Naked for What Cause?

 

There's no question the pictures are beautiful and dramatic, looking a bit like a pre-Raphaelite painting. But a lot of nudie pictures are beautiful. In fact, there's a well-established arena of photography devoted to aesthetic representations of nude human form.  All good, and nice ass.

 

Nudes with animals?  Been done before and quite a lot. In fact, there used to be a couple of bars in Florida that specialized in semi-nude mermaids and mermen swimming around in glass-walled tanks.  Pay your $10 cover charge, but down your $15 for a watered-down gimlet, and watch the nudie show in a really big tropical fish tank.  All fun and good.

 

The remarkable part about the picture, above is the title:  Princess of whales: How a naked female scientist tries to tame belugas in the freezing Arctic.

 

Guess what?  Almost every single word in that title is a lie. 

 

For starters, the naked woman is not a scientist or a princess:  She is an international free diving champion and publicity-seeking exhibitionist by the name of  Natalia Avseenko.  She clearly is an athlete, and there is nothing wrong with seeking publicity if that is part of how you feed yourself and your family.  But a scientist?  Not in a million years.

 

Nor is she an animal trainer, nor is she training these animals. 

 

To be clear, Beluga whales have been trained for decades and getting naked with the animals has never been part of the regime.  Nor is whale training a 20-minute or 20-hour proposition.

  

So what is going on here? Nothing more than a little soft porn with captive wild animals for the zoo trade. 

 

These Beluga whales are wild animals that have been penned for sale by a Russian company which, rather frustratingly, has found few buyers, as almost no one in the world is buying wild caught marine mammals. 

 

This photo shoot is from 2011 when the Georgia Aquarium was trying to get the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to allow it to import 18 Beluga whales from the Utrish Dolphinarium for public display. That request was denied and NOAA noted that "This is the first application for a permit to import recently caught wild marine mammals in more than 20 years."

 

Right. 

 

The wild whale porno shoot did not work as a marketing tool for selling the exploitation of wild-caught marine animals for the zoo trade. 

 

And don't expect too many whale sales any time soon.  

 

Maybe releasing these whales back to the wild is the right idea?  Just a thought...

 

In other "naked with fish" stories we find former X-Files star Gillian Anderson going topless with a conger eel wrapped around her neck to protect her modesty. 

 

 

 

 

What going on here?  In this case, nudity is being used to grab attention for "Fishlove" a campaign trying to turn the tide on the destruction of ocean bottom habitat done by destructive trolling practices.

 

 

 

The Fishlover website explains:

The global marine ecosystem will collapse within a generation if unsustainable fishing practices are allowed to continue. The collapse of global fish stocks is one of the greatest ecological challenges we face today.  The good news is that it is a problem for which there is a relatively simple solution. With the right political decisions, we CAN save our seas so that they will be teeming with live for generations to come.

The core message here is one I have supported for more than two decades as I have noted in a previous post in which I explain why I do not eat commercially-caught fish.

So you want to get naked for the cause? Great. Maybe. What was the cause again?  Is this publicity for science-based work, or for something else (like a direct mail factory, such as PeTA?). 

Nothing wrong with nudity for a cause, I suppose (though it's not that original an idea at this point), but one has to ask what else have these naked stars done for this particular cause? 

If nudity is the only thing ever brought to the table, one has to wonder whether it is the cause that is being served, or whether it is simply more exhibitionist narcissism being put on by exhibitionist narcissists. 

For the record, I have been on the winning side of advocacy causes for more than 35 years now, and I have never once appeared naked or asked anyone else to do so.  And yes, go ahead and say it:  Thank God.
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