Nudism Research Articles

'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

Family Perspectives on Communication With Healthcare Providers During End-of-Life Cancer Care

To assess healthcare provider communication about end-of-life (EOL) and hospice care with patients with terminal cancer and their families, from the perspective of the family members. Exploratory, qualitative study using focus group discussion. University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center. 24 spouses and first-degree relatives of deceased patients with cancer who had been treated at the cancer center from 2000-2002. Family members participated in one of two focus group discussions and completed a short questionnaire regarding their sociodemographic characteristics and the type of EOL care their deceased relatives had received. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were audiotaped and analyzed by comparing, contrasting, and summarizing content themes from the focus groups using NUD IST 5(N5) software. Family perceptions of communication with the healthcare team in EOL cancer care. Participants associated the information, content, style, language, and timing of communication about EOL and hospice care from healthcare professionals with patient age, attitudes, and compliance with medical decisions. Informed decisions about EOL care by patients and their family members, including the use of hospice services, appeared to be compromised by these types of communication biases. Satisfaction with EOL care was associated with the perceived quality of communication among patients, family members, and the healthcare team. Study findings highlight the importance of training healthcare professionals in the content, timing, and potential biases associated with information delivery to facilitate informed decisions about EOL and hospice care to dying patients and their families.

Nutrition-related information-seeking behaviours before and throughout the course of pregnancy: consequences for nutrition communication

Research has shown that especially pregnant women, and also women with a wish for a child, have increased nutrition awareness. Seeking nutrition information seemed to be an important determinant for nutrition awareness. However, little research has been carried out about nutrition-related information-seeking behaviours before and during pregnancy. This study aimed to explore nutrition-related information sources, nutrition information-seeking behaviours and motives for seeking nutrition information before and throughout the course of pregnancy. Data were collected by means of retrospective in-depth face-to-face interviews of 1 h with five groups of 12 women: women with a child wish, women in their first, second and third trimester of the first pregnancy and women in their first trimester of the second pregnancy. Women were mainly selected via midwifery practices. The interviews took place at conference rooms or at the respondent's home. Qualitative data were analysed with the software program NUD(*)IST (QSR, Melbourne). This was based on the research objectives and relevant text segments of transcripts. Women with a child wish generally sought little nutrition information because they were not pregnant yet. Information sources were the Internet (anonymous) and the social environment (models). In relation to the manifestation of nutrition-related information-seeking behaviours during first-time pregnancies, three groups of women could be distinguished: (1) women who feel like a mother from the moment they know that they are pregnant, (2) women who feel like a mother later in pregnancy and (3) women who do not feel like a mother yet. Each group had its own specific information-seeking behaviour. Important information sources of the first group were the Internet (anonymous and up to date), books (extended) and midwives (expert) during the first trimester; the 9-month calendar (fun and tips), friends (experienced) in the second trimester; and friends (information on breastfeeding) in the third trimester. Information sources of the second group of women were mainly brochures provided by the midwife and the midwife herself. The third group of women mainly relied on their own common sense. Second-time pregnant women mainly relied on their experience, the midwife and books for specific questions. Pregnant women perceive pregnancy-specific nutrition information as important because it is one of the few things that they can apply in their daily lives to protect the health of the fetus. Nutrition-related information-seeking behaviours mainly were pregnancy specific in character, rather than directed to general nutrition information.

The Party and the Arty in China: The New Politics of Culture (review)

