Don’t you dare be nude in your house!

July 17th, 2007, 12:42 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Michael Doss

Photo by “pecanpieguy” and released under Creative Commons. Original Image available here.

…or anywhere else “public” in Huntington Beach. The city this week voted to make nudity illegal, a law that was surprisingly not on the books before. In addition to your standard rules (don’t be naked outside or on the beach), the new regulations limit nudity where it can be seen from the public. What this means to you, my liberal friends, is that you can’t go naked in your own home with the windows open.I usually leave terms like “nanny state” to the folks in editorial, but this sort of strange “protect the children from threats that may or may not exist” mentality confuses me. You’ve all heard the naturist arguments - we were born naked, we’ve all see naked bodies, nudity is not necessarily sex - all fine and good. I’m more concerned with one legal argument and one practical one:

Legal: Men have no regulations about being topless in public. This applies only to women. How and why is that allowed, or even constitutional?

Practical: Everyone is still allowed to wear clothing that not only shows 99.5% of the body, but also highlights/accentuates the exact parts of the body they’re trying to keep covered.

I’m also surprised more women aren’t up in arms against the law, for the “legal” reason above. Not that they necessarily want to go topless, but because they can’t. That’s usually incentive for me to fight something.

Unfortunately, I don’t see a good way to fight this law other than a mass protest, and I’ll let you know if hell freezes over and one happens (though if you want to plan one, I’ll certainly help). The only good thing to come out of all this, however, is that rules on a women breastfeeding an infant older than age 2, and restrictions on wearing a “costume or device that simulated nudity” were struck from the law. Get out those “nude fat guy” costumes and live it up!

Bonus: if you’re looking for a good time (and you’re at home or a very liberal workplace), try a Google image search for “no nudity”. Let’s just say you get the letter of the law here for the most part, but certainly not the spirit.

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