Ben Shapiro — listening to Miley Cyrus talk to Monica Lewinsky — asks, rhetorically, because he's very sure the answer is no.
But maybe you yourself or somebody you've known does walk the face of the earth nude because that's who they really are.
I know I've said this before and maybe I was quoting someone else, but I just spent an absurd amount of time searching for that, unsuccessfully, so I'm just going to try to say it again, though I'm quite convinced I said it better that other time: Nudes have virtually no role in human history. They're big in the history of art, but when it comes to the course of human events, you don't see them. People do get naked for various purposes, but they are not nudes. You never see nudes — this type of person — other than in an art studio, in a work of art/pornography, or in one of those "camps" where they intern themselves.
Anyway, Ben's point here is that Miley's unhappy experience reinforces his belief that men and women should save themselves for each other: "My wife and I... were both virgins going into our marriage.... I remember people used to make fun of me when I would talk of this before I was married that I intended on being a virgin until I was married. I thought it was important to talk about that when I was 17, 18, 21 because again that is a moral precept that is good for the world to live."
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৭৪টি মন্তব্য:
You’ve never lived in Woodstock. (Yes, that Woodstock!)
Public nudity very common. A number of “friends” who always answered the door naked (women).
So Monica Lewinsky and Miley Cyrus are just now discovering that decent men don't want sluts for mates?
Poor Miley.
btw- did you see Madonna's latest strange public sexual antics?
Mark Twain quote: "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society."
Shouting Thomas, since I've never lived in Woodstock, when "friends"" who happen to be women who always answer the door nude, what's the standard greeting?
If God had not meant for us to wear snappy clothes, He would have covered us with fur.
the alex jones/ snako portion is disturbing.
Insane Dumb dhimmi meets Islamofascist.
Three things:
1. See functional nudism in sub-Saharan Africa, where lack of clothing and dark skin help with tropical temperature control. Those who migrated out of Africa immediately faced colder weather and required clothes to survive winter. As everything from pre-Bronze Age to modern society changes derive from Eurasian cultures, everyone who participated wore clothing to merely survive.
2. Ben reveals his moral focus vs. the always kinky Miley. She posed nude at age 15 in 2008, and there was apathy vs. pearl clutching back then too. She has lived as a kinky adult since. IMO this is the oil-vs-water difference between religion-minded people and bohemians. They never see eye to eye, and are too far apart to take the other side's perspective.
3. The "nudists" aka "naturists" of the 20th century kind of split the difference in their no-clothing resorts. They weren't as wild and free, as least publicly, as general bohemians. Naturism was and always will be a niche and culturally akin to walking on a razor blade.
Also--like the frequency of billionaires in our population, the percentage of people who look good without clothes is vanishingly small.
Notably, however, those who do look good generally look very, very good.
"Mark Twain quote: "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.""
That's one of the quotes I was trying to remember.
I blogged about that "Mark Twain" quote here https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/09/to-me-hes-supreme-model-of-how-artist.html
"This makes me think of the old witticism 'Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.' Did Mark Twain say that? According to Quote Investigator, *maybe,* and Mark Twain certainly did write: 'Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.'"
Lady Godiva would like a word.
I also blogged that "Mark Twain" quote here https://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/11/in-these-times-of-compassion-when.html
I had written: "In the broad span of human culture, fashion is more important than space travel."
A commenter had responded: "I suppose, Althouse, it would depend on how you define fashion, but in the grand sweep of human history nobody cares what pants Lee Harvey Oswald wore."
I said: "And yet, if Lee Harvey Oswald had not been wearing pants, he would never have assassinated John F. Kennedy. As Mark Twain said: 'Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.' He also said: 'Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.' And: 'A policeman in plain clothes is a man; in his uniform he is ten. Clothes and title are the most potent thing, the most formidable influence, in the earth. They move the human race to willing and spontaneous respect for the judge, the general, the admiral, the bishop, the ambassador, the frivolous earl, the idiot duke, the sultan, the king, the emperor. No great title is efficient without clothes to support it.'"
People don’t go to the grocery store nude because it would be illegal. That doesn’t mean being nude can’t be self-expression for anyone.
"People don’t go to the grocery store nude because it would be illegal."
And yet they shoplift!
“ Nudes have virtually no role in human history.”
I can only recall the original Greek Olympic Games, and that was all male and the nudity assured competition was pure to the person’s own attributes.
Cyrus is one of them girls with the kind of crazy drugs can't fix.
Clothing is an equalizer, a protector, and diversified self-expression. That said, eyes down here was a popular entreaty.
Ben is implying that Miley Cyrus is a certain kind of professional.
I guess I'll have to walk nude around the block here and tell the cops I am just expressing myself...
While we're criticizing Miley for not wanting to save her body for her partner, let's also criticize her for that lazy BS feminist technique of pretending that a normal thing most people of both sexes do is really just men trying to control women.
Cyrus implies that women are fine with their husbands/boyfriends getting sexual with as many women as they can, openly. That monogamy is something men invented to control women. I'm pretty sure that's not true. I'm equally sure that Cyrus knows that's not true.
