Let´s talk about nudity...

thorhammer

gregory said:
A friend once said that naked men (except the one you happen to love at the time) just make her giggle. I have to say, I can see her point..... :bugeyed: Unless in use :D the dangly bits are a bit ridiculous.....
Now, now, play nice, girls :D
 

minrice

Cat* said:
Then again, don't many of us like looking at beautiful women, no matter if we are heterosexual or not?

I would rather look at a beautiful, naked woman than a man any day. The female form is truly beautiful. :)
 

WolfyJames

I really do not mind nudity. But beside the Archeon Tarot, I really dislike photo-collage decks in general and so I dislike the Cosmic Tribe Tarot. The Archeon has nudity tastefully done but there is not enough males in the deck, I'd really love it if Timothy Lantz were to make another deck more balanced with more males because I really love what he does.
 

Sinduction

I love nudity, but am not into the "sex" decks. I too have often wondered where the hot half naked men are. They don't have to show me everything, I like a little left to the imagination. But why are the men either old, ugly, or clothed?

I prefer to have the men and women beautiful and scantily clad. Like Ciro's devil from the gilded. Bare-chested with a mask over his face! I will admit I was disappointed when I looked over his upcoming Legacy deck and found it lacking a hot man for me.

Maybe one day I will learn to draw and make my own deck that shows me a world that I'd like to live in. Where the men are beautifully toned, walking around shirtless and silent. Maybe one of them will look like the Rock. :D And lots of pretty women with bodies that I will never again have but which I can appreciate all the same while I reflect on how desirable I once was.

Goodness knows I see enough old, ugly men with stained shirts and beer bellies in my daily life. I'd love the tarot to show me something different. Oh, and can he cook as well?
 

RiccardoLS

Have You considered that women have "more" graphically sexual zones than man? You clothe two gender the same, and you have totally different results.

On the other side, should deck portray an idealized world? All people young and beautiful... they are symbols/auratic abstractions of concepts. For instance they are not "a woman fighting a lion", but they are "strength".
Or should they portray/illustrate reality? Then we should have old and young, ugly and beautiful, etc...
And this is just not related to genre. Should people live in an idealized world, in time, like the fake-medieval we all know from the RWS. Or should they live in present reality (or in any other defined time)?

We may answer so many times to this question, but the truth is that we can't have everything at once. Each deck will have to choose his own.

"Nudity" cames as much from a certain comic book approach, but also it cames from classical and renaissance art. I think that on the subject, there is a lot to say. Gender balance is not just in nudity, but in symbols and energies, and many other things.
How does it reflect on reading?

ric
 

firemaiden

Le Fanu said:
It´s not the nakedness as candidness stuff. Secondly, it´s never men. Why don´t we see The Hanging Man naked more often, with gravity-defying member? (Ok, you get it on the Haindl, but when they tried to do it on the Rohrig it was quickly "reissued" as if we weren´t quite ready to deal with it) The nudity is never democratic, it´s a kind of "nudity" from 50 years back. I could be wrong, but I always suspect that the majority of tarot readers are women. Do they want to see this? Some do (Cat, for instance) But do the rest of the female members here not find some of these images a bit uncomfortable or gratuitous or unnecessary? And who do you think they´re aimed at?
I am a woman, I am heterosexual. I love looking at beautiful drawings of women nude. I have no interest at all in seeing pictures of naked men.
 

Debra

Le Fanu said:
What´s with the dated, 1950s style comic book/ Playboy nudity in so many (particularly Scarabeo) decks? .....

I mean, why?

Great question.

I think...it's easy, that's why. These images aren't about the beauty of the female form yadda yadda. Real art knows how to make all bodies beautiful. This kind of art doesn't require much thought. Whatever you draw, just "hot it up" visually with cleavage and bums.

In the keyboard world, it's like adding BOLD and COLOR and CHANGING FONT SIZE to catch the eye--without necessarily improving the design or meaning of the text.
 

WolfSpirit

Have You considered that women have "more" graphically sexual zones than man? You clothe two gender the same, and you have totally different results.

No they don’t. They have different graphically sexual zones, not more.
A good artist (or a good dresser) can look men look very sexy. At least, men who take a little care of their body and not the beer belly louts.

I am amazed that so many women in this thread say they don’t want to look at a pretty (partly) undressed male. As a heterosexual woman – I can say I find both partially undressed men and women sexy, sexier than total nudity.
But I don’t need it in a tarot deck. Now if I want to look at a beautiful body – do I look at paintings, or magazines, or posters that are meant for that purpose and are a generous size (the pictures I mean, not necessarily the body parts) or do I look at relatively small, relatively expensive cards that are meant for divination ? No though choice for me there :D
Although...actually I don't buy magazines etc. either. Guess it's more in the mind for me anyway. Maybe women just have bigger minds than men :D
 

RiccardoLS

WolfSpirit said:
No they don’t. They have different graphically sexual zones, not more.

I really disagree. That's why on the ebach you see man with one piece and women with two pieces bathing suit. Simply as that. But it's still just an opinion :(
 

WolfSpirit

RiccardoLS said:
I really disagree. That's why on the ebach you see man with one piece and women with two pieces bathing suit. Simply as that. But it's still just an opinion :(

Oh I see, I do agree that female breasts are regarded differently than male bare chests. But that is not what I was talking about.
The decks LeFanu mentions in his first post - like the Manara, or the Casanova - even hardly show a male bare chest, or a leg, or a buttock, while the women hardly have a stitch on them. And the women don't have natural breasts, they are huge breasts pointing upwards.
And that is what turns the women in these decks into sex objects - not the fact that a woman with her shirt off is regarded differently than a man with his shirt off.