Can people unlearn their naked shame?

These people have shrugged off learned behaviour

By Paul King

Once we were all happy to walk around naked, now we're not. But can an experiment in nudity help us understand why we are so embarrassed by being seen in the buff and help shed our inhibitions?

It's a classic anxiety nightmare - you're standing in front of a room full of work colleagues, your boss is there, maybe even that new colleague you've been trying to impress. And you're stark naked. Ouch.

Why are we so ashamed of being seen naked? Is there something deep in human nature that finds naked skin abhorrent? Some prudishness inherited from our Victorian ancestors?

FIND OUT MORE... Horizon's What's the Problem With Nudity? is on BBC Two at 2100 GMT on Tuesday, 3 March Or watch it later on the BBC iPlayer

And how can you explain the rebels who shun convention to spend their weekends hanging out with similar-minded nudists, insisting nothing could be more normal?

Eight ordinary people - none of them nudists - were recently brought together for an experiment filmed by the BBC's Horizon programme, to test some of the scientific theories that explain why naked bodies make us so uncomfortable.

Among them were Phil, 39, from Birmingham and Kath, 40, from Dorset. Kath's greatest worry was that people would laugh at her. Some of the men in the group were more concerned about inappropriate excitement.

Man's nakedness

Phil was first to feel the cameras burning into his skin. A matter of hours after meeting the other volunteers, he found himself before a full-length mirror, instructed to remove all of his clothes. When he discovered the mirror was two-way and he was being watched, his red face, beating heart and soaring blood pressure told a story.

Performing the same task, Kath admitted she wanted "the floor to open up." When we are naked in public, most of us feel exposed.

All around the world individuals feel great shame when they know that others know that they have failed to be adequately modest Prof Dan FesslerPsychologist

And of course, a naked human is just that bit more naked that other primates. We have only minimal body hair, they have fur. Why?

It's one of the greatest mysteries in evolution, and even bothered Charles Darwin. One of the theories is that we lost our fur as a way of dealing with the heat of the sun. It's controversial, as most mammals use fur to protect them from the sun. But some anthropologists believe our ancestors' unique ability to sweat, along with their upright stance, meant we could cool quicker without fur - prompting the onset of human nudity.

They reckon that evolutionary step towards nudity had huge implications for the human race. With a souped-up cooling system, our ancestors could afford to develop ever-bigger brains - leading to culture, tools, fire, and language.

Red for 'no-go'

"Really, without losing hair, without our sweatiness, we wouldn't have been able to evolve the big brains that characterise us today," says anthropologist Professor Nina Jablonski of Penn State University. "Essentially, being hairless was the key to much of human evolution."

So there's reason to believe our nudity arose out of practical need, but that doesn't answer why we're so ashamed by it.

Attitudes towards nakedness may be the result of the need for long-term pair bonding

But it seems this shame can be unlearned - witness, for example, the work of artist Spencer Tunnick, who frequently corrals hundreds of volunteers to strip off en mass in public places for his photographs.

After a series of experiments, Phil and Kath, who had been so self-conscious at the start, each came face-to-face with a newly stripped fellow volunteer. They were invited to paint the body in front of them, colour coding every patch of skin to show how uncomfortable they felt touching that part of the body - red for no-go; yellow for squirming and green for fine.

Phil drew the line at colouring his subject's genitals, but Kath had lost all her inhibitions. Within moments she'd painted her subject completely green. Every inch.

Learned shame

It was an example of how flexible our attitudes to nudity are. And it explains how nudists can carry on as normal when they're surrounded by naked people. Over a couple of days, the volunteers had unlearned many of the social conventions that normally govern their life, and reached a new consensus that permitted them to be naked in each other's company.

It chimes with the psychologists' theory that we are not born with a shame of nudity. Instead we learn it, as an important behavioural code that allows us to operate in human society.

Some people may even find this image uncomfortable to view

With the long immature period of a young human, mum and dad need to form a stable pair bond to do the looking after. But humans are more social than any other primate, living and moving in large social groups.

Psychologist Professor Dan Fessler, of the University of California, Los Angeles, says our gregariousness "poses a challenge... because those groups of course provide a source of temptation. Potentially both sexes can benefit by cheating on their partners."

That's where our shame of nudity comes in. Over thousands of generations, we've learned that showing off a naked body sends out sexual signals that threaten the security of mating pairs. And we've chosen to agree that that is a bad thing.

