The Nostalgia of Nudity: A Kinder, Gentler Pornography

Just in case no one told you, there's porn to be found on the Internet. You're just a Google search away from the sorts of images whose mere description proves a daunting task for the conservative-minded, with every body part and possible function thereof on display. Anything two (or more) consenting adults can do is done. No plain brown wrapper. Nothing left to the imagination. No ceremony or discovery about it. It's just there.

Think about it.

Just in case no one told you, there's sex to be found in the real world. And these days it's not always handled responsibly. People get pregnant who shouldn't. Diseases spread. Teenagers have sex in schools or at the mall or in parking lots. Infidelity and broken homes ensue. No plain old relationships. Nothing left till later. No ceremony or sanctity about it. It's just there.

Think about it.

My first brush with nudity came with classical European paintings that featured a lot of naked ladies. I was ashamed to look at them (being, what, seven), but in that way that a little boy knows he's not allowed to go in the girls' bathroom, for whatever reason. The concept of arousal didn't quite figure in. That didn't occur to me until one day I furtively glanced through my parents' issue of "Vanity Fair" (magazine, not book), promoting her "Sex" (book, not act) with Madonna on the cover, and happened across a photo of her baring her breasts.

I closed that magazine so fast the resulting wind blew a neighboring house over.

With time, a young man grows to appreciate pictures of naked ladies a little more. By middle school, a friend more enterprising than I had actually developed the courage to buy the occasional dirty magazine. Imagine that, the same shops that sold greeting cards and candy bars also had good old-fashioned porn. On sleepovers or camping trips, we'd look over a "Playboy" with hushed tones of reverence in our voices, and we'd tell each other to keep it down.

Oh, we had the Internet in those days, I'm not that old. But pornography is not for the impatient, and these were the days of dialup. Slow dialup. Besides, there was something more real about a girl in a magazine, God help us.

There was a sense of discovery about it all. That nervous, exciting feeling that you were doing something wrong and getting away with it. If you have to fight for something, it means more. Even if all you get is a furtive peek at Dad's "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit issue-God, how relevant is that any more?-you earned it.

And, let's face it, there's different stages of porn, you know? The airbrushed-to-death, all-smiles cheerleaders and celebs in "Playboy" aren't anything the feminists in the crowd can be proud of, but there's a certain odd innocence even in the way they show off their breasts. It's not quite clean. But it isn't filthy. Depending on your level of tolerance, even adjectives like 'degrading' or 'sinful' might be hard to apply, because something else shines through. It's taste expressed in the context of trash.

Indeed, Hugh Hefner's little magazine followed me as I grew. I knew I'd gotten to a certain age when I could take the back issues off the rack at the barber shop (God, where have barber shops gone these days, come to think of it?) and page through them, in front of my father, without shame; indeed, we'd share a pile. By college, when we kept all sorts of magazines in our dorm bathroom, I'd be turning to the joke page first. Nudie pics could wait.

There is no waiting these days, no fine line between the artistic expression of the nude female form and the exploitative video footage of a woman and a horse participating in a decidedly uncommon equestrian event. It's a funny thing to be nostalgic for. But we forget that just as rock 'n' roll lost its innocence and movies turned to trash, well, porn went sour too. There is something to be said for the slow slope into sexual imagery, the journey a young man takes from innocent to porn fiend. It's easier to hide something on a computer than under a mattress, and perhaps we are worse off for it.

Look at what's become of a society of young people that never had to hide what they looked at, never had to work to get at it. Sex will always be there; why did the growing-up process get so rushed? It all comes out in the end. It does not need to come too soon.