New Year's Eve 2023

New Year's Eve

It's New Year's Eve.  Time for that traditional ...

Champagne cocktail.

How do you make a memorable champagne cocktail?  Easy.  Start with some champagne.

Add a cock ...

and some tail.

Agitate vigorously until the pressure is suddenly released.

Happy New Year!

(Thanks to Vellohomo for this photo)

Performers - Part 45

 Nature Danger Gang

Nature Danger Gang is a Japanese band that came on the scene in 2014.  Though the band was mixed-sex, they were known for nudity of some of the male band members during performances.  To put it another way, some of the male members showed their male members.

Male band members also were known for crowd surfing (above).

And if they weren't nude when they dived into the crowd, the crowd quickly stripped them.

This band member isn't quite nude – his penis is wrapped like a Christmas present.  This was in 2014, when they may not have been sure how much nudity they could get away with.

Later, that small degree of modesty was abandoned.

Here's another band member crowd surfing naked.

Two band members singing naked.

And a naked pile-up on the floor.

Here are two of the band members offstage.  I don't know what that means, but I can guess.

We end with a clip from a performance at Scum Park in 2017, showing a band member crowd surfing.  The crowd quickly strips off his shorts, and he goes back onto the stage naked.

And in case you missed it, while he was crowd surfing, a fan grabbed his penis and licked his balls.  I've zoomed in on the action above.

Nature Danger Gang broke up in 2017, but the band members have apparently reunited for a few special-occasion concerts since then.

Protests - Part 46

 Reef Beach

Reef Beach is a beach in Manly, Australia, a suburb of Sydney.  On Oct. 19, 1976, the government announced that nude bathing would be permitted at Reef Beach and Lady Jane Beach.  Local residents immediately protested, despite Reef Beach being secluded and difficult to access.  Above, a protest rally against the nude bathers on Oct. 31, 1976.

Another view of the protest against nude bathing on Oct. 31, 1976.

On Nov. 16, another anti-nude beach protest occurred.  This video clip starts with a calm and reasoned statement by Tom Donnelly, spokesman for the nude bathers.  Then we get a statement from an anti-nude beach protester: "Why don't they go somewhere else?"

The beach continued to be a nude beach for the next two decades.  Above, beach-goers queue for ice cream in 1985.

But the issue continued to simmer.  This 1987 photo was labeled "Local alderman says Manly council has been pretty limp on this."  Of course, the way he's facing, we can't see whether he's limp or not.

Then the Manly Council banned nude bathing beginning in February 1993.  That resulted in another round of protests, from the nudists this time.  Above, protesting nudists on Feb 2, 1993.

More protesting nudists on Feb. 6, 1993.  The issue then got dragged into the courts, because it was not clear that the town of Manly had jurisdiction to ban nude bathing, since the beach was controlled by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Eventually the Environment Minister announced that there would be four nude beaches in New South Wales, but Reef Beach was not one of them.

So, where does that leave the guy with the tattoo above?

Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 25

 Ivy League Posture Photos

Yale started taking nude photos of incoming freshmen in 1919 as part of a program to detect and correct posture problems.  The Yale photos have erroneously been associated with William Sheldon, a psychologist at Harvard and author of Nazi-like eugenic theories who used Harvard nude posture photos to illustrate his theory of somatypes.  But, as far as I can tell, the Yale photos are not connected to Sheldon's work.

Here are six more posture photos taken at Yale that I had the opportunity to acquire.  For privacy reasons, I redact the names of men who might still be alive.  All of these men have passed away, so their names are not redacted.

This is Yale freshman Robert Irving Lyman on Oct. 4, 1939.

Before 1952, the Yale posture photos showed a side view of the student.  After 1952, a different apparatus was used, providing posture photos showing a front, rear, side and top view.

This is Yale freshman Donald William Maclean on Oct. 4, 1939.

Note the strange pins stuck to each student's back and chest.  The pins were stuck on at specific points for later posture analysis.  Supposedly, by examining the angles formed by connecting the points where the pins touched the body, certain posture problems could be detected.

This is Yale freshman Allen Louis Solomon on Oct.. 2, 1939.

The photos were then analyzed.  If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions.

This is Yale freshman Stuart Holmes Johnson, Jr. on Oct. 2, 1941.

The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium.  Nobody outside this staff saw the photos, and the photos were not published for other students to see.

This is Yale freshman Gerhard Emmanuel Lenski, Jr. on Oct. 8, 1941.

After the photos were used, they were filed away.  The posture photo program was discontinued in the 1960s, and later, most of the photos were burned.  However, some of the photos escaped burning, including the photos that I have been showing in this series.

This is Yale freshman Robert Elliot Post on Oct. 3, 1941.

*        *        *

Note: some of my followers have questioned the propriety of publishing these photos.  If you think I should not publish them, please don't comment to that effect.  Too much time and space has been taken up on the subject.  We can agree to disagree.  If you don't like it, go to some other blog.  Here is my position:

1. Were these photos an invasion of privacy for the students?  By today's standards, yes.  By the standards of the day, not so much.  In that era, guys were routinely naked around each other in locker rooms and in swimming pools when women weren't present.  Being asked to strip and even being photographed naked as part of a posture examination would not seem too outrageous.

