States of Undress

Hello, World!
I have been working on a somewhat socially objectionable project fueled just as much by my fascination with language and anthropology (itself an often "problematic" discipline) as it has been by the appeal of its taboo. I have struggled to find anywhere online suitable to share it for the purpose of receiving feedback, being that neither its format nor content suits any subreddit or forum I know of, until I found this unique gem of a community.
So what is this thing? Basically, it's a collection of professional semi-nude portrait photos each representing a different nation of the world. If for no other reason than feasibility, I chose to include only female models (which are more numerous or at least more photographed than male). Naturally, many of these selections rely on cultural stereotypes in order to be recognizable or iconic, and some could be considered corruptive displays of fetishistic exoticism or, alternatively, artistic and self-realized explorations of postcolonialism. Much of its intrigue for me is from the juxtaposition of the "sacred" and "profane" in presenting a cherished national identity along side the forbidden fruit of exhibitionist nudity. In some cases, I have literally incorporated religious elements, which I imagine would prove the most controversial.
I have compiled these photos in an imgur album found at the following NSFW URL: imgur.com/a/Ny4Hr
Please let me know if you find that any photo is poorly representative of its associated nation, and feel free to offer some alternative(s) that you might have at your disposal as well as correct or supply any faulty or missing captions or attributions.

NB the caption for Iraq should be , but imgur doesn't display cuneiform it seems.

 

Thank you for the feedback, Martian. I'm not worried about what messages it sends or controversy it provokes, because I didn't put this together for anyone other than myself. I really enjoyed curating these photos and researching the vocabulary and grammar of all the languages to write captions that serve to further justify each photo's association with its given nation. Now that I finished the bulk of it for a while, I decided to share it so it feels less like its over already, and I reckon that yet others here might enjoy it too. I noticed from the view referrals that someone here posted this to a private forum at yourfavoritedriversucks.com; it might have been a guest, but if you're still reading this, can you share what the reaction was there?

 

Thank you for sharing.
I can tell you put a lot of work into it and I enjoyed many if the pictures.
Folks from Canada will probably get a laugh out of theirs.

 

swell collection...random order or size of nation???...............found some to be slightly off topic and others so recognizable that they didn't count...all in all a nice view...xoxoxoo

 

Redravin, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I believe Martian is from Canada, but he didn't mention it. Since I've included all 195 UN observer and member states (plus Kosovo and Taiwan, which have near-universal recognition), just about everyone should be able to appreciate the photo representing the nation(s) of their citizenship.

Thank you, Bobby. It's arranged in order of medium fertility de facto population estimate. What do you mean by "[some] didn't count"?

 

You've actually got an interesting idea I'd kinda like to see someone produce rather than just try to find the best-fit for: Given a single nude figure what is the minimum possible context that can create a picture identifiable to a specific nation or culture. What significant activity, piece of national dress, or item is so identifiable that even when given nothing else an educated observer can still say "Yep that's <place>".

 

I get you, Mr. Martian; I too view many things as objectively and analytically. Though I wouldn't say the photos are abstract, they definitely present ideals which are in many cases fanciful or romanticized views of traditional cultures. Folk costumes are of course not representative of the modern, Westernized societies of most countries, but I have exploited that here to more uniquely characterize many nations as they might have been seen pre-globalization.

Shadowex, how I wish I could produce my own photos for this project. I'm rather interested in the opposite extreme: how strongly one photo can typify one county's reputation, including the most characteristic setting, costume, props, and phenotype of the model. Canada scores pretty high on setting and props, even though I'm pretty sure the photo was taken in Kitzbuehel, Austria. One of my other North American favorites is Cuba, which scores very high on setting (and possibly props, depending on how you consider the car).

I see what you're saying about how the nudity aspect would be integral to your minimalist scheme, but to me it's just a bonus and makes finding the rare photo more rewarding.

 

As a world traveler, I appreciate the different looks women have around the world. And I've even been to the Miss Universe contest and seen women from lots of different countries.

This also reminds me of the average face project that someone did a few years ago:
The Average Woman's Face Around The World (PHOTO)

Someone photographed girls from around the world in bodypaint for the World Cup a few years ago too in their countries colors too.
World Cup Girls in Bodypaint will make you drool

But, I like the effort to find girls from some of the smaller countries.

 

When I was exploring this concept early on, I came across the Miss Universe "national costume" competition, whose impressive adaptations of traditional dress are so over the top that they make Disney World's Epcot park look like a quaint and extremely orthodox recreation of international cultures mired in the reclaimed swamp of central Florida.

The facial composites are interesting to compare, but I would discourage thinking of them as "averages" because I seriously doubt that the sample sizes obtained by the blogger who created them are sufficiently large to be accurately representative.

Like the national costume pageant, I found those World Cup photos while searching for similar collections. Surprisingly, I haven't found any on the theme of ethnographically-inspired erotic/artistic nudity like my own, so I had little to draw from and even less to outdo.

 

IMHO

That series doesn't seem like a study at all. What I see is a series of photos by professional photographers showing posed professional models. The attractiveness of the woman is first & foremost, the "traditional" ethnic clothing comes across as very secondary. It's like the photographer found the hottest model, in all likelyhood a professional, of a certain ethnicity, and had her dress in traditional ethnic clothing.

 

It's not a study. It's just as much as an art project as the facial composite project discussed above. Your description of what you see is actually how I presented it at the start of this thread. Professional models tend to have conventionally attractive features, and naturally I did choose photos I liked. I understand why it can be considered superficial and damaging for the media and beauty industry to indulge the adaptive preference for traits such as facial symmetry and averageness (both indicating heterozygosity favorable for disease resistance), pronounced secondary sex characteristics (indicating immunocompetence), and, for females, smooth, hairless skin (indicating neotony and a high estrogen-to-androgen ratio associated with fertility). All of these traits are thought to be selected for, evolutionarily, because they represent increased reproductive fitness, or likelihood for the production of viable offspring, which is made less relevant by advances in medicine and technology and can thus be considered ethically second to human psychological needs. In this instance however, I argue that the presentation of these conventionally attractive traits is socially productive because it demonstrates that they are valued cross-culturally and naturally occur within all populations regardless of how they might be grouped by ethnicity. Many of the models and photographers are native to the countries they are each representing, which should be often evident from the attribution below each image.

Curiously, much but not all of the clothing in the photos is of a traditional style, but the distinction of clothing as "ethnic" is nebulous. All clothing is made by humans and embodies the result of cultural influences concerning fashion and utility endemic to some areas of world. Modern Western-style clothing is primarily a development of European culture and as such can be considered no less ethnic than any other kind.