Burning Man. The Oregon Country Fair. The Solstice Cyclists. What do these events have in common? A marked lack of shame in all of their participants.
Shame. What does it do? For some people it keeps their clothes on. But in recent decades this age-old instinct has been ditched. Apparently, in the ’60s and ’70s, hippies started doing drugs, freeing their minds, getting primal and going “organic,” which inevitably led to public nudity.
Oregon’s history as a counterculture haven has designated it a cesspool of nude liberation and the state’s First Amendment law has even gone so far as to protect these brazen types.
But where’s convention in all this? Where are those staples, those societal pillars that we can hold on to as finite, moral and trustworthy?
Some might say they’ve vanished.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Oregon Constitution protects individuals’ right to the “free expression of opinion” — this encompasses public nudity (without the intent to arouse) and has been held up by state and appellate courts. However, as of late, certain cities have been opting toward a more conservative attitude. Public nudity was banned in Ashland in January. The ACLU went berserk, but no further discussion occurred.
Public nudity has been banned in Portland since 1985 when the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld the city’s ruling; however, the court also cited that as a form of expression — for instance in the case of protesting or rallying — it’s still a protected right.  So, where does this leave us? We’re stranded, attempting a cost benefit analysis of public “expression” and all the ambiguity behind the word.
The shroud of gray that surrounds the act of expression delves much further than mere naturism. We assume that by “expression,” the law intends to address political expression, the most protected form of speech in the U.S. However, limiting ourselves to assumption is for those of the derriere strain. I express myself every day by what shoes I put on (political statements via Toms), what types of food I buy (Sustainable agriculture? Fair trade?), and the books I choose to read for class.
Expression can manifest itself in anything, and if it ostensibly doesn’t, then you can sure as hell find a way to manipulate words to make it seem so. Oregon law is kind of double-edged on this matter. In one sense it provides the most protection of free speech of almost anywhere in the world, and in another, it leaves citizens confused as to what constitutes the expression protected under the law.
A much more cohesive argument is put forth by such campaigns and activist groups as The Freedom to Be Yourself campaign, a nudist activism group headed by Vincent Bethell. The guy sounds like a real asshole (he’s British) when he claims that his “earliest memories are regarding (his) deep self-awareness,” but disregarding his egotistical feelings, he stands behind something that Oregonian nudists (and Oreganic hipsters) feel strongly about. Self-expression here is what matters most. Yet, Bethell’s ideology couples that with an overarching goal of what he terms humanization.
“My goal is to inspire everybody, the entire human race, regarding a celebration of our human racial identity,” he wrote on his blog. “This is why I seek skin freedom.”
The freedom to be naked if you want to be.
Freedom means different things at different times. The most acute and jarring sense of the word can be felt when it’s being repressed. That’s when freedom blares out. The freedom to be naked in Oregon is the most liberal, by modern measures, but that’s no excuse to be idle, because it’s not liberal enough.
Ashland is home to tweakers, hippies and conservative assholes — but no naked people. That’s good because everyone should be entrusting their livelihood, their dignity and their fortitude to the fabrics and materials that clothe them, right? I think the fat cats down in Ashland would probably like a nice tunic or frock to go along with their well-endowed, Victorian sense of shame.
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