>"I thought it was important to talk about that (being a virgin until I was married) when I was 17, 18, 21 because again that is a moral precept that is good for the world to live."<
Whatever lights you up, Ben... And you were doing OK there - until that last "that."
Sorry about your poor vision.
Shoplifting is OK with the Democratic Party. Inspired.
Intimacy is fragile and needs to be protected.
planetgeo said...
Shouting Thomas, since I've never lived in Woodstock, when "friends"" who happen to be women who always answer the door nude, what's the standard greeting?
"Nice tits?" Or perhaps "Happy Birthday!" since she's in her birthday suit?
Mandatory nudity would stop shoplifting in its tracks.
Is anyone suprised that Ben Shapiro was a virgin till his marriage?
Question Althouse, shorts or no shorts.
I knew an old man on Clare Island in Ireland who as a young man back in the 1940s, scandalized the island (pop 450) by walking naked, aside from Wellington boots, one Sunday morning to the church then down to the quay and then home. He was a brilliant and well read man, and was ultimately buried on the hill behind his cottage, again scandalizing the locals by no being in consecrated grounds. His name was Michael Joe O’Malley, and while didn’t make history, he did make Irish television in 1974. He was an incredible man. Here’s a link to his video on youtube. It is well worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHXP9Usakm0
Its good that Ben was able to turn an external reality into a grand principle. Somewhat like a man with no money congradulating himself for not being a spendthrift.
Clothes aren't just neccessary for the existance of power in society, most people look better in clothes, as any trip to a nudist beach will confirm.
Walking around nude is a very selfish thing. Not everyone wants to 'celebrate' your body- natural as it may be (or maybe not). I can tell you that my wife used to like to see me naked. Now she requests, with a sort of horrified look, that I cover myself. And honestly when I walk past the mirror in the bathroom and catch myself, I agree with her. Just for the record, I don't walk around the house nude, but sometimes I'm between clothes. Or going to bed (that's another topic entirely).
Being nude is imposing yourself on others in a way that's just too much information. It's rarely a turn-on. Mostly a turn off.
Years ago, here in my town of Sarasota, one of our barrier island beaches was known to be a nude beach. We've always had a lot of European vacationers here, especially in August. And I suspect it started with them- not with American retirees. But that was years ago. Since then this city became a more popular town to live in and visit. Today there are too many families going to those same beaches. That one ceased to be a nude beach years ago. Now it's just families and retirees watching young people with lithe bodies wearing very little, but not nude. Which somehow makes it more titillating.
"Nudes have virtually no role in human history."
Adam and Eve would beg to differ.
I used to live next to a family (father, mother, 1 boy, 1 girl, both preteens). One day I heard angry yelling from their house. I looked through the fence and could see the father standing in front of them all as they sat on the couch. He was angrily lecturing something. He was completely naked, with his johnson also angrily swinging in front of them right at eye level. There was a divorce a year or so later. I never saw my parents naked that I can remember. Those kids probably never forgot it.
That merkin is too casual to wear to a wedding. Get the formal one.
“And yet they shoplift!”
What could a. naked woman shoplift besides carrots and cucumbers?
A good idea for shoplifting would be to go to the store naked, and put on their clothes, and leave.
Of course, the power is not in being nude or naked, but in the gaps and gapes of the clothing. A princess and a chambermaid are hard to differentiate stripped to the skin. So clothing is of vital importance in the female competition. But once draped, it is the timely or strategic gapes that draw the attention.
On the male side, the strivers seek to use clothing for differentiation. The professions value the expensive suit more than the truly powerful.
"Is not the most erotic portion of a body where the garment gapes? In perversion (which is the realm of textual pleasure) there are no “erogenous zones” (a foolish expression, besides); it is intermittence, as psychoanalysis has so rightly stated, which is erotic: the intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater), between two edges (the open-necked shirt, the glove and the sleeve); it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance. ”
― Roland Barthes
Though many in the US long to bring back the submission to the red cap as in Europe, but even today some semblance of needing due documented authority not official dress is required in the US.
"Throughout the Continent any official, any judge. anybody "who has a red band around his cap' who, in any indirect way, represents the state — a railway conductor, a spy, a station agent — not only has the right to deprive you of your freedom, but you have no right to question him; the "red band around the cap" is a final answer.
"Hence that extraordinary incident, at which all England laughed, the Kupenick robbery. A certain crook who had been a soldier and was familiar with the drill and the passwords, obtained possession of an old captain's uniform, walked into a provincial town of some importance, ordered the first company of soldiers he met to follow him, and then with that retinue, appeared before the town hall and demanded of the mayor the keys of the treasury. These were surrendered without question and he escaped with the money, representing, of course, that he had orders from the Imperial government It never occurred to any one to question a soldier in full uniform, and it was only some days later, when the town accounts were sent to Berlin to be approved, that the robbery was discovered.
"Such a thing could by not possibility have happened in England or with us; the town treasurer would at once have demanded his authority, his order from the civil authorities; the uniform would have failed to impress him."
---Popular Law-making: A Study of the Origin, History, and Present Tendencies of Law-making by Statute
by Frederic Jesup Stimson (1910)
"Sneako"?
