WEBVTT - Nakedness 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:07.960 Hello, I'm Dessa, and this is deeply human. Unless you 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:10.720 are listening to this program in the shower, sunbathing on 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:13.640 a progressive beach, or as a fresh born babe, you 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:17.160 are probably wearing clothing even if it's hot out, which 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:19.760 is strange when you think about it. No other animals 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:23.200 fashion garments to conceal their private parts. And that sentence 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:26.040 probably doesn't make much sense because I doubt other animals 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:29.360 bother sorting public parts from private ones. So why do 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:46.840 we like, listener? Why aren't you naked? When my little 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:49.280 brother was small, maybe six or seven, he hit a 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:53.760 sleep walking stage, well like sleep running really. It usually 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.120 happened shortly after his bedtime. When my mom and I 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:58.760 would be chatting on her big bed. We hear rapid 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.360 footfalls coming from down the hall, and we'd make way 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:03.680 because we knew that in a moment my brother would 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:07.560 be rounding the corner sand's pajamas and would leap like 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:10.959 a little naked starfish onto her bed. Then we would 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.240 take great care not to wake him up and embarrass 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:16.240 him before guiding him back to bed. We were more 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:19.680 concerned about this kid being ashamed of his nakedness than 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.600 we were of him, like launching himself out the window. 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:27.000 Let's talk to a naked grown up. Now, can you 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.759 introduce yourself like the way that you would at a party. 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:34.880 I can give it a go. Hi, I'm Mark, I'm 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:40.160 a party. I get nervous for a dude with some 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:44.560 self professed social anxiety in Mark went on national television 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:48.240 in the UK and got totally naked. So Naked Attraction 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:53.080 is a Channel four TV show where the dating happens 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:57.920 in reverse. They say, basically as six naked people in 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:01.240 the studio and the pick he gets to choose a 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.120 person to go on a date with by it gradually 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:11.919 seeing their nude body. I cannot emphasize enough how insane 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.840 this TV show is. I first stumbled across it a 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.840 couple of years ago channel surfing in a London hotel room, 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.200 and I spent the next hour in sustained shock. The 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:24.320 format itself was like pretty pedestrian, one person fix a 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:27.480 date out of a panel of contestants, but all the 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:31.520 guests get completely naked. And when I say completely, I'm 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:35.200 not talking about like demure poses with crossed legs or 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.639 topless women peeking coyly over a bare shoulder. I am 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:44.200 talking like close ups of genitals in studio lighting on 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.240 Network TV and Light ten PM. If I own curls, 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:50.720 I'd have to be typing these scripts one handed because 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:54.680 I would still be clutching them. But to Mark, who 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:57.360 was gearing up to re enter the dating pool, this 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.359 sort of terrifying challenge. It was kind of like cross 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:05.560 training for taking the Plunge. In many ways, it's more 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:08.280 scary to go out on a date and meet someone 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:11.160 new and get naked with them for the first time 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:13.400 than it is to go on an actual TV shot. 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:20.080 Our unclothed bodies do seem sort of fragile, such a 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.480 vast expanse of bear skin to a braid or chill 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:30.880 or burn or bruise. Naked people are just so naked humans, 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:33.560 you might recall from a bio class of your are 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.640 sometimes called the naked ape. We lost our fur about 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.360 a million years ago, and there are a few theories 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.520 as to why. The most popular asserts that our bear 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:46.680 skin helps us sweat to stop us from overheating. Anthropologist 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:52.760 nenigibal on Ski I study human skin, including the evolution 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.680 of nakedness and what it means to have naked skin. 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:03.880 What is not intuitive to me is if we evolved 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.440 over a fi fillion generations to be furless, then why 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:09.720 did we turn around and start wearing fur stolen from 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:14.120 other animals. Probably one of the first things we did 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:19.480 was cover ourselves up at night. Humans, like other primates, 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:23.159 would have been good at huddling with one another to 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:29.440 keep warm, and certainly we also used furs and animal hides. 