The human body, especially the nude male figure, has been a subject of art since the first scratching appeared on cave walls. Stick figures with phalluses denoted the male, procreation and dominance. Archeologists have found evidences proving that the male nude appeared in Egypt in the early Dynastic periods and in early Mesopotamia four thousand years ago.

The Greek made the nude into art, and we, the Americans, made it into something commonly referred to as pornography. Until today, nude is still a major subject in art that everyone would have seen a few times, either in display cases of a museum or in greater numbers of male underwear ads. Myself being a boy of the old capital of Vietnam, I grew up with such statues in the décor of my living environment. I still remember that my family owed some of them, which my grandmom called...