The naked truth about Kate

 

Pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge looking at naked breasts in the Solomon Islands open up enough paradoxes of symbolism to keep a conference of cultural anthropologists busy for a month or so. They would clear up the culture of the Solomon Islanders easily enough but get a collective headache trying to understand the confusions, archaisms and perversities of "modern" Britain that lie behind those royal titters (sorry ma'am). 

                Paul Gauguin - Duas Mulheres Tahitianas (1899)

While in this picture the Duchess smiles charmingly as she meets people of the Solomon Islands, in others she giggles on seeing the naked breasts of cermonial dancers. The hundreds of Oceanian islands that make up the Solomons did not see bare breasts as a topic of embarrassment until Christian missionaries tried to impose European values in the 19th century. Traditional dances put on to entertain royal visitors still feature traditional nudity. So why was the Duchess photographed getting the giggles? Paul Gauguin didn't giggle at the women of Tahiti, which has similar traditions, but admired them with awe, as his 1899 painting Two Tahitian Women beautifully illustrates. He marvelled at these women 'walking about naked without shame'". (texto integral aqui)