God, Nudity and the Iowa Pork Queen

Ever since God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, nudity has won mixed reviews.

Some have gloried in the naked human form, and others have considered its public display as tantamount to fornicating with the devil.

In the biblical story, Adam and his gal pal, to give it a contemporary spin, were naked but unaware of it until a snake tempted them with an apple.

God had told them specifically to leave the apples alone, and when they took the first bite there was hell to pay. Sin was off and running.

That’s a simplified version of what appears in the Old Testament, but since I’m writing for newspaper readers and not fourth-year seminarians, it’ll do.

To cut to the chase, God was so p.o.’d at Adam and Eve for partaking of the forbidden fruit that he made them aware of their own nakedness and, well, the rest is Rubens, Botticelli, Playboy magazine and sex on the Internet.

I mention all this by way of approaching, however cautiously, the subject of public nudity and what eventually happens to those who practice it.

The nudity I saw was in a Moorpark Community College production of the play “Equus,” which features a brief flash of two students in the raw.

The people I spoke with about nudity were former Playboy centerfolds who, instead of being condemned to hell for baring their bods, have turned out to be nurses, teachers, librarians and others of a less than iniquitous nature.

Not one of them, to the best of my knowledge, has become either a serial killer or a close friend of Bill Clinton.

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My recent interest in unclothed people began when, prior to the play, I heard that the chairman of the Ventura County Community College District board of trustees was objecting to a scene of two actors in the buff.

Norm Nagel, a God-fearing, churchgoing man who happens to be up for reelection, wanted them to wear body stockings, feeling that a college campus probably isn’t the place to display one’s genitalia on stage.

Les Wieder, who is chairman of Moorpark’s Performing Arts Department, went, as they say, ballistic at the very idea of censorship. He argued that the author of the play, Peter Shaffer, was insisting upon nudity and that he, as the play’s director, knew how to handle it.

Wieder is a talented playwright who does not equate nudity with obscenity. While I didn’t ask him specifically, I’m sure he would agree with satirist Tom Lehrer, who once sang that, “Filth, I’m pleased to say, is in the eyes of the beholder.”

Both the district chancellor and college president agreed with Wieder, and the play is being performed as Shaffer, if not God or Norm Nagel, intended.

It’s a superb production, and the brief nudity has so far not caused anyone in the audience to engage in evil, disgusting behavior.

Anyhow, considering that “Equus” is about a kid in love with a horse, a little bare behind isn’t all that big a deal.

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So what happens to people who appear in puris naturalibus? I asked that of Playboy’s Miss September ‘63, Victoria Carbe Valentino. She’s founder and editor of “Centerfold Sweethearts,” a publication dedicated to the women who have flung themselves naked across two pages of the magazine.

A demure 55, Valentino appears more like a kindergarten teacher than anyone’s Playmate, although she proved again in a recent centerfolds-revisited section of the magazine that the years . . . how can I put this? . . . have been kind. Nothing seems to sag.

A nurse and certified grief counselor, Valentino is on a crusade to prove that centerfolds are not bimbos and that many have gone on to careers having nothing to do with the quality of their erogenous zones.

In support of this, Playboy publicist Bill Farley points out that prospective centerfolds are carefully screened. “We’re looking for Iowa Pork Queens,” he said, “not nude dancers.”

I’m not sure that Marilyn Monroe, the first centerfold, fit anyone’s notion of a pork queen, but to each his interpretation of the girl next door.

It might comfort Norm Nagel, a dentist, to thus learn that public nudity does not necessarily result in an unbridled stampede to carnality. Looking into mouths all day may have understandably distorted his perspective. Hopefully, this will better his attitude toward the naked human body.

If not, I can always put him together with Miss September ‘63, who has a thing or two to say about Eve’s more obvious assets.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com