Christina Rees 

Whatever you believe about how we came to be here on planet earth, here we are, all of us, bodies as well as hearts and souls and minds. Our physical nature is basic to and part of what we are as human beings, and is one of the things we all share in common, whether we are at home inside our particular skin or whether we find it painful or distasteful to relate to.
There is something disturbing and distorted about our society's implicit and explicit messages about our unadorned bodies. We have turned them into "objects of shame, subjects of violence or icons of lust". We drive them too hard until they break down, or we neglect them until they malfunction. We feed them inappropriate food and overload them with poisons.

We sneer and gloat and peek and violate. We glut them with all types of excess and punish and harm them for all sorts of reasons.

What we can't do, it seems, is accept our bodies as precious, the only means by which we engage with other people, the rest of creation, all of life. As a Christian I believe that God's Spirit is present in our bodies, whatever our size or shape, or condition. That should affect how I see myself and others. Maybe if we were more comfortable with our own nakedness, we might see beyond the bits that make us laugh or offend us and start seeing ourselves as worthy of respect, holy; crowned, as the Psalmist says, "with glory and honour."

A contributor to Steve Gough's 'Bulletin Board' 

I have been going nude at beaches etc., for many years. Just a few years back I was in a relationship with a woman who soon got to like being nude at the beach herself. We both had kids from previous marriages. One day she suggested a visit to the beach and to take the kids with us. We explained to the kids that we were going to a nudist beach and that they didn't have to come, or go nude if they did come. None of them declined. 

At the beach my partner and I stripped off, the kids kept their cossies on at first and played normally as kids do, taking no notice whatsoever of all the nude people around them. Then my partner?s 11 year old daughter came over to us and asked, "Is it all right if I take my clothes off?" 

Her mother said it was up to her. She did so and carried on playing normally, the other kids followed suit not long afterwards and all carried on playing as normally and very obviously without any concerns about being naked.

Later, I decided to walk down to the sea and Sarah (my partner's 11 yr old daughter) asked if she could come with me. As we walked the 100 yards or so to the waters edge, both naked, she asked me these questions: "This is really nice isn't it?" and, "There's nothing wrong with it is there?"; "Why do some people think it is wrong? I don't understand them!" 

I asked her, "Do you feel all right with it, are you embarrassed, uncomfortable or anything?" Her reply, "No, it's a really nice feeling!" Another question from me, "What about the fact that people can see you without any clothes on?" Her reply, "It doesn't bother me, nobody seems to take much notice anyway!" And a final question from me, "And what about you, don't you mind seeing people with no clothes on, especially all these grown ups on the beach, and me and your mum too?" Her response, "No! It doesn't bother me at all, I don't know what all the fuss is about, you don't notice it after a while." Quite enlightening I think, from an 11 year old!

Michael O Ward

New Zealand has a particular problem in that virtually all its TV drama material is imported from the USA. The USA media is constantly pushing the US cultural anti-humanity agenda. On the one-hand, extreme and graphic violence, causing desensitisation of the public and hence acceptance and tolerance of horrendous violence perpetrated on peoples in nations that the US wants to conquer to further its military/corporate goals. And on the other hand the complete taboo against the simple honest display of nudity, particularly of the male. The token portrayal of female nudity to provide deniability of this, is stylised and only of idealised female celebrities, which are 'owned' by the media industry.

This United States of America corporate cultural doctrine is now firmly entrenched into New Zealand society. The programming of young people appears to be almost a done-deal as we note on many occasions.

So the pixilation of innocent (non-sexual) nudity is an essential component of this continued agenda, to enable the controlled display of stylised corporate nudity to have commercial value.

We can protest all we like, but we will not stop it.

How can we?