Shame is the ideal emotion to enforce that code of conduct. Because it feels unpleasant, we avoid it at all costs. And because it's such a visible emotion, everyone around gets a clear message that you know you've messed up.

Social contract

"All around the world individuals feel great shame when they know that others know that they have failed to be adequately modest," Prof Fessler says. "Essentially, they're signalling to those around them 'I understand what the social norm is and I understand that you know that I have failed in this regard, so please don't hurt me.'

"Nudity is a threat to the basic social contract. They have exposed their body and their sexual selves in a way that presents an opportunity for sexual behaviour outside of the principal union."

But as this code of conduct is something we learn, rather than are born with, we can re-learn it, if common consensus allows. As Phil reflected: "One thing I think I'll take away is how easy it was to bond with complete strangers in what should really be an artificial environment and one that by all society's standards we should feel uncomfortable with."

Would all this knowledge prepare Phil and Kath to push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour back in the real world? As the weekend drew to a close, they were presented their final, surprise challenge.

They are invited to walk naked in the street to waiting taxis, which they do. They have overcome a significant bit of socialisation.

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Can you rebrand a bad memory?

Five that rebranded and one that didn't

By Craig Smith

What has Abu Ghraib got in common with the Millennium Dome? They've both been shut down only to reopen under new names. But the rebranding trick is a hard one to pull off, especially when bad memories are fresh.

Sellafield, Altria, Sea River Mediterranean, Xe - the rebranding club recently gained a new member in the guise of Baghdad Central Prison.

That most of these names will be unfamiliar illustrates the difficulty, or futility, of attempting to wipe clean the slate of history with a mere name change.

Even with the benefit of five decades passing, the British nuclear reactor formerly known as Windscale looms large in the public consciousness for the disaster that occurred there in October 1957 when a fire led to a radioactive leak.

Abu Ghraib should be knocked down, turned into a community centre, a park area or even a parking lot. Anything but a prison Joel BiswasFuturebrand

What chance then for Altria, formerly Philip Morris, to shed its associations with tobacco, or the oil tanker Exxon Valdez to put ecological disaster behind it with a pleasure cruiser-type moniker such as Sea River Mediterranean?

Iraq, and the US's presence there, has opened up a new chapter in such "rebranding" exercises. The reputation of Blackwater, the security contractor operating in the country under a US State Department contract, was already badly damaged by the time of a 2007 shooting involving Blackwater guards that left a dozen Iraqi civilians dead.

Earlier this month it renamed its group companies Xe (pronounced "zee") is an attempt to limit its losses to the State Department contract that once represented a third of its annual revenue.

Saddam past

Abu Ghraib prison will find it less easy to eradicate an ugly past. It gained notoriety in 2004 when the world witnessed shocking images of prisoner abuse at the hands of their US military captors - an episode that former US President George Bush described as the low point of his tenancy at the White House.

Before the arrival of the Americans, the prison had held inmates and enemies of Saddam Hussein in their tens of thousands.

This is the most vivid association with Abu Ghraib prison

The Iraqi officials now running the prison are at pains to point out that Baghdad Central Prison is a very different institution to the one the Americans eventually shut down in 2006. It now houses a modern medical centre, mosque, hair salon and recreational area for visiting families. The authorities have capped the number of inmates it will hold at 14,000.

Such efforts to improve the "product" are understandable, commendable even, yet its "repackaging" faces one, seemingly insurmountable, hurdle. Whatever name the prison goes by, it still sits squarely in that district between Baghdad and Fallujah called, well, Abu Ghraib.

And while marketing gurus can do what they like with a company or institution, they have little sway over the renaming of an entire neighbourhood.

This is the new Baghdad Central Prison

"This isn't so much an attempt at commercial rebranding as an attempt at reconstructive surgery, changing one's identity and trying to live under an assumed name," says Joel Biswas, senior strategy consultant at branding agency Futurebrand. "The only problem is that Abu Ghraib can't actually physically relocate."

In fact, the rebranding is an insult to the Iraqi people and a major black eye for the branding industry, says Mr Biswas.

"Abu Ghraib should be knocked down, turned into a community centre, a park area or even a parking lot. Anything but a prison."

Whether or not the branding industry suffers by the efforts of Baghdad Central Prison or vice versa, the fact is that its management faces the same difficult decision as any crisis-hit organization - whether to keep, change or cull the brand.