"Curtains for Zoosha? K-smog and Batboy caught flipping a grunt."
Which is worse, manchild Ben Shapiro talking about trivia like this or Ben talking about serious topics and pretending to be an adult?
Big Mike...
Soup can.
Hard to slip a tin of tuna in quickly tho...
Amirite ladies??
"I'm just going to try to say it again, though I'm quite convinced I said it better that other time: Nudes have virtually no role in human history."
Bathsheba would like a word.
Ann Althouse said...
"People don’t go to the grocery store nude because it would be illegal."
"And yet they shoplift!"
Shoplifting is rather furtive as compared to shopping in the altogether. That said, some shoplifting is brazen, so there's probably some overlap
It's never the people you want to see.
The empress has no clothes. She's a stripped urchin, a poor player, who struts and frets for attention. #MeToo
I think, particularly in the summer season, there are actually quite a few people who walk around the privacy of their own home nude. Not as self-expression, perhaps, but for comfort or convenience. That said, it's not the walking around bit I'd find problematic. It's the sitting down. Maybe one carries around a little towel?
"Who told you that you were naked?"
Can nude voting ensure election integrity
"That said, it's not the walking around bit I'd find problematic. It's the sitting down. Maybe one carries around a little towel?"
Don't forget pan frying a steak!
Anything different between nude and naked?
Is one more artistist?
And yet they shoplift!
There would be a lot less shoplifting if people went to the store nude.
"And yet they shoplift!"
That's because aisles used to be left unlocked/naked.
Now the aisle have chastity belts.
"It's never the people you want to see."
Though islamification is causing its steep decline, the Germans have a long tradition of nude bathing. There's a photo of a young "Mutti" Merkel skinnydippin out there. Motion seconded.
In the clip Cyrus was referencing the same idea that Shapiro attributed to evolution. I didn't hear her criticizing it, just acknowledging it.
Cyrus has left her stripper/singer days behind. Others have taken her place. I'm OK with it. Now we only have the memories, and Google.
"Nudes have virtually no role in human history."
Floppy things, male and female, need restraint and excretory organs should be covered for sanitary reasons exclusive of the sexual.
Humans figured this out about the time they figured out fire. Althouse's assertion is simply a recognition of practicality.
Even by the standards of Disney stars, Miley is brittle and neurotic. Perhaps she'll just remain neurotic and not go full Britney but the risk is there.......If a woman is young and beautiful, flashing the occasional boob is more empowering than objectifying. It's like Schwarzenegger flexing his bicep.
From what I've read, , during many periods raw brute strength caused many men to become leaders, i.e. aristocrats and kings, of their tribes and peoples. I'm sure beauty caused many women to rise above their station. Roxanne was a courtesan who became an Empress. The judicious application of nudity was probably part of her schtick.
Cyrus is sounding rather sane lately. Possibly Dolly's influence.
Also, if flashing the occasional boob is empowering then Cyrus might have achieved Supergirl status.
It's for the art. For the children? #HerToo? You've come a long way, baby. Not.
Humans also adopted privacy screens. Later they invented indoor plumbing.
This seems to belong here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycv6W-QSg0Q
What could a. naked woman shoplift besides carrots and cucumbers?
Eggplant obviously.
A our family's hardware store we had a sweet elderly woman customer named Eugenia who had inherited a large old summer mansion on the water. She wanted my father to find a way to fix her shades, which were rigged to operate from the bottom up.
She explained that her late father, a tycoon of some sort, liked to walk around the house naked while he was enjoying his summer vacations, but also liked the view. So he had the shades custom built so that he could raise them halfway, enjoy his private nudity, and look out the windows.
Annette Funicello was apparently the last Disney child actress who transitioned to adulthood without serious emotional problems.
I don’t care about Ben or Miley, but wow does Monica look lovely!
Nudity as an attribute - a la color - unbecoming in context.
Ben Shapiro is a dork
Were I in a house with Miley Cyrus, I would not wear “PJs”; but I would wear an apron when pan-frying her a steak.
Ann Althouse said... "And yet they shoplift!"
Got a laugh... A person went shopping nude and didn't get caught.
One only needs to see the Red Carpet extravaganza at the Oscar's to see that the baring of private parts is now considered fashionable. Not to me, I like some of it left to the imagination.
Miley Cyrus does nothing for me in a sexual sense. She seems older than her age. And that weird voice. No thank you.
#SlutWalk... Talk are a rhyme in time.
Temujin: Lido Beach(?) was a nude beach when I was a college student there. It was also the closest beach to the shopping district and buses. I went once with two girlfriends, wearing swimsuits of course. There were creepy men walking around taking photos of us, as all the nudists were shriveled elderly Europeans, really shockingly hanging out parts nobody wants to see. One husband and wife invited us to their yacht for cheese and wine.
We did not go back.
David Sedaris has an hilarious story about visiting a nudist colony. Everyone has to carry little towels to sit on in the restaurant and cabin furniture. This raises the essential question: who wants seconds from the nudist salad bar?
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