Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1157.
Describing nudity.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1157.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit our website at eslpod.com.
Become a member of ESL Podcast.
When you do, you can download the Learning Guide for this episode.
Each learning guide contains a complete transcript of everything we say in English.
And while you're on our website, take a look at our ESL podcast store that has additional courses in business and daily English just for you.
On this episode we're going to hear a dialogue between Venus and Milo About describing people who don't have any clothes on.
Let's get started, Kids.
Cover your eyes.
Don't look at that.
I didn't know there would be nudity here.
Why did you bring us here?
I brought you here to see this celebration of the beauty of the human form.
This is obscene.
Look at the bare breasts on that one, and the one over there is topless.
That man's private parts are on display for everyone to see.
Most of these are butt naked.
Can't you see past the nudity to appreciate the artist's creations?
I'm not one of those people who go to nude beaches and run around in their birthday suit completely uninhibited.
This is shameful.
This isn't a nude beach.
It's a museum.
Your kids are here to appreciate some of the finest art in history.
I don't call this art.
I call it pornography.
I'm taking my kids out of here.
Oh my God, there are full frontals wherever you look.
Kids, keep your eyes covered.
We're leaving.
All right, but I was just trying to open your kids' eyes to art.
You've opened their eyes, all right, and I'm slamming them shut.
Venus begins our dialogue by saying to her children, kids, cover your eyes.
The expression to cover your eyes means to put your hands in front of your eyes so that you don't see something bad.
If you're watching a movie and there's a very violent scene apart, with a lot of violence, and you know that your husband or wife doesn't like that kind of violence, you may say cover your eyes, meaning don't look at the screen, or put your hands in front of your eyes so that you don't see this.
Venus is telling her children to cover their eyes.
Don't look at that, she says.
I didn't know there would be nudity here.
Why did you bring us here?
Nudity comes from the word nude, n-u-d-e.
To be nude means not to have any clothing on.
We might also say to be naked, n-a-k-e-d, without clothing.
Venus is asking Milo why he brought them to this place.
We later learn it's a museum. that has nudity.
Milo says, The human form means the shape and appearance of the human body.
Venus, however, doesn't think this is a good thing.
She says, This is obscene.
Obscene O-B-S-C-E-N-E is something that is considered very vulgar or inappropriate, usually something related to nudity or sexual activity.
Something that is obscene is considered to be unacceptable by the social standards of the community or of the culture.
Certain things might be considered obscene in one culture or in one historical period that are not considered obscene in a different one.
Venus, however, thinks that the nudity she is seeing is obscene.
She says, look at the bare breasts on that one, and the one over there is topless.
Breasts B-R-E-A-S-T are two things that women have on their chests in the top front of their body, that are used to, among other things, feed children, young babies.
Bare breasts are breasts that are not covered with any kind of clothing.
Topless.
T-O-P-L-E-S-S refers usually to a woman, but it could be a man who doesn't have a shirt on, who doesn't have anything that is covering the top part of his or her body.
If a woman is topless, then you will see her bare breasts.
A great deal of Western art, especially during the Renaissance period in Europe, features the human body that is naked.
Similarly, you find art from the ancient world ancient Greece and Rome where the human body was shown without any clothing.
Venus doesn't like this.
She then says that man's private parts are on display for everyone to see.
Venus is, we think, pointing at a statue.
It's not a real man.
It's a statue of a man, a representation of a man.
She points out that the man's private parts are on display.
A person's private parts are those parts of the body that we normally cover with clothing.
For both a man and a woman.
That would include the parts around your waist.
That is where your legs meet, the lower part of your body.
For a woman, private parts usually also include her breasts.
These are things that are typically covered with clothing in most Western countries and certainly in most places in the United States.
To have something on display, D-I-S-P-L-A-Y, is to have something so that everyone can see it.
It's in a place where everyone can see it.
Venus is saying that this statue is showing a man's private parts so that everyone can see them.
Most of these, Venus continues, are but naked statues.
Your butt, B-U-T-T, is your rear, what you sit on.
It's a somewhat informal word, but a perfectly good word to use in any circumstance.
In more formal English, we might refer to it as a person's behind, B-E-H-I-N-D.
Or, if you want to be really sophisticated, you might use a word that comes from the French your derriere.
My father would sometimes use that word instead of butt.
But most people say butt.
Notice there are two Ts in this butt.
Butt naked refers to someone who doesn't have any clothes on, and so you can see the person's butt.
It's usually a general term however, to refer to someone who doesn't have clothes on any part of his body.
Milo says, can't you see past the nudity to appreciate the artist's creations?