In 1982, the US's leading over-the-counter medicine, Tylenol, was rocked by the so-called Tylenol Murders, when capsules on shelves were laced with cyanide, killing seven customers. Although the deaths were all in the Chicago area, the effect was felt nationwide and few believed the brand could survive the disaster.

Owner Johnson & Johnson responded swiftly, launching a then unprecedented mass recall, public information campaign and relaunch. Within a year, not only had the household name survived, it had regained its market share and more than restored public trust.

Dome crisis

What Johnson & Johnson realised is that the residual value of a well-known brand is greater than the damage that can be done to it by even the worst of crises, assuming you respond to the problem ethically and effectively. It is a fine line, however, and the trick is in being able to spot the difference between a brand survivor and one that is in its death throes.

Though little else was wounded in its making than a few political egos, by the time the Millennium Dome opened for business on 1 January 2000, it was already a brand suffering a catastrophic crisis of reputation.

Over budget and overhyped, the exhibition that the structure housed attracted just over half the number of visitors forecast. A year later the venue was closed and struggled for purpose for six years until it was reopened as "the O2" in June 2007.

Although it had shed the Millennium Dome name and had benefited from a

Can a fleece ever be fashionable?

Stylist Mary Mullally accessorises our bog standard fleece

By Megan Lane and Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine

The synthetic fleece is 30 years old and can be found in almost every walk of life - except the world of high fashion. We took this humble, workaday garment to London Fashion Week to see what the style tribe made of it.

They wore leggings and stompy heels. We, however, stood out in a red fleece. A bobbly, basic, and decidedly unironic fleece. Its one possible claim to fashion fame is that it looked a little like the red fleece Rageh Omar wore in his "Scud Stud" days of reporting from Baghdad.

Fleeces and sportswear are extremely fashionable now. We just watched the Christopher Shannon show and he used it (pictured above). Anything can be fashionable, it's how you wear it. This fleece is very basic but you could wear it as a dress, over leggings and big heels TopMan stylist Mary Mullally, 31

Despite its near total absence from the catwalks of this week's London Fashion Week, the fashionistas who populate this biannual style bash couldn't help but cosy up to this ever so humble garment. Perhaps it's the chance to wrap up warm...

Polarfleece first went on sale in 1979, trademarked by New Hampshire's Malden Mills. Made from polyester microfibre, it drew moisture away from the skin, freeing ramblers and climbers from the prickly discomfort of waterlogged woolly jumpers. Today polar fleece is a generic term for the fabric, rather than a brand, and is the nation's outerwear of choice, whether for pottering in the garden or out on a bracing walk.

It is practical. Cheap. Lightweight. It's dry almost as soon as it emerges from the washing machine, and is made from the plastic bottles we toss into recycling bins. It adds warmth, but is less bulky than a coat.

But stylish it is not - a fact conceded by those whose dress sense is carefully scrutinised.

The gratifying thing about a fleece - aside from the warmth - is that it simply never has to look good Emily Maitlis

"The gratifying thing about a fleece - aside from the warmth - is that it never has to look good," says BBC newsreader Emily Maitlis, whose favourite off-camera outfit is a fleece with jeans and ballet pumps. "It is a declaration you simply don't mind. Hence the joy. Anything aesthetic is an unaccustomed bonus."

Unaccustomed indeed. For despite its slimming shades of grey, navy or black, the fleece is boxy of silhouette and zips tend to woggle unflatteringly over one's torso.

Fashion staple

But don't yet rule it out as a style statement, says Professor Penny Martin, of the London College of Fashion.

Fleeces have an unfashionable reputation because they're fluffy. But fleeces are stylish. I love this one, I love the colour. It's better zipped down, and with a few layers, maybe with a scarf to bring it up Model Dominique Hollington, 19

"The fleece jacket has been designed with practicality in mind, but with a tweak of the proportions, perhaps across the hip, and a rethink on the fastenings, I can imagine it being used by a menswear designer.

"After all, where did jeans come from? Nineteenth century workwear, given a little bit of a twist in the 1950s to become a contemporary choice."

As if to prove the point, on Wednesday, the last day of London Fashion Week, designer Christopher Shannon used fleece in his sportswear-themed collection.

Professor Martin says an unfashionable fabric will suddenly hit the catwalk and then be picked up by the High Street when an entrepreneurial manufacturer targets an up and coming designer, offering sponsorship to use their cloth.

