Anatomy of nakedness

Paul Ableman

"Paul Ableman traces our attitudes to our dearest posession in societies as diverse as the naked Indians in the freezing regions of Tierra del Fuego and the clothed city cultures of the West, in the contrasting licence of the baths of the later Roman Empire and the strip-clubs of Soho... He probes conflicting Christian views of the body as a symbol of corruption and of innocence, shows how Western art distorts the naked body while seeming to glorify it, and casts a critical eye on how people view the bodies of others while concealing, deforming or displaying their own. The pornographic, phallic symbols and ambiguous ideals of the Western world are shown to be the direct result of the banishment of the body from the social scence."--Jacket.