NUDITY. People are nude in the most innocent moments as children and later at times of profound vulnerability—during sex and orgasm, while bathing, in sickness, and under the care of medical personnel. Much later, bodies may be exposed to adult children and other caregivers. And finally, one is exposed again in death, when one's body is prepared by morticians and other specialists in the ritual care of the dead. And yet it would be naive—too innocent of gender and sexuality and their capacity to mark human interactions with the signs of dominance and submission—to equate nudity only with innocent vulnerability. The man who wears a raincoat to the park and displays himself to hapless observers is not innocent in his vulnerability but is driven by the awareness that exposing one's sexual organs can strike fear in the beholder.

From the female figures exposing their labia...