Quote:
Originally Posted by tdi16v
Indeed, I agree with you, should be mandatory and July or August, but many are out of the country for holidays.
The solution could be, to ride in a park where only naked riders allowed, like in the London Zoo, I'm sure many more naked and specially women.
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Funnily enough, though the World Naked Bike Ride has several stated aims, allowing participants to be photographed so their sexual organs can be studied on porn websites is not one of them. The organisers have to accommodate the aims of the protest, the riders, and the requirements of the local police, they are not going to mess about with the rules to make the ride more porn-friendly, particularly as this would put off lots of potential riders and get in the way of promoting the message (no-one wants their cause associated with porn).
There's a lot of grumbling on here from photographers complaining that the organisers are losing opportunities for publicity by stopping them taking pictures, but all they are doing is protecting the riders from intrusive photographers. There are hundreds of pictures and videos of all the rides, and photographers for media outlets will have press accreditation from the organisers so the "lost opportunity" argument doesn't hold any water. I suspect the only people trawling Flickr and other internet sites for photos from the ride are participants and perverts like us.
The exhibitionists who ignore the police instruction to keep pre-ride nudity inside the staging area are a minority and don't represent the most of the riders. I overheard more women refuse consent to be photographed than agree this year and a lot of disparaging comments about the photographers (such as "weirdos"). While long-range photography during the ride is expected, even encouraged, close up shots of individuals are only supposed to take place with the subject's permission, and there were posters all around the staging area at Brighton reminding all participants of this.
If you make nudity mandatory, that will reduce the number of female participants (the ones only happy to go topless or in underwear) and shift the demographic of the event away from enthusiastic activists and more towards deliberate exhibitionists. Fewer women will have a snowball effect, as the women who are happy to go naked in a mixed-gender group but feel less comfortable surrounded by predominantly men also drop away. That will make the event less attractive both to us and to media outlets. I know there are a couple of international rides where full nudity was prohibited - it wouldn't surprise me if these had a higher female-male ratio than the bare-as-you-dare rides, perhaps someone who was at one can give an opinion?
The main factor (in Brighton at least) that determines the number of female attendees and the level of nudity on display is out of the organisers' control - the weather. London and Brighton chose last week's date because it fell during National Bike Week. It wouldn't surprise me if most viewers of these photographs didn't know that, which again suggests that nudity itself does not necessarily increase awareness, and why more nudity and/or photos of nudity is not the organisers' main focus.