To see past PAST something means to ignore or not be bothered by some negative part of an experience or something that you're reading or looking at in order to appreciate or enjoy the better things, the good things, the good qualities of something.
Venus says I'm not one of those people who go to nude beaches and run around in their birthday suit completely uninhibited.
This is shameful.
Let's start with the term nude beaches.
A beach.
B-E-A-C-H is an area next to an ocean, or possibly a lake, that people go and sit on in order to get a suntan.
A nude beach is a beach where you... can sit without wearing any clothing.
This is not very common in the U.S.
There are, I guess, places like this.
I myself have never been to one.
But a nude beach would be a beach where it isn't illegal to be naked.
Normally, if you walk around a town or a city without any clothes on, you might get arrested for for not having any clothes on.
But on a nude beach, usually you are safe to do that.
In other words, it's not against the law to be nude in public, as it is in most places in the US.
Venus says she's not one of those people, meaning she's not the kind of person who goes to nude beaches and runs around in her birthday suit.
To run around means simply to walk around, I think in this case, or to move around.
Your birthday suit says, refers to you not wearing any clothing.
When we say someone has their birthday suit S-U-I-T on, we mean the person doesn't have any clothing on, just as the day that you were born was when you came out of your mother's body without any clothing on.
You didn't have any clothing on when you were born, and so we call that condition of not having any clothes on your birthday suit.
A suit normally is, of course, a set of clothing that you have on pants and a shirt, for example, perhaps even a tie if you're a man.
Venus says she doesn't run around in her birthday suit uninhibited.
U-N-I-N-H-I-B-I-T-E-D.
To be inhibited means to not want to reveal yourself or to be shy, to be unwilling to do certain things, perhaps because you're embarrassed by them or you don't think they're appropriate.
The opposite of that is to be uninhibited.
To be uninhibited means not to be embarrassed by anything, just to do whatever you want, not to think that it's inappropriate.
Most importantly, not to care about what other people think of your actions.
Venus thinks that these nude statues, this art that she's seen, is shameful.
S-H-A-M-E-F-U-L.
Something that is shameful is something that causes you feelings of embarrassment when you think that it's wrong, when you think that it's inappropriate.
Milo says, however, this isn't a nude beach.
It's a museum.
Your kids are here to appreciate some of the finest art in history.
It occurs to me now that perhaps Venus is a teacher rather than a parent.
But in any case, Milo is telling her that she and the children are in the museum in order to appreciate art.
Great art, some of the best art in history.
Venus says, I don't call this art.
I call it pornography.
Pornography P-O-R-N-O-G-R-A-P-H-Y refers to images that are intended to sexually excite the person who sees them or watches them.
A shorter form of the word pornography is porn, P-O-R-N.
Venus thinks this art that shows the naked or nude human form is pornography.
She says, I'm taking my kids out of here.
Oh my God, she says, there are full frontals wherever you look.
Full, F-U-L-L, frontals, F-R-O-N-T-A-L-S, refers to the fronts of people's bodies which are naked.
Basically, people who don't have any clothes on.
The term frontal comes from another expression, frontal nudity, which describes seeing the front of someone's body without any clothing on.
Milo says, alright, but I was just trying to open your kid's eyes to art.
To open someone's eyes to something means to get him to understand or appreciate something he hasn't seen or understood before.
Venus says, you've opened their eyes all right, and I'm slamming them shut.
To slam, S-L-A-M, something means to close something, but with a lot of force.
If you slam the door, you close it using a lot of force so that it makes a loud noise.
Venus is saying that she's closing her children's eyes because she doesn't want them to see what she thinks is pornographic.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I brought you here to see this celebration of the beauty of the human form.
This is obscene.
Look at the bare breasts on that one, and the one over there is topless.
That man's private parts are on display for everyone to see.
Most of these are butt naked.
Can't you see past the nudity to appreciate the artist's creations?
I'm not one of those people who go to nude beaches and run around in their birthday suit completely uninhibited.
This is shameful.
This isn't a nude beach.
It's a museum.
Your kids are here to appreciate some of the finest art in history.
I don't call this art.
I call it pornography.
I'm taking my kids out of here.
Oh my God, there are full frontals wherever you look.
Kids, keep your eyes covered.
We're leaving.
All right, but I was just trying to open your kids' eyes to art.
You've opened their eyes, all right, and I'm slamming them shut.
There's nothing obscene, we hope, with any of our dialogues.
Thanks to our wonderful dialogue writer, our script writer, Dr. Lucy Say, for her wonderful work.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