Reviewed by: The Party and the Arty in China: The New Politics of Culture James Gao (bio) Richard Curt Kraus . The Party and the Arty in China: The New Politics of Culture. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. xi, 247 pp. Paperback $27.95, ISBN 07425-2720-4. It is well known that economic reform has transformed China from an economic backwater to a strong competitor in the global market. Less well understood are the accompanying political and cultural changes that have taken place in the reform era. In this well-researched book, Richard Curt Kraus analyzes the reformation of Chinese cultural life that has until now been obscured by ignorance and ideological bias. The book is organized into seven chapters. It begins with a succinct description of the Chinese cultural landscape and then moves to the ongoing reforms. [End Page 144] To help the reader understand what changes have taken place in the arts system, Kraus describes the evolution of artistic life from the Confucian tradition to the Guomindang experience, and from the legacy of Yan'an to the politicization of the arts under Mao. According to Kraus, "reforming culture has been a central issue in Chinese politics for more than a hundred years" (p. 29). Various political forces have affected the thinking of artists and inspired them to translate new visions into artistic expression. Yet, the current transformation of Chinese culture has been the product of a newly developing market economy, which has eroded the former domination of communist ideology. In chapter 2, Kraus examines two revolutions in patronage that occurred in 1949 and after 1976. The first made Chinese artists into employees of the communist state; this brought stability to their lives but at same time placed them under a restrictive, repressive control. Believing that "revolution was not simply a material process, but also a matter of ideological commitment" (p. 49), the Communist Party established various institutions to administer the arts. The author's description of these complex institutions is generally correct, with a few minor inaccuracies. For example, the "Oriental Song and Dance Troupe" does not belong to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Culture never administered Chinese television and broadcasting. To explain how the market economy is redefining the Party-arty relationship, Kraus argues that China's second patronage revolution is manifesting itself in the way that cultural markets supplement state employment. The substantial changes taking place may be summed up in the statement that "art-as-propaganda gave way to art-as-commodity" (p. 64); the market for commercial culture has expanded at the expense of bureaucratic control. One should perhaps read the author's discussion of Chinese censorship (chapter 4) before moving to the case analyses on nude paintings (chapter 3). Kraus criticizes "a double standard for China and the West" on censorship and argues that "our understanding of Chinese censorship would be advanced by greater honesty about the West's own censorship" (p. 134). He sees Chinese censorship "as a kind of game, in which state officials and artists contest the extent of free public expression" (p. 108). China has not established an official censorship apparatus, but Party leaders at different levels do have the power to censor artistic works according to their own understanding of Party policy and their own moral standards. Direct criticism of Party politics can be silenced before the critics speak out, but the censorship of artistic works might take place several years after their appearance. The practice of post-publication censorship and the changes in the political climate make the occurrence of censorship all the more erratic and unpredictable. Serious punishments are meted out to a few writers, while others receive only a warning. This strategy of "killing the chicken to scare the monkey," as the Chinese expression goes, explains how the state has been successful in getting artists to hold to a strict self-censorship. [End Page 145] Kraus examines the reasons why censorship has eased in recent years. This is "not mainly due to the party's goodwill, but because many intellectuals pressed successfully for fewer restrictions and because the emerging cultural marketplace has complicated the censor's job" (p. 122). The...

Three Stories

Three Stories Marcelino Freire (bio) Translated by Claude Henry Potts (bio) Somebody Killed the Lifeguard We're happy. It's Sunday in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro. Children roll around in the sand. The beach spins. There are asses here from every corner of the planet. If some of them make it worse, others make it better—like the drumming section of a samba school, like blacks playing soccer. Nobody wants to know about the rain. I'm not going to be the rain. In such sweltering weather, Sunday is a perfect day for dozing off. Rio is one big smile. Hey, this is beginning to sound like a guidebook. We're happy because our coastline spans more than 7 ,367 kilometers. The water is clear and warm all year round. With its sea of automobiles, even the city of São Paulo has an ocean. Everything flows toward Suarão, Sonho, Cibratel I, Embaré, Ilha Porchat. Some of these beaches aren't fit for swimming. Others have diversions like waterfalls that gush into the waves, slapping the white sand like tongues. I don't want to know. Nobody wants to know what happened yesterday. Yesterday already was. Why don't we talk about futevôlei instead? It is played the same way as beach volleyball except you use your feet instead of your hands. A player can use his chest, his head, and any part of his legs. You've got to stay on top of the sand and not sink down into it. Don't let the wind lift your serve from behind. Now I'm talking about sailing. There's a nautical term for every direction you send the ball: sail, cut, angle, line. But when you're at the beach, the only thing you really need to know is how to swim. In the case of the boy yesterday, it was something different. What boy you ask? Yesterday during that confusion. There are those who go to the beach only to eat or get a tan. For these types, here's a bit of advice: 1. only use tested dermatological products; 2. remember that sixty percent of solar radiation is transmitted through heat; 3. in local restaurants, don't forget to try sopa leão veloso, a famous stew made of fish heads and shrimp; or 4. try arroz-de-cuxá from São Luis do Maranhão. [End Page 101] [Begin Page 103] It's also important to remember that although Brazil has more than 192 lighthouses, they are rarely built because of the dangers of the sea. The dangers of the sea. As if the Dead Sea, like the others, had never died. As if sharks had never been able to attack. As if the shipwrecks had never sunk to the bottom. As if pirates had never done any smuggling. As if oil had never flowed through pipelines. As if whales had never fallen after breaching. As if the boy yesterday had not also been the boy today, more alive than the early-morning sun. As if he had never been hit by that damned bullet. What can you do? At the beach, there are tons of things to do. Surfing, diving, hiking, camping, and even nude sunbathing. Once you've gone nude—think about it—it's like being reborn into the world. To expose everything the way an Indian would, without even a thong bikini. Pedra Grande is one of them, a beach that allows the complete manifestation of paradise. It is located in Trancoso, Bahia. There's also Pedras Altas in Santa Catarina. Tambaba in Paraíba. Naked as a cloud in the sky. I don't want to make it rain. I don't have that kind of power. I want this story to have some usefulness—to give the traveler a bit of advice. I want it to be about the different climates one can find in this country. I also want it to be about the moon's oceans, or the boy's body, stretched out there. Let me talk about the weather a bit. It's not just the blazing sun that can hurt you, but also...

