nudity

Googling Bear Naked

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

It’s been a tough week and my idea bank was running low, so I consulted a ‘writing prompts’ site for some inspiration.  One suggestion caught my interest:  Check your site stats to find your three most popular posts, and write about the connection between them.

I checked my stats… and burst out laughing.

Excluding the pages of my official website, here are the blog posts that draw the most visitors, in order of popularity:

We’re All Free! And Naked!

Confessions of a Vegas Swinger

We’re All Naked

Gee, I wonder… what’s the connection here?  Let me think for a nanosecond…

When I went back and re-read those posts, the best part (as usual) was my readers’ comments.  Who knew that my blog would be the #1 Google result if you search ‘naked machete-wielding motorcyclist with fanny pack’?  Searches for ‘naked beer-drinking martial artists on motorcycles’ and ‘polar bear sex club’ also return my blog at #1.

I’m famous!  Or maybe ‘notorious’ would be a better word, but let’s not split hairs.  All this despite the fact that I’ve never been naked on a motorcycle, and my only knowledge of polar bears comes from viewing them from a safe distance at Churchill, Manitoba.

Black bears, on the other hand, are far more familiar than I’d prefer.

You know the saying, “Art imitates life”?  Well, my art imitated life; and now my life has turned around to imitate my art:

In Book 11, I wrote about a bunch of wackos who protect their secret compound in the woods by feeding bears to keep them near the stockade.  That was based on the true story of some folks here in BC who did the same thing to guard a marijuana plantation.

Yesterday I discovered that I now live in a compound patrolled by my very own bear.

I’m less than thrilled.

We just had an 8’ pagewire fence installed around our yard to keep deer out of the garden.  Our crew put up most of the fence, and then ran dogs through the woods to make sure no deer were inside the area before they closed everything up.  They finished Monday around suppertime.

Only a couple of hours later I was walking around the house when I heard a distinctive “Uuuhhhh.  Uuuhhhhhh…” and the sound of heavy footsteps crashing through the forest not far away.

A bear.

Shit.

I didn’t glimpse it, so I don’t know for certain that it was inside our fence, but it sure as hell sounded close.

Needless to say I’ll be cautious around here until the bear decides to leave and pulls down part of the fence to do it.  After we repair the fence we’ll probably be okay, since there’s nothing inside to tempt a bear to return… except maybe a naked motorcycle-riding machete-wielding martial artist wearing a fanny pack.

But that only seems to appeal to random Google-searchers; and since it’s hard to operate a keyboard with paws and 2” claws, the bear will never even know about the internet star on the other side of that inconvenient fence.

I think we’ll both be happier that way.

Have you searched anything interesting on Google lately?

P.S. Preorders are available for Book 12:  Kiss And Say Good Spy!  Click here for links to online retailers

A Nudie Pic From My Sordid Past

/ Diane Henders / 29 Comments

All the major celebrities have nude pictures lurking somewhere in their past.  They pretend to be embarrassed about them, but in fact it’s a clever marketing ploy to drum up some sensational news articles and garner more publicity.

I figure I could use some publicity, so today I’m going to unveil a nudie pic from my own misguided youth.  And no, I’m not talking about baby pictures.  I was twenty-two at the time, and old enough to know better.

I have to warn you, this is not a tastefully-done boudoir photo.  It’s a tawdry snapshot from a time when someone who shall remain nameless (and whom I’ve cropped from the photo) convinced me to expose myself in public.

I knew at the time that it was a bad idea.

I protested, but I was young, and peer pressure is a terrible thing.  And I believed in the power of friendship.  A true friend would never ask me to do anything humiliating or potentially damaging to my reputation, right?

Wrong.

Here’s the proof:

Sorry, Camille, I would’ve cropped you out to preserve your privacy if I could, but thanks for being there. No, I mean physically there. In front of me, blocking the view.

Sorry, Camille, I would’ve cropped you out to preserve your privacy if I could, but thanks for being there. No, I mean physically there. In front of me, blocking the view.

Believe it or not, I am actually wearing a dress in that photo.  (For the record, Camille was a fellow martyr, not the bride who strong-armed us into this disaster.)

The bridesmaids’ dresses were flesh-coloured taffeta.  Low-cut and strapless, they had an inadequate wrap-around skirt secured only at the waist.  I’m sure I mooned half of Winnipeg just trying to get in and out of the car while the wind whipped that skirt around.

But the top was worse.  Much worse.

When the dress arrived the day before the wedding, I refused to wear it.  The top was so loose that one false move would’ve given the girls far more freedom than was advisable (or legal, for that matter).

So the seamstress altered it.  She was obviously vindictive about the last-minute change.  When I got the dress back the morning of the wedding, it was so tight I couldn’t draw a full breath.  My assets were attractively portioned into four boobs:  Bisected by a tourniquet of fabric, two naked bulges overflowed the top of the bodice, while the sadly flattened remainders were viciously crushed against my ribcage.

It was the 80s, and back then, cleavage was usually concealed in church.  You should have seen the poor minister’s face when I shuffled up the aisle clothed in little more than the tattered remains of my dignity, my half-exposed boobs burgeoning over the bodice with each humiliated breath while I tried to keep that slit-to-the waist skirt closed.  He probably wondered if I was inside the dress trying to get out, or outside it struggling to get in.

Trust me, it was the latter.

Somehow I got through the day, but the damning photographic evidence is preserved for all time:   Me, apparently stark naked in public, smiling for the camera.

So do you think that’s enough to make me famous?  Or just mortified?

We’re All Free! And Naked!

