Naked is normal for ‘Playboy’ – as it was for Neanderthals

Nudity is back.

Playboy’s chief creative officer – Cooper Hefner, scion of the septuagenarian suzerain, Hugh – has reversed the company’s decision to ban the boob from its magazine. This isn’t just an editorial judgment, though. It’s a social mission, a crusade to free us all from the tiresome business of getting dressed: #NakedIsNormal,

Playboy says. Now, call me a cynic, but this commitment to liberating us from the tyrannical convention of clothing seems a tad convenient for an empire that has made millions from the unclad female form.

Still, if there’s one thing stronger than my instinct to scoff it’s my desire for sleep. So the junior Hefner’s words left me wondering. Have I been getting it wrong these past 28 years? Have I been wasting precious shuteye every morning on the superfluous and abnormal task of putting clothes on? Who needs a wardrobe to select from when the birthday suit is always pressed and ready to go?

Venturing into the #Normal world of playboy. com I was met with the poster girl of this reclaimed ordinariness: Miss March, aka Elizabeth Elam. She can be found reclining in her undies (NB, Playboy has defined nudity as showing breasts and bottoms, not actual full-frontal, unabashed nakedness – that’s #NotNormal, Cooper).

As well as empowering the visitor with her casual, arm-squeezed, bra-clad bust, she regales the viewer with further truths, such as her Turn Ons (strip clubs) and Offs (the word “daddy”). If Miss March’s example wasn’t enough to convince me that “nudity” was righton, then perhaps “Soak it Up” with the showering Erin or watching Monica eat a burger in a bikini was.

But as I scrolled through these normally naked women (or, in Playboy’s language, “young rabbits”) I couldn’t help but wonder if, despite having reached their nirvana of bodily liberation, they weren’t actually just a bit chilly.

I’ve always been quite fond of my fingers and toes. In fact, you could say that I’m attached to them; so much so that avoiding frostbite has been a consistent factor in my choice of ensemble. I now realise that in pandering to this weakness, these mere bodily foibles, I was furthering the unnatural abomination that is clothes – well, external clothes anyway: if there is one thing we can learn from #NakedIsNormal it’s that underwear, particularly of the stringy variety, is most definitely OK, even if it can’t offer much insulation on a cold February night.

The cold has always been a bit of a problem for us humans, but one that might just have had some benefits, too. Some anthropologists have suggested that it was our badly insulated bodies that forced Homo sapiens to develop the advanced tools required to make better clothes, stitching skins and furs together to make things that fit properly. In contrast, our chunkier Neanderthal competitors got by with more minimalist attire, just draping hides around themselves. Ian Gilligan of the University of Sydney reckons the hard work paid off around 30,000 years ago when the climate got really, really bitter: we survived and they didn’t.

In other words, without clothes, the human race wouldn’t exist today. So if it’s all the same to the nice people at Playboy, I’ll keep my jumper on. It might not be normal, but you never know when another big freeze might come along.

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