"It's not going to happen that we all suddenly decide it'll be nice to be warm and the fleece will become fashionable. That's not how it works."

Club attire

As is so often the case these days, the High Street is there first. Retailers of "yoof" favourites such as wet-look leggings and tube dresses - American Apparel and Uniqlo in particular - already sell tight, bright incarnations of the fleece, the perfect top layer for their clubby, casual, urban wares.

I wouldn't mind a fleece, it's good for outside when you're cold. In a few years it will be in fashion again, but with more seams and in different colours. It could work if it was wide or slim. Also some better quality zips - metal instead of plastic Vibeka Kaae, 26, design assistant

Which is apt, as what originally helped propel the fleece out of its outdoorsy niche was the acid house scene, says Rosemary Harden, curator of the Fashion Museum in Bath.

Clubbers dressed for comfort in trainers, backpacks, baggy T-shirts and trousers - and donned fleeces to head home in the thin light of dawn.

"There was the mountaineering Berghaus crowd, obviously, but fleeces were being worn in clubs in the 1980s and made by brands such as Duffer of St George. That propelled them into the mainstream, and then, awful awful, the fleece became the sort of thing your mum would wear."

Those who once threw shapes on the dancefloor now indulge in pastimes such as rambling and gardening. And what do they wear? Fleece jackets. Fleece hats. Fleece scarves. Fleece gloves. No wonder outdoor shops proliferate on High Streets and shopping centres up and down this land.

This needs accessorising, maybe cut the sleeves off. I do own one, which I wear when it's very cold. It's a fashion staple. You might think people here would slag it off but fashion people aren't like that. I like this fleece. Top-notch, 10 out of 10 Model Jono Namara, 21

The Ramblers' Association Walk magazine is almost entirely illustrated with people in fleeces, young and old.

The fleece has helped lure us outside in our leisure time, says Minnie Burlton, the magazine's gear editor.

"Its warmth to weight ratio has simplified packing for a weekend away walking. Once you'd need loads of cotton and wool layers, now you just need a fleece and an outer layer to keep the wind out."

And gone are the days of pulling on still-sodden socks and jumpers the day after a drenching.

"If your fleece gets wet, it will dry if you put it on a hanger behind the door. So if you go on a walking holiday to the Lake District, for instance, you can stay at a B&B. A walkers' lodge with a drying room is no longer essential."

The fleece jacket has also helped democratise the school uniform, offering a more casual choice for head teachers keen to foster collegiate pride and nip competitive dressing in the bud, without asking parents to shell out for blazers and ties.

From baby blankets to kit for polar expeditions, the fleece keeps us snuggly.

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Quiz of the week's news

7 days 7 questions

It's the Magazine's 7 days 7 questions weekly quiz - a chance to find out how much news from the past week you've read, heard and watched... and how much has stayed lodged in the old grey matter.

1.) Multiple Choice Question

The Obamas have decided on a presidential pooch - a rescue Portuguese water dog. Spot this breed.

1. Shaggy dog
2. Golden boy
3. Curly locks
4. Little woofer

2.) Multiple Choice Question

European leaders met in Berlin to discuss the banking crisis. Whose statement is represented by this word cloud? The size of the word reflects the frequency of use.

1. Gordon Brown
2. Nicolas Sarkozy
3. Angela Merkel

3.) Multiple Choice Question

Kate Winslet finally won an Oscar after being nominated six times. Also in the running was perennial favourite Meryl Streep. When did she last clutch the Academy's golden statuette?

1. 1983
2. 1986
3. 1996
4. 2003

4.) Missing Word Question

Judge frees drug * neighbour

1. flush
2. dealing
3. mule

5.) Multiple Choice Question

What sold for £14,500 this week?

1. The last Woolworths pick'n'mix
2. A Lions rugby shirt worn by Barry John
3. A diamond ring owned by Charles Dickens

6.) Multiple Choice Question

Gordon Brown's chuffed to bits at being the first Euro statesman to meet Barack Obama in Washington next week. Who might have blown their chances by spelling the president's name incorrectly?

1. Silvio Berlusconi
2. Angela Merkel
3. Nicolas Sarkozy
4. Prince Albert of Monaco

7.) Multiple Choice Question

Former RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin has been condemned for the size of his pension, a princely £693,000 a year. How much is that a day?

