Nudes and Prudes?

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Originally uploaded by ronald_gainey.

One of those instances where traveling helps you reflect on your own home. I believe it was in Helsinki where we were observing yet another in a long line of nude statues, and it occurred to me to wonder: why are we (Americans) so (relatively) uptight about this? We are, after all, European in heritage, culturally, genetically, and otherwise. This is not any sort of value judgment per se, I'm just asking and have no clear answers. Europe seems to have nude statues everywhere. I guess the stock answer is the old "founder effect" of the Puritans and their extremely conservative outlook. I don't have anything better, offhand. It may merely be that between our founding and then the Victorian era, the greater part of our history has been dominated by those uptight values. Maybe in a few hundred more years, we'll accumulate some more libertine artifacts along the way. But then, Europe has passed through those very uptight cultural waves as well, yet managed to avoid destroying their more "liberal" cultural items during those phases. I guess they have a healthy respect for history. Destroy culture because you're feeling uptight, never! However, destroying culture by war, that's another matter altogether...