FEMALE NUDITY: HOW THE EXPERTS SEE IT

Every wave of feminism has foundered on the question of dress reform. I suppose it is asking too much of women to give up their chief outward expression of the feminine difference, their continuing reassurance to men and to themselves that a male is a male because a female dresses and looks and acts like another sort of creature.

--Susan Brownmiller, “Femininity”

It was 1970 when author Susan Brownmiller met her archenemy face to face on national TV.

“I had this famous confrontation with Hugh Hefner on the old ‘Dick Cavett Show,’ ” she said. “I remember telling him I’d know we had equality (with men) when he’d wear a cottontail on his rear end.”

It hasn’t happened. If anything, the gap between female nudity and male cover-up in the nation’s skin magazines has only widened in the ensuing 16 years.

Women dress up--and strip for the camera--out of the same deep need, theorized Brownmiller.

“That’s because the mission of femininity is to be liked, and one of the things women do to be liked is to dress up,” Brownmiller said. “They think it’s cute because some men think it’s so adorable.

“A woman can’t afford not to dress up in our culture . . . and it’s not so healthy. As a consumer, it might be fun, but ultimately it’s very damaging.”

Brownmiller’s own epiphany over just how damaging and deep-seated is the dress-up and take-it-off syndrome came several years ago when Playboy turned its cameras on the Ivy League women’s colleges. Brownmiller was on campus when a contingent of Barnard College students demonstrated against Playboy. At the same time, a second group of women demonstrated for the right to pose nude.

“They said they had the right to be sexy too,” Brownmiller said. “It is more important than their own self-respect because somehow Hugh Hefner has been able to convince them that dressing like bunnies or posing naked is how sexiness is measured in this culture.”

All that is proved is the desperate need women have to be liked, Brownmiller said.

“But you can’t blame them for not knowing any better, because there are so many messages in the culture that this is the sign of a sexy woman. Women are turned into narcissists.

“It seems to me so clear, though, that this narcissism is forced on them.”

“On one level, it’s sort of controlled streaking,” says Dr. David Viscott, a professional psychologist, author and host of an afternoon radio call-in program heard over KABC-AM (790).

“When men do their beefcake for Playgirl, they’re showing off their vitality and good looks,” he said. “When women pose for Playboy, they’re showing that they’re un-old-fashioned. Is that a word? Prudish. They’re showing they’re not prudish.”

On another level, though, the existence of a double standard as manifested in the Playboy/Playgirl layouts is far more insidious, Viscott says.

“Women obviously feel they have less to lose because they’ll never make it to the top anyway,” he said. “That’s what’s wrong with our society. Sexism represents the ultimate damage because it destroys the victims’ belief in their right to have the very thing they protest that they want.

“Women already know that they can’t have it, so they give up before they even begin. They say: ‘Why not pose nude? It doesn’t make any difference anyway.’ ”

Viscott is not alone in lightly shrugging off both Playboy and Playgirl for appealing to the voyeur in everyone while, at the same time, attacking both magazines for pandering to male and female insecurities.

“It is deplorable in work situations where people should be judged on their performance and not their looks,” said Dr. Toni Grant, the 10-year KABC veteran whom Viscott replaced last November.

Grant, who will begin hosting a similar call-in program for the Mutual Network on April 14 (to be heard locally noon-2 p.m. on KFI-AM), does risk the wrath of feminists in supporting a double standard on the magazine stand.

“The double standard is a catch phrase that people use that has a great deal of negativity attached to it, but it is accurate and not necessarily bad sexually and in a personal sense,” she said.

“I mean, the double standard didn’t evolve because men wanted to be mean to women. Women are prettier to look at than men. We have publications like Playgirl, but they don’t sell to the degree of Playboy for the simple reason that women are not visually oriented the way that men are. Women are aurally oriented.”

Women like to hear what men like to see, Grant says.

“Women are revered for their beauty,” she concluded. “Men are revered for their power.”

“There is a long tradition of women posing in the nude,” said Elinor Linz, author of “The Feminization of America.” “But how many nudes of men do you see in the art museums? Not very many.” The reverse was true in ancient Greece, she said.

“Among the Greeks, the body and mind were one. If you celebrated one, you celebrated the other,” she said.

Things began to go awry, she theorized, when men began equating disrobing with a threat to their power and to their masculinity.

“One very simple reason women will pose (in the nude) and men won’t is that they (women) are used to it,” Lenz said. “They go to male doctors and undress all the time. I’ve heard from many men who tell me they find it very difficult to go to a woman doctor, even though a woman is often far more empathetic.”

Far from taking a militant stance against Playboy, Penthouse or even Playgirl, Lenz is tolerant, even somewhat sympathetic of the graphic exploitation in skin magazines. They are dinosaurs and their days are numbered, she said with undisguised optimism.

“They thrive because there are still men who are not sure of themselves, and there are a lot of women who are afraid and want to be protected and pampered. There are a lot of people of both sexes who are simply afraid of freedom, especially in the upper and middle classes.”

Brownmiller quit shaving her legs and began wearing trousers years ago. It was no protest. It just seemed practical and comfortable. Dressing as one wishes when one wishes should be a right enjoyed by everyone--men and women.

Sometimes these days, she feels as though she’s fighting a losing battle, however.

“My position is a minority position even in the feminist movement. Remember a couple of years ago when Gloria Steinem posed in the bathtub for People magazine? I guess she felt like, ‘Damn it! I can still look good in one of these cheesecake poses.’ Even she can’t resist it. So how can you blame Vanessa Williams (the former Miss America, who lost her crown after appearing nude in Penthouse magazine)?”

And how, after all, can the 17 women of Playboy’s “Radio Visions” pictorial bear any blame?

KFSD’s Erin Clark likes dressing up in pastels and pinks. She was raised in a family that believed in God, sports for the boy children and home economics for the girl children.

The walls of Clark’s San Diego office next to the KFSD reception area are papered with hunk shots of Tom Selleck. A decorative miniature license plate on her desk advises “Think Fun,” and a paperweight next to it tells all who enter that “I Love All Men.”

But that’s not why she straddled a piano bench next to a baby grand and posed nude for Playboy. She did it for much the same initial reasons that women tend to give when they shed their bras and briefs for the granddaddy of American men’s skin magazines.

She did it, she says, because fellow employees--male employees--dared her.

“Men are old-fashioned. You have to agree,” she said with a nervous laugh.

“If men think that’s how women really look, well . . . they’re crazy. We just don’t look that way. I’m not saying there was any airbrushing or touching up or anything. There wasn’t. But I know how I look and . . . well, I’m sorry, but there’s just not that many out there who are that perfect.”

Despite being resigned over her long-pitched battle with the Playboy/Playgirl vision of American men and women, Brownmiller continues to give a great deal of thought to the needs of America’s Erin Clarks, their perplexing drive to be loved and admired and ogled.

“I know all the arguments. Women say life is grim enough. At least they can be considered sexually attractive.

“There’s something in this country that blends this fear about sexual identity with the desperation for fame and notoriety. A kind of lust for attention.

“I think if you scrape beneath the surface, though, you find a lot of fear about sexual identity. And that’s so ridiculous because you can’t take someone’s gender away from them.”