Diet for the Mind

When your child has an unhealthful, junk-food diet, you can either follow the encouragements of the mega-food industry (whose sole motivation is to get your money), and continue to feed him crap, since it’s what he craves and has become accustomed to, and after all, at least he’s eating something…

Or you can follow the advice of health professionals and put your foot down and say, “Enough! Crap is crap, and you don’t treat poor health by continuing to provide that which ruined it.” You fight (and it will be a fight) to restore healthful eating habits in your child, and perhaps to help other parents do the same by reducing the prevalence of junk food. A good way to do that last part is by refusing to buy what the purveyors are selling.

Sensible advice, right? The same holds true of the books we read and movies we watch. Perhaps your children crave the lurid, sensationalistic violence that pollutes media today, but that doesn’t make it less unhealthy. People defend this literary junk food by saying, “At least the kids are reading,” but that’s not good enough when it comes to food, so it shouldn’t be good enough when it comes to literature.  And how much is the desire for junk-reading due to it being the kids steady diet? The book-to-film industry insists they are simply providing what the people want, washing their hands like Pontius Pilate, but are they providing what kids want, or have the kids been conditioned to want it, for lack of any alternative that doesn’t seem as undesirable as brussels sprouts? Funny thing is, brussels sprouts are only unpalatable because they are so often poorly prepared. But there are some great recipes out there.

And there are great books; we just have to get kids used to the idea that conflict in a story doesn’t require physical violence, and the “stakes” don’t have to be death. Anyone who has had to eliminate salt or sugar or fat from their diets (I had to do one, and chose to do another) will tell you that at first it’s awful, that everything is bland and flavorless and makes you want that Bag O’ Calories all the much more. But gradually you adapt, and discover the amazing array of flavors that had been buried under all that sodium (I discovered the joy of black pepper when I reduced my salt intake). Subtle, delicate flavors that are far more rewarding. This is true of literature as well. When all you read is maiming and killing, anything else is boring, but eventually you can discover the much more profound strivings of the human heart and the human spirit, important things that were lost in the constant bloodbath.

I’m not all-or-nothing. There’s a place for tasty snax. But it’s a small place. I’ve always maintained that the key to healthy diet lies in two words: balance and moderation. Eat a variety of foods, and don’t eat too much of anything. Don’t deprive yourself of ice cream, but just have a small scoop, rather than the whole pint of Cherry Garcia in one sitting. It lasts longer, and you enjoy it more. Focus on quality: a six-ounce filet mignon is far more enjoyable than a two-pound porterhouse, and you are left feeling better afterwards.

But the interesting thing is, as far as the real junk food, the true crap, you find that, once you have reduced or even eliminated it from your diet, you not only don’t want it any more, you can’t even enjoy it. Once I got off salt, I became quite sensitive to its presence, and now I can barely stand salty foods. And this is as nothing compared to the experience of vegetarians who, having eliminated meat from their diets, find that if they do have meat, it makes them very sick.

I’m not advocating vegetarianism, although it’s a valid choice for people who know what they are doing. But I do think we should reduce or remove from our diets those things that make us sick once we’ve had a chance to step back from them.

And I think this can be true of media-literature as well. I hadn’t read much nor gone to many movies when I began my writer’s journey a few years ago. I’d been a voracious reader in years past, and once went to all the big movies. But I stopped, for reasons I’m unsure of. As a result, upon exposure to the media diet children subsist on today, I was literally sick, and, as you can tell, have perhaps not yet recovered. Had I been immersed as my fellow writers have been, the ones who responded to my horror with, “What’s your problem? I love that book!” I likely would have shared their enjoyment of these things. Yet a meager few actually listened and, taking a step back, looked at this stuff with clearer eyes and said, “Oh my God, this is awful!”

As I said before, some of my favorite movies were quite violent for their time, and I was concerned I was being a hypocrite. But that’s the key: for their time. Recent studies have shown that the ratings have changed. Movies that just ten years ago would have been solid R-rated for violence are now barely even getting PG-13. Dirty Harry, one of my favorite movies, was quite controversial for its extreme violence, and the glorification of it. But it would probably get a PG today. The level of violence in entertainment has increased, and continues to do so. When we feed our cravings, they are not satisfied. Drinking a sugary soda makes you want more sugar. Hyper-violent books and movies make you want more carnage. This has been confirmed in studies.

