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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Urge: Naked World
You'll never meet Mr. Right with your bed facing north
Can Chinese interior design turn a lonely bedroom into a lusty love nest? It worked for Karen. She moved her bed, painted the walls and met Mike.
By Hank Hyena
[02/07/00]

Smoke 'em if you've got 'em?
No one has studied casual smokers, but their risk level might be lower than expected.
By David McGuire
[02/07/00]

Urge
Love is just a moment
Forget about finding Mr. Right. Finding oneself is more exciting than romance. These celebrated feminists sound more like hosts of "The View" than sisters of the struggle.
By Cathy Young
[02/05/00]

Urge: Naked World
Stressed sailor, bored waitress bare all
Sailor dances in his birthday suit at Aussie football match. English waitress brightens up bowls championship in the buff.
By Hank Hyena
[02/04/00]

Living the paradox
How do the French eat all that cheese and still lose weight? I had to find out.
By Valerie Frankel
[02/03/00]

Complete archives for Health & Body

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While urban governments legislate a plethora of progressive decrees, their attempts at enlightenment are often dismissed in the countryside where ancient prejudices prevail. With 84.6 percent of the population living in rural areas this means change, in reality, touches very few.

Visit the Naked World archive Do you have a tale or tip for Naked World? Send e-mail to Hank Hyena

Gender equality was guaranteed in Burkina Faso's 1991 constitution, but women and girls remain miles away from authentic liberation. Last month, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women convened to strategize against its greatest concerns: forced marriage, wife inheritance, polygamy, violence against women, illiteracy and accusations of witchcraft.

Young Burkinabe girls are often coerced into matrimony because customs regard them as "property to be given away as a gift for a friend, a medium of exchange, or to be used for immediate or future interests," according to a report on the Jan. 28 M2 Presswire.

Although these "forced marriages" are illegal, ignorance of the law abounds in a country where 92 percent of the women are illiterate, cannot afford legal action and are geographically isolated from courts.

On an encouraging note, the committee praised Burkina Faso's success at abolishing female genital mutilation, or clitorectomies, and urged the nation to assume leadership in eradicating the horrific practice from Africa. Burkinabe women were also congratulated for having taken the lead in accepting the female condom.

Female activists in this landlocked country on the fringe of the Sahara deserve to be optimistic about their future. Rural migration into urban areas is gradually educating the populace and eradicating the misogynist notions of the past.

The United Nations has launched several programs to elevate the status of women, and slowly, women are making tiny inroads into the political arena. Of the National Assembly's 111 representatives, 10 are women.

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You'll never meet Mr. Right with your bed facing north
Feb. 7, 2000

Are you lonely in bed? Want to bounce on the box springs with some sexy company? Just align your mattress in the proper position and the lovers will line up at your door, swears a recent convert to feng shui.

Karen May, 32, wrote in the London Mirror that she was single, antisocial and depressed when she consulted Liza Evans, a feng shui designer. Redecorating the barren boudoir was advised as a remedy. The cold bed was pulled away from the wall because this would allow Mr. Right warmth and access on the opposite side. The bed's head was also steered southwest, the direction of romance.

Repainting the room supplied the next invitation to intimacy as the pale mauve walls were replaced with hot red and orange hues. A red heart-shaped lamp was also installed. Its warm glow made Karen feel "relaxed and sexy." Fake plants were disposed of to rid the chamber of "dead energy." A wooden sculpture of two people entwined was purchased to promote "unity."

Were magic gems incorporated? Absolutely. A rose crystal was dangled by the window to attract "the earth element."

Did the ancient but also New Age arrangement produce aphrodisiac results?

May claims she met a man named Mike at her gym one month later. Mike, 30, made her blush and she "couldn't stop thinking about him." A week later, the two chatted all night together and marvelous Mike confessed that he was "irresistibly drawn" to her.

Today, Karen reports that they've been together for nearly a year and it's just gotten better and better. "We're on the same wavelength and we trust each other implicitly," she coos.

Yadda-yadda-yadda. Yawn. Groan. Bah. Humbug.

Naked World scoffs at the innumerable silly superstitions of feng shui, like the fear that one's wealth will disappear "down the drain" if you don't fix a dripping faucet. I propose that the arcane art simply performs as a mental placebo on the easily influenced and the wistfully hopeful. My skepticism will not stem the tide of converts though as long as testimony like May's promises solitaries that they can land partners by simply primping their flats.

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Stressed sailor, bored waitress bare all
Feb. 4, 2000

Streaking stark naked with one's pubic zone in full public view is a fad that began in the early '70s, when bellbottom corduroys and macramé were the rage. Cultural quirks usually fly swiftly out of style, but baring it all in front of startled multitudes seems to be a trend with long legs, particularly in Anglo nations.

Australian sailor Peter Hassall, 29, danced in his birthday suit before 14,000 spectators during a football match in Darwin between the Essendon Bombers and the West Coast Eagles, the Australian AP reported.