/ Diane Henders / 34 Comments

Peer pressure is a terrible thing.  I’ve been successfully resisting it for months, but my resolve has slowly eroded under the relentless burden of my readers’ expectations.  So here it is; the post you’ve (apparently) all been waiting for:  “We’re All Free!  And Naked!”

Don’t look at me like that.  Hell, I don’t know what I’m talking about, either.

“We’re all free! and naked!” has been the top search phrase that has brought people to my blog ever since I posted “We’re All Naked” back in January.  (If you’ve just arrived here because you searched “We’re all free! and naked!”, I’ll apologize in advance – “We’re All Naked” does include a link to some mostly-obscured YouTube nudity, but unless you’re turned on by drunk hairy naked guys singing scatological lyrics, it’s probably not what you’re looking for.)

Back to the topic at hand:  Since January, “We’re all free! and naked!” has brought people here four times more often than my next most popular search term (my name).  And every week, the numbers keep going up.

I ignored the phenomenon for several months, afraid of what I might find if I delved into it too deeply.  I assumed it was just a temporary aberration, but it’s still there.  Still far and away the top search phrase that brings people to my blog.

When I finally gathered sufficient courage to search it myself, the search engines only returned a link to my own post, “We’re All Naked”.  So what the hell is everybody looking for?  I know I hold the dubious distinction of being the top search engine result for “Polar Bear Sex Club”, but at least I did actually use those words.

‘Free and naked’, not so much.  But it’s gotta be something pretty specific.  Even the punctuation is the same, over and over and over.

So if you got here by searching “We’re All Free!  And Naked!”, I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.  If you’re looking for nudie pictures, you’ll be sorely disappointed.  (Though probably not as disappointed as if I’d actually posted some.  Trust me, you don’t want to see that.)

My books have some hot scenes in them, but somehow I suspect that’s not what you’re looking for, either.

If you’re looking for support for a cause, I’m all for freedom and I have no particular objection to nudity, unless it’s my own nudity.  In that case, I have to apply all sorts of caveats involving protection from sunshine, rain, snow, wind, bug bites, allergy-producing plants, prickly foliage, splintery wood, hot/cold/sharp objects, overly interested observers, and a plethora of other conditions that essentially limit my nudity to “indoors in privacy”.

Anyway, if you’re one of the folks who came looking for something else, and if you’re still reading, I’m sorry you didn’t find what you’re looking for.  But welcome anyway.  Who knows, if you look around here a bit, you might get a chuckle or two for your trouble.

And please tell me what you were really looking for.  If that many people are searching for it, it must be good.

Hope you find it…

We’re All Naked

/ Diane Henders / 27 Comments

Ever since I had my giggle over the dick pic I found on the internet a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about nudity.  Yeah, welcome to my brain.  Sorry about that.

Due to the mysterious workings of the universe, last week I coincidentally discovered another instance of nudity that made me laugh myself silly(er).

I’m a Dr. Hook fan from away back.  ‘Waaaaay back in the 1970s.  Back when they were Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, doing raunch ‘n’ roll that bore no resemblance whatsoever to their later mainstream hits.

So I was tremendously amused to find an old video of the Hook boys shit-faced, stark naked, and performing some “blues”.  *Warning for those who missed the words “stark naked” in the previous sentence:  Although the nether regions of the video are (mostly) blanked out, this link is NOT SAFE FOR WORK… or any other place where someone might be offended by the sight of drunk naked guys improvising scatological lyrics.

Which, admittedly, may prove rather limiting.

However.

After I picked myself up off the floor and dried my tears of laughter, I started thinking.  Is it funnier because they’re naked?  Hell, yeah.  Imagine the same video with clothes.  Funny, but not as over-the-top hilarious.

Why do we humans arbitrarily designate certain areas of our bodies as “Not To Be Revealed”?  Why are those areas considered so offensive that you can get arrested for showing them?  And why do some of us laugh when the naughty bits get accidentally exposed, while others are horrified?  (Unless the bits in question are exposed in Art, in which case we all stand around nodding seriously and looking constipated.)

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the practical advantages to covering up.  Those probably became agonizingly apparent the first time primitive man tried to step over a thorn bush.

But how did ‘Ow!  I’m gonna wrap some mastodon hide around that’ become ‘Don’t show that or you’re going to jail’?

Who decided nudity was “obscene”?  After all, as Sam the Eagle points out in one of my favourite Muppets skits, we’re all naked.  And aside from minor variations in size, shape, and colour, it’s pretty much a case of ‘If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all’.

Maybe it’s because we humans are such perverse creatures.  Tell us we can’t have something, and we’ll immediately devote huge amounts of time and energy to obtaining it.

So maybe the simple fact that we usually keep our goodies covered makes it that much more fun (or shocking, depending on your attitude) to sneak a peek.  Though by logical extension, that would mean most Canadians should faint at the sight of any exposed skin, since we’re pretty much bundled up eight months out of the year.

I dunno.  I guess, like some grown-up version of the “telephone” game we used to play as kids, somehow the message got garbled from ‘You don’t usually see that’ to ‘You shouldn’t see that’.  It would be interesting to see how long it would take for our taboos to melt away if nudity was more widespread.

So you folks down in the tropics give it a try and let me know how it goes, okay?  ‘Cause it’s still winter here, and it’ll be at least three months before I get my first forbidden glimpse of naked arms.

* * *

Why does our society make such a big deal of nudity?  Why are naked marble sculptures considered “art” but naked magazine photos are considered “pornography”? 

Or, if you’re not so much into the philosophical discussion:  Have you been to a place where nudity is acceptable/expected?