Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6: Sex in Relation to SocietyEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6: Sex in Relation to Society
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
No doubt it may be said that the ideal in this matter is the
possibility of permitting complete nakedness. This may be
admitted, and it is undoubtedly true that our rigid police
regulations do much to artificially foster a concealment in this
matter which is not based on any natural instinct. Dr. Shufeldt
narrates in his _Studies of the Human Form_ that once in the
course of a photographic expedition in the woods he came upon two
boys, naked except for bathing-drawers, engaged in getting water
lilies from a pond. He found them a good subject for his camera,
but they could not be induced to remove their drawers, by no
means out of either modesty or mock-modesty, but simply because
they feared they might possibly be caught and arrested. We have
to recognize that at the present day the general popular
sentiment is not yet sufficiently educated to allow of public
disregard for the convention of covering the sexual centres, and
all attempts to extend the bounds of nakedness must show a due
regard for this requirement. As concerns women, Valentin Lehr, of
Freiburg, in Breisgau, has invented a costume (figured in
Ungewitter's _Die Nacktheit_) which is suitable for either public
water-baths or air-baths, because it meets the demand of those
whose minimum requirement is that the chief sexual centres of the
body should be covered in public, while it is otherwise fairly
unobjectionable. It consists of two pieces, made of porous
material, one covering the breasts with a band over the
shoulders, and the other covering the abdomen below the navel and
drawn between the legs. This minimal costume, while neither ideal
nor æsthetic, adequately covers the sexual regions of the body,
while leaving the arms, waist, hips, and legs entirely free.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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