The junk-food industry isn’t going to stop producing Cheezy-Poofs, and the literature/film industry isn’t going to stop making carnage-filled movies, with higher and higher stakes, including younger and younger victims, and killers. So we have to be the ones to say enough. We must refuse to let them tell us what we want to read and to see. That’s the reason literary agents lie. They say they want something new and different, but they continue to go with vampires and zombies and dystopia and death. Something new and different is a risk, and there’s big money at stake. So they keep giving us more of the same, thinking it’s what we want, when in fact they are part of the conditioning to make us want it.

But if we stop, if we say, “I don’t want that, not matter how tasty you make it look,” then eventually they’ll have to do something else. As I said, there are good books. And there are good movies. Not just saccharine fare either, but rich, provocative stories that get awards, but rarely pack theaters or fly off bookshelves. Demand more of that, and less of the sick ugliness. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll all be healthier for it.

Facing the Consequences

Recently I wrote about Martin Luther King and his assertion that real progress is not brought about by waiting.  And I suggested that sometimes it is a matter of waiting that gets the result, that taking confrontational action may not actually be the most productive approach.  And I said that I had a personal perspective to share on that, which would be forthcoming.  It’s taken longer than I expected, because, as it turns out, I was waiting for the ending to play out.  I just didn’t realize it.

People who know me know that I am an appreciator and advocate of nudity: in art and literature, in social life, in our basic humanity.  This is reflected in my writing, where casual nudity is presented as a healthy norm, not as something dirty or salacious or offensive or anything like that.  The human form is a thing of beauty; we have the entire history of art to confirm this.  It should not be hidden in shame, but appreciated and celebrated.

Further, conventional western attitudes towards nudity are not only backwards, they are destructive.  It’s not nudity that is unhealthy, but rather a clothes-compulsive culture based on shame that is.  We teach our children “modesty,” but really we are teaching them that their bodies are dirty, ugly things to be kept hidden.  Except when you’re with someone you really love.  But not family members, of course.  Even though you love them, you must never see each other naked.  So say generations of psychologists and advice-column-writers.  No wonder the kids grow up with highly warped concepts of body image.

Even worse, we then fill media with images of near-nudity.  The distinction is important.  We crave titillation, want to see a woman in a state of near undress.  Better still, completely naked.  But wait, we need to blur out the “naughty bits.”  In other words, we want to know that she’s naked, but not to actually see her naked.  At the most extreme form of this insanity, consider the Howard Stern radio program, where eager listeners tune in to hear a woman take her clothes off.  Raise your hand if you understand that.

Perhaps part of the problem comes from the way our culture conflates nudity and sex.  Granted, nudity greatly enhances sex, but there is nothing innately sexual about nudity.  But you won’t convince people of that.  Thus we arrive at the very problematic issue of pornography: a catch-all term that people use to refer to things ranging from hard-core coitus to naked people playing volleyball on the beach.  It’s all classed as “porn.”  And thus, “filth.”  There it is.  The naked human body is “filth.”  No wonder we’re all ashamed to have one.

I want to do something about that.  In my book, I am presenting body-positive nudity.  I want my readers to encounter a scene where a teenage boy takes an evening swim with his younger sister, both of them naked, and have the reader think it’s so perfectly natural and pleasant that it never occurred to them to think it’s weird.  This was in fact the reaction of one of my beta readers, and I was very proud of that.  If I engender that reaction in teen readers, it’s worth everything.

Teens, my target audience, are particularly vulnerable to body-negative messages.  They are fascinated by their bodies, and those of their peers (and potential mates), but so terrified of nudity that they use the word to refer to someone who’s topless, or wearing underwear.  We say this is as it should be, that being exposed to nudity is damaging.  Tell that to the numerous young people who have been raised as nudists.  These are people who grew up at nudist camps and resorts (never nudist colonies – there’s no such thing).  Studies have shown that these children and teens are, nearly without exception, bright and healthy and well-adjusted.  No doubt there is a correlation with the fact that most nudist parents are well-off and health-conscious, but still, these children have very healthy body-image and are not, as people might fear, over-sexed, but rather have very realistic attitudes towards sexuality.  Compare this to all the teens, who, overwhelmed by hormones, turn to internet pornography as their only representation of the human body and sex.  And we wonder why they have such unrealistic expectations.  They can hardly have realistic expectations when reality is kept hidden from them.

