During the New Deal, no one knew they were nude.
This is what folk singers of the period tell us.
People were too busy working, building ugly office blocks, and track and field facilities, and, occasionally, theaters.
They would build bridges without bras. Build carparks without codpieces. Erect LGA airport without a lick of clothing on.
Manifest libraries with visible labia. It didn’t matter if you had an innie or an outie. No one was refused admission.
When everyone works together as comrades, you see, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. Different kinds of clothing are a divisive tactic imposed by the class system. So, when we work together, we can assume we have come back to an age of innocence, where such discernments are not the point.
To my critics who say such a thing is indecent….I don’t give a Hoover Dam what you think.
To those who say wait a minute, I saw that mural that Diego Rivera painted of all the wonderful workers of the western world laying bricks and putting up drywall, okay, okay. Who’s to say they didn’t give Diego a bottle of tequila and ask him to cross his eyes, turn around twice, and THEN paint the mural? American clothing, if you could get it at the time, was dirty and not worth wearing. Besides, all the WPA projects were completed during the summer months, obviously. You wouldn’t build the Triborough Bridge during a snowstorm, would you? Did god give us muscles so we hide them away? Are workers allowed to believe in god? Will she get mad?
The one thing that all the workers of the western world could agree on back then–all 99% of the population–was that we must all start anew. Not like a new constitution, or a revolution or anything up that alley. More like, everyone would make a New Deal Resolution to like the old things just fine as long as there was a paycheck involved. Or maybe some bagels.
You can tell how much everyone liked the New Deal. All those highways, so straight, so many arches, and flagpoles, with eagles carved on them.