The Waning Power Of Nudity

The Economist has an opinion piece suggesting that nudity has lost the power to shock. It follows in the wake of the Greenpeace sponsored Spencer Tunick nude photo on a glacier in the Alps.

The uproar that greeted a naked album-cover picture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the end of the 1960s would not be repeated today. Lennon asked us to “be ourselves” and world peace would be sure to follow. This seems quaint now. In the next decade the popularity of “streaking” brought nudity closer to the mainstream. By the 1990s the ladies of Britain’s Women’s Institute felt comfortable enough to bare all for a charity calendar. Organisations the world over have repeated the idea endlessly ever since, increasing public indifference.