The first thing they do – after the blood has been sponged off, bodily glues siphoned, and umbilical cord clipped – is place your naked, squealing baby on your bare body and watch like hawks for it to begin to root for your breast. Later, when the fuzz of the actual act of birth is beginning to dissipate, they bring you flesh of your flesh, clean and swaddled. The minute the nurse leaves, you unwrap this baby to count its toes, marvel at its form, long fingernails, peeling scalp, sometimes facial bruises from your pelvis. You check for birthmarks across its brand new human body. You see it naked.
A picture by Heather Whitten of her husband holding her fevered son close, under a shower was taken down by Facebook for being inappropriate, specifically with regards to nudity. Both the photograph and the censorship raked up a predictable furore. Facebook has often been accused of policing women’s bodies, specifically breasts, while ignoring more serious issues like threats of violence against women and hate speech.
But how we react to nudity, both public and private, is a combination of personal upbringing and the milieu. Traditionally, Indians really shouldn’t be bothered by nudity at all. Our tribals and ascetics are often unclothed. Only two months ago, at 8am on busy Linking Road in Mumbai, I saw two Jain men walk buck naked across the street surrounded by a small posse of chanting devotees. But in Facebook-speak, it’s complicated because for women, it is all about location. While the Slut March and the bikini are touted as signs of liberation in some big cities (okay, maybe two) in the less civilised parts of our country, nakedness is used as a tool to shame, to disempower, to punish women.
At home, in private, families make their own rules about nakedness. In India, we live in small houses, our children rarely have their own rooms. The nuclear family is not the standard. So while some of us may have grown up seeing our mothers naked as they bathed us or changed (or our fathers in those ill-advised speedos in the '80s), by and large, no matter how liberal your upbringing, by the time the children are in their teens, families start covering up around each other.
Different ethos
This dichotomy between male and female, private and public, squeamish and reverential attitudes isn’t universal. In a blogpost comparing Europe and America on nudity, travel writer and Europe expert Rick Steves says he prefers a continent that is matter-of-fact about the bare naked truth, “where the human body is considered a divine work of art worth admiring openly”.
Encountering this different ethos can be an eye-opener, literally. On holiday in Crete, three generations of a local family sauntered down to the shore, umbrellas, picnic baskets, beach towels in hand, to the next cove. When we looked up next, Grandpa was making his way into the ocean, the wrinkles on his bare arse reaching down to the back of his swollen knees. I looked up slightly shocked only to be greeted by the sight of the entire family in the altogether, mum, dad, kids, grandma. I quickly mimicked an anthropologist’s sangfroid. The next day, when the sight was repeated, but with another family, I didn’t bat an eyelid.
The personal history between you and your child features nakedness. It is part of the natural intimacy that comes from a shared biology. Any shame about it is a learned shame, an enforced one. In this piece about nudity and culture, Rod Dreher talks about teaching his son about art, which includes nudity. He talks about the act of breastfeeding and how in New York, it was treated matter-of-factly and in Dallas, it seemed to unnerve people. Dreher brings up, as warning, the story of Jacqueline Mercado, whose pictures of her kids taking a bath were treated as child porn. She was indicted by Texas prosecutors over a photo of her breastfeeding her child for “sexual performance of a child”. In the haste to keep everything “innocent” and above board, we have warped our lens on what is natural and commonplace. Dreher suggests, “It runs parallel to pornography, this leering, panicked modesty.”
American prudery
Facebook seems to have the panicked American prudery, “let’s play it safe” written into its code. At delicate times like these, it presents as a lumbering, faceless monolith with grand (some would say malevolent) ambitions of influencing discourse, politics and now even public morality. Its heavy-handed attitude to censorship, its clunky algorithmic grunts combined with its absolutely untrustworthy, ephemeral privacy settings have made me extremely wary of sharing anything at all of personal value on it.
The question is, would I share a photograph as intimate as that one with the public at large? Would I open myself up to the diversity of opinion from an uncharted milieu on Facebook? To me, the nudity in that photograph is not what makes it private. There is a precarious vulnerability to both father and son I would not be comfortable holding up to the abrasiveness of stranger scrutiny.
Mostly, I worry we are not clear about where we stand on the issue of consent of the child. Stories like this remind us that parents who casually or professionally document and share their family stories need to objectively regard our responsibilities towards our children. Are we okay with them being subjected to judgement and commentary from absolute strangers (or overzealous law enforcers)? Can we safely predict they will have no problems with how we have presented them in social media, in the future? And will they share our aesthetic when we claim a very personal experience of theirs was “art” for public consumption?