Public Nudity Isn’t Empowering

It finally happened — someone showed up to a red carpet completely naked.

Bianca Censori accompanied her husband, rapper Kanye “Ye” West, to the Grammys Sunday, where she dropped her enveloping fur coat to reveal — nothing. Or, more accurately, some kind of single-thread-count bastardization of a tube sock.

Censori did a couple of spins before the couple exited the event, leaving audiences agape.

I am not surprised we have finally hit this ignominious milestone. I don’t know when you last tuned in to an award show or, say, an opening ceremony, but the dress code generally demands indecent exposure.

I was surprised, however, to see the rage and concern Censori’s peep show inspired from those who regularly celebrate nudity as empowering for women. Many even speculated West had forced her to perform the “humiliating” stunt.

What’s the difference between Censori’s outfit and some of her compatriots’? USA Today tries to boil it down to choice. For instance, the outlet contends, Rose McGowan wore a see-through dress to the Met Gala in 1998 to “reclaim a sense of agency over her body after she was assaulted.”

Here’s the problem: there’s no evidence Censori wore anything against her will. Had her dress been just an inch longer, or slightly less transparent, I suspect no one would have raised such an allegation. She would have been just another in a long line of women almost — but not quite — exposing their bodies on television.

Censori’s display was “humiliating” only because she bared it all, crossing the final, unspoken line separating decency from indecency.

I don’t think people that claim public nudity can empower women like acknowledging they even have a line. They fancy themselves more free-thinking than us prudish Evangelicals, and more accepting of women’s sexual expression.

But, like a vestigial limb, these same people still experience moral outrage when someone crosses their far-flung line of public indecency.  

As a woman, speaking to other women and parents of women, I want to emphasize that public nudity is always demeaning — even when a woman chooses it herself.

Sin twisted relationships between men and women. For almost as long as these relationships have been corrupted, women’s bodies have been used as objects and currency. That context isn’t relegated to history. Women are still vulnerable to objectification today, in part, because of men’s physical strength and because the power of human sexuality.

God showed us the power of the human body directly after the Fall, when He provided Adam and Eve clothing. God did not do this because He was ashamed of the bodies He had created, but because He knew that, in a sinful world, they should only be shared within the intimate and protective bonds of marriage.

Human sexuality is a sacred and powerful thing. But now, more than ever, women can choose to protect themselves from being objectified. One way we can do this is by wearing appropriate clothing that honors our bodies.

Your child may not be bearing it all on the red carpet, but I promise all young women need to internalize this lesson. No matter what TikTok, celebrity culture, clothing store catalogues, or anyone else tells them, stripping down is never in their best interests.