The petty officer was on leave after a stressful 40-day tour in East Timor aboard the HMAS Newcastle. After boozing with buddies all afternoon, Hassall accepted a dare to gyrate buck naked on the green playing field in nothing but his Nikes.

Police escorted him out of the arena to Darwin's courthouse, where he pleaded guilty to an indecent behavior charge that cost him $400. Magistrate Daniel Trigg grumbled, "I get a bit concerned when I see members of the armed forces behave in this manner. I'm a bit concerned about their maturity levels."

Female streakers are apparently more appreciated at sporting events, especially pretty ones like Tracy Sergeant, 22. The waitress strolled nude in front of 500 cheering spectators at the World Indoor Bowls Singles Championship in Hopton, Norfolk, according to the Times of London. Bowls, a game similar to bocci ball, is usually spared the type of raucous behavior reserved for football.

That was before Titillating Tracy. During the game she bounced up to champion David Gourlay and his opponent Les Saunders and planted a kiss on each. Later she explained, "Bowls has a reputation as a boring game and I wanted to liven it up."

Was the fleeced femme punished like the poor Aussie sailor? No. Quite the opposite. Tracy made sympathetic headlines across the United Kingdom. Norfolk officials told the Glasgow Herald no charges would be filed.

Issuing a tongue-in-cheek statement, they said, "After having studied the whole unsavory incident on 43 occasions, including slow motion replay, we have decided against implementing a rule that spectators should remain clothed at all times."

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The panty police nab one of their own
Feb. 3, 2000

What's sexy in one country isn't erotic everywhere else. Take Japan, for example. In this archipelago that finds raw sea urchin tasty, a great number of men share a common obsession: peeping at the white panties of pubescent, uniformed schoolgirls.

Japanese Web sites depicting photos of shy nymphets in plaid skirts demurely exposing a naughty patch of white cotton abound, feeding the fetish.

Naked World is concerned about this phenomenon. How do schoolgirls stroll unmolested in this land pervaded by panty hounds? Are their hems hoisted in public by uncontrollable knickers nuts? Do peepers fling themselves prone on the sidewalk so they can gaze past young knees?

And now, even the police have gone "undercover," according to Tokyo's Mainichi Daily News.

Toshihito Yamamoto, a captain of Osaka's riot police, spent last week training at Tokyo's National Police Academy. To amuse himself during his Saturday off-hours, he strolled to the hip Shibuya district with his camera to snatch some freeze frames. When a 17-year-old schoolgirl sauntered by, the excited cop curled himself into position to capture a celluloid panty shot.

GRR! SNARL! The captain's voyeurism was irately observed by the girl's territorial 19-year-old boyfriend. Yamamoto tried to slink away, but was quickly cornered by the angry lad and escorted to Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department, where he confessed in disgrace. His career is now ruined. Osaka Prefectural Police have announced his dismissal from their ranks.

This saga of crime and punishment proves that peering at panties in Japan is only tolerated as a private vice. Anyone pursuing beaver viewing in public faces sharp condemnation. Although the taboo bait skips along the public domain, it can only be clandestinely witnessed by those who are athletic and aesthetic enough to concoct a graceful, invisible glance.

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AIDS killing supposedly celibate priests
Feb. 2, 2000

If celibacy is the best protection against high-risk sex, then Roman Catholic priests should be enjoying one of the safest lifestyles because of their vow to abstain from sex. But after so many altar boy scandals, should anyone be surprised that the supposedly chaste are succumbing to AIDS?

In a special series on AIDS in the priesthood, the Kansas City Star mailed a confidential survey to 3,000 priests. More than 800 responded.

Fifty-eight percent said they knew at least one priest who had died of an AIDS-related illness. And 32 percent said they knew a priest living with HIV.

Exact casualty numbers are unknown because infected clerics are often shamed into silence by Catholic administrators. Others, like the late Bishop Emerson Moore of the Archdiocese of New York, are quietly transferred to a distant hospice where they're eventually tagged with a death certificate that conceals the true cause of their demise. Moore's passing was attributed to "unknown natural causes."

Plagued padres don't get infected just by listening to lurid stories in dark confessionals. Fifteen percent of the responding priests said they were homosexual and 5 percent said they were bisexual. Seventy-five percent said the church should have provided them with more sex education when they were seminary students. The Rev. John Keenan of Chicago believes that the majority of patients at his Trinity House clinic for priests were exposed to the virus through same-sex activity. One client, he said, had passed on the malady to eight other priests.

How will the Vatican respond to this challenge? Will it do away with the celibacy requirement and encourage its robed ranks to wear condoms? No. Hell will probably freeze over before the pope surrenders his insistence on chastity. The only clerical change that has occurred since the AIDS era began is that most religious orders today now screen applicants for the priesthood with an HIV-antibody test prior to their ordination.

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