Naked

Vogue November 2014

I have seen like millions of others around the world, the naked pictures of Kim Kardashian. Any respectable fan of popular culture would seek that out on the Internet to see what the queen of making not so much into a spectacle is up to now. Call it what it is, she is a woman that wants the world to see her body naked; phooey the art that she is photographed by a famous photographer, and she stands in an iconic Grace Jones pose. If anyone looks at that photograph and thinks that her body has been blessed by the gods, I feel for them. Because there isn't much natural about her. Her tits and ass look like they are being buoyed by hidden circus wires ... and I know, though I don't watch the show, that she regular buffs, puffs, pulls in, and scrapes off any human-ness. Hey, that's her thing. I'm not intimidated by it because I can imagine the lengths that she takes to achieve such perfection. I have a hard time of round brushing my increasingly long locks into a semblance of a blow-out on a daily basis. Yeah, I don't have that drive, nor need, in me.

I was in New York a couple of years ago. It was cold, and we were tired of walking in it. I saw a shop and said, 'let's check it out.' I failed to see the line of people waiting to get in to the store. And I was brusquely stopped at the door by a super big human being denying my entrance into a warm room. What the heck? What is this place? Ah! it's Dash, the Kardashian store. I was instructed to get in line with the other girls ... and I looked at the line and saw .... girls. More than the Twitter missteps of Lorde or any of others who are back peddling from their 'Mom' comments about the naked pictures, I worry about the girls. They don't know any better than to think that it's all real. I am concerned about their response and what it will do to their self-image. I can hear the girlish calls to the heavens: I want to look like her, I want to look like her .... not understanding the smoke and mirrors.

Ah, but that's not what I meant to start with as I found in this month's issue of Vogue the beauty of a nearly naked man, who also works fantastically hard at his work, but can fly through the air with perfect pose. It's a beautiful photograph of a beautiful man. He is not on a pedestal wrapped in Mikimoto pearls, nor are any strings attached. This is the kind of naked that I like to see.