Naked

A Cultural History of American Nudism

Brian Hoffman (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

336 Seiten

2015
New York University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8147-9053-3 (ISBN)

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In 1929, a small group of men and women threw off their clothes and began to exercise in a New York City gymnasium, marking the start of the American nudist movement. While countless Americans had long enjoyed the pleasures of skinny dipping or nude sunbathing, nudists were the first to organize a movement around the idea that exposing the body corrected the ills of modern society and produced profound benefits for the body as well as the mind. Despite hostility and skepticism, American nudists enlisted the support of health enthusiasts, homemakers, sex radicals, and even ministers, and in the process, redefined what could be seen, experienced, and consumed in twentieth-century America.

Naked gives a vibrant, detailed account of the American nudist movement and the larger cultural phenomenon of public nudity in the United States. Brian S. Hoffman reflects on the idea of nakedness itself in the context of a culture that wrestles with an inherent sense of shame and conflicting moral attitudes about the body. In exploring the social and legal history of nudism, Hoffman reveals how anxieties about gender, race, sexuality, and age inform our conceptions of nakedness. The book traces the debates about distinguishing deviant sexualities from morally acceptable display, the legal processes that helped bring about the dramatic changes in sexuality in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the explosion in eroticism that has increasingly defined the modern American consumer economy. Drawing on a colorful collection of nudist materials, films, and magazines, Naked exposes the social, cultural, and moral assumptions about nakedness and the body normally hidden from view and behind closed doors.

Brian Hoffman received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has taught at the University of California, San Francisco and Wesleyan University. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Going Naked 1 1. Indecent Exposure: The Battle for Nudism in the American Metropolis 17 2. Out in the Open: Rural Life, Respectability, and the Nudist Park 48 3. Between the Covers: Nudist Magazines and Censorship in Midcentury America 87 4. Naked in Suburbia: Family Values and the Rise of the Nudist Resort 131 5. Pornography versus Nudism: The Contradictions of Twentieth-Century Sexual Liberalism 169 6. Free the Beach: Nudism and Naturism after the Sexual Revolution 209 Epilogue: Nudism in the New Millennium 251 Notes 263 Bibliography 309 Index 323 About the Author 331

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.5.2015
Zusatzinfo	29 black and white illustrations
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	612 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie
	Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Arbeits- / Sozial- / Umweltmedizin
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie ► Völkerkunde (Naturvölker)
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	0-8147-9053-4 / 0814790534
ISBN-13	978-0-8147-9053-3 / 9780814790533
Zustand	Neuware