Prude
Almost a year ago now, the #MeToo discussion began, denouncing abuses of power resulting in sexual harassment: a discussion in the film world, the theater world, the music industry, the "ordinary world" and other worlds. Also about #MeToo in the museum world appeared articles in the newspapers, for example about how to deal with work of (male) painters who, often too young, compromised and sometimes abused female models.
At the same time, society is becoming increasingly prudish. Whereas prudishness once gave way to more openness and acceptance of the naked body, this has been reversed in recent decades. At the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s, it wasn't such a big deal: at art schools, nude models were portrayed without batting an eye, and on television we saw more and more "functional nudity" - mostly women. For a while it seemed as if 'we' could deal better with the naked, naked body without suffering from shame or uncontrollable lust.
Does dealing smoothly with nudity and being respectful of each other without sexually transgressive behavior get in the way of each other? Not necessarily, of course, but there is some wrinkle. In any case, nudity always provokes reactions. Thomas Widdershoven, of the design bureau Thonik, must have noticed that too. As guest curator, he created the exhibition Bare in Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen (NH). The exhibition shows the changes that have taken place in the meaning of 'naked' during the past decades. A bold but perhaps necessary choice in a time when prudery is on the rise. The exhibition designers talk about the contradiction between nudity that is experienced as uncivilized in museums and nudity in the classics that is experienced as civilized in those same museums.
The reaction to "uncivilized nudity" also affected the people who, in early October, hung up a gigantic poster of nudity - a constricted female buttock - by graphic designer Anton Beeke in the center of Amsterdam as a tribute to Beeke, who died earlier this September. The poster evoked so many negative reactions that it had to be removed from the public space.
Civilization is about many things, but also about the way we can deal with nudity. Ultimately, we can talk about prudishness, be led by prudishness, be shocked by nudity or not; what matters is that discussion is possible and that discussion leads to real respect for each other, acceptance of the naked body and ultimately to less sexually transgressive behavior. Whether people are capable of that, whether we are civilized enough, is the question. As long as we are not civilized to the bone, prudery may be a reasonable alternative and normalization of the "natural" body and all that goes with it is still a long way off.
English 
Dutch