Emotional clashes and female public nudity in Thailand

This article revisits cultural controversies over female public nudity in Thai society. It uses Songkran’s topless dancing in 2011 and a bare-breast painting performance on the ‘Thailand’s Got Talent Show’ in 2012 to explore cultural and emotional clashes in Thailand’s 21st century. It shows that these two cases of public female nudity drew deep and divergent emotional responses from different groups in Thai society. These cases clearly revealed a clash in viewpoints with regard to Thai notions of feminine respectability associated with national identity and women’s sexual expression. On the one hand, the controversies prompted moral panic and backlashes against women’s sexual rebelliousness. On the other hand, they set off counter-backlashes against hegemonic discourse that tends to normalise oppressive sexual culture, nationalism and totalitarianism.

Squeezing, Squirting, Spilling Milk: The Lactation of Saint Bernard and the FlemishMadonna Lactans(ca. 1430–1530)

The focus on three drops of milk issuing from the Virgin’s breast in “The Virgin in Front of a Fire Screen” was inspired by contemporary representations of the Lactation of Saint Bernard. This latter iconography provides the visual context for the vivid address of eroticized depictions of the Madonna’s “one bare breast” in Flemish art and shows the intricate connections between visuality and materiality in fifteenth-century Flemish religious art. Some depictions of Saint Bernard’s lactation transform the Madonna’s jets of milk into rays of light aiming for his eyes, stressing the interchangeability of materiality and visuality as modes that were expected to facilitate and/or authenticate miraculous appearances of the Madonna.

Three-Dimensional Kinematics of the Breast during a Two-Step Star Jump

Anecdotal reports suggest two-step star jumps cause excessive breast movement and discomfort, leading to recommendations for this activity as a diagnostic tool to determine effective breast support in a retail environment. The aim was to investigate multiplanar bare-breast kinematics during the two-step star jump and to establish the relationship between breast kinematics, discomfort and cup size. Thirty-nine females completed five two-step star jumps with no breast support after which breast discomfort was rated. To establish relative breast kinematics infrared cameras tracked the 3D co-ordinates of breast and body markers. Maximum resultant breast displacement, velocity and acceleration during jumping reached 18.7 cm, 93.1 cm·s−1and 3.6g, respectively. Significantly more vertical breast displacement (p< 0.01) and velocity (p< 0.01) occurred compared with mediolateral and anteroposterior kinematics. Breast discomfort increased as cup size increased (r= .61). Two-step star jumping stimulated multiplanar breast kinematics and high levels of breast discomfort. Therefore, this activity may be useful in a retail outlet to determine the function and comfort of a sports bra.