private moments 27

My opinion is that the magazine actually has a net positive effect by showing the breadth and beauty of human cultures — not to mention other natural wonders. When they cover marriage rituals in Tibet or a rodeo in Wyoming, I think it shows how much alike we all are even though we may express ourselves very differently. I can’t say that the magazine has always been this beneficial since anthropology for a long time was connected to a Western attitude of supremacy. I can only speak for the years I have read it. My reading is more sporadic now since I haven’t lived near my parents for ten years.

“Is that an issue of us having a double standard, of us saying, “We are more developed and therefore we are embarrassed by nudity, but they are not as evolved and so their nudity is due to their lack of sophistication, so we are comfortable with their nudity as we are comfortable with an infant’s”?”

Yes. This is the double standard.

As much as I appreciate your desire to vie for another angle, your optional view is not an suspended judgment, but rather just another judgment - a decision we’ve made that we can stand objectively outside of another culture & make intellectual discoveries that reflect our civilized development. “A rose by any other name is still a rose.”

I would agree that we are fine with seeing another culture’s nudity but generally uncomfortable with nudity portrayed in our culture. Is that an issue of us having a double standard, of us saying, “We are more developed and therefore we are embarrassed by nudity, but they are not as evolved and so their nudity is due to their lack of sophistication, so we are comfortable with their nudity as we are comfortable with an infant’s”? Many people probably do think this way. I think another option is that we are able to put aside our social mores to a certain extent and understand that though nudity in our culture is not as acceptable, it is acceptable within their culture and so we suspend judgment. All that is to say that I don’t think it’s clear cut that National Geographic is unfairly employing some kind of privilege against other cultures.

I didn’t know that was possible, but I guess that is a topic for another time. Where I agree with Eddy on the National Geographic analysis is that while it may not be hyper-sexualized, it is still a privileged posture to plaster our intellectual curiosity of foreign cultures in ways that we would never represent out own.

Case in point - while we are fine with the nudity of another culture on the front (or in the pages) of a magazine for anthropological curiosity, we would never put a picture of an American woman’s breast nursing her child as a photo on or in a magazine for anthropological “curiosity.” People would argue (and have) that that “kind of activity” shouldn’t even happen in public. And not for any sexual reasons.

So again, while it may be ‘harmless’ to view another culture’s nudity on National Geographic, it still represents our privilege to portray in other cultures their “otherness” in ways that we would never portray our own.

I remember being in China and being catered to when I walked through marketplaces of bigger cities. (I also remember being stared at in smaller cities that probably saw a lot less white people.) Money or the perception of money was a major factor there and travelers from the West likely have more money than the average citizen of a developing nation.

“Americans tend to be flattered by the privilege rather than disturbed by it.” This is true, but something in me doesn’t think the response is unique to Americans. Most human beings, it seems to me, would be flattered. That doesn’t excuse the behavior.

Westerners in many third world countries are given certain privileges that the very people of that culture do not get. We may get better service and in the example of my story, we are invited to participate in surgery. We are given invitations that many people within that culture do not get. And the fairer one’s skin within certain cultures, the greater the privileges. Americans tend to be flattered by the privilege rather than disturbed by it.