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:35.640 As humans began to move outside of the tropics, we 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:38.880 get cold at night and invent blankets. Okay, that tracks, 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:42.240 But when does shame enter the picture? Because it seems 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.039 like and even the hottest of climbs, humans usually cover 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:48.799 themselves up, even with only a tiny little scrap of fabric, 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.640 and those genital coverings don't seem to serve any meaningful 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:57.160 purpose for thermal regulation. It's not like, man, I'm freezing, 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:00.440 can I borrow your fig leaf? So what's going on there? 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:06.440 What's with the whole modesty business? People were living, you know, 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:11.080 cheek by jowl, and one can imagine that there would 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:17.799 be certain situations in which the condition of the genitals 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:23.680 would cause some kind of social disruption. Let's just say gently, 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.799 let's try to get this past the censors together. Nina 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:31.560 what are you talking about? If you're in a close 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:39.800 social group, sometimes those interactions between individuals that cause visible 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:46.280 excitation would be considered anti social. It's like we're concealing 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:50.080 sensitive information as much as we're concealing the anatomy itself. 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:54.479 Who's roused or who's on their period. And sometimes modesty 0:05:54.560 --> 0:06:00.640 isn't only about clothes. Modesty isn't necessarily about of rain up, 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:06.240 but it's about removing yourself from the greater social group 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:14.640 under particular situations. For instance, women removing themselves when they're menstruating, 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:20.120 or a couple going off when they're having sex together. 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:23.560 So like me wearing jeans right now might be the 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:28.080 equivalent of me sneaking off behind a tree or over 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:30.880 a ridge in times of yore. Like it's just me 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.680 keeping the intimate bits intimate, which I no longer need 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:43.520 to do geographically, because Levi's yeah, it's like clothing is 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:46.400 a little privacy shed that you take with you everywhere 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.360 you go, and it's a shed you are not allowed 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:52.000 to leave. Try walking down the street without your clothes 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:56.599 on in New York. Actually you can't do it. That 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.320 buzz kill was provided by Philip Levine, Professor of History 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:04.880 at the University of Texas. I think some people would 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.880 be offended and suggest that you're obscene. Other people would 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:09.520 think that you're, you know, what we used to call 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.160 a sex maniac, whatever on earth that means. Others would 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:16.840 think that perhaps you were psychologically unbalanced. Some would think 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.760 that you were making a political statement, because we do 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:21.920 know that nakedness has been used a lot as a 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.720 form of political resistance in many different cultures. Clothes may 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.480 have started with warmth and privacy, but they certainly didn't 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:31.400 end there. Clothing has become a crucial part of culture. 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:37.200 It announces social affiliations and economic status, and class and ethnicity, 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:40.320 and over the course of human history it's become almost 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:44.080 like a wearable flag sidebar. We have an episode about 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:51.800 dress and dress codes. Philippa herself specializes in colonial history, 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:55.600 when British and other European powers were traveling far beyond 0:07:55.640 --> 0:08:01.160 their own shores, encountering varied customs across the planet, misunderstanding 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:03.960 much of what they saw and citing those differences to 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:08.240 rationalized programs of world domination. There is this notion that 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:12.800 bodies of color, black bodies in particular, are somehow naturally naked, 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:16.360 and that this makes those people inferior to civilized white 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:18.560 people who know to wear clothes. This is a narrative 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.160 over and over again in colonial texts that one of 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:25.760 the reasons we need to civilize these people is because 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:27.640 they don't understand that they need to wear clothes and 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.160 be modest, and they need to learn shame. We see 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:32.360 it with the missionaries in the eighteenth century when they 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:35.320 first get to places like the Pacific Islands. We see 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:37.480 it in Africa, we see it all over the world. 