Barbara Kay: Near-naked indecency is the latest trend

In summer’s waning phase, I sought inspiration for a “silly season” column, and found it — I thought — in a story about C.L.A.S.S. Soiree Steakhouse, a Hollywood, Florida restaurant where, on the first Monday of the month, at a cost of $150 per woman and $250 per man (or $300 for a dining couple), diners may fully disrobe before chowing down. Chefs and servers remain clothed, but, as curvaceous restaurant host Tasheba Hart told Fox News, she herself goes “totally nude” (only donning a robe “if it gets a little chilly.”) Do they provide towels? Ewww.

I very much doubt that nude dining for both sexes will become a “thing,” but within 24 hours I happened upon an article suggesting that desire to push the envelope on public nakedness, or near-nakedness, is filtering down from earthly goddesses on Hollywood red carpets, to America’s middle class, and may well have staying power. Clothing brands are participating, too.

The title of that recent Wall Street Journal article is “’Naked Dressing’ is Spreading and it’s Making Things Awkward.” That, and its subtitle “Barely-there outfits are moving from the runway to weddings and business conferences,” give readers the gist, but some of the examples are eye-widening.

At a cyber-security conference, a male attendee who is “not someone who rattles easily,” recalls being embarrassed seated near a woman “in a bralette and sheer black skirt.” He didn’t know where to look, he said. It turned out she was the keynote speaker.

Some brides are so worried about female guests stealing their limelight by wearing inappropriate garb that they issue detailed attire instructions on wedding invitations, bringing modest dresses for etiquette scofflaws to change into. In Sausalito, California, at a Hawaiian-themed wedding, most attendees wore Hawaiian shirts and hula skirts, but one guest wore a nude-colour thong bikini bottom and a bandeau top. (She was ordered to choose between a beach cover-up or leaving.)

Reactions solicited for the article varied, from endorsement by a participating proponent of the look as “feels empowering” and represents “a modern kind of feminism” to “a hard no” from a female Westchester attorney, who told WSJ, “I have two prepubescent boys. They would go insane if they saw their mom dressed that way.” I’m with that mom, of course.

The shifting sands of what constitutes decency and indecency have long preoccupied me. When we say someone is a “decent” person, a billowing cloud of meanings emanates from the word: honourable, neighbourly, courteous, civic-minded, socially appropriate, someone respectful in word and deed of the limits to behaviours that cause tension in our public spaces.

But when we say “indecent,” we are more likely to be referring to bodies and the fact that their choice of cover is wandering far enough beyond society’s unspoken limits to cause social tension. Sartorial norms change from era to era and differ between cultures, so it is hard to pin down a strict definition of indecency. But in virtually all societies, public nakedness is either ghettoized, as in nudist camps, or proscribed as indecent.

So, clearly, transgressiveness is part of the motivation in this present trend, if that is what it is. But transgression against what? Previous fashion revolutions were legitimate rebellions against sexist impositions in women’s couture such as hyper-modesty, impracticality and constraint of movement (I am old enough to remember the horribly uncomfortable crinolines we girls felt obliged to wear under our skirts.)

Had women’s fashion not already arrived, decades ago, to the point where every conceivable concession to comfort, utility and versatility was available to any budget? The war was won. Wherefore the continuing need to rebel?

At a certain point, costuming oneself with no other object than to approach closer to forbidden nakedness while pretending that this is perfectly rational and empowering behaviour for a woman is pure sophistry. Worse, viewed through the lens of a heterosexual man for whom it is strictly taboo to comment on what, in a precious generation, would have been justly described as, and forgive me for being crude here, but I can’t think of a better word than cock-teasing, public near-nakedness is inherently sadistic.

The only place near-nakedness fits within the bounds of decency is at the beach. The beach is not a public forum in the usual sense. It’s a strip of common land to which people flock as a break from life in the real public forum. No interaction with strangers is required in this recreational space. So really, if there is one space where “live and let live” in terms of one’s sartorial lamination should rule, it is the beach.

Which brings to mind the extraordinarily ill-considered 2016 gambit by more than 30 French Riviera towns to ban “burkinis,” the full head-and-body (but not the face) swimwear Muslim women were wearing at their respective beachfronts. Prime Minister Manuel Valls and former President Nicolas Sarkozy supported the ban. Valls said that France was in a “battle of cultures” and the burkini represented the “enslavement of women,” while Sarkozy said he would institute a nation-wide ban if he were re-elected as president. In the end, France’s highest administrative court overturned a lower court’s support for the ban, ruling it “breached the fundamental freedoms to come and go, the freedom of beliefs and individual freedom.”

No kidding. The ban attempt was not only illegal, but stupid in its conception, because it is face cover, not body cover, that symbolizes misogyny, so politicizing the burkini muddied the pellucid waters of France’s face cover ban, in force since 2010. The bikini may be a cultural norm at the beach for most French women, but it isn’t an existential element of French ethnicity.

Decency in public self-presentation is also difficult to define, but most of us know it by cultural osmosis. A good rule of thumb is to imagine yourself as the defendant in a court of law. What will you wear (especially if you’re guilty) that telegraphs to the judge your good character, social maturity, sexual dignity and respect for the occasion? Hint: not a thong bikini and not a niqab. It’s the sweet spot in the middle.

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