By Rob Boyte

Published: Nude & Natural 11.4 (1992)

                Naturisme 93/1

Ask any American man over 40 where he got his first sneak peek at a photo of a woman's breast and it's more likely to be National Geographic than Playboy magazine. 

This has been an American institution for the past century, and has been acknowledged by the Geographic itself in the Sep. 88 centennial issue:

"The portrayal of native women in their natural mode of dress in the magazine became a hallmark - and a source of countless jokes.  For generations of impressionable youngsters, these pictures ...constituted their first exposure to non Western ways."

Since the first bare-breasted Zulu woman appeared in the Nov. 1896 issue, we can be sure there were criticisms.  But, since the early Geographic appears to have been predominantly by and for white men with robust appetites for viewing the natural world, who would object?  As also mentioned in the centennial issue, "While it can hardly be denied that these pictures (of women in true native dress) played a role in the dramatic growth of membership, Grosvenor (an early editor) regarded the decision to publish them as a victory over prudery."

For that worthy effort of fighting prudery, the Geographic should be commended, as well as for accurately showing naked natives the way they really were. It was probably a healthy and enlightening experience for the 19th Century Victorian mind.  Or the 20th Century for that matter. 

So what if those naked dark bosoms just happened to be on young women and were appealing to the clothes obsessed men of this culture?

But, with the vast changes in the world since the 1890s, there is a nagging suspicion that the venerable National Geographic  has not kept abreast of the current cultural changes.  Looking at the list of present officers and trustees (1992), it's obvious that it is predominantly male, and quite possibly those males are predominantly white.  Could the Geographic be ethnocentric or even sexist?

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with showing naked female breasts.  The widespread acceptance by all the natural cultures of uninhibited exposure of this child feeding anatomy is exactly why the Geographic has always had a source to photograph.  These innocent natives could never have conceived how much titillation would be stirred  in the males of our supposed advanced culture by images of their body, which they took for granted.

In more recent years, in addition to naked female breasts, there have been unretouched photos in the Geographic of full-frontal nude males as well - again, either African or South American natives. 

There are ample nude white people in Europe and North America these days to warrant a reportable cultural phenomenon, and yet the Geographic persists in not showing their nudity as openly as with the dark-skinned people.

As in the Aug. 90 issue reporting on Camp Koversada in Yugoslavia, it is significant enough to report that this is "one of the largest naturist resorts in the world..."  That "facilities for nude campers or hotel guests dot the entire Adriatic coast, (and) elsewhere, even traditional beaches can be topless."  Despite this emphasis on the prevalence of a nude culture of white people, the accompanying photograph shows the nude people from behind, in what has become the typical handling of nudity or topfree women by the press.  This same ploy was again used in the April 92 photograph of nudes on Vancouver's Wreck Beach.

 And, in May 89 there was a beautiful picture of a nudist family in the Baltic Sea, but it was carefully posed so the woman's breasts did not show and the man's crotch was darkened.

When this inconsistency was pointed out by myself to National Geographic magazine, Senior Assistant Editor  W. Allan Royce replied that "since a majority of our readers are from western cultures, articles ... provide an understanding of other societies not often seen to a larger audience."  Wouldn't that apply to the unique social infrastructure found in some traditional nudist colonies, and not seen by many outsiders?  It's at least as interesting as the Amish in Pennsylvania.

Perhaps being defensive, he inaccurately says that "in all cases, people are always photographed in their natural settings, providing honesty and credibility to the respective photo essays." 

No sir!  The question still begs unanswered.  Why is it permissible to show the penis and scrotum of an African Surma (Feb 91) or a Brazilian Urueu-Wau Wau (Dec 88), but not a Yugoslav naturist in his natural setting?  Why are photos of breasts on Nuba (Feb 5l, Nov 66), Zulu (Aug 53), Dyak (May 56), Masai (Feb 65), Yap Island (May 67, Oct 86), Turkana (Feb 69), Adama Islands (Jul 75), New Guinea (Aug 82), Woodabe (Oct 83), Ndebele (Feb 69), and Surma (Feb 9l) women shown, yet not one white Canadian can be found to face the camera at Wreck Beach?  Why are the breasts shown of Josephine Baker (Jul 89), a black native of East St. Louis, but the breasts of white native women of Miami Beach not shown?