Wellbeck

Wellbeck – it isn’t how he spells his name – describes in his Extension of the Field of Struggle – it is not what it is entitled in English – the torments which a man denied the opportunity to mate undergoes at the sight of partial female nudity; and he fulminates at the ideology of women’s lib which allows females to flaunt their bodies in the name of freedom. Their entitlement, he says, is to tantalize me: show me the wares but not give them. Grrr, he growls.

I think a more relevant discussion of the same problem – of partial nudity – can be made from another, and more obvious, angle. Namely, that most of the partial nudity (low-riding pants, underblouses worn instead of blouses, etc.) is not tantalizing but offensive.

Oh, I don’t mean to some sort of mores. Most sexual mores are nonsense anyway. No. I mean – offensive to the eye.

For example, on the train several days ago I was forced to sit across from a remarkably ugly woman. Everything in her physique was just wrong – wrong without being perverse. One could not exclaim over her charitably, as one might over the Elephantman, “you poor creature!” She wasn’t fat, or sick, or misshapen: she was just horrifically ugly in the most ordinary sense of the word. Merely looking made me wince.

All the same, as if to say that she didn’t care, or that she at any rate found her body beautiful, or perhaps in an attempt to make up for lacking graces with sex-appeal, she – showed. Oh, boy, did she show.

The train was packed and there was nowhere to run to. I tried looking out the window, but the sights were not much better (Mestre); then I tried wearing sunglasses; then I tried taking my glasses off. I even tried sleeping: but the train shook too much (Italian rails, probably not maintained since the Austrians were forced to quit back in the 1860’s). And at any rate, as soon as I closed my eyes the horrible memory of what I had just seen floated up before my eyes.

It was, for me, the most painful 45 minutes of the last 12 months. (And that’s including the Tibetan third-eye-opening surgery).

Now, I am sure the woman is intelligent, sensitive, charming, loyal, and decent. Unfortunately, any virtues she might posses are simply overwhelmed by her ugliness. Her readiness to show only adds insult to injury: it cries from the rooftops precisely that which she should work hardest to hide. (Really, has she not looked in the mirror?)

The creature, like most people, really, would benefit from a publicly enforced dress code. (A burka would not be a bad idea, actually).

Now, mind you, you will never hear a peep of complaint from me about skimpy clothing on pretty girls. In fact, when it comes to pretty girls, really, the skimpier the better and Canova had it about right – an unruly piece of silk, or an a few olive leaves in the strategic area are plenty enough. But the sad truth is that most people– men and women – who show should not. In fact, showing appears to be counter-proportional to one’s looks. The better they look, the less they show; the worse they look, the more of their anatomy we are obliged to see.

Which is why, unless Wellbeck’s standards are different from mine – I mean, seriously lower than mine – I can’t see what there is to be tantalized by. But I imagine that in the long term, visual exposure to all this god-awful stuff can be psychologically crippling. There are probably public health grounds for enforcing minimum dress codes.