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:41.800 Philippin notes that while clothing traditions vary hugely across the world, 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.240 not every culture ties up their notions of modesty and 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:50.160 shame with the naked body. But many colonialists depicted bear 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.520 skin and some sort of moral failing evidence of an 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:58.480 animal nature ignorance. Charities organized fundraisers to clothe the natives 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:02.800 to fulfill a moral imperative, But a prominent naturalist named 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.680 Thomas Henry Huxley was eager to document the naked bodies 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.480 of people around the world, and a letter written by 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:13.400 Huxley was actually what inspired Philippa herself to embark on 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.240 a career studying nakedness. So in eighteen sixty nine. He 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:20.320 writes a letter to the man who runs the British 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.400 Empire and he says, and these are his words, not mine. 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:26.400 He says, please, could you arrange to have photographs of 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.920 naked natives sent to me for scientific research purposes? Well, 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.480 where i am reading this letter and my jaw drops, 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:36.600 I'm thinking eighteen sixty nine, height of the Victorian period. 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.760 And here he is having the goal to ask this, 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.400 you know, grand politician, to send him pictures of you know, 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.360 men and women without their kit on. Granville writes back, 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.079 and he says, sure, no problem, I'll be right on it. 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:51.319 And indeed he sends to what they call a circular, 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:53.320 which is basically a letter that goes to every single 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:57.080 colonial governor, saying, Professor Huxley needs pictures of your natives 0:09:57.080 --> 0:10:01.400 without their clothes on, Please send eighteens sixty nine. This, dude, 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:05.240 rights send nudes to the whole world. You got it. 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.840 Huxley wanted the people of the empire to strip naked 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:11.760 for photos so he could classify them the way a 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:15.640 collector pins butterflies to a board. He was interested in 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:18.840 figuring out how humans evolved, but he was also working 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:22.959 on sorting people into a hierarchy of races. A lot 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:27.680 of people took similar photos, missionaries, anthropologists, even game hunters. 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.680 It got me thinking about how even as a child 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:34.560 growing up in Britain myself, we had had school textbooks 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:37.239 that talked about the naked native and what an incredibly 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.719 familiar troope this was to me, and that trope has 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:44.560 been pervasive. Our sense of propriety and shame can be 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:50.080 leveraged for power, social and political. Naked people's historically weren't 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.439 considered deserving of the same respect and more regard as 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:59.200 clothed ones. The most sensational and complicated and heart sinking 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.920 story that Philippa told me took place in an Australian 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:07.640 mission school called Rnabella. The Mission and Annabella is a 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:12.080 really interesting example of how messy this stuff becomes. I 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:15.599 think it failed, but it tried, I think, to understand 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:19.559 and to respect what it understood as the local indigenous customs. 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:21.760 So we're talking about in what was known as the 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.320 out back. You know, we're in the desert here. It's 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:28.160 the nineteen for days in rural Australia, one of the 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:30.959 last regions on the continent to be settled by white people, 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.360 and By the standards of the time, this mission school 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:38.160 was considered progressive, promoting the culture and the language of 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:42.079 the indigenous Aboriginal people. Some of the students there were 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:45.720 children of two Aboriginal parents full blood would have been 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:49.040 the term used then, and some were halfway. The kids 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:52.560 who are full bloot are being encouraged by Annabella to 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:56.240 embrace what they see as their indigenous culture, and as 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:59.200 a result, they're not allowed to wear clothes because they 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:04.080 understood as a naked and primitive people's the kids who 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:08.000 had white fathering, those kids were not allowed to go naked. 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:10.440 I don't think I am ever going to forget that 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:15.680 these kids strand in on either side of adults imaginary lines. 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:27.520 The mandate for modesty is pretty universal, even if modesty 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:31.640 looks different in practice around the world. Some places don't 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.320 like bare breasts or legs, or shoulders or hair. But 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:39.480 whatever the rules are, most cultures are passionate about compliance. 