2. To protect the privacy of the students, I redact the names of students who may still be alive.  I only publish the names of students who have died.  Legally, the right to privacy does not extend beyond death, i.e. it does not extend to spouses, children, grandchildren, etc. of the deceased person.

3. In my opinion, publishing these photos is similar to publishing nude photos of athletes and soldiers taken by LIFE magazine photographers.  At the time, the understanding of the photo subjects was that photos with frontal nudity would not be published in the magazine (and they never were), but the LIFE photo archive containing those photos is now publicly available online, and nobody seems to be complaining about it.

4. I consider these photos to be a historical record of the time.  Almost all of the Ivy League posture photos were burned when their existence became widely known.  In my opinion, that was akin to book-burning of books that someone claimed were obscene.  These photos are not obscene.  They should be celebrated, not hidden away.

The Naked Farmer - Part 22

 State of Nature

We continue our series of photos posted by the Naked Farmer, Ben Brooksby, a young Australian farmer who takes and posts photos of naked Australian farmers on social media sites.  The naked photos are to get people's attention, and his message is to encourage people with mental health issues like suicidal thoughts to talk about it with someone and not to hide it away.  Ben himself had suffered from panic attacks in school.

Farmers send Ben naked photos of themselves from all over Australia.  I've been posting these photos grouped by the Australian state they're from, but today's photos didn't give the location.  So, I'm just going to say that these guys are in a state of nature.

The photo above was labeled "Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong," the beginning of the song "Waltzing Matilda."  It certainly gives us a new image for that song.

This one was called "Fat buddies on a fishing trip."

And speaking of fishing, this one tells us "Life's stress fades away."

Four farmers survey their greenhouse.

This one is called "Happy Straya Day."

This one was labeled "It's not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."

Less philosophical, here's Richie and a sheep.  But Richie still found a way to enjoy a glass of wine.

And this one is labeled "Save water – drink beer."

This guy has a beautiful view, and so do we.

Here's a farmer tending to his windmill ...

and, doffing his hat, he provides another view for us.

We end with a group of farmers at sunset.  Nobody can say these guys aren't willing to lend a hand.

Vintage Athletes - Part 49

 Boxing Day

In Britain and some Commonwealth countries, the day after Christmas is known as Boxing Day, much to the bemusement of Americans who imagine a holiday devoted to boxing matches.  Actually, the name originated from the custom of giving a "Christmas box" of money or small gifts to servants and tradesmen on the day after Christmas.  Nowadays, it's another shopping holiday.

But I celebrate Boxing Day with photos of naked pugilists.  Last year I featured some boxing greats, including Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Mike Tyson, and Cassius Clay, who later became Muhammad Ali.  You can see that post here:

https://unashamedmale.blogspot.com/2022/12/boxing-day-2022.html

Today we look at some vintage boxers.

We start with the photo above by artist Thomas Eakins called James Wright and George Reynolds Nude, Boxing, 1886-1888.  There's a fascinating story behind this photo.  Eakins was the director of the art school at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  In January, 1886, Eakins had a male model remove his loincloth during an anatomy lecture with female students present.  The incident ignited a controversy.  Eakins protested that in the art world, nudity was not impropriety, but he was forced to resign.

All fifty-five of Eakins' male students and eighteen of the thirty female students threatened to resign if Eakins was not reinstated, and when he wasn't, sixteen of the male students did resign and formed their own art school, the Art Students' League, for Eakins to teach them.  Describing the school's purpose, Eakins said "The basis of study is the nude human figure."  Eakins taught them without pay.

The photograph above was taken in the studio of the Art Students' League, and the models, James Wright and George Reynolds, were among the 16 students who founded the school.

The gif above is from plate 335, called Boxing with Gloves, in Eadweard Muybridge's 1887 book Animal Locomotion.   The models are #52 and 53.  Model 52 was identified as an instructor at the Fencing and Sparring Club.

We've previously seen this photo of American boxer Billie Papke weighing in for a fight in France in 1912.  Papke was the world middleweight champion in 1908.

This 1930 photo by German photographer Gerhard Riebicke looks posed, not like a real fight.  Riebicke was an important photographer of the German Freikörperkultur (FKK) movement, which advocated nudity in the open air.  The FKK movement was popular in the 1920s and early 1930s until the Nazis banned it when they came into power in 1933.

German boxer Hein Müller won the European heavyweight title in 1930.  Photo c. 1929 by Hans Robertson.

Here's American boxer Henry Armstrong weighing in for a fight with Enrico Venturi in 1938 in Madison Square Garden.  This photo by LIFE photographer Carl Mydans was published in the Jan. 31, 1938 issue of LIFE.  In those days, even family magazines like LIFE were not prudish about rear nudity, although they did not show frontal nudity.

A photo from the same 1938 photo session by Carl Mydans shows Henry Armstrong getting rubbed down.  This photo was not published in LIFE.

Senegalese-French boxer Assane Diouf competed from 1935 to 1947.

Dutch boxer Luc Van Dam in the shower in 1949.  He held the Dutch middleweight title in the 1940s.

We end with boxers John Conteh (left) and Bunny Johnson (right) with manager George Francis (center) at Highgate Pond, Hampstead Heath, London, 1974.  Conteh held the WBC light-heavyweight title from 1974 to 1977, and Johnson was the British heavyweight champion in 1975.  Outdoors in a public park in broad daylight, these were unashamed males.