The bizarre attitudes that pervade British society regarding sex and nudity must be in the blood. I remember as a youngster trying to stay up to watch Barbarella (especially the opening sequence) while my gran was babysitting. Mum bursts in from Bingo and orders me to bed much to my disappointment. 'You're not watching that filth!' she shouted. A month or two later I am sat watching the Wicker Man with mum and dad in the room when Britt Ekland does her naked dance and not a word was spoken, despite my pyjama bottoms bulging alarmingly (I added the last bit for effect, in reality no one would have noticed any difference). Why? Did my bingo loving mum have a deep seated hatred for Roger Vadim?
As far as contextual nudity and sex, something Ofcom keep spouting on about and what is harmful to children. If as a 10 year old boy I decide to sneak downstairs and grab a cookie and a glass of milk while mum and dad are asleep, what is to stop me firing up the tv, film 4 and whoa.......Rocco Siffredi in Romance, Margot Stilley in 9 songs or even worse, Kathy Bates in About Schmidt, possibly the most disturbing nudity ever committed to screen. Hang on a minute though, this isn't that gratuitous babeshow stuff, you know the pussy slip stuff that gets in your brain and eats it from the inside, no, no, no this is contextual nudity! 'Son is that you downstairs?' 'Yeah dad.' 'You'd better not be watching the babeshows!' 'No dad, no, just Rocco with a spear poking some French girl!' 'Don't forget son, it's only a film, it's in context and in blighty we don't do that sort of thing! Bloody French!'
When I was 11 my best mate's dad worked at a printers and got free magazines to proof and print, I got the final version as a freebee. Practical Photography, Amateur Photographer and a real arty one just called Photography. Apart from porn mags, which we also passed around at this age, it was the most nudity I had ever seen.
It is quite pathetic with the technology available to kids today to get so hung up about the babeshows. The BBFC have shown common sense in recent years but Ofcom quite frankly are a bunch of dangerous, interfering arses who are only interested in empire building and self preservation.
As for me, after all these years of being exposed to excessive nudity, sex and very little of it in context, I have done ok and I am unaffected.
At this point my wife has asked me , in the interest of balance, to point out that although my early experience of the Wicker Man has not harmed me in any way, she is thoroughly sick of me dressing in pyjamas, wearing a policeman's helmet and shutting myself in the spare bedroom and refusing to come out until she has danced naked across the landing smacking her buttocks, the walls and the spare bedroom door! Don't judge me too harshly.