Venus at her mirror: Velazquez and the art of nude painting

17th century saw a tremendous thematic and technical development in the realm of painting as artists experimented with realism and anatomical exactitude, and gave free expression to themes of sensuality. This is especially apparent in Velazquez' at Her Mirror, also known as The Rokeby Venus. In this text Andreas Prater uses the much-studied and imitated painting to trace Venus's depiction in art through the centuries. Prater begins by offering a detailed examination of Velazquez' masterpiece. He delves into its numerous levels of meaning as well as its impact on the nude paintings of its day. He also looks at the painting's history, including its attempted destruction by a suffragette in 1919. Velazquez' self-admiring Venus is compared to her depictions in other well-known works by admiring artists, including da Vinci, Giorgione, and Titian, as well as in works by later artists such as Manet and Cabanel, and into the modern world of advertising. These comparisons provoke intriguing perspectives on the evolution of eroticism, feminism, and Christianity in art, and offer an understanding of the influence that one artist and one work can have on generations that follow.

Blood, Identity, and Counter-Discourse: Rabbinic Writings on Menstruation

Blood, Identity, and Counter-Discourse:Rabbinic Writings on Menstruation Ishay Rosen-Zvi Charlotte E. Fonrobert . Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000, 326 pp. The project undertaken by Charlotte Fonrobert in this book1 is clearly innovative, breaking fresh ground in the research of rabbinic culture. Her scholarly novelty lies in the specific material that she investigates as well as in the methodological approach to it. The last decade saw the emergence of abundant writing on questions of gender and sexuality in rabbinic literature. Exploiting the contemporary methods employed in the fields of cultural research, women studies, and feminist criticism and assisted by Michel Foucault's writing on sexuality, the works of David Biale,2 Daniel Boyarin,3 Michael Satlow,4 Miriam Peskowitz,5 and others have presented a broad view of the relations between the sexes and the picture of gender that emerge from rabbinic literature. Within this framework, particular attention has been given to marriage and sexual relations, the place of women in the house of study and in the market, adultery and seduction, and so forth. The talmudic concern with the female body, however, has not yet been subject to such a comprehensive examination. Though most of the above-mentioned writers recognize the centrality of the human body in rabbinic literature,6 there has been no detailed study devoted solely to this subject. The opposite holds true of parallel research of Greek and Hellenistic literature, which long ago recognized that medical writings about female anatomy and physiology are a potential source of a cultural history of gender. The works of Aline Rousselle,7 Lesley Dean-Jones,8 Ann Ellis Hanson,9 and others have proved that this research direction is promising and fertile. These investigators introduced Greek and Hellenistic medical writing into the historical discussion of gender. They managed to prove that the Hippocratic [End Page 210] corpus, Aristotle's biological works, Galen's and Soranus's writings, and similar texts that deal with the structure and function of the female and male body are no less instructive about perceptions of sex and sexuality in the Hellenistic world than the analysis of Ovid's works or the nude paintings in Pompeii.10 Following in the footsteps of these investigators, Fonrobert seeks to examine the gynecological and physiological knowledge embodied in the laws of Niddah as a gateway to the talmudic universe of gender. In this endeavor, she complements Tirzah Meacham's critical study of the mishnaic tractate of Niddah,11 which focuses on the philology and realia of the text without analyzing its gendered context and cultural implications. Fonrobert's second novelty lies in her methodology. The works of Judith Hauptman,12 Michael Satlow, Judith Romney Wegner,13 and Tal Ilan14 are thematic, tracing an issue through various sources and strata. As a result, they engage the sources in a selective and necessarily partial manner. Fonrobert, in contrast, focuses on a relatively limited number of texts, but quotes them extensively and analyzes them rigorously and at length. This method proves to be profitable. Her detailed and extensive treatment of the material produces new insights even into texts that have drawn considerable scholarly attention (such as the story of R. Akiva and the menstruating woman in M Niddah 8:3).15 By adopting a textual orientation, Fonrobert goes beyond the analysis of contents to examine the text's language, argumentation, analogies, metaphors, and tone in order to extract their implicit picture of gender. This approach accounts for the accomplishments of this book and the insightful perceptions it offers. The Structure The book has a clear-cut structure, which is instructive of Fonrobert's methodological approach. Besides the introductory and concluding chapters, the main argument—engaging the laws of Niddah in rabbinic literature—is presented in four thematic chapters. These chapters are divided into two groups: the first part (chapters 2 and 3) concerns the object of knowledge—the female body, while the second (chapters 4 and 5) deals with the subjects holding this knowledge. Each of the two parts is structured in a similar fashion, with the opening chapter describing [End Page 211] the masculine hegemony and the succeeding...

