I saw myself naked in the shower yesterday, and boy, was I offended. I mean, it totally blindsided me. I'm reading ingredients off the shampoo bottle, and it slips out of my hands. I bend down to pick it up and — bam! — absolutely without warning: full frontal nudity.
It was a
crass and classless stunt for my body to pull at any time of the day, but to do it at 10 a.m.,
when it knew I was awake? I quickly averted my eyes — lifted them to heaven, in fact — scrubbed and scrubbed my body for an hour and a half (I had a noon appointment). But for all that effort, and all that lather coverage, I still felt
dirty.
Yesterday morning's manifestation is just one more sign of the general decline of American values. Back in the early sixties, when Ed Sullivan was programming my showers, the censors were committed, proactive, and thorough. I could not set one foot inside the bathroom without my chest covered in a chaste polyester wrap and my nether parts cheerfully contained in a pair of knee-length bathing trousers.
I am horrified and outraged by my body's inappropriate and shameless display of its
you-know-what, and you can bet I will be writing a sharply-worded letter to the government demanding an explanation as to how this could happen.
