Blake's Nudity

William Blake's illustrations for "The Lamb", "The Little Girl Lost", and "The Little Girl Found" all involve humans in various states of dress. The boy in "The Lamb" is naked, as are the children and adult frolicking at the end of "The Little Girl Found". However, Lyca and her mother are clothed in "The Little Girl Lost" and the first illustration of "The Little Girl Found". Blake's use of nudity seems to imply a state of innocence, purity, and natural being. Hence, Lyca's mother is clothed because she has lost her innocence in the transition to motherhood, and will soon experience the sorrow this transformation so often carries with it. Lyca also is clothed, but the lioness releases her of the clothing that binds her to the human world, the world of experience and pain, before carrying her off to reunite her with the natural world. At the end of the poem, which I always perceived as Lyca's parents joining her in death, all are depicted in a natural state of nudity, having returned to an innocent, painless, carefree state.
Modern American society has an extremely different view of nudity. It does not represent innocence or purity, and is most certainly not natural. In Columbia, South Carolina, where I used to live, there was a news story a few months ago about a mother who was told by Wal-Mart employees to stop breastfeeding her child in a public area of the store. Several comments on the story pointed out that Wal-Mart is a "family store" and young children might be exposed to the indecency of a bare breast. Breastfeeding is a completely natural action; humans have evolved to feed their young this way. However, Americans have come to understand all nudity as having a sexual bent. If a child sees a women breastfeeding and is told to look away, the child grasps that something is "naughty" about nakedness. That child eventually has to confront their own nakedness (it can't be escaped) and may wonder what is so wrong about them, about their body. This is why a majority of Americans have body image and self-esteem problems. From a young age, they are exposed to the idea that their natural state is something shameful, to be hidden away. Although, since most people can't quite figure out why they have this uneasy feeling about their naked appearance, they start to think it's because their hips are too big, or their waist is not proportionate, and endeavor to somehow change this. Thus, the plastic surgery and diet businesses boom, but people still don't quite seem happy with themselves.