Covering Nakedness

As soon as the hostess seated us, I cringed.  There, on the wall behind our table, hung a painting of a nude woman.  It wasn't a raunchy painting by any means.  On the contrary, it was quite...calming.  She, the nude, sat near the edge of a river on one leg with her other leg extended behind her.  Her bottom was fully exposed, but only one breast was showing, the other hidden behind her arm as she leaned over the bank.  I suppose she could have been at the river washing her clothes or, perhaps, her kitchen dishes, although her reclined position would have made any thorough scrubbing difficult.

"I should have just taken them to McDonalds!" I thought.  But, I don't like McDonalds.  And I was feeling fickle at three o'clock in the afternoon while we waited in town for Seth to finish his Destination Imagination meeting.  So I took Sam and Henry to a sit down restaurant in hopes of killing time and better food.  The dining room was closed, due to the odd hour of our repast, so we were seated in the bar area.  The Olympics were playing on the three televisions across the room and I quickly and strategically positioned my boys with their backs to the wall, crayons in hand and several games of tic-tac-toe.

Inevitably, Henry spied the painting.  With a grin on his face, he pointed to the picture and said, "Picture, Mom!"

I acted uninterested and simply replied, "Uh-huh."

"Mom," Henry insisted, "There's a bum!"

Those words drew Sam's attention to the painting.  As his eyes took in the body parts Jay and I have been conscientious to teach must be talked about appropriately and with respect, he immediately became embarrassed and covered his mouth with his hands while he looked at me with very worried eyes.  I don't want my boys to have weird hang ups about the human body so I explained, rather poorly, the various reasons why that picture was not "bad" but instead considered art.  I hemmed and hawed about the body being a beautiful creation of Heavenly Father's and how artists sometimes draw or sculpt the body in its naked form to draw attention to its beauty and wonder, but I wasn't very convincing.   Sam's response was, "Well, we can't draw anything like THAT in art.  That's a rule." Which led to more hemming and hawing about maturity and age and where and when it's appropriate.  Eventually, I just told the boys to turn around and stop looking at the picture.

I know I didn't handle it well and I've been thinking about our conversation and my discomfort ever since.  Truthfully, I didn't like the picture.  Like Sam, I was uncomfortable eating my hamburger next to it. The woman was too...well...naked.  Admittedly,  I have no formal art training to critique color or form or style, but my non-trained eye didn't like the naked part.  Who sits by a river, in that position, without any clothes on? What about twigs and dirt?  Realistically, wouldn't someone without clothes more likely be squatting?

I don't want to be that person, however.  The kind who feels uncomfortable around a nude statue.  The kind who feels that all nudity must be also be sexual.  It feels immature and petty somehow.  I want to see Michaelangelo's David and The Birth of Venus by Botticelli up close and live because even though I know very little about art, I know that those pieces are important.

And yet, I have three sons.  I am scared to death about pornography.  I think it is the scourge of modern-day society.   The cynic in me wonders when and not if they will see it and how I can help them understand that in spite of what the world thinks, it is evil.  I want them to follow President Hinckley's counsel and "Shun it."

How much more simple would it be if I could just say, "Naked people are bad!  Nakedness is bad!  Don't ever be naked or look at anyone naked!   Not ever!"  But I can't.  Because, someday, I hope they will be happily married and well-adjusted enough to love and honor their wives.  And because, maybe someday, they'll be a doctor like their dad, who sees nakedness all the time.  As much as we'd love to have all our parts and pieces clothed during our doctor visits and appointments, sometimes being naked or partially naked is a requirement.  Henry's surgery would have been impossible without exposing a private part.  And mammograms wouldn't have any benefit at all if women refused to uncover their breasts for the procedure or Jay refused to look at them.

My question:  Does nudity have a legitimate place in art?  If so (and I'm assuming it's so), where do you draw the line between art and pornography?  When, as a parent, do you cover your child's eyes?   The Supreme Court once said, "You know pornography when you see it." and I believe that.  This picture in the bar wasn't pornographic.   But, how do I teach my sons what is o.k. and what is not?  How do I ensure that they know pornography when they see it? Because I'd really, really like to skip the part where they see it.  Should I have encouraged Sam's reaction to the restaurant picture? It's exactly how I'd like him to react when he sees pornography.  I want him to be embarrassed and I want him to understand that it's not o.k.   But, I also want them to grow up understanding that our arms and legs, ears, toes, knees and, yes, breasts and bottoms are, in fact, beautiful.  And a wonder.

If you could tell me how to do this perfectly, with no awkwardness and no mistakes, I'd be much obliged.

A much less controversial piece of art by Sam