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.920 Some taboos on nakedness, however, don't seem to vary all 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:47.960 that much across culture. Philippa says there is one adult 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:59.440 body part that almost every society covers up. The biggest 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:04.000 taboo over time, without question, is the penis. There's always 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:06.000 a big hoho harp when we start to have any 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:09.720 hint that we might see a penis. Somehow women's bodies 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:13.360 are okay to commercialize, to use, to sell things, to 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:16.839 make pretty pictures from meaning you know, poshed off. It 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:27.920 goes on gallery walls. Fast forward. A woman sits for 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.720 her portrait with her eyes closed and her arms crossed 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:34.520 over her bare breasts in front of a studio backdrop. 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:39.280 The photos crapped at the waist, but you can see 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:42.120 like the dark band of leggings at the bottom of 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:44.480 the frame. It's a kind of image you might see 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.719 a lot of while scrolling on social media. But when 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:52.040 this particular image was posted to Instagram, the platform removed 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:58.120 it for violating community guidelines. The woman in the photo 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:02.800 was Naomie Nicholas Williams, a black plus sized model. She 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:06.480 the photographer, and a bunch of other people pointed out 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:10.240 that slenderer white models could post exactly these sorts of 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:14.520 images all day long and not get censored. Her fans 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.880 rallied on her behalf online. The hashtag I want to 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:21.000 see Naomi started gaining traction, and a lot of other 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.960 users who tried posting the image met with similar takedown notices. 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.960 Naomi wrote a public letter to the CEO of Instagram 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:33.360 that said, and I quote Instagram reproduces the same racial 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.360 biases that society does. Seeing fat black bodies is too 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:41.680 much or unpalatable, And actually Instagram ended up changing its 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.480 nudity policy, acknowledging that Naomi's photos shouldn't have been taken down. 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:49.720 One of the people who signed Naomi's letter was Shar Elise. 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.160 For those people right now who are just like meeting 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:56.440 you for the first time by voice only, can you 0:14:56.480 --> 0:15:01.440 describe what you look like? Yeah, I'm skin I have 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:07.360 a shaved head. Um, I'm probably around the size well, 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:10.640 I'm around the size u K sixteen to eight team 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.800 and I'm like five ft five, I've got loads of tattoos, 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:21.120 quite a few pacings, and yeah that's me. Shar is 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.200 a content creator but sometimes model, and the founder of 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:27.720 an online platform called Girls Will Be Boys, which aims 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:31.480 to explore gender through personal stories. She says that a 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:35.000 naked body is seen through a completely different lens. If 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:39.240 that body is black, it goes back years and years 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:44.560 and years, Like, there's so many examples of our bodies 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:48.800 being seen as either like freak shows. It's not just 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:52.280 a body that functions that are human being lives in. 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.720 It's it's something else. It has to be something else. 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.520 It's disgusting and it's really unfair. And a lot of 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:02.840 forums only on naked bodies are considered artful and others 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.520 are just fundamentally indecent and shouldn't be seen at all. 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:10.400 We don't see women with saggy boobs, we don't see 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:13.520 women with bellies. They have the phrase of like all 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:16.040 shapes and sizes, We welcome all shapes and sizes, but 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:19.160 you don't. Okay, maybe different size, but it's always the 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.440 same shape. So Shar teamed up with Naomi in another 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.880 motel to pose for a photo project the protested online 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.800 censorship us three models of painted head to toe in 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:33.040 pink glitter all over. There literally was not expect of 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:35.640 us that wasn't painted, and we were kind of stood 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.440 on these podiums and it was just us in like 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.760 our natural forms, and there were close ups of like 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.120 certain body parts like back rolls, and it was just 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:51.680 basically a middle finger up to censorship and society and 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:55.320 making out that our bodies are something that they're not 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:59.160 and that basically, our bodies are exactly what we say 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.920 they are, and that we can be shown as all 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:07.600 as well as our slimmer or white counterparts. So it 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:11.440 was just like a celebration of us and our bodies. 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.920 The human menagerie is stocked with all sorts of bodies, 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:22.280 and we tend to see just a small sampling of 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:25.800 them represented in our media, and so we take note 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:29.119 when the spotlight hit someone not usually asked to center stage. 