Channel 4’s Naked Education sparked outrage after adults stripped Infront of teens – here’s what I think about it
HOW many boobs, bellies and bums can you fit into one TV programme?
Well, I lost count while watching Channel 4’s Naked Education last week . . . because there were quite a few balls, too.
So, forgive me if I got distracted. It’s a rarity to be exposed to so much nakedness in this country.
Now, it might be the Swede in me that means I’m unfazed by it all but that I also welcome it with open arms.
After all, a naked body is just that. Naked, bare, au naturel.
There is nothing sexual about the body in its natural state.
Come on, people, we all have one. They are all different and come in all shapes and sizes.
Living as we do in a time when our young people are relying on soft and even hard porn for their sex education, normalising nudity is becoming increasingly urgent.
This was largely the premise of the show, to make us all more at ease about naked bodies and to understand their differences better.
Naturally, this was always going to be too risqué for this prudish country and many felt horrified enough to throw their virtuous and offended arms in the air.
Instead of taking a pragmatic view, that showing a handful of kids aged 14 to 16 half a dozen naked bodies might help educate and normalise nudity, many came to the conclusion it was some kind of perverted sex show and saw it as “filth”.
Folks, this show was brave and unapologetic.
We simply can’t go on as we are with one uptight, puritanical generation turning a blind eye to our young people who are gorging on a diet of online porn for their sex education.
The point of this programme was not for people to concentrate on the baseless assumption that a nude body has a direct correlation with sex, but instead to be myth- busting and attempt to dispel the rumour and prejudice about our bodies.
I asked my nearly 15-year-old son to watch the show with me. He chose not to and promptly left the room.
Although curiosity did seem to get the better of him because he kept popping his head around the corner.
I wasn’t trying to embarrass him. I wanted him to watch and learn.
I’d far rather that than have him scroll through endless, accessible porn sites which will give him a wholly unrealistic view of sex and bodies.
If one in five teenagers watches pornography frequently — and we know it can reach children of primary school age — we have a huge problem on our hands.
And we seem to be out of ideas when it comes to dealing with it.
We know that if they see women being degraded, humiliated, objectified and sometimes even abused, it only stands to follow that the bodies of the people taking part are going to become their expectation.
Young men will see women who have “perfect” shapes — big breasts, big lips and, more often than not, no sign of body hair — and presume all women look like that.
If that is all you see, it becomes your normal.
This means that another body shaped in any other way, with its uniqueness, quirks, blemishes, lines and what we refer to as “imperfections”, will not only be deemed unacceptable but become marginalised and stigmatised.
Quirks and foibles
This, in turn, means that in order to try to avoid feeling vilified, judged and disgraced, women will make attempts to conform.
It’s a vicious cycle of degradation, compliance and submission. Women (and perhaps a small minority of men) are altering the way they look so they can try to meet this unrealistic expectation.
No one is ever going to win this battle. Least of all the next generation of young people who might end up rejecting another person’s body for all its quirks and foibles.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are just standing on the sidelines, allowing our impressionable young people (and perhaps even the more impressionable older ones) to create and live in a world built on unrealistic expectations. And, yes, I am concentrating on women and women’s bodies because I know it disproportionately affects us.
Society has always been harder on women.
We desperately need to get comfortable with the fact that all our bodies are different.
We are unique and that’s why we need to rediscover the beauty of all the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies.
PHONE ADDICTION SUCH A TURN-OFF
RESEARCH by the think tank Onward has suggested we are a “burnt out” nation.
We’re all knackered, exhausted, busy and overwhelmed because the advent of mobile phones has clouded the boundary between work and leisure.
In short, we seem incapable of switching off.
Despite sleeping on average half an hour more than people did some 50 years ago and not working longer hours, we are feeling spent and unable to find the time or energy for volunteering or even pursuing hobbies.
Our lives are moving faster than ever before because we’re cramming so much more into them.
Much of this is because even if you’re doing the housework or out with your mates, that phone is always by your side or in your hand, which is enabling some kind of detrimental multi-tasking.
It is that constant, persistent connectivity and being contact- able via our phones that has changed the fabric of life so much in the past couple of decades.
You don’t have to be a high- flying CEO to feel continually busy and pulled in different directions.
You can be a stay-at-home mum or a carer and still feel beset by a steady and uncomfortable flow of obligation.
Like many, I’m guilty of being a slave to my phone. I check emails at 10.30 at night. I check the rolling news on my phone the second I wake up. I confess to finding it incredibly difficult to switch off.
Being a woman of a certain age does mean I might feel knackered a lot of the time.
But it is more the mental preoccupation that mars my life and that relentless feeling I’m chasing my tail because there is always something else I should be doing. This is always swiftly followed by guilt as I haven’t achieved all that is expected of me.
Many days it feels like I’m on the road to hell.
I think we need to start normalising putting our phones down and, from time to time, holding our hands up to the rest of the world, saying,“No” and flaking out in front of Emmerdale.
Now that’s my dream scenario.
Unwanted attempt at a belly laugh
MAISIE SMITH posted a picture on social media of her cradling a somewhat swollen belly with a huge heart emoji across it.
The actress was with her boyfriend Max George (apparently originally from the band The Wanted but nowadays mostly from nothing) looking shocked, with his hand over his mouth.
In many people’s eyes, this was a pregnancy announcement.
Little wonder then that the smug couple faced a backlash when it had been meant as a joke and Maisie’s belly was merely bloated after eating a five-course meal.
I get that people don’t think messing around and pretending to be pregnant is funny. Especially for those who have struggled with, and maybe lost, the battle with infertility.
And also for those die-hard fans who hang on every word and loved-up picture the couple post. It must have felt like an insult and a betrayal.
While I have no desire to defend these two young fools, it should also be possible to josh around a bit once in a while, right?
What really got my goat was the fact that, once again, this publicity-hungry couple did it all for attention.
This was all about creating a stir, getting noticed and making sure they kept their names in the news.
And, naturally, they got what they wanted. It’s just that in my life, they’re very much The Unwanted.
SPANISH DREAM A RUM DO
THIS week I got an email congratulating me on my second anniversary.
I was a bit excited for a moment, as I was wondering what the hell I’d managed to do to last so long.
Then I realised it was a reminder that two years ago, I had downloaded an app to start learning Spanish. It’s a language I’d always wanted to master, to go alongside my French and German.
Then it all came flooding back: The pandemic, the lockdown.
Memories of children coming back home to live, the sun shining and tanning our skin, me turning to rum every afternoon because I was so thrilled I’d refrained from murdering anyone that day, deciding instead that I should do something useful with my time, like learn a new language.
It was a bit of fun and I was wholly committed at the beginning – religiously and diligently spending my half- hour a day (sometimes twice a day) learning to say useful things such as: “My cat is in the tree” en Espanol.
I’m good at languages. I love them. But every single morning, when I was obliged to do a quick refresher of what I’d learnt the day before, I couldn’t remember a single thing. Very unlike me.
You might put it down to age and memory (how rude!), but I prefer to blame it on the lockdown and the rum.
Surely we all lost our minds a little during that time? Surely we all started things we didn’t quite finish?
Surely we all have huge blanks in our memories from that period?
My dreams of becoming fluent in Spanish were dashed, not by my failing memory, but rum-induced medication on account of the trauma of having my children back home.
Not all is lost, though. I can still say: “Cuatro cervezas, por favor.”
Which will stand me in good stead this summer, I hope.