1. £1,001.23
2. £1,456.54
3. £1,898.63

Answers

1. It's picture three. Portuguese water dogs look similar to poodles. Michelle Obama told People magazine that the First Dog would arrive at the White House in April.
2. It's Gordon Brown. He said the world needed a "global new deal".
3. It was in 1983 for Sophie's Choice. She's won best actress twice and been nominated 15 times for leading and supporting actress gongs.
4. It's flush. A man jailed for threatening to kill an alleged drug dealer was freed on bail while appealing against his two-month jail sentence. He also flushed five bags of heroin down the toilet.
5. The souvenir bag of cola bottles and white mice received 115 bids on eBay. Welsh star John's shirt went for £7,200 at Bonhams. The ring was bought for £26,000 at an auction in Herefordshire.
6. It's Mr Sarkozy, who apparently sent a handwritten congratulatory note on election night addressed to "Barak".
7. It's £1,898.63 per day. Sir Fred says he has no intention of giving it back.

Your Score

0 - 3 : In the red

4 - 6 : Credit due

7 - 7 : Loaded

For a complete archive of past quizzes and our weekly news quiz, 7 days 7 questions, visit the Magazine page and scroll down. You can also do this quiz on your mobile device.

Find out how to get the BBC News website on your mobile device

What makes youth clubs so uncool?

Little Richard - definitely not youth club endorsed in the 1950s

Why do youth clubs have an image problem? Because every aspiring young rebel knows that's exactly where their fretting parents want them to go, says Laurie Taylor in his weekly column for the Magazine.

It must have only been a couple of years after my mother finally abandoned her attempts to make me attend mass at St Helen's on Sunday morning that she developed her obsession with youth clubs.

Why was it, she wondered, that I chose to spend my evenings with Vinnie and Den hanging around the chippie in Endbutt Lane rather than following the example of other decent boys in the neighbourhood and enrolling for the twice a week get-togethers at the Brownmoor youth club?

She had a point. Hanging around the chippie was not a stimulating way to spend an evening. There were occasional pleasures to be had: the minor thrill of persuading the man in the shop to add extra scraps to your sixpenny bag of chips, the comfort of finding a doorway which was deep enough to protect you from the wind and cold, the somewhat distant hope that this might be the night when you could catch a glimpse of some of the girls with short red skirts from Streatham House school.

FIND OUT MORE Hear Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on Radio 4 at 1600 on Wednesdays or 0030 on Mondays Or download the podcast here

But in truth, the real attraction was much simpler. The chippie was not Brownmoor Youth Club. Vinnie and Den and I were hardly radical teenagers. We wouldn't have known the meaning of the word. But we were bound together by the sense that there was something uncomfortable, even disturbing, about allowing ourselves to be categorised as youth, as suitable subjects for a youth club and a youth leader and youth activities.

Each of us at one time or another had been to Brownmoor Youth Club. Each of us had joined in such youth activities as the table-tennis competition and the general knowledge quiz and the Friday night "youth dance" in which relations between boys and girls were carefully regulated by the youth leader whose periodic blasts on a whistle were a signal that existing foxtrot or quickstep partners should disentangle and choose a new partner from the nearest couple. (Den, who'd read about these things in a medical dictionary, called it the coitus interruptus dance)

The sight of such unfettered free movement made me regret every second I spent earning my bronze medal for the quickstep

There was, though, one youth club we all rushed to attend. When I was about 16, news came through that somewhere in Queens Drive, there was this place where the leader played all the latest records. There were no waltzes, or foxtrots or quicksteps. You could just stand there and listen or do the sort of crazy dancing that was banned in all the local dance-halls (I can still remember the large sign on the pillar nearest the stage in the New Brighton Ballroom which read "No Jitterbugging".)

Everything we'd heard was true. Our 61 bus dropped us outside a pub and then an arrow led us to an upstairs room which was bursting with the sound of Little Richard. We soon learned that the club's leader only played Little Richard. He'd take Rip it Up off the turntable and replace it with Good Golly Miss Molly and then get Tutti Frutti ready for the next play. And how people danced! The sight of such wonderful unfettered free movement instantly made me regret every second I spent the year before earning my bronze medal for the quickstep.

The place never had a name but it soon became a regular haunt. One night, Den, who had the same sort of trouble with his mum as I did with mine, asked the man who put the records on if this was "a proper youth club". The man, who never revealed his name, came straight to the point.

"If it was a youth club, mate, they wouldn't let someone like me inside."

And with that, he flipped Lucille off the turntable and replaced it with Long Tall Sally.

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