Nudity in Tarot.

[ana luisa]

When reading for clients the last thing l want is blatant porn style huge boobs and penis's. l want to focus on the serious matter of reading

That's what came to mind. The sitters. I don't mind nudity as long as it serves a purpose. Even if it's done in a tasteless way, if the message is about lack of taste, then so be it. What concerns me more is the reaction a sitter may have with the cards. Granted, it is not them interpreting the cards but it still may break the flow between the client and the reader.

 

[Zephyros]

Don't you think there are double standards though? A man with no shirt isn't considered nude while a bare chested woman is, and her nudity needs to have some reasoning behind it.

 

[gregory]

Don't you think there are double standards though? A man with no shirt isn't considered nude while a bare chested woman is, and her nudity needs to have some reasoning behind it.

That's exactly the line of thought that got the law changed in Ontario!

 

[foolMoon]

l do not mind nudity in tarot as long as it is elegant and refined and not in your face. Lady Frieda Harris has done it beautifully in the Thoth tarot. She shows the females graceful and feminine and the nude males are painted with just the hint of penis.

When reading for clients the last thing l want is blatant porn style huge boobs and penis's. l want to focus on the serious matter of reading

It would be a good idea to be selective on what decks to use for the type of quorents and also circumstances of the readings.

 

[prudence]

And prudence - I agree that there are silly looking bits of women too - but in what you might call perfect condition, they don't DANGLE like that. When prepared for use (!) the penis is a lot more impressive than any women's bits, I agree.

Natural breasts, no matter how young and fit you are, do absolutely obey the law of gravity, it's the fake ones that disobey. And when a female body is in motion, nude, you will see all kinds of flopping and bouncing about. Which can be funny as well as titillating for the viewers, but often painful for the woman in question as she runs around.

The Deviant Moon has a fair amount of naked breasts, but Patrick Valenza has clearly not done this in an effort to entice, the DM breasts are so strange and sometimes freaky, but they don't offend me, though I'd bet they might offend some folks in a reading situation. Likely a lot of people might even be offended at the notion of exposed breasts that aren't perfect looking and boobilicious.

I'd imagine that Gaby is going to give us the kind of nudity that is more thoughtful and less porn-esque than some of the nudity from other decks. I seriously doubt that it would be gratuitous. It might be a bit off putting, if I think about the detail she has put into hands, and how incredibly expressive and sometimes weird the hands are in her art, hmm, how might that translate into nude body parts??? I'm very much looking forward to seeing what Gaby does with the nude form. Very much.

 

[Thoughtful]

It would be a good idea to be selective on what decks to use for the type of quorents and also circumstances of the readings.

Oh yes I am selective on my use of decks that's why l use Thoth and Roots of Asia which adequately read for all types of clients.

Even if l had a porn star come for a reading l would still use these decks, if l used some of the brazen style decks She/He would probably groan with "oh no not shop talk"

 

[Cocobird55]

Nudity doesn't bother me, but i would never do a reading for a client using The Cosmic Tribe.

 

[nisaba]

I would love to know how folk view depictions of nudity in tarot decks.

It's just not an issue.

Are there acceptable levels, where others are just too much or are you just plain put off and naked flesh renders a deck unusable?

Totally nude decks are fine. Even pornographic decks are fine. I have a small sub-collection of the latter, and use them occasionally.

I ask as the deck I am painting will likely have male and female nudity throughout and I am not seeking to create an erotic deck.

I won't have an issue with it. Clothes are just clothes. In winter, they stop you getting too cold. In summer, they stop you getting arrested because of ridiculous laws. That is all.

The state of undress feels necessary. Though I am not so keen to deploy an army of censorious fig-leaves, I may need to shyly turn figures away from the observer.

You don't even need to do that. Whole bodies are fine. If you have a hang-up about that, slight blurring or shadowing works. An erotic deck shows sexual acts (as many cards in all my erotic decks do), not just naked bodies. Do we have issues with naked animals? No. Should we have issues with naked people? No. People are just people - clothes aren't all that interesting.

Perhaps I need two versions.

Up to you. Why, would you be putting clothes on the second version?

See what you can do in the second version with long hair, smoke, clouds ...

 

[nisaba]

But that's also the world we live in, particularly the US with omni present penis aversion.

Yet, if you look at young males, particularly young males who are poor and disenfranchised (or rich and in hiphop videos), they are all touching or pointing at their penises all the time, as if they have to keep reminding themselves and other people that they actually own a penis. And if you sit in a park with a public loo block for any length of time, you'll notice women coming out of the "ladies" fully clothed up, and men coming out of the "gents" still zipping themselves up, even "respectable" suited middle-aged men, as if it's socially acceptable to fiddle with their boy-bits and the fabric around their boy-bits in public.

I make no judgements about this - it is just an observation I've consistently made. I'm not interested in boy-bits - I particularly notice all the overt signalling that man do to draw attention to their groins. Women do far less of it - women are generally more comfortable in themselves, I suspect.

 

[nisaba]

Why should a naked body distract any more than a clothed one ? I never get that.

Hear, hear!