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" Live out of your imagination

not your history "

Stephen R. Covey

Mirror Mirror on the Wall – ‘A Brief History of Nakedness’ offers a Mirror to Readers and Reviewers

May 31st, 2010

A Brief History of Nakedness discusses the way nudity can act as a mirror of the soul. How we perceive ourselves, our degree of self-esteem or self-loathing, how comfortable we feel in our skin, profoundly affects the way we behave in the world. Body shame tends to produce shameful behaviour – our shame is projected outwards on to others. Ease with one’s own body shape tends to produce the reverse: tolerant, relaxed behaviour that comes from a sense of being comfortable in the world. That’s why it’s an important subject. That’s why I’ve written a book about it – because how we feel about our bodies has a profound impact on how we lead our lives and treat other bodies, and the body of the Earth herself.

The two reviews mentioned in my previous post, appearing as they did on consecutive days in the national press, and penned by two peers, provides the perfect demonstration of this. And now the Telegraph review has gone online, so it’s easy to compare them.

Take Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s review  from the Telegraph which opens like this:
Here’s an experiment to try at home. Take off your clothes and stand in front of a full-length mirror. What do you see?
If you’re someone like the sculptor Antony Gormley, you might be confronted by a nicely toned body with handsome genitals just crying out to be cast in bronze. If not – and frankly most of us aren’t that brazen – you probably look more like a lump of clay that’s been left out in the rain. Let your eyes linger on the wobbly bits, the knobbly bits, the weird bits that look as if they belong to someone else. Familiarise yourself with the historical route map of lines and scars. Notice the hair that seems to have decided to abandon your head and relocate itself in surprising new areas.

At this point, you may hear a little voice reassuring you that you’re beautiful, warts and all. Even so, you have doubts. Your body may even decide to take matters into its own hands, so to speak, unwilling to allow itself to be explained away by that chunk of grey matter between its ears. It may flinch or shudder.

Now pick up Philip Carr-Gomm’s richly illustrated history of nakedness.

Read full review

Then read how Peter Conrad begins his review for the Observer

Writers, luckily, are invisible voices: we can only be grateful that Philip Carr-Gomm is not on television. To judge from the photograph on the jacket of his book, which mercifully stops at the neck, he’s a jolly, ruddy, probably burly fellow, with a shock of greying curls. But he has the soul of a sanctimonious flasher, and is convinced that the sight of the rest of him – adipose middle-aged belly flab, jiggling genitals, a bum that has doubtless gone south – would be good for the world, helping to usher in a new age of spiritual renewal and political revolution.

Read full review

The suspicious might think that Conrad is a mate of mine and that I’ve bunged him a few quid to write something fantastically silly to create a contrast, to boost book sales (it shot up the charts on Amazon yesterday really nicely) and most importantly – to provide a graphic demonstration of one of the book’s theses: that a consideration of nakedness provides us with a powerful tool to examine issues of empowerment: religious, political and cultural. Sadly I have to report that no money has changed hands between Peter Conrad and myself.

“My hands are clean!” As the Conservative politician Juan Barranco announced on a poster of himself naked in Madrid in 2007.

5 Responses to “Mirror Mirror on the Wall – ‘A Brief History of Nakedness’ offers a Mirror to Readers and Reviewers”

  1. It’s amazing, seeing the contrast of these reviews! While Douglas-Fairhurst’s review is inviting and intriguing… I find myself uncomfortable, almost embarrassed to read Conrad’s. It’s as if his obvious self-shame is infectious, and I find myself wanting to look away from his insulting rudeness so as not to give it a witness that would make it all the more embarrassing for him. I actually feel bad for the guy!

    In any case, I’m really looking forward to reading this book, as soon as I can scrape together the funds for it! (Unless you want to talk your publisher into sending me a free copy to review for the online Druid journal Sky Earth Sea, which would rock! 😉 In any case, thank you for writing it, regardless of what silly critics say.

  2. “A sanctimonious flasher”??? That’s the best sound-bit so far, Philip! I am jealous.

    If I were you, I’d put a collection of the best quotes with credits onto a tee shirt, and definitely wear it to gatherings. Put the book cover on the back for a little free publicity.

    Hell, I’m not you, and I’d wear it myself if I had one.

    Fabulous! *laughing*

  3. Hi Cat C-B Good idea! I love your remark about this in the Wild Hunt blog too:
    “if I ever got a diss this clueless from anyone, I would wear it pinned to my shoulder like a corsage. What a flattering piece of over-the-top, out-of-touch, are-you-kidding-me insult that is!”

  4. I have to put this point forward but what Conrad was saying was verging on religious discrimination (paragraph 2 specifically)! I am shocked and appalled that an Oxford don could be so puerile in what should be an article focused on the facts in the book rather than his slightly warped ideas about Paganism as a whole. While I get that Paganism is a scary and alien prospect for many individuals of the mainstream, there’s simply no need to insult it in such a childish manner!

    Thinking back though…I’m fully a part of the Cambridge community and actually I would be more shocked if one of our own had been so ridiculous. The “other one” doesn’t surprise me one bit!

    Good for you for taking it well though! Conrad is clearly an ignorant fool and I would certainly like to give him a piece of my mind, just like your Mother does!

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