Nudity. This is minimal for the sub-topic, and should be expanded here rather that trying to summarize for the Nudity section. I also copied a lot of sources I have not used yet here.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 04:07, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Sections with content that seems off-topic
On WP, what counts as Historical?

Content regarding contemporary hunter-gatherer societies that maintain cultural practices similar to those which were typical of human society in the past are not truly historical, but anthropological.

My assumption about the difference between contemporary and historical is the latter is beyond the memory of any living persons, approximately 100 years, or at least a generation, 20-30 years. Even using the least restrictive measure, anything that happened in the 21st century is not historic.

I plan to remove content from the "Traditional cultures" and "Recent history" sections based upon the above criteria. --WriterArtistDC (talk) 04:36, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

traditional cultures
is it appropriate to put all native americans, africans pacific island cultures all together in one section? we wouldn't put europe and india together in a section, despite being closer than the americas and africa is. i feel it might slightly feed off the trope of africans, native americans and pacific islanders being "uncivilised savages". it doesn't say that, but the fact they felt it was appropriate to put them all together, despite being different, implies they are all the same, because they are "uncvilised". i'm not going to try to change it to separate the various cultures in that section, because i wouldn't know how to do so well. but i feel it is innapropriate to group such diverse cultures together under "traditional cultures". Farleigheditor (talk) 22:04, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Renamed section to "Colonialism" and added citation.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 20:35, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Managing linked articles and references
See discussion on main article talk page.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 16:51, 18 April 2021 (UTC)


 * After a week with only one favorable response to merge I am proceeding. I have moved the citations relating to the History section of the Nudity article but have not fully integrated the Works sited section.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 20:19, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Removal of content
The extensive section on Japan was from a single source, what may have been a draft of a book chapter on a university website, but lacking an author's name cannot be considered a RS. In addition content was misplace being from the late modern era.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 04:55, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Balancing article content
I am proceeding with the balancing of content between Nudity and History of nudity, which means mostly copying from there to here, and condensing what remains there. According to WP:Copying within Wikipedia there is no need for me to attribute this content, since I am moving text I wrote myself. According to XTools I have contributed 80% of the text there, and 66% here, which will increase. Apparently the guideline states that I need to say this in each edit summary, which I have not always done before, but will now do so.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 15:02, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

History of nudity in main article
I am continuing with the project of balancing the content between History of nudity and the corresponding section in the main article on Nudity. There are many issues that need to be addressed.

--WriterArtistDC (talk) 04:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The topic covers the entire history of humanity from a narrow perspective, the facts and meaning of nakedness. This immediately runs into the problem of historical sources, which are rarely about everyday life. Even worse, they are not about the majority of societies, but the civilized societies that passed down their version of history, and commented on others from their perspective. There is much about ancient Greece, but nothing about the "barbarians" they looked down upon for abhorring nudity. There is nothing about how or why the civilizations of classical antiquity which recognized functional nudity were replaced by Abrahamic civilizations with a foundation myth of bodily shame that abhorred nudity.
 * I accumulated enough references to add the section on Colonialism, which I hoped would stir some discussion as to content, but there has been none.
 * I can find no "overview" sources, but only those focused on a particular time and place. Summarizing these sources immediately brings up the problem of original research. For example, if I have sources that refer to similar behaviors in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, can I generalize about the ancient Near East?
 * There is a definite bias in academic research, "nudity" is not a topic to be taken up lightly, or to be included in related studies as the basic fact of human existence it is. I can see some "whitewashing" of history, with the behaviors of the past being assumed to be either "proper" (little nudity) or "scandalous" (rampant nudity) depending upon the perspective being taken.
 * What level of abstraction/generalization is appropriate? Can any summary statement be made about the major eras: Classical antiquity, Post-classical/Middle ages, and Modern? If the main article is about the contemporary era, is there much of relevance there beyond the late modern?

Colonialism
Regarding your recent edits, the section on Colonialism was not intended to define an era, but an historical process that spans many periods and has not ended. Rather than splitting the content, the modern and contemporary sections need to be reorganized. Also, see History of nudity in main article above.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 13:56, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Moving content from main article
In order to reduce the size of Nudity, I am moving content from the History of nudity section from there to here. WriterArtistDC (talk) 22:08, 6 December 2022 (UTC)