It all started on the day that a former poster-girl-turned-
a case might cogently be made for equating modernity
serious-actress arrived to the premiere of her new film wearing
with nudity. Contiguous with the philosophical progress
nothing. From then on there were new converts to naturism every
of the last three or four hundred years has been a gradual
minute or so, until practically everyone walked around without
loosening of social morality whereby the shedding of clothes
so much as a pair of socks on. An exception was Richard, an
is parallel to a loss of moral absolutes and to a gain of self-
essentially prudish young man who saw the whole thing as
actualising personal moralities. Is it a coincidence that a
a ruse devised by artists which would ultimately result in the
cataclysmic event such as the second world war which
ruin of society. With his friends Sarah and Ben, Richard made
led to a questioning of faith in God and human perfectibility
a stand against the nudists, until arrested and imprisoned in
was followed in subsequent years by the mini-skirt and the
a windowless cell, where he was obliged to defecate in a red
bikini, culminating in the valorising of nudity at music festivals
potty. However, after an unknown number of days or weeks,
towards the end of the sixties and the amoral hedonism of that
Richard was released and, with Sarah, paraded as a national -
decade? Moreover, the subsequent decades have seen a
or even international – hero: a position he accepted with grace
reactionary backlash in the form of resurgent fundamentalist
(unlike Sarah). He rose to become as popular as he was respected,
Islam and US Christianity in which the censorship of exposed
sharing a high profile relationship with the original poster-girl.
female flesh can become an election issue – your privates are political.
(Pierre Monceau and Jean-Pierre Sertin)
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