The Semiotics of Female Nudity

The auditorium is packed, maybe a hundred people total--friends and colleagues, assorted grad students, senior scholars in my field--an even mix of men and women.

They're quietly chatting as they wait for me to me to step on stage. Meanwhile, I'm standing in the wings, nervously shuffling through my notes. The conference coordinator approaches me--a young blonde woman named Sarah.

"It's a full house," she says. "You've certainly piqued people's interest."

"I hope I can deliver...," I say.

"You'll do great," she says, resting her hand on my arm. "Knock 'em dead."

The time has come. The moment of truth. I walk to the lectern, my heels making staccato taps on the wooden stage. I'm dressed in a lovely grey linen suit, my hair swept back in a tidy chignon, very sharp, very professional.

The crowd grows quiet. From her seat in the front row, Sarah gives me two thumbs up.

Clearing my throat, I launch into my talk.

First, I give a brief précis of my background and my scholarship, followed by an abbreviated history of the female nude in Western art.

I'm nervous at first, but as I warm to my topic I slip into the familiar cadence of the classroom, briskly clicking through my slides of Greek and Roman marbles, paintings by Édouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, and Amedeo Modigliani.

Then photographs by Man Ray, Edward Westin, and Lee Friedlander.

The final Friedlander is a shockingly raw image of a young woman lying on her belly, legs open, her hairy sex clearly visible.

I linger on the image for effect, then click through to a photograph of myself.

A ripple of conversation travels though the audience--some gasps, a few giggles.

In the photo, I'm standing naked against a backdrop of amorphous greenery, impassively facing the camera, hands down at my sides.

It's not a sexy pose or even a particularly flattering one. My every physical flaw is mercilessly on display--my small tits, my fat ass, the generous pudge of my belly. My bush is a dark, unruly tangle. If you look closely, you can discern the folds of my labia peeping out between my heavy thighs.

I pause for a few uncomfortable seconds--giving the audience the opportunity to consider the contrast between the naked woman on the screen with the fully-clothed one on the stage.

"Previous scholarship on the symbolism of the female nude has focused on how women's bodies are situated and reified within the Male Gaze," I continue. "So pervasive is the patriarchy that even as women ourselves...,"

I make a sweeping gesture toward the audience. "... we often have a hard time considering the significance of a naked woman other than as an object of male lust or desire."

Half a dozen female grad students begin typing furiously on their laptops. Others in the audience--both male and female--hold up their cell phones to photograph me in front of my naked image.

"My talk today is intended to be an interrogation of this point of that view," I announce portentously. "And... hopefully... an intervention."

That's my cue to start taking off my clothes.

I proceed matter-of-factly, not making a show of it, just calmly undressing as if I was back in my room at the conference hotel.

First, I remove my jacket, folding it neatly and placing it atop the chair next to the lectern that I requested from Sarah for just this purpose.

"What previous commentators have failed to consider is what a woman's nakedness may mean to her," I say, as I start unbuttoning my blouse.

"Now obviously, every woman has her own idiosyncratic response to nudity. Some women find it demeaning... some, humiliating. For others, being on display is arousing, or even empowering. A common refrain among women who strip for a living is the rush of power they get from being naked onstage. I began my investigation by analyzing my own personal feelings about being naked, but in discussions with female colleagues I soon discovered that my reactions, while not universal, were still quite common."

I slip my blouse off my shoulders and lay it calmly on top of my jacket.

"What I'm proposing is not a universal semiotics of female nudity, but rather a critical posture that is accessible to any woman who it resonates with. I freely acknowledge there are other ways of being naked, but this particular stance works for me and I hope it works for you too."

I unzip my wool skirt and let it drop to the floor. After I step out of it, I bend over and add it to the pile. I also slip off my heels and tuck them underneath the chair.

I'm down to just my underwear now--my plain, unremarkable bra and panties. The audience is watching me closely--curious, eager. Their cumulative gaze is like a physical caress. A flush creeps into my cheeks.

"To be naked is to be seen," I explain. "In terms of Latour's actor-network theory it's a relation--a state of being that requires both an unclothed body and an appraising eye. The eye may belong to another...."

I gesture toward the audience.

"... or to the naked woman herself...."

I pick up the antique hand mirror that Sarah has left for me below the lectern, and study my reflection. A stray lock of hair has escaped from my chignon, and I carefully tuck it away.

"From the perspective of the Male Gaze the naked female body is merely a locus of desire--a symbol of fecundity or decadence. But from the perspective of the naked woman herself, her body is, in Kantian terms, the ding-an-sich--the thing-in-itself--her raw physicality made manifest by the act of being gazed upon."

I reach behind my back and unhook my bra. Slipping the straps off my shoulders, I lean forward to let my tits spill out. My nipples are standing straight up, rudely erect. I glance at Sarah in the front row, desperate to be reassured I haven't gone too far. She nods and smiles. You're doing great.

Emboldened I hook my thumbs in my panties and pull them down.

Naked. I'm totally naked.

A collective gasp ripples through the audience.

I click through to the next slide. It's me standing before the same anonymous green background, but in this photo I'm wearing the outfit I just shed--my conservative grey linen suit and low heels.

I step out from behind the lectern and put my hands down at my sides so the audience can fully appreciate the juxtaposition between the naked woman on stage, and the fully-clothed on one the screen.

