Paradoxes

I love it when nudity is used to sell clothing. I remember an advertisement from the early 1970s for h.i.s. clothing, a shot of a tree in the middle ground with a limb in the foreground. Various articles of h.i.s. clothing were strewn across the limb and in the background about a dozen young people frolicked naked in and around the tree. The tag line read, "When you have to wear clothes. h.i.s"


This window display appears on Market Street for the clothing store Solis, celebrating Gay Pride.


Yet none of these models seem to be celebrating, or proud of their bodies the way the models were in the 1970s h.i.s. advertisement. While none of the '70s models seems out of shape, they are no way as "sculpted" as the Solis models. To me this is indicative of not only a commodification of our bodies which has transpired over the past 40 years but also a body fascism which dictates that that which is presentable is the unnatural. Our natural bodies, relaxed, uncovered and exposed, may not be seen, do not pass and are no longer fit for public consumption –– or Pride for that matter.