Self-Parody Watch

"I had such a transformative experience on my own when I did yoga naked rather than clothed," said Naked Yoga NYC teacher Isis Phoenix. "I wanted to share that." [...] "We are reclaiming and celebrating our bodies," said Phoenix, who starts each class with a disrobing ceremony. -- New York Post

Reclaiming them from what, exactly? How hard up we seem to be for Shared Transformative Experiences.To the point of inventing disabilities to overcome! And not just STEs, but ones we can celebrate. We can strip off -- what a victory! It's all so dreadfully banal. Nudism is the new checkers. Only checkers has a set of rules and a point to it more complex and well-developed than celebration. That's sort of what a game is for -- withholding celebration until some quantum of meaning has been obtained out of participation in an order. Celebration as we take it is like stipulating that we've all just already played a game and everyone won. Celebration as we take it hinges on the idea that celebration shouldn't result from meaning but should result in it. That's bizarre enough on its own terms, and much more 'harmful' culturally speaking than playing a game where the winners of a game of team checkers get to get naked. 

At least naked yoga isn't an orgy, I suppose. But it's a long and storied flipside in our vain human efforts to sanitize and sublimate animal nakedness. A group of kids can run around and play naked. A group of adults? It's always a self-parody, an embarrassing act of pretend. And I'd surrender any right to pass laws accordingly in exchange for the right to keep and freely declare that judgment. Though there's nothing unreasonable about passing laws that keep the nude action private. And as a matter of law, of course, -- as opposed to a matter of 'aesthethics' (your Word for the Day) -- I'm happy to tolerate naked clubs of almost all varieties. Tolerance has plenty of room for amused contempt, and if I were a nudie I'd be totally cool with that on my own end. 

Comments

[hb]

Isn't this a pretty modern of you? An ancient Athenian or Roman wouldn't have thought getting around with a bunch of other naked people at the bath or gymnasium (the naked place) was self-parody. A large part of why the West was originally better than the East, in some people's minds, was the former's comfort with what you call "animal nakedness."

[J.P. Freire]

"if I were a nudie I'd be totally cool with that on my own end."

Heh. Which end?

[tb]

Yeah, well, sideburns are the new canasta.

[DFH no.6]

So this, umm... "self-parody watch" of which you speak. You mean your own bad self, of course, don't you?

Cuz that would be really pomo and everything (like the sideburns, I suppose -- I wonder if The Editors know about you?).

Also, you don't possess any "right to pass laws accordingly", as you put it, so therefore can't surrender it (nor can you surrender the actual right in this regard which is owned collectively by the body politic).

In addition, you already have the "right to keep and freely declare that judgment" (it's in the Constitution, son) so no need to try exchanging something you don't have for something you already do.

You probably meant that figuratively, I guess, though with conservatives (happy little doctrinaire literalists that they tend to be) one can never be too sure.

Perhaps you meant it as "snark". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.