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In This Issue

• Celebrate Our Appendix!
• Alternative Motherhood
• Gossip and Nudity: Interview with the Gossip
• Letters to the Feditors
• The Colombia Spectador
• Yowie! How the Brazilians do bikini wax
• Making Waves
• Am I Naked or Nude?
• Marauding Interviewer: Dwarves Fascinated by Own Pants
• Big Nudity Exam
• Point – Counterpoint
• ‘Is It Cold In Here?’
• News Briefs
• News Quiz: Do you know about the important events going on in your world?
• Eight Situations In Which I Am Naked
• Get Your Hands Off Me You Damn, Dirty Apes
• Naked Haikus
• Naked Horoscopes
• This is Not a Naked Santa
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 16.8

Stephen Grant

Smile, and the whole world smiles with you.

Fed focus groups show that the average reader considers the words naked and nude synonymous and is not the least bit amused when paid for his/her time in shoe laces. The former is a common fallacy that must be corrected. Despite the two words sharing the same root, nog, they have distinct origins and meanings.

"Naked" derives from the Greeks and their word, gymnasium. As we all know, the Greeks were big on taking off their clothes in the gymnasium, and then debating love while mud wrestling. These were all normal everyday activities, and henceforth, naked has taken on the meaning of being without one's clothes under average circumstances. Therefore, when people are not clothed, they are naked. Naked they are bom; naked they shower; and, if they're lucky, naked they will die.

Nude, on the other, hand, is not of Greek origin, but comes from our buddies, the Latins (those lovable scamps near Latvia, in the former Uzbekistan). Settling in the East, isolated from the barbarous Europeans, the Latins were a peaceful and intelligent people, not at all jealous of Western culture. Accordingly, they studied the human body in detail, and used the word denude to describe it. Denude, in the parlance of the time, meant, "dude, I just saw a chick with no clothes and it's considered cultural. I love this town."

Thus, thanks to the Latins, when you're in the undressed, there may be cultural aspects to your bearing it all that qualifies you as nude. Nowadays, it is far less likely to be nude than naked (culture is quickly succumbing to Ebola), but as I write this article sans clothing, I am most definitely in the nude. And if you were to go to the Met and remove your clothing, much like the art itself, you'd be in the nude.

The origins of "naked" and "nude" show how two different cultures can interpret seeing another's unmentionables. The two term foundation does not, however, exclude new forms from further clarifying the natural state. For instance, there is a term for an ultra form of naked that has come to be commonly accepted: buck naked. This term starts with "naked" but elevates it with copious amounts of gusto.

Spring Break provides a perfect example. The upstanding young women who participate in the wet T-shirt contest and eventually remove all of their clothing are arguably naked. The two women who decide to express their love for each other on stage, on the other hand, are buck naked. They have gone beyond the call of duty for naked. They transcend naked. Buck naked is a very special term for those very special ladies.

As times are now changing and societal standards are in flux, a significant portion of people who are without clothing do not always perform simply one activity, a trend which has brought with it a term of its own. These multi-taskers are not naked, yet they are not nude. Thanks to a little fusion and a lot of Internet forwards, they are now nekkid. For example, if we were to add an X-factor to my writing this article in the nude, such as taking a sip from a forty and spilling one for my homies, I would no longer be in the nude, but nekkid. Again, if I were in the nude at the Guggenheim, but I was urinating on the Armani exhibit, I would qualify as nekkid. To be nekkid is to add a dash of class and a sprinkle of trash to the recipe for buck naked.

As winter turns to spring and the birds begin to tweet what could make for acceptable porno music in a pinch, hoards of college students will venture out of doors whilst out of drawers. One can only hope that the masses realize the folly of describing at a whim, for as we now know, there are subtle, but essential differences. Now, when that guy streaks across South Lawn belting out the Gettysburg Address, and solving a Rubix cube, you'll have, the knowledge base to determine whether he is buck naked, nekkid, or possibly an 'unclassifiable George Rupp bidding Alma Mater his unforgettable farewell.