So to that end, I went further.  People need an attitude adjustment, I decided.  In much the same way that King advocated tension, the way the early gay-rights activists shouted, “We’re here and we’re queer!” I thought I’d show people a way.  My forum: social media, the great communications platform of our time.  I made some “motivator” posters (you know, like the ones that have a picture of an eagle and the words “Take Flight” at the bottom).  These were pro-nudity, showing images of nudity and statements about it being positive.  Thus, there was nudity.  It was pointed out to me that there was a preponderance of young naked women.  Okay, guilty.  I confess a preference for the female form.  I’m wired that way.  But also the female nude is more socially acceptable than the nude male.  A naked woman can potentially be appreciated as beautiful, by both genders.  A nude male, on the other hand, is at best hilarious (consider Will Farrell).  Beyond that, it’s pretty much a guarantee of a label of obscenity.  Ugly, disgusting, sorry to ruin your breakfast.  So yes, it was easier to find suitable female images, and less likely they would cause offense.  So I thought.

I placed these posters periodically on Facebook.  You can predict where this is going.  What little response I got was positive, but mostly there was no response from people at all.  I upped the ante a bit.  During the Supreme Court arguments on gay marriage, I realized we were still limiting the definition of marriage, and asked why we aren’t also reexamining laws regarding polyamory and age-of-consent and so forth.  With images to match.  Someone objected, sending a message to me.  So I pulled everything and started over, staying away from overtly sexual material.  But still there were images of nudity on my page.  This included families in nudist settings.  This I considered appropriate, because it is young people who most need to hear the message.

I received a “warning” from Facebook saying there had been a complaint.  But they also said they had reviewed the material and found it did not violate their “community standards.”  Okay, vindication.

And then they shut down my account. 

Right in mid operation.  All of a sudden I’m logged out, and when I try to log back in, I’m told my account has been permanently suspended.  I’ve been banned from Facebook.  For posting images of nudity in what turned out to be an ill-conceived attempt to do…I’m not really sure what.

What was I thinking?  I’m not going to compare myself to King, who went to jail and gave his life fighting for an issue infinitely more significant than nudism.  It was the wrong forum, and I ignored the warnings.  But this also shows how things have changed.  King fought in a time where everyone was pretty much seeing the same things through media.  Compare to today, where there are so many sources of information that we can pick and choose and surround ourselves only with perspectives that support our own.

Someone objected to my content and got me banned.  Why didn’t they just un-friend me, or block me outright?  Why was it necessary to get Facebook to shut me down?  It’s because we are in a culture that says we have a right to never see things we don’t like.  Blame both sides of the political spectrum.  The right tries to force a repressive morality on everyone, while the left fights to rid discourse of any words or depictions that might hurt someone’s feelings.  So we are accustomed to the idea that we should never have to see anything objectionable.

Worse, we take the next step and decide that nobody else should see it either.  “I don’t like nudity, so you shouldn’t be able to see it either.”  Funny thing, there’s stuff on the internet, and even of Facebook itself, far more blatantly sexual than my content.  Go figure.

But that’s that.  I’ll live.  Beyond the initial irritation, I’m sure I’ll eventually come to appreciate all the spare time it frees up not reading up on what my friends are doing.  True, I just lost contact with a few people, and also lost the primary way I publicize this website.  But it’s not the end of the world.

But let me just end by saying this.  If you get kicked off of Facebook (which happens quite often), don’t be fooled by all the websites saying “Here’s all you have to do to get back on.”  I followed every channel, and, apart from a single message essentially saying they reviewed my case and determined I am “ineligible” to use Facebook and that the decision is final, I have received no response to my pathetic pleadings and promises to “be good.”  Once you’re out, you’re out.  It’s not like we pay to use the thing, so they have zero motivation to reinstate anyone.  Word to the wise.