In the Netflix series, Marco Polo, set in the court of Genghis Khan, there is a wonderful little fight scene showing a strong Chinese woman despatching three soldiers. It is beautiful for me in that it is mostly uninhibited in its depiction of nudity – not in a salacious way, but in a rather dance-like but down to earth way. This is the link: (it wouldn’t embed or whatever, because of the nudity…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw2KMmWK7AI
I feel that the acceptance of the naked body as being natural and beautiful that we espoused from the late 60’s into the 70’s and early 80’s (the Woodstock generation) has been undermined and reversed, such that there is a prudery now that is maybe even worse than that of the 50’s that we sought to overthrow.
(Although, interestingly, my father was also very uninhibited about nakedness – and he was very much in his prime in the 50’s…in the 60’s, we would change, for swimming or sport, in shared changing rooms, and everyone would be quite uninhibited, whereas now, there seems to be a shyness between men and boys – I don’t know what happens in women’s changing rooms! – which was never there in the 60’s in my view.)
Of course, you will also know (if you read my blog!) that Victoria Bateman has written and lived a superb critique of ‘female modesty’ which extends to the dawn of human time, specifically about female modesty as a tool of the patriarchy.