Origin of Nakedness.

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Brooks Hall

Birth: “as naked as the day you were born.”

Newborns are wet, covered in streaks of blood, and coated with a white substance known as vernix caseosa…
~Wikipedia.

A baby comes into the world with stuff on it, but naked enough, I suppose. A little being who’s, “genitals are enlarged and reddened,” via Wikipedia. Genitals are organs of reproduction: sex organs. And we don’t think of children as being sexual until puberty, but there they are born with “enlarged and reddened” sex organs. Does it say something about us that we enter the world this way (beyond the scientific hormonal explanation), or is it just a freak of nature (no meaning beyond body chemistry at birth)?

And there is the possibility for a woman to deliver a baby with an orgasm. Here’s a video about that:

So, in light of our sexual nature and possibilities right from the start of life, why are a lot of women so uptight (“uptight”=stereotype) about being portrayed as sex objects (the word “object” to refer to woman is a problem) in media, one might wonder? Sex is bliss, right? Are we just going against the unstoppable flow of nature if we want to limit or change certain kinds of representation? And what’s obscene about being naked? It’s how we were born, right? And yoga is hot and women are sexual, so what could be the problem with a video featuring a woman, in her black lacy panties and bra, doing yoga poses in front of a mussed bed with a sleeping guy still in it?

Hmmm… Here’s the video:

The woman in the video is beautiful, and the poses are awesome, but I’m bothered by some of the shots that are not about the yoga, like this one:

I think that this shot is about consuming this woman with a sexual gaze. And someone might say, “So, she’s sexy. That’s awesome. Beautiful.” In fact it was the word “beautiful” that first introduced me to this video in my Facebook news feed.

The first time I watched the video I stopped it about here. As I was watching, my thought process was set in motion by the establishing shot (shown just below). “Oh look, there’s someone in the messy covers,” I thought. After sex yoga, one might assume…

And I was just sort of turned off by the scenario set up by the video. I don’t really feel inspired by stuff like this. It seems to be more about sexual consumption than yogic expertise. And what the model is doing in this video is amazing and skillful. So why was I put off by it?

I was turned off by the packaging and presentation. There she is in an enormous and sparsely decorated bedroom in the city, apparently just having gotten out of the messy bed. She then must have put on her special “yoga bra and panties” just to be comfortable, or maybe because the producers didn’t think it would be appropriate for Equinox to release a nude video. I can only guess.

Everything we see in the images was chosen to tell us something, and mostly to make it exciting so that a lot of us would watch it. The poses are exciting, but the cowboy boots kicked off to the side of the bed are a little much. So I stopped it early. At first. Then I watched the whole thing because I wanted to write about it. And I’m impressed and confused. Impressed with the poses. Confused by the bedroom scenario and close-up sensuality shots (like the one shown above). I’m confused because that doesn’t appeal to me, and I feel like it’s supposed to.

I love sexuality. I just want to see something that makes sense to me. And I love yoga, but yoga isn’t about “getting off,” is it? Yet if a woman was truly having a orgasmic yoga on her own terms, I think it could be cool. In media, it’s a heterosexual man’s world. And I remain unaffected, if not a bit offended by the subtext of this video. Even though it shows a physically powerful woman, the scenario doesn’t read as empowering to me. Boo.

This week I also saw a picture on mindbodygreen.com that inspired me:

There are other images associated with this campaign by PLUS Model Magazine, but this one inspires me the most. I love seeing the model standing there smiling and looking at us. She seems more in control of her presentation. And the tape measure is usually such an overdone cliché for weight loss ads, but here the model is shown to be measuring her ample buttocks! This is super empowering. What I see here is that she is claiming her fullness. This woman is not trying to be small. Yay! I just get happy looking at this. It is fun. And she is naked.

She is sharing herself with us. It doesn’t seem as if she is being sold.

I think that this is what bothers me about the majority of images of females as they are often shown in advertisements: it looks like they are being sold. I mean it as badly as it sounds. I almost think that it encourages bad, disrespectful and even criminal behavior towards women to show them like a perfect product, available for consumption.

Nakedness is a natural aspect of ourselves. The body is the origin of our physical presentation in the world. It is good, like a baby is good. An infant is a pure, precious little being, and we all are also precious and worthy of appreciation. And sexuality is good when there are conscious, empowered adults deciding to express that way with each other. I think that the scenario in the Equinox video makes us into peeping Toms. I don’t like that.

