I don't often think about the distinction between pleasure and delight but in my mind they are very separate states of being. Pleasure is a sensual experience, body based, reserved for sex and food and carnal experiences. Delight is headier, more of an emotional state in reaction to something that's happened to me. 

For me then, delight comes to me no matter what or who I'm touching. I doesn't require my direct  tactile experience. Delight is easier to come by and perhaps more fulfilling (?). It seems that it would be since it can come to me in so many forms - stories and pictures, for instance - whereas carnal pleasure can be hit or miss.

I think I mistakenly focus more on the pursuit of pleasure and I discredit the delights of being delighted. Delight requires openness and perhaps a lack of self-awareness, a willingness to let myself get swept away, Perhaps there's the risk.

An open heart is more likely to be delighted.

I have friends who are very good at delight. They seem to walk to world like wide-eyed kids and they're always a joy to be around. Delight is catching and delicious. One of my friends, in fact, says "I'm so delighted!" when something pleases her.

 It's a good phrase. I'm going to use it today.  

​I mean, kinda it is, right?

I hate the way pictures are censored on Instagram with stars and spirals and scribbles to black out nipples and genitalia. It ruins the pictures. Personally, I'd rather post a completely different picture than censor my own pictures that way. 

So, I make the choice to self-censor with my hands and usually I can find a way to censor in such a way that looks sensual and doesn't look quite so much like censorship.

I have a picture that I have yet to post because I can't post it on Instagram unless I censor it. So I took the picture above, which is essentially the same picture but self-censored, intending to post both. But this censored picture looks way more naked than the other actual naked picture where my hands cover nothing..

My hands just put the viewer in mind of everything I'm covering. Right? 

I think that's the way censorship works. Yes, now you can't see anything on my body that would violate "community guidelines," but as a result the picture is much more striking and memorable than if I'd just posted a picture with my hands down.

When we're told we can't have something, usually it's the only thing we want. Human nature. 

update: 
This picture was online for about 15 minutes before instagram deleted it. Way to prove my point IG...

I woke up this morning with an entirely different picture planned for Sinful Sunday today. But then I saw Molly's picture on Instagram and realized that it was the first Sunday of the month so of course there's a prompt. I'm bad about paying attention and planning for photo prompts and usually I would just post what I wanted but this morning I decided to take a different picture.

The prompt was "underneath" and my first thought was me underneath something and my second thought was the camera underneath me.

Not for nothing but an upward shot is incredibly difficult for me to take in any kind of flattering or interesting way. I've taken a few that I really like in the past but I didn't want to duplicate this pose and instead wanted to do something different. 

It took forever. I took a million terrible shots. But it was an interesting experiment and once I took this shot, found the right quote and added the "70's Playboy suntan" filter (appropriately named "Hefe," which always reminds me of Hugh Hefner), I kinda liked it. 

I think the quote adds a little cheeky something to the photo, because who doesn't want pearls?

Happy Sunday everyone.

This is one explanation of the difference between nakedness and nudity. 

But it's also all about the picture and the pose right? There's something so removed about the picture above. Even though you can see just about all of me. Perhaps that's just it, it's the distance and the scope. A close up feels more personal and more sensual than a longer shot. 

To me, this shot definitely feels like a nude and less like a naked person. It looks engineered and structured, like my body is another piece of furniture in the room. On display. Perhaps it's also the spare quality of the window seat? The lack of cushy furnishings, blankets, pillows etc.

I took a picture last week with a similar pose but I'm in bed and you can see a  lot more schmada (for lack of an official word) in the background. All the furnishing context helps make that previous picture look more candid and less posed, which in turn makes it feel more naked, I think.

This picture is a classic nude shot. And even though my bottom is bare, I doubt it will get removed from Instagram because it doesn't seem lascivious. 

Funny how the rules work, isn't it?

Hyacinth over at A Dissolute Life Means... has resolved to post every day in June and is inviting others to join her. Separately, I had also felt a need to push myself this month and decided I wanted to post every day in June about the subjects of nakedness and nudity. I'm calling it Naked June and I'll fold it into her challenge.

I've been thinking a lot about these naked pics I take and the whys and wherefores. Artists have always painted and photographed the female nude but while previous centuries worth of female nudes are considered "high art," now the naked selfie is derided as low class.

How did we switch up so easily?

Is it the sheer number of naked pictures online or perhaps the degraded quality of most of them? Is it the derogatory term "thirst trap" and with it the idea that seduction and sexuality are shameful? Perhaps it's all of these things plus the easiness of access that has blurred the lines of art and commerce. Sometimes it's hard to tell with an online naked picture if someone is promoting themselves, selling themselves, admiring themselves or inviting everyone in their audience to do any one of those things. 

I started my own photo project for very personal reasons that I wrote about here and it's since evolved into something I call Ekphrasis Inverted.

Ekphrasis is a Greek term for the practice of using colorful language to describe a visual piece of art. Essentially, creating a piece of art that describes another piece of art. I used the ekphrastic ideal in an inverted way by adding text to my pictures to describe, define or further expand on them and then I offer the text and picture combo up to an audience for commentary of their own. 

In many ways, this is what all bloggers do. We all put pieces of our art online and invite commentary. But what is so compelling about nakedness and nudity? And is there a difference between those two things? 

I'm thinking on it this month.