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This is another one of those frustrating reads. It has such potential, it's appeal is universal, it relates directly to the human experience, and yet it ends up being an exercise in academic self-gratification.

The sentences are extraordinarily dense, and the language used is so esoteric, that the layperson will find themselves re-reading passages and consulting dictionaries to the point of utter frustration.

In the end one is left with the impression that the author is more concerned with demonstarting an arcane knowledge of sociological concepts than with providing a truly readable, worthwhile, and ultimately human exploration of a fascinating and important topic.

Ruth Barcan's latest book, Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy, isn't your average beach read. It's printed in small type and has only a few pictures (i.e. Figure 1, etc.). Barcan, who teaches in the Dept. of Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia, is an academician and her writing style reflects it.

I must admit that I found a good deal of the writing dense and requiring my full attention to decipher. Occasionally, it drove me to the old Random House Unabridged. [The meaning of metonym fascinated me (root word: metonymy - look it up!).]

Ms. Barcan breaks Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy down into four main sections: 1) The Nudity/Clothing Dialectic 2) The Metaphor of Nudity 3) Unnatural nature: Mess, Savagery, Perversion, Crime 4) The Nude Republic: Celebrity, "Ordinariness" and Identity." These four topics very thoroughly cover nudity within cultures--in a religious, social, mythical, and economic sense. Nudism is covered on pages 166-180.

Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy, in my humble opinion, offers little in the way of new insights into its subject. Having recently read Body Packaging, I felt I learned as much, or more, from that book as I did from this one. However, that's not to say that Ms. Barcan has nothing to teach. If you can focus on deciphering some of the academic prose, your reward will be some interesting cultural nuggets.

I'll end this review in Ms. Barcan's own words. "Whatever choices or determinations we as individuals might make, it is clear that our culture provides us with a vast array of possible responses to nudity, ranging from disapprobation to romanticization. The rich philosophical, religious and artistic traditions of the West help structure our reactions to nudity and our bodily experiences of it. While in any given instance we as individuals might make a clear-cut judgment, our society as a whole is characterized -ambivalence about the body itself, about sex, about the benefits of modern civilization and, deep down, about what it means to be a human, and about the place of humans in nature."

This book must surely be the best of its kind on the subject. It is a highly readable yet erudite examination of the historical, psycho-social, and symbolic meanings attached to the unclothed human body in Western societies. Barcan (herself a nudist) draws upon philosophy, religion, literature, popular culture and personal interviews to analyze the nudity/clothing dialectic, the metaphorical uses of nakedness, the makeup of anti-nude attitudes, and the influence of embodiment on one's sense of self and community. In addition to consulting other nudists in preparation for her writing, Barcan discussed matters with nude models, tattooists, health professionals, strippers, pornographers, and educators. Thus, the book is both well-grounded theoretically and "fleshed out" experience of individuals for whom nudity is experientially significant. Barcan teaches in the Humanities Dept. of the University of Western Sydney (Australia).