Without thinking about it, I absent-mindedly run my fingers through my bush, fluffing it from where it was compressed by my underwear.

I'm so aroused by this. I'm so turned on.

My pussy is sopping wet. A fleeting thought passes through my brain. Is it obvious? Can the audience tell? Does it make my thesis stronger? Or undermine it?

More cellphones are raised to capture the moment. The staccato tap of fingertips on laptop keyboards accelerates.

Raising my voice so I can be heard without the lectern microphone, I resume speaking.

"As I said before, I intend this talk to be an intervention. Allow me to elaborate: There is an inherent bias in scholarship toward the male perspective. This is not mere happenstance. For hundreds of years, the academy was an exclusively masculine domain. The few women who managed to storm the ivory tower...."

I suppress a giggle.

"Forgive me, but it's such a phallic metaphor! As I was saying, the few women who managed to storm the ivory tower were denigrated and marginalized. It's only with the advent of feminist scholarship in the 1970's that male critics have accepted that a woman's alternate reading of a text could be just as valid as a man's canonical interpretation."

Warming to my topic, I pace back and forth at the edge of the stage, addressing my words directly to the front row. My tits bounce with every step. Whenever I turn toward them to make a point, I give them a clear view of my labia, now swollen and moist with arousal.

"I submit to you that even in the post-feminist academy, feminine readings are marginalized. Even in works that are written by women for women. Even when the female body is itself the primary text. Language is a cage. With every utterance the female academic must strain against the iron bars of langue, imploring her listeners to take her parole at face value, not under the archaic regime of masculine semiosis."

To emphasize my point I extend my bare arms toward my audience. Stretching out to them. Pleading with them.

"Interpreting any feminine utterance requires a measure of empathy, good faith, and sisterhood," I continue. "I invite you to join with me in building a new interpretive community of female bodies in dialog with other female bodies within the communal praxis of our shared physicality."

"To that end," I announce. "The remainder of my presentation will consist of me letting my nudity speak for itself--the 'word made flesh'... as it were."

I squat down at the edge of the stage and spread my legs. The audience gasps again. There are few things more transgressive than a woman deliberately exposing her genitals. I make no pretense of modesty. I show them everything. I open my fleshy labia with my fingers to call attention to the pink, juicy wetness inside. I stroke my finger teasingly along the tiny shaft of my clitoris.

This latter action causes a tiny sigh of pleasure to escape my lips. I'm so turned on. So amazingly horny. I start openly masturbating in front of everyone, trembling a little--both from my heightened state of arousal and my fear that my raw display will be misinterpreted not as a feminist call to arms, but as merely a sad exhibitionist kink.

Have I just destroyed my career?

But I notice a flurry of activity in the front row. Sarah, the conference organizer, has stood up and is taking off her clothes. Quickly she strips off everything--her zippered hoodie, her tee shirt and leggings, her tennis shoes and socks, her bra and panties. In a few seconds she's as naked as I am.

Then she sits back down and spreads her legs, mirroring my pose. She has a tidy little pussy, shaved completely bare, with delicate pink lips--quite different from the hairy extravagance of my cunt--but still she opens herself with her fingers like I did and starts masturbating along with me.

Our eyes meet, a strange moment of sisterhood.

As she gets more comfortable with touching herself in public, she cups one breast and begins teasing her nipple. She looks at me significantly and arches one eyebrow.

A question from the floor!

I respond by playing with my own titties. Together we carry out a masturbatory dialog--a debate of the flesh. Every time I make a salient point, Sarah responds with a new line of inquiry. Give and take. Thesis and antitheses. After a brief period of contention, we achieve synthesis, whimpering together in mutual orgasm.

More questions from the audience follow. A half-dozen other female students follow Sarah's lead and shed their clothes to participate in our colloquium.

The range of body types is impressive. Fat girls and skinny girls. Tiny tits and heavy hangers. Shaved pussies like Sarah's and hairy ones like mine. Race and class distinctions are forgotten. An ethereally-pale white girl strums along with the ebony-skinned black girl sitting next to her.

Even tenured faculty join in. I recognize a motherly professor from Brandeis who I've chatted with at conferences before. She's sitting in the third row with her legs spread wide, openly masturbating in front of her fully-dressed male colleagues.

The men in the audience know to keep their clothes on. They know they haven't been invited to participate in this particular conversation. They willingly accept their role as observers--passive watchers from the sidelines, whose function in the relation is to ensure that women aren't merely naked, but that they're seen. It's a complete inversion of the classic Male Gaze. The men are objectified into a collection of anonymous viewpoints--they lack any identity or agency. Only the women are individuated. Only the women have presence in the Derridean sense.

Our discussion reaches its culmination. A chorus of female voices fills the auditorium. We are beyond words. We sing the song of our naked flesh--grunts and moans, a few sobs and whimpers--eloquent and primal.

I return to the lectern.

Leaning forward for emphasis, I raise my fist in triumph and defiance.

My first two fingers are shiny with pussy juice.

"QED," I roar into the microphone.

The applause is thunderous. A crowd of naked women gathers in front of the stage, peppering me with questions as I sift through my cast-off clothes to get dressed again. Sarah, still naked, is particularly effusive.

"Bravo!" She claps. A tour de force!"

Fully dressed now, I slip out of the auditorium and back into my mundane life as a scholar and teacher.