Setting Root Wisdom off with a Bloody Bang!

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Brooks Hall

…with my period! Okay, brace yourselves, get excited, or click away, readers, because I am going to talk about it. Yea!

On New Year’s day, 2012 (wooo! So excited…) at about 3:30 in the morning I had painful cramps. The pain radiated from the front-and-center of my pelvic bowl. I had a sense of great movement and heat in my low belly. I went to the bathroom about eight-or-so times. It felt as though my uterus was taking control. She was saying that she could not do what she needed to do until the intestines were clear! I know someone might say that I just had the flu that was going around, or that I ate something not-quite-right the night before (that might also be true… It all could be!). But the fact remains that in my sense of it it was the uterus callin’ the shots. It was really profound how the pain would intensify and fade. I woke up one time thinking, “…and I don’t have any Advil.” And I haven’t taken Advil in over 10 years! It had been my go-to cramp reliever in high school and college. But I haven’t had any need of something like that for a really long time. I think that it’s due to yoga that I feel as good as I do throughout my cycle. But anyway on that morning she was saying, “listen to me!” And I couldn’t help but listen.

One thing that’s come up with my explorations in Pelvic Empowerment (also the name of a workshop I recently presented) is the continual cultural indoctrination on period shaming, like the whole “Feminine Hygiene” class of products, and the blue fluid to demonstrate absorbency… Gimme blood, I’m a vampire. Not really. I just think that nature’s cool as she is—at least a part of me does. When many times in reality, I still find myself ashamed when I buy tampons. I think that would actually be one of the great things about using the DivaCup or similar product. It just so happens that my body doesn’t like that product. My skin “down there” becomes tender and swollen and peeing becomes a more sensitive matter when I use it, so I’ve put the DivaCup aside for now (as much as I’d like to use it, for purely environmental reasons, of course…). So I still find myself at the counter in the grocery store with my organic cotton tampons, and declaring publicly that I bleed.

It’s a blessing! …a sign of my health and potential fertility! It’s the way nature did it, and not a punishment from god as some believe. I have no desire to “outsmart mother nature” as Tampax ads assert.

This ad is a real drag. Sorry I posted it, but it seems necessary to make a point. “Mother nature” in the video is dressed as old fashioned and old to boot, as if having your period is so 1954. But women still have periods, people, unless we are on medication to stop them. So we do have radical choices.

Maybe women don’t naturally appreciate their periods until they turn 40, or so (like me), and realize that they might want to try to have a baby if they never did that. Our society certainly doesn’t embrace any changes in activity or behavior for any reason. And most women don’t want to be seen as having any weakness, or anything that might slow them down when it comes to competitiveness in the workplace, or the right to party and be glamorous or model if the Tampax commercial is to be believed…

In the video, the period were it known or seen would ruin everything: her chance to be a star, successful, her white dress, her chance to continue making out with the guy on the set. Pretty manipulative. The model in the commercial is shown to be in power and have control (and not to have to listen to the old bitch who wants to ruin her fun) because of her special tampons that “outsmart mother nature.”

Well, I do change my yoga practice for my period, and also occasionally break the “rules” I sometimes set for myself about how I should practice softer and be gentle with myself. And I recognize that it’s a personal choice for women who practice yoga. But check this out: as the picture below shows, during menstruation a woman’s uterus doubles in both size and weight.

Artist's models to actual size in person. On the left is a uterus that hasn't given birth and is not menstruating. The uterus on the right shows the change in size during menstruation. And when holding the actual models you can feel the significant difference in weight, too.

When I saw these models of the uterus of on and off the period it helped me to realize that: hey this thing is real. I always knew something was happening, and had to take care if the “mess” once a month, but somehow it wasn’t as real as seeing more about what is happening to the uterus. This is a significant event that women who are menstruating go through regularly.

We should respect our bodies. And what that exactly means is up to us as we become more informed and experience what we need, and how we best care for ourselves under the different conditions of life.

As for me and my uterus… I plan to respect her call! In 2012 she spoke loud and clear! And I hope to understand the message better as I go forward into this exciting year!

The way I understand it is that it could have been a freak event, like wow (?) bad cramps for the first time in many years… Or she, Ms. Uterus was standing up to be heard. It might sound goofy if it is a new idea, but I believe that the body does contain messages for us. She might have been saying: hello!! I’m here. Pay attention. I can move things.