I just wanted to comment on the marvel that Columbae’s Quarterly Body Painting Party is. Because you would think that a general admission boozy naked college party would get super sketchy super fast. But the fact is that it’s a remarkably wholesome affair, that continues to be well attended, even by the squeaky-clean-est of co-opers. Very few females end up running away, feeling objectified or uncomfortable: something that often happens at many clothing-mandatory parites. Here I’m going to gesture at a theory as to why.

Of course, there are lots of contributing factors. There’s the fact that nudity is more or less ubiquitous in this environment. To be naked is to conform, to be clothed is to deviate and consequently, stand-out. There’s the fact that the medium establishes a really playful, wholesome tone: you’re essentially fingerpainting, in bright primary colors. Chances are the last time you did that, you had no idea what sex was and were used to bathing with your opposite gender sibling. In the sink. (Oh my god, sink baths.) There’s the fact that co-op kids make up most of the party, and while they as individuals are not universally unsketchy (oh contraire!), as a group their culture more or less is (consensus caters to the least-comfortable person! (which is why it can take so long!)) There’s the fact that covered-in-paint, while not clothed, isn’t completely naked either.

But all of this aside, the thing I’m most interested in is the utter absorption the act of painting creates in most attendants. All of a sudden each is an artist, working on a completely novel canvas. Lots of people who haven’t made so much as a doodle in years rediscover their creative side, and lots of possibly otherwise insecure people learn to think of their body in a completely new way: as a vehicle for paint. I have seen the sketchiest-guy-in-the-room elbow aside the completely naked, and temporarily completely un-painted, most-attractive-girl-in-the-room, without even a how-do-you-do (nor an ogling of her breasts). She was lacking the silly second skin purple paint would provide and in fact stood out in the crowd quite a bit as un-painted. He was not a co-oper, nor particularly under the scrutiny of the community. But she was between him and a bucket of black paint, and his torso was looking a little patchy. I have to admit, I can sympathize.

(White clouds and blue skies, Spring 2010)