Now that's more typical of a Sun headline.
I love reading letters to the editor. Whenever I open a paper, they're the first things I turn to...especially if a provocative article appeared in that particular paper the day before. "Well, I couldn't have said that better myself", I'll muse, or "what planet is this wackjob from?"
One of those latter moments occurred yesterday as I perused the National Post. Regrettably, in my haste to vacate work--bad day, yesterday--I forgot to port the paper along with me. And the online Post doesn't link to letters, other than today's. Still...
On the front page of the Post a couple of days back was a little blurb about Daniel Radcliffe, known the world over as Harry Potter. Seems young Daniel (he's 17) is taking steps to avoid being typecast as a bespectacled wizard the rest of his life. His first step is to appear in the West End revival of a Tony-award winning play called Equus. Some first-rate Hollywood talent has appeared in that play before him: Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton being the best known examples.Whatever. The play calls for--gasp--nudity. More than that, actually: arousal. The picture that accompanied the Post front-page blurb was thus not of Harry Potter, but of his hairy pot. (Must...resist...urge to...pun...) Actually, the picture was tastefully done--there was just enough skin shown so the casual viewer can note he's all nekkid and bare. (I'm a casual viewer--believe you me, I have no abiding interest in Daniel Radcliffe's bod, not least because he's uncannily like an old friend of mine. Also, I'm not gay, he says as an afterthought. Now, Emma Watson, on the other hand...)
My reaction to the picture went like so:
Hey, that guy's all nekkid and bare.
On the front page.
What's a guy doing nekkid and bare on the front page of a major paper?
(catching sight of the words below) That's Daniel Radcliffe!
[aside: you can count the celebrities I'd recognize (nude or no) on the fingers of one thumb]
Good for him. You can't get much further away from Hogwarts than waving your warthog all over the London stage. Kind of brings a whole new meaning to "Platform 9 3/4".
God, the puns lie thick upon the ground.
And then I moved on to the Letters to the Editor.
Well, the furor.
One gentleman asked the Post to kindly relocate the "salacious" stuff to the Arts and Life section so as he wouldn't have to scramble to hide the paper from his kids. I sat there reading that letter over and over, trying to imagine life in his family. I kept stumbling up against mental walls and banging my head against them.
Boy, those kids must be filthy. You can't very well clean yourself fully clothed.
Wait a sec: You can't change clothes without being at least momentarily nekkid and bare! How does he do it? How does he keep his kids blissful innocence intact?
I'm not sure, of course, but I suspect this parent would have no trouble plopping his kid down in front of a television, where he'll see eight thousand murders before he's out of elementary school.
The logic escapes me. It really does. My God, people, it's just SKIN. We all have it. Clothes are just things we don to get warm. That is their sole function, the sole reason for their existence in a sane and ordered world. Of course, this world is insane and disordered, thanks in large part to Mr. Scramble-To-Hide-The-Skin-From-The-Kids and the myriad people like him.
I'll say it again: if God had meant for us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way.
Now, I am not a practising naturist: I prefer the feeling of being clothed. But it has nothing to do with self-esteem...I am not my body, after all. I can, and have, strolled around comfortably naked. On a sufficiently hot day, of course I long for the option of disrobing, don't you?
It's topics like this that make me feel like I am all alone in the universe.
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