This 1861 statue is in England is the oldest known statue of the most famous nude.
This is what a British group sang of her in 1966:
Seventeen, a beauty queen
She made a ride that caused a scene
In the town
Her long blonde hair
Hangin’ down around her knees
All the cats who dig striptease
Prayin’ for a little breeze
Her long blonde hair
Falling down across her arms
Hiding all the lady’s charms
Lady Godiva
It was a bigger hit here then there, and I understand someone remade it in 2012. I don’t think it could be remade today. Why? Because of the young woman in the grocery store next to me looking at toothpaste.
It was kind of like “The Streak” and I was Ethel. I’m standing there looking for a particular toothpaste when the aforementioned woman sidled up beside me. Startled, a bit, I turned to look and there was a 20-something woman with a baby attached to her teat. You could not see the aforesaid at all but all of her left breast was visible.
She asked, not in belittling way but sort of in a testing manner, “Does this make you uncomfortable?” I wanted to say, “No, I shop for toothpaste often.” I wanted to say, “Heck no, I love when a woman exposes herself.” But I didn’t. I said, “I guess it does.” She then explained, “Well that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it so my young boy, and others too, would stop thinking of a woman’s breast in sexual terms.” I wanted to repeat Luther’s response to forced celibacy: that’s like putting paper next to fire and commanding (in the case teaching) the paper not to burn.
It’s even more foolhardy than that. I wondered: did this woman understand that the genesis of the transgender movement and the homosexual movement is de-sexualizing a woman’s body to a man, especially to a young man?
The issue is not what this young mother wishes to do in her own home, but why does she wish to do this in public? NOT nurse but do so a la Lady Godiva. I guess she answered that by the desexualizing thing. But what are we to do with the wisest man in the world advising a young man to be satisfied by his wife’s breasts (Pr. 5:18-19)? Why does the lover in Song of Solomon tell his beloved, “Your two breasts are like two fawns” (S.S. 4:5) and, “Your breasts are like bunches of grapes (S.S. 7:7) if God did not give breasts to women not only for nursing but attracting? What about a person’s nakedness being reserved for spouses in particular in Leviticus 18? I know; I know that’s part of the ceremonial law that applied only to Israel in the Old Testament. But doesn’t it at least mean that nakedness is not a neutral thing?
I’m betting no one who defends the practice of public nursing with exposed breast has ever got in a discussion with a nudist. He, you see, knows better than God. Clothing is not necessary for fallen man (More about that below.). It is for some men, but not for him. He can handle nudity. You not being able to just shows you how provincial, uneducated, maybe even unbelieving you are. Here’s how I address the problem in A Light Unto My Path.
“Remember God said, ‘For when you eat of it you will surely die.’ Right then and there they were dead to all that was good, all that was God. Where their sexuality had previously been holy, pure, chaste, and totally under their control it now was perverted and not in their control. Hence the fig leaves.
“’So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.’ This was no answer. It dealt with sin only outwardly. Also what sort of a covering was a fig leaf? This has to be the origin of the saying, ‘Not worth a fig’. God will replace those fig leaves with a much more durable animal skin, but this won’t be the answer either. The answer will be the promise of the Seed of the Women who by having His heel bruised [while being so human that he will need nursing at his mother’s breast.] will crush the head of the serpent.
“It’s good to point out that nudist colonies or communes that think they have transcended the need for clothing are fooling themselves. You are not more advanced if you think men and women can go without clothing around each other; you are ‘more’ fallen. God didn’t find the fig leaf covered Adam and Eve and say, “You don’t have need of clothing.” No, He made them better, more complete coverings” (19-20).
Back to Genesis. Chapter 3:7 says that fallen man and woman sewed fig leaves together and made themselves “loin coverings” (NASB 77), “loincloths” (ESV), “coverings for their waste” (EHV). The Hebrew is ḥăḡôr, masculine, girdle, waist cloth. And that was good enough for fallen Adam. Most men too. Even before the onset of full nudity in strip clubs, topless, or a wet-t-shirt, was enough to pack men in. But bare-breasted women are not okay with God in public. When He arrives on the scene, He, God Himself, made kutōneṯ. This is feminine noun. It’s for her sake that God makes them a long shirt-like garment.
Well, my young 20-something toothpaste shopping friend, wasn’t bare-breasted. Her nipple was covered, only her breast exposed. Back in the day, in some venues, women waiting table or dancing had to have their nipples covered. Her bottom was a bikini – not a thong, and stars or some other design covered her nipples. Was that okay? That, even then, was a ‘good’ moneymaking business. There’s two things going on. Fallen men wanting as much bare nakedness as they can get, and Christian spouses sharing fully that with each other but NO others.
You see the fallen man behind the Lady Godiva’s nakedness. That lustful leer is evident in the song Lady Godiva, but listen to the rest of the lyrics and see where her willingness to expose eventually leads her. It’s a Greek Tragedy. And like the alleged story of the 11th century Lady Godiva, it is men who goad her to expose herself ever more.
And Proverbs 5:15-19 deals with a husband not wanting to share his wife’s sexuality with others. “Drink water from your own cistern. Drink running water from your own well. 16 Why should the water from your springs flow out into the street, your streams of water into the public squares? 17 They should be yours, yours alone. They are not for strangers to share with you. 18 Let your fountain be blessed. Obtain your joy from the wife you married in your youth, 19 who is a loving doe and a graceful deer. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Always be intoxicated with her love.”
Watch the Seinfeld episode where George leers at the president of NBC’s buxom daughter and to save the day the latter is tricked into leering at Elaine’s cleavage as she leans over to “borrow” ketchup. The moral of the story: is put paper next to fire and burn baby burn is the outcome no matter how much you want it not to be.