The American Nudist Movement: From Cooperative to Capital, the Song Remains the Same

L'A. examine pourquoi et comment le mouvement nudiste aux Etats-Unis a change depuis ses debuts, et il propose une analyse de sa situation contemporaine, centrant son etude sur l'American Association of Nude Recreation (AANR). Il analyse la croissance et la structure du mouvement nudiste a partir d'une approche d'economie politique, mettant en lumiere la maniere dont il a ete incorpore dans la structure du capitalisme afin de devenir une entreprise rentable et compatible avec l'ideologie capitaliste. Aujourd'hui, le mouvement nudiste continue a proposer des valeurs qui sont a l'oppose du capitalisme, mais sans les pratiquer. Le nudisme, loin d'etre un exemple de resistance culturelle contre l'hegemonie de la structure sociale dominante, participe et renforce cette structure. L'AANR est completement integree dans les gouvernements et industries nationaux et locaux, et peut etre comprise comme un instrument de coercision et de controle.

The value of tan lines: vulvar melanoma and ultraviolet rays.

Recreational sun exposure of the general population has increased. There is less clothing on the beaches, increased accessibility to tropical beaches, and increased use of artificial suntanning equipment. The vulva, traditionally, has been protected from sun exposure. In this age of nude sunbathing, particularly within the confines of a tanning bed, it is interesting to ponder whether such exposure would affect the incidence of melanoma of the vulva.

Margaret Olley and the social context of Susan with Flowers

The public reaction to Australian women artist Margaret Olley's paintings of reclining nude Aboriginal women and still lifes, focussing on her painting 'Susan with Flowers' (1962) is discussed by placing them in the social and cultural context of the early 1960s Brisbane. It is suggested that 'Susan with Flowers' portrayed an Aboriginal woman with commonly found flowers in Australia, while the initial presence of the nude paintings in the private sphere diluted any possible racial interpretation of them.

Morals Versus Art: Censorship, The Politics of Interpretation, and the Victorian Nude

Censorship raises the question of how an object is deemed art or obscenity. Although sociologists have studied how cultural objects are interpreted according to the cultural frameworks of the larger society, little has been written on what makes one interpretation more compelling than another. I analyze the controversy that arose in New York City in the late nineteenth century when an eminent art dealer was arrested by Anthony Comstock, leader of the New York Society for the Suppression of Wce, for selling photographic reproductions of nude paintings. I contend that arguments draw on cultural schemas that constitute, and are in turn constituted by, social structures. Simultaneously powerful interpretations construct an appealing identity for adherents to the arguments. While Comstock had been supported by New York's upper class when he claimed that pornography threatened elite children, the arrest of a leading art dealer for selling the photographs cast doubt on the moral purity of the upper class itself

Does Nudity Protect Against Tick Bites

In the spring of 1992, following a case of erythema migrans at a Connecticut nudist camp, a request was made for a physician to come to the camp to

Parade strippers: A note on being naked in public

This research studied the practice of exposing the female breasts in exchange for “throws” from Mardi Gras parade floats in the New Orleans area. Data were obtained from men who rode parade floats and from women who exposed themselves. Interviews were done with 51 women parade strippers and 54 male float riders. This phenomenon is compared to nudism, mooning, nude sunbathing, and streaking.

