There is a poignant scene in the last episode of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, where a young girl asks, after escaping to Canada, "Is this where we can wear whatever we want?" As a naturist, this scene had a particularly powerful impact on me. What people are or are not allowed to wear cuts at the... Continue Reading →
Please help, I would like to advertise my fantasy adventure novel, Ages of Aenya, but it won't let me get started because, for some reason, the book has been labeled as erotica. My book is NOT erotica! It has never been erotica. There is a lot more adult/erotic content in Game of Thrones and other... Continue Reading →
There is something wrong with the world today. I know you feel it, deep in your bones, and I feel it too. But maybe it's just me. I mean, how can you really ever know how good life could be? Or should be? Every civilization has had to deal with its share of problems. We... Continue Reading →
This is something I originally wrote for Facebook, but I feel it's relevant to post here as well. Dear Friends and Family, I do not know whether anyone will care to read this, as I haven't been using Facebook lately for personal reasons, but my heart is heavily burdened by everything that is going on... Continue Reading →
If there's one area in which I can agree with the KKK, the white race is going the way of the dodo. According to Neo-Nazi "literature," white people are like glasses of milk. Add a drop of Hershey's syrup to the mix, and BAM! you've got yourself chocolate people. Now supposing we could be certain... Continue Reading →
I am angry. And I am sad. Every time we have a mass murder in this country, I feel obligated to do something, to help in some way, if only just to add my voice to the chorus for change. I am deeply troubled, not just by this senseless loss of life, but by the utter... Continue Reading →
Whoo-boy Rarely do words fail me like this, but after finishing George Orwell’s 1984, I am utterly at a loss for what to say. Nothing I can put into words, other than the words Orwell uses himself, can accurately describe the depth of despair, the hopelessness, the utter nihilism bound in this... Continue Reading →
It seems to me that a lot of feminists just don’t know when to celebrate. It isn’t as if the world doesn’t still have a ways to go before we reach equality between the sexes, we most certainly do. But that doesn’t mean we cannot take note of small victories along the way. What is, at times, even more aggravating is when feminists try and turn positives into negatives.
Case in point, Wonder Woman, which just released this weekend, is a fantastic film with a fantastic star, Gal Gadot, directed by a female director, Patty Jenkins. It is the first female-led superhero film since 1984’s abysmal Supergirl, and the best reviewed DC film on Rotten Tomatoes at a whopping 94%. Audiences are loving it, as the movie has already raked in 100 million. Wonder Woman is all kinds of groundbreaking, but none of that seems to matter to CNN film critic Lewis Beale. Never mind that my two daughters, 7 and 12, were utterly ecstatic leaving the theater, or that I could see in their eyes that same sense of well, wonder, that I must have had at their age watching Christopher Reeve don the cape. For so-called feminists like Beale, Wonder Woman’s virtues are invalidated because Gadot is just too damn pretty, and she shows just a bit too much thigh. It’s at these moments that I wonder (no pun intended) whether people like Beale even understand what feminism is.
Now I have given a great deal of consideration to this notion that female heroes cannot be sexy, as I have struggled to reconcile my naturist ideals with feminism. And while my own heroine, Thelana, will most definitely never come near the status of icon that Wonder Woman embodies, it is worth noting that many of the same arguments in support of a thigh-exposing heroine can be made for my all-nude hero.
Thelana: The Nude Heroine
I can already hear the detractors, the angry feminists calling me out as a sexist. Their argument, I imagine, will go something like this,
Thelana is the lead heroine in Nick Alimonos’ fantasy epic, “Ages of Aenya,” and she has everything we love to see in a female character: strength, intelligence, and she can dish out punishment good as her male companion. She even passes the Bechdel test! So why am I up in arms about Thelana? Well, when it comes to hyper-sexualizing women, this author’s hit rock bottom. We’re not talking chainmail bikinis or skintight tights here either, because with this super hero, there is no costume. You read that right. She is utterly, unapologetically, naked. If “Aenya” was some kind of erotica, I might give it a pass. But no, this is serious fantasy, straight out of Westeros and Middle Earth. So, as a…
View original post 1,239 more words
"The Editor-in-Chief will see you now, Mr. Hovah." Jay straightened in his chair and got to his feet. He could feel the surge of excitement, tingling his extremities, energizing his limbs. Finally! The receptionist with the short brown hair and spectacles ushered him through the hall to the editor's office. In gold leaf lettering, a glass... Continue Reading →
