Clothing and the Nude

Under the regime of the exchange of beauty for benefits, man is doomed to forever admire female beauty, while his own body is left in the cold, how beautiful it might be." In the case of the female transvestite, her wearing of male clothing makes her more masculine, giving her a "boyish" look. The unisex look is making both men and women sexless figures, Beyst suggests: "clothes and other artificial interventions remove every sexual difference: we get to see a sexless being, like the angels of olden times."

Items of clothing often imitates the body parts that they cover, but, at the same time, replace them with something else, Beyst observes. For example, "the shape of the . . . panties echoes the triangle of the mound of Venus, while, at the same time, replacing the pubic hair and the mucous skin through shining cloth." Likewise, when a body part vanishes from display, it is shown in surrogate ways by the outerwear that covers it: "It is not difficult to understand why the disappearance of the vulva celebrates its resurrection in the folds of drapery, in collars or cuts in sleeves, stockings, jackets and coats." In this way, fur is a surrogate for pubic hair, he says, just as "the breasts reappear as cups and the nipples as buttons" and "the thighs or the hips are accentuated in crinolines" and hidden skin reappears, transformed into "silk, leather, or latex." Shoes, he says, "are destined to embody the penis."

Because clothing can substitute for the body parts it covers, clothing can become a fetish, Beyst argues: "Things are further complicated in that pieces of cloth may be isolated from the body from which they derive their appeal. Especially in such cases do the displacements of erotic appearance take the shape of a veritable 'fetish.'"

Beyst explains that jewelry, tattoos, and piercings both divert the eye from the body parts they adorn and attract the eye to these same parts.