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The Hippie Hippie Shake

frau sally benz

Most people I know say I’m a hippie at heart — the polyamory and free love, the music I dig, my sociological interest in hippie culture… I do like seeing and learning about all things 60s and 60s counter-culture in particular. So I was all excited to check out this link that Alyssa Milano posted on Twitter, Woodstock: LIFE’s Best Photos (some pics in the slideshow NSFW).

I’m browsing through the pictures and they’re cool, of course. Then I got to (NSFW folks) this picture and was sort of taken aback. For those who can’t see, it’s a group of people by a little waterfall thing, but the focus of the picture is the front view of a fully naked woman. It’s not that nudity is anything new in hippie culture, but most of the other pictures up to that point were pretty tame. I moved on and started to see more nudity, this time male nudity as well. By the time I get to the end, I realized that I didn’t see even one penis.

I went back to get a sense of what I did see, and realized that in the one shot featuring a fully naked man in a pose similar to the one featuring a woman (still NSFW), the penis is conveniently covered by a hand. Now, I realize that we didn’t technically see the woman’s vagina in that picture. But we definitely saw the entire area — it wasn’t covered by anything. And I also understand biology 101 and the fact that penises are on the outside and vaginas are inside and all of that…

But… I don’t know… it still bugs me. Is it just me?

My friend suggested these reasons for me not seeing any penis:

“bizarre leftover assumptions about hair and chests being appropriate, but no other genitalia, i guess OR men at woodstock had tiny penises OR (my personal favorite) you are used to enormous penises”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m some sort of perv who goes out of my way to look for penises in Woodstock pictures (or maybe I am. hmm… now I’m not sure). And it’s not as if my day would have been brighter if only I had just gotten a glimpse of hippie penis (okay, that’s a lie, it probably would have). I guess it just bugs me because I feel these pictures were intentionally chosen because the penis was already covered, yet there was no problem showing the woman’s entire body.

There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there…

14 thoughts on The Hippie Hippie Shake

  1. I agree that there are fewer taboos against full frontal nudity for women then men. But I can throw in maybe one other reason why a penis might not be in evidence in that pose: it was cold! If you notice, a lot of the folks in clothes are wearing a lot of them: coats, even hats. Yes, there was probably a little creative photography on the part of the Time photographer to make sure he stayed in the “printable” range of decency, but there might have been environmental factors as well.

    On a side note, my uncle (fully clothed) is featured in one of the photos (“Wet but undaunted”). His little girl is going to get away with murder as a teenager, thanks to this photo…

  2. I would be willing to bet it was intentional. I went to a burlesque show in New York at one point and they explained that labia, penises, and nipples were a no go, but everything else was okay to show.

  3. I got a creepy male gaze vibe from a few sets of pics I came across in those Life archives. Like hey why are the 1940’s era pics of my old high school/arts camp all of a few women posing all over campus? A lot of the more touristy photo essays seemed like more like an excuse to look at the pretty ladies.

  4. Hmm, my assumption has always been that those kind of things are fully intentional. Even the photo of the fully nude woman you link to conveniently hides all the men. I think the angle of that shot was intentional to cover up the men behind the woman. And if there were naked women around willing to be photographed, there were certainly men, as well. It is probably both choosing shots that don’t reveal too much male nudity, as well as not taking those shots in the first place.

  5. I guess it just bugs me because I feel these pictures were intentionally chosen because the penis was already covered, yet there was no problem showing the woman’s entire body.

    I’m sure that IS why they were chosen. I’ve definitely seen Woodstock photos where penises were involved (don’t ask where…no idea), so it’s probably the venue. But yeah, it’s interesting which PARTS of genitalia are considered offensive. Most of the things that would pull women’s genitalia into the range of “not appropriate” — labia, clitoris — when shooting a nude event journalistically aren’t particularly visible just standing (as opposed to lying down or with legs spread), especially with unshaven pubic hair. But penises are considered inappropriate and they ARE visible standing, so by default full frontal nudity is often less acceptable for men.

