* Sloaning

“There is no smaller package in the world than that of a person all wrapped up in himself.”
William Sloane Coffin, Jr.







Gordon: Intensely naked
By Claire Gordon
The Yale Daily News
Published Friday, February 5, 2010


I saw my first naked man with my dad. It was 1992, and we were on a father-daughter excursion to the Tate Modern. In the section “Nude/Action/Body,” we stumbled upon a triple life-size projection of a naked, slender middle-aged man jumping on a trampoline in slow motion.

The other visitors watched the man’s loose bouncing chest skin, reflected on the human condition and walked away. My 12-year-old eyes, however, were fixed on the flaccid penis slapping ever so slowly and ever so repeatedly against his thigh. My father and I stood in front of that video for 180 seconds.

He found it less awkward to stare at the screen than to interact with his pre-pubescent daughter. I was also paralyzed, but by the hypnotic and slightly horrifying image of an adult male nude/action/body.

I am now desensitized to the naked male. After witnessing the Finals Fairies’ flesh parade my first reading week at Yale, I have found it difficult to avoid mass nudity on campus. Yalies love getting naked. And not in that normal collegiate way of the drunk girl at the party who takes off her shirt. Yalies love getting naked for rebellious, irreverent purposes. Mostly.

A 1975 Crimson article by James Gleick, Harvard ’76, observed this unique Yale phenomenon. “Yale has a special, feverish intensity that sets it apart from its brethren,” he writes, “and Yale’s intensity, some say, shades over into sickness and depravity.” Gleick describes the Yale practice of sloaning: “attracting public attention to ones genitals.”

Gleick is now a successful author, who studies the cultural implications of science. He coined the term “Butterfly Effect,” which is interesting because the innocent sloaning of the ’70s has spawned a culture at Yale of both spontaneous and highly organized communal undress. . .


#1 By Sloane Coffin 4:36a.m. on February 5, 2010

This is a strange and beautiful piece of writing. I just wonder what the Chaplain in 1976 (my era) would think of sloaning. (I had never heard of it until this article) I believe he had just succeeded William Sloane Coffin who had moved to Riverside Church.

PK


#2 By Yale 08 9:44a.m. on February 5, 2010

I hate the smell of Gnosticism in the morning.


#3 By James T. Madison 11:11a.m. on February 5, 2010


I have been told by many people that before women came to Yale, Payne Whitney Gymnasium was kept heated to a rather high temperature and many students walked almost everywhere naked. ("Gymnasium" means "naked house" in Greek, of course.) If students are now traisping about in the altogether whenever they can, perhaps the time has come for the University to embrace social progress, restore the old customs, bring back nudity (or is it "nakedness?") to the Gym, and prohibit most suits in the Payne Whiteny pools. I realize that this institutionalization of what has become a student custom would undermine the practice of "getting naked for rebellious, irreverent purposes," but perhaps the students could practice something rebellious and irreverent at the Gym?

There is a practical side to all this. Before women, most swimming in the Payne Whitney pools were naked, a practice that helped to keep the filters from clogging up. In fact, the third floor practice pool water was not drained from the time the Gym opened in the 1930's until a few years after women were admitted. The filter was soon clogged up by women's longer hair, the then-concurrent lenghtening of male hair (the "rebellious, irreverent" practice of the time, with swim caps imperfect protection), and more and bigger swim suits all around. The pool had to be drained for the very first time in the 1970's. Draining was delayed a bit when an engineering professor appeared at more or less the last minute and warned the Gym staff that since the pool had not been drained since the 1930's, nobody really knew if draining it might cause the third-floor Gym walls to cave in when the outpressing force of the practice pool water was removed. Faced with the prospect of an unplanned implosion of Payne Whitney, the Gym staff delayed the draining for a short period while the professor ran some calculations. Those calculations showed that the Gym would remain sound, and the draining and filter replacement continued.


#4 By unbelievable 12:17p.m. on February 5, 2010

Like #1..I too have never heard of sloaning.

This is what happens in an extreme liberal bubble, you create "frenetic" type behavior.

In little time you become desensitized from all perversion and reject that which is moral and wholesome.

All that is left is faith that one day we will return to the values and morals instilled by our families.

#5 By cod piece 1:40p.m. on February 5, 2010

4:
I'm not asserting it is any more immoral than wearing a cod piece in medieval times was immoral.

Just a fashion of the era.

I believe it is called a high-rise and a low-rise by tailors today.

However, I am asserting that I never heard of it during my 9 years on the Yale campus ('76-'85)until reading this beautifully written article this morning.

PK

#6 By Puzzled 2:05p.m. on February 5, 2010

What's the big deal about nakedness? Except for protection against the elements, covering one's body certainly is not "natural". I guess it has to do with some strange old myth about covering one's nakedness and feeling embarrassed and all that, all because of a snake and and apple.. how weird can you get? What has that to do with "morals and values"?

#7 By Birthday suits February 6, 2010

#3:

Not only Payne-Whitney, which I dimly remember as a child, but the New Haven YMCA on Howe Street (and, I believe) the sister building, the YWCA, had nude swimming, although people used a towel when walking around the building.

Such libertinism baffles me because the 1950's were so Puritannical otherwise. Maybe it has to do with those Winslow Homer "Swimming Hole" idealizations. Or maybe post-war industry was so tenuous, that no one had time for extraneous frivolities like bathing suits when nature provided birthday suits for free.

I suppose if one believes that "the only thing we have to fear is our secrets" then clothing the body--secreting it so to speak -- makes no sense.

On the other hand. we used to be covered with hair for protection from the elements --especially the sun---and for warmth.

I opt for clothes.

PK