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:32.679 Remember that guy Mark who took off all his clothes 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:35.720 on that show Naked Attraction. Mark is a handsome dude, 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.240 but if you were to google clips from his appearance 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:40.880 on the show and I have, the first thing you're 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.800 likely to notice about his anatomy is, actually, well, what's 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:49.280 let him telling? I actually had my whole color on 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:54.959 removed and had a colostomy backfitted in order to collect 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:57.440 the waste that would ordinarily go through your color on 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:01.440 and out of your butt. And so yeah, that the 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:03.800 changes you the way you look because you have this 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:08.240 sort of medical appliance on your stomach. So at the 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:13.920 time I was pretty embarrassed about it. I was more reluctant, 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:17.440 friend want to actually see me. Mark has Crone's disease, 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:21.199 and after a surgery, he felt ugly hyper aware of 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:23.960 the bag affixed to the skin above his right hip. 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.080 He healed up and got back on his feet, but 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:31.280 dating posed a particular challenge. I was meeting new women 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:34.160 and had to get naked at some point, and therefore 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:38.640 had to really address this u shyness that I had. 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:41.560 So when his friends encouraged him to go on the program, 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:45.040 he went for it and the audience loved it, and 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:48.919 afterwards the Twitter account for Colostomy UK congratulated Mark on 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.560 his confidence and all the work he'd done raising awareness. 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:55.280 They also posted a shot from the episode featuring a 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:59.040 modesty saving eggplant emoji, but his colostomy bag in full view. 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.920 I think being naked on national TV was probably the 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:07.680 biggest challenge that I've done so far. I think kind 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.679 of stepping it up like that and gradually revealing it 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.280 to more and more people has helped me personally as 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:17.199 well as obviously, you know, the more people in the 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:19.520 general public that know about these things, the better. In 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:22.639 my opinion, getting naked can make a statement. It can 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.320 make us feel vulnerable or empowered or just chilly. But 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:29.439 when other people see you naked, it might change the 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:34.600 way they think about how you think. Okay, let's get 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:38.000 Kurt Gray in here already. He's based at the University 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:40.959 of North Carolina Chapel Hill as the director of the 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:44.560 Deepest Belief Slab, which let's be Frank is an amazing 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:47.560 name for a lab. Some years ago, a few of 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:50.639 his colleagues were having a debate how does seeing someone 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.480 undressed change the way you think about them? One team said, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.800 we objectify naked bodies. When you observe somebody naked, they're 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:01.640 reduced to a mindless pile of meat. But the other 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.280 team said, you don't think less of them, you just 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.639 see them differently. Kurt decided to run a series of 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:10.080 trials to try to find out who is right. I 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.439 can tell you about the most interesting experiment, which involves 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.760 adult film stars if if you like ready, the easiest 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:20.479 experiment to run is just show people the same person 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:24.560 you know with their clothes on and close off. Same picture, 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:28.919 same setting, same lighting, same makeup. The only thing that 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:34.280 differed is nakedness. Happily, a photographer named Timothy Greenfield Sanders 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:37.080 had already published a book of portraits in which porn 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:40.879 stars were photographed both naked and clothed in exactly the 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:44.080 same poses. And we had a disclaimer that said warning, 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:48.199 you're gonna see You're gonna see pornography in this study. 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.119 And with that disclaimer, the study filled up in a 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:55.040 hot minute. So we asked a thousand people to judge 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:58.760 these adult film stars. These thousand participants were then given 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.600 a questionnaire to capture their impressions of the people in 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.159 the photographs. They were asked questions like, compared to the 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.840 average person, how much is this person capable of self control, 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:12.879 of planning a feeling pain, a feeling rage. And we 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:17.200 found that when you see someone will have their clothes on, 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:20.720 so that when they're naked, you see them as less 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:24.480 capable of thinking, but in fact