QUOTES 11/10/2017

“I took all my clothes off, hung them on the hook on the back of the door and headed toward the center of the classroom.  Walking around naked in a roomful of people wasn’t new to me.  I had been modeling ever since I’d had a conversation with a massage therapist at a hot springs resort in Northern California two years before.  He told me he was in charge of scheduling models for his figure drawing classes and asked if I would I like to model for one of them. . . The idea tantalized me and boosted my ego. . . Maybe they wouldn’t care that I was a 60-something-old-lady, I thought. . . People often asked me how I could take my clothes off in front of strangers, but I would tell them that taking my clothes off wasn’t the hard part.  The hard part was holding the pose for 25 to 45 minutes without moving a muscle (not even your eyes) that was what separated the men from the models, so to speak. . . Today, at 74 years of age, I no longer work as an artists’ model and, when I take my clothes off and look in the mirror I am, of course, flabbier and dimplier than when I was over 15 years ago.  But an older, more flabby and more dimply self if not what I see.  What I see is the great indelible truth that was revealed to me in that junior college classroom.  I see that at any age, in any shape and at any weight; I am something beautiful to look at, to appreciate and to cherish. . . Finally, I see that exactly as I am, I am a perfect work of art.  And just like any other perfect work of art, I always will be.” – Carmelene Siani, http://betterafter50.com/2016/05/why-i-loved-standing-naked-in-a-room-full-of-strangers/

“FEMEN GIRL” (Video) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wb9JI1ey5Q

“We did see quite a few people while [free]hiking.  It seems that a few were really surprised to run into a group of naturists, but nobody seemed upset.  We just gave them a good hiking story!” – Felicity Jones, https://youngnaturistsamerica.com/stony-kill-falls-review-yna-gathering-juniper-woods-nudist-park/

“Nudity and nakedness have had a very strange rap throughout history, and what counted as ‘illicit’ or ‘shocking’ on the naked human body has shifted radically from century to century.  Nudity has often had political, religious, class-related or emotive purposes; for instance, the Metropolitan Museum points out that the baby Jesus began to be pictured as naked in European Renaissance art to emphasize that he was meant to be human, or ‘God made man,’ not because everybody wanted to see creepy naked babies.  Naked people have stripped their clothes to show that they're vulnerable, to try to get closer to holiness, or just to be practical.  But the naked body has had some strange attitudes attached to it, or at least ones that seem extremely weird to the modern consciousness.  Nude female bodies in particular have been used as everything from eroticism to entertainment.  If you were a medieval noble in France or the Low Countries in the medieval period, you'd likely be shown ‘tableaux vivants,’ or live still scenes, that involved naked ladies posing as nymphs or goddesses . . . But what parts of them were actually scandalous?  Was it the breasts?  Maybe the ankles?  Depending on where you popped up in history, you'd get a radically different answer.  Nudity's judgement, it's pretty clear, is in the eye of the beholder, though in some cases that eye could get you blinded or killed.” – JR Thorpe, http://www.bustle.com/articles/172288-7-strange-beliefs-about-nudity-in-western-history?platform=hootsuite