Orientalizing the Self: Theatre in China after Tiananmen Square

GUIZHOU, YUNNAN, INNER MONGOLIA, SHANXI, MayJuly 1990 From 23 May to 9 July 1990 I traveled in China researching the state of theatre.1 My official research concerned nuoxi (ritual theatre by ethnic minorities) in southwest China; my unofficial research concerned repression by the government since the brutal crushing of the democracy movement of 1989. I went to China with the naive assumption that, like Eastern Europe in recent years, I would find a thriving underground. My own Eurocentrism (despite years of training in Asian theatre and culture) prevented me from viewing the events in China from a Chinese perspective. The repression, fear, and sadness in China was far greater than I had expected. The year prior to the 4 June 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square had been a year of artistic advances. A breath of freedom was in the air, perhaps most visible in the first public, government-sanctioned exhibit of Chinese paintings of nudes. Displayed in Beijing during the early months of 1989, the exhibition coincided with attempts by China's avant-garde visual artists to imitate what were perceived to be Western styles. For example, one artist blasted her painting with bullets during an exhibit. Neither the nude paintings nor the bullet-spewing performance would have been tolerated-or even attempted-prior to that extraordinary spring thaw. Such events encouraged the optimism of the prodemocracy movement. Thus the brutality of the military reprisals was all the more shocking to Chinese artists. I naturally assumed that arriving in China one year after the massacres, traveling under the auspices and at the invitation of the Chinese Theatre Artists' Association (Zhongguo Xijujia Xiehui), I would be able to meet and discuss theatre with playwrights and directors all over the country. Indeed, I discovered that they were more than eager to share their experiences with me. A priority for theatre artists in China today is to be heard; and since the silencing of protest is extremely efficient, foreign visitors are viewed as emissaries, letter carriers from behind the lines. The fact that I was accompanied by Kuang-Sheng Shih, a doctoral student at UCLA who is a native of Taiwan (and thus was freed from a translator provided by the Chinese government) meant that I was a safe person with whom to speak. The knowledge that comments spoken to me would neither be censored nor reported to Chinese authorities gave me a peculiar power, seeming to draw artists to me. Much of what I will

Kronbergs «Jaktnymf« och dess mottagande av kritiken

Summary When Julius Kronberg's Nymph and Fauns (1875) was first shown at the Nationalmuseum in 1876 it aroused enthusiasm and indignation. The painting can be regarded as a central Swedish work in the pompous style introduced by Hans Makart and the Munich School. “The Nymph” is an artificially constructed picture belonging to a world that bears little relation to reality. However, the composition and the colour scale, which is rich and brilliant, create a festive atmosphere. According to the story, Diana and her nymphs were resting after the hunt by a lake in the woods when they were surprised by lusty fauns. Fauns were fashionable at that time, in literature as well as in art. The model on which modern nude painting is based is Correggio's Jupiter and Antiope (fig. 2) in the Louvre, a painting that Kronberg must certainly have seen, for both his colour study and the finished “Nymph” contain echoes of Correggio's picture. The theme is also reminiscent of Susannah and the Elders, a motif that was painted b...

Specimen Days: The Therapeutics of Sun-Bathing

Explores Whitman's descriptions of nude sun-bathing in Specimen Days and shows how the poet was influenced by a variant of the therapeutic air cures and camp cures prescribed by his distinguished physician Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and by other doctors in the 1870s and 1880s.

Escaped from the Harem, Trapped in the Orient: An analysis of the multiple gazes in Nadine Labaki’s movie Where Do We Go Now?

Throughout history, the majority of artists have been men, and quite often the women in their works have been featured as passive objects of male sexual desire. This sort of one-sided dynamic is ubiquitous; it can be detected in the vast majority of Western nude paintings, and even modern advertisements tend to conform to the same pattern (Berger, 1977). As a consequence, feminist discourse of the representation of women in visual culture has focused on the concept of male gaze. However, the proliferation of images in modern times has given rise to a “broad array of gazes and implied viewers” (Sturken, 2005, p. 87). Women are no longer simply objectified, nor is the business of directing the gaze relegated to solely a male domain.

Nudism For The Family

Nudism For The Family

American Naturists. Henry Chester Tracy

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsAmerican Naturists. Henry Chester Tracy Charles A. KofoidCharles A. Kofoid Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 17, Number 21932 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/346673 PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

American Naturists

American Naturists