What bigger issues does the seemingly frivolous topic of nudity point to today? There was a precise moment when I realised this. He offered me a tiny towel that only just covered the essentials. At the time, I saw nakedness as paradoxical — mundane yet controversial, simultaneously natural and unnatural. For there is a fundamental ambiguity in the nature of human existence: humans are originally naked for however brief a moment! Humans may be naturally naked, but we have used clothing to define our species, and to differentiate ourselves from each other.

Many a feminist, by now, has upbraided the duplicity of breastfeeding women being shamed, while virtually in the shadow of hoardings, giving ample eye-suckle to passing heteroblokes. Scandal after scandal has broken on Facebook following its unilateral censuring of selective naked breasts, inciting free-the-nipple picnics and other breast-flailing expressions against slut-shaming. But the latest fracas involving Arrernte woman and writer Celeste Liddle, and the image of painted Ampilatwatja women performing ceremony, references more than just discriminatory publishing of naked breasts by Facebook and, by extension, the wider mediascape. There is a long history of settlers deriding the nudity of women elders that reflects more on their fears than on the women who were, unsettlingly, completely indifferent to their discomfort and offence. Her primitivism was thought to make her more libidinous.

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Aboriginal women from the remote Central Australian community of Ampilatwatja performing at a public ceremony in to protest against the Northern Territory intervention. Facebook is facing scathing criticism down under, after suspending multiple accounts for sharing the above photo of Aboriginal women performing a public ceremony. In a speech honoring International Women's Day on 8 March , feminist writer and indigenous rights activist Celeste Liddle spoke about women of the central Australian Arrernte Aboriginal group, to which her family belongs, and their representation on the Internet. When the speech was published by independent news website New Matilda , Liddle shared the article and its accompanying image see above on her public Facebook page, Black Feminist Ranter.