At what threshold is nudity defined on the web?

Question:

At what threshold is nudity defined on the web?

Would the word nudity be defined by one exposing one's complete body but not excluding exposing one's mammary glands, one' s genitalia and one' s rear end ? There existed a very famous poster /photograph of a very famous 1980's supermodel and actress Nastassja Kinski photographed by the famous celebrity photographer Richard Avedon. Miss Kinski, in the poster, was reclining unclothed with either a 20 foot or 30 foot boa constrictor coiled around her body. The boa constrictor was coiled strategically on Miss Kinski's unclothed body covering Miss Kinski's private areas. Given this description of Miss Kinski in this photo, would she be deemed "nude" in the most impirical definition of the word "nudity" used for the world - wide web?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: The kind of photo you're describing is usually called an "implied nude". Meaning, it's obvious that the person depicted it wearing no clothes, but there's nothing visible that clothing wouldn't normally cover.

Generally speaking, a person is nude when they're not wearing any clothes, regardless of what you can see in a photograph or video. It describes the subject's state of dress, not what the viewer can see.

As for at what point censorship kicks in, that gets pretty complicated. There's no consensus on it.

The is the "world" part of the "world wide web". In the US, an exposed female nipple would be considered "nude", whereas in parts of Europe it wouldn't be. More conservative places wouldn't even tolerate an "implied nude" photograph. Different countries all have different legal definitions for nudity, and different cultures all have different ideas of what's acceptable in terms of nudity and what's not.

It's further confounded by attempts to make a distinction between "porn", "art", and "educational materials". For example, a female's breast might be okay on a medical web site talking about breast cancer, whereas it wouldn't be in other contexts.