    Maybe penises should be more acceptable, or nudity for women should be less acceptable, or something. Who knows what the best solution would be? I feel like nudity apart from sexuality should be much less sexualized, in general. Not that Woodstock was exactly sexuality-free ;D ;D but clotheslessness is definitely not in itself a sexual act.

  6. If you look through the other three photo albums of Woodstock, you’ll see lots of bare bums of both genders and in the “Woodstock: Dig the Vibes” album, photo 10 has a frontal shot of a nude man whose penis is visible. (He’s standing up in a crowd.)

    In one of the photo albums, one of the photographers talked about how he photographed more nude guys than girls because he didn’t want to seem like a perv.

  7. I think photography overall has this kind of bias of focus on female bodies… I’ve grown so tired of the whole “men who do b&w female nudes” genre, the ones with artist statements that are some variation how much he “loves the special artistic quality inherent in the female form” or some such platitude. I mean, it’s not like men’s bodies are devoid of aesthetic beauty, Maplethorpe seemed to do just fine making damn fine art using male models. (oh, but wait, the critics then say, Maplethorpe was just a “gay” or “fetish” photographer, so then it doesn’t quite count). grr.

    ok, rant over.

  8. I pretty much agree with everyone on this thread.

    Meg, super-cool about your uncle!

    Michelle, I took another look at the other albums and did see the picture you’re referring to. It made me giggle a bit because I felt like I was playing a weird version of Where’s Waldo.

    Victoria, I have to say ditto! It annoys me too!

  9. Apropos of a posting and many comments a few weeks ago here, it’s quite nice to see a woman with pubic hair, and just is an indicator of how the mainstream view of women’s bodies has changed in the past 40 years. Then it was considered radical and hippie to not shave our legs and armpits, to grow our hair long and un-hairsprayed, but pubes were – just pubes. Perhaps because women’s pubises weren’t seen very often, even by readers of ‘mainstream’ porn like Playboy. Now that the pressure on women is to be completely hairless, I wonder what younger people who look at these anniversary photos of Woodstock will think of the woman in this photo – Ewww, she has pubic hair – or will they think maybe it’s not such a bad idea, in fact, maybe it’s quite beautiful. So, no, I’m not disturbed by this photo, because I hope younger people will see it and realize female bodies don’t have to be plucked and airbrushed to be beautiful.

  10. I have long hair, should I start sending you pictures of my penis?

    I know the BBC had strict rules against penises as the last taboo, and I think there are still rules about the erect/flaccid issue on television. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an erect penis on screen outside the pornography genre.

    The only show that had penises as a regular feature that I’ve seen was OZ.

  11. Frau Sally Benz @ 8: hee, Waldo. I think Waldos would make a charming addition to my euphemism dictionary.

  13. Comparisons of male and female nudity always remind of a thought that those “penis enhancement” spam mails brought to me: Maybe a better equivalent for penii are breasts, with the messages about size etc.? There seems to be a cultural message that for sexual success nothing is more important than in women perfect breasts, and in men a large penis.

    So maybe we should regard showing a topless woman as similar to showing a nude man with his dick visible. Strangely – or maybe not *g* – women have to deal with countless pictures of breasts to be compared to and intimidated by, while men are somehow sheltered from those depictions. I could of course go on about priviledge, women as the “sex class”, the male gaze…

  14. This is like Japanese rules for pornography. You are not ALLOWED to show the genitalia of either men and women at all….if there is genitalia, it must be MOSAIC-ked.

    therefore, when it comes to women, as you yourself have acknowledged, it is fine, most women in Japan pornography sport pubic hair, so there is no need to mosaic most of the time, only at certain angles.

    But for the males involved, you can have as much pubic hair on them, but you’re still gonna see it, so the entire penis is always mosaic-ed.

    The day you can show women’s genitalia in full details on screen and lubricating as well in a mainstream movie, is probably when you’ll see men with erect penises everywhere as well.

    But hasn’t that guys who always makes DUDE-BRO flicks, Apatow been showing more penises in his recent movies lately….

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