more capable of feeling, 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:29.320 of feeling fear and pain and pleasure. Kurt's findings implied 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.720 sort of a zero sum proposition, like the more we 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:35.919 perceive people as thinking, the less we perceive them as 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:40.840 sensitive to feelings. Kurt conducted another experiment, and this time 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:46.120 he encouraged participants to administer safe but uncomfortable electric shocks 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.720 to someone in another room. Before doing so, however, they 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:51.439 were shown a picture of the guy who would be 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:55.719 receiving the shock, Shocky as it were. Some participants were 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.680 shown photos of Shocky negat above the waist. Other participants 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:01.800 were on a picture of him wearing a black hoodie. 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:05.879 And as you might be starting to suspect, Shaki was 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:08.440 a secret agent in this thing, actually a part of 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:11.119 Kurt's team. And so what we found there is that 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:15.400 people administered more shocks when people were closed than when 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:20.080 people were naked. Kurt figured that's because we perceived naked 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:24.120 people as more sensitive to pain, more vulnerable. It didn't 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:27.639 seem as though research participants were objectifying the naked people, 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:31.320 reducing them to nothing more than their physical bodies. They 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:34.400 still regarded them as individuals with mental lives. They still 0:22:34.440 --> 0:22:38.320 had minds, but participants assumed the minds of naked people 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:41.840 were doing less intellectual work, and we're more involved with 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:47.719 sensation and emotion. But can we really extrapolate these findings 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:50.919 from the highly controlled laboratory environment to the outside world. 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:54.320 Kurt admits it's hard to be sure if data collected 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:57.639 from Harvard undergrads holds true for the rest of the 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:00.920 planet look in other societies. It is certainly seems that 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:03.800 perhaps the more powerful the more you're seeing as a thinker, 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:06.920 the more clothes that you have thought. But as the scientists, 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:09.440 how we say more park needs to be done. Kurt 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:13.480 understood these results to suggest that maybe seeing people differently 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:16.639 when they're naked isn't all bad. Maybe it helps us 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:20.960 register their vulnerability and prompts us to want to protect them. Also, 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:25.080 maybe it's just like true, maybe when we're naked we 0:23:25.200 --> 0:23:28.080 do tend to focus more unfeeling than thinking. Right, we 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:32.080 wear clothes to protect ourselves so we don't feel as much. 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:34.480 And so I think it's true that that when we 0:23:34.520 --> 0:23:37.359 are closed, we are more of a thinker, and we're 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:39.679 naked we're more of a dealer. I guess on the 0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:43.000 occasions where I encounter someone who is observing me naked, 0:23:43.400 --> 0:23:46.479 like I'm not planning an invasion of Prussia, like I 0:23:46.560 --> 0:23:50.359 am more, I am more focused on the present moment, 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:53.720 experience and sensation, whether it's good or bad. Yeah. Yeah, 0:23:53.880 --> 0:23:56.400 although you know a little known fact Napoleon plan most 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:58.800 of its advance is totally naked. But that's not true. 0:23:58.800 --> 0:24:00.920 I just made that up. God, I just I was 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:10.320 like this, flip the table over, Spike, Mike, you just well, listener, 0:24:10.520 --> 0:24:13.560 our time together is almost up. And if I sound 0:24:13.600 --> 0:24:16.680 a little different while delivering this final thought, it's because 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:19.439 I am now sitting completely naked on the floor of 0:24:19.440 --> 0:24:23.320 a hotel closet, and I would describe the sensation as 0:24:23.840 --> 0:24:27.560 mostly humbling, kind of hard to put down my own 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:30.480 standard issue insecurities and focus on the task at hand. 0:24:31.480 --> 0:24:35.000 It also feels like I am maybe doing something low 0:24:35.080 --> 0:24:39.919 key illegal, which is probably just a product of my 0:24:40.000 --> 0:24:43.280 own looming fear that housekeeping is going to enter un 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:47.320 announced and discover me in a very difficult to explain 0:24:47.359 --> 0:24:55.000 audio project. I once read an article in the Seattle 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:59.719 Times about just how seriously we dig modesty. There were 0:24:59.720 --> 0:25:02.919 these disaster planners and they were really struggling to create 0:25:03.000 --> 0:25:06.800 viable decontamination protocols because people who were caught up in 0:25:06.840 --> 0:25:11.399 anthrax scares were so reluctant to undress, even to save 0:25:11.440 --> 0:25:16.040 themselves from a potentially lethal biotoxin. Some people, and I quote, 0:25:16.280 --> 0:25:20.119 would rather be dead than strip in public. But you 0:25:20.160 --> 0:25:23.080 know who just does not care at all about modesty 0:25:23.160 --> 0:25:28.800 or nakedness. Tiny kids. They suck at getting into clothes 0:25:29.080 --> 0:25:32.320 and they suck at wearing them. We've got to persuade 0:25:32.320 --> 0:25:35.199 every new arrival to the planet one by one to 0:25:35.320 --> 0:25:37.919 get dressed and get on board. We teach them to 0:25:37.920 --> 0:25:40.480 put on a hat. On the winner, we explain which 0:25:40.480 --> 0:25:42.720 parts must be covered to merge into the flow of 0:25:42.840 --> 0:25:46.680 social traffic and to protect their furthest little bodies from 0:25:46.680 --> 0:25:50.240 the elements would get them shoes and shirts and maybe squirts, 0:25:51.200 --> 0:25:53.720