In July , hundreds of female protestors in Nigeria occupied properties owned by Chevron Texaco. By threatening to take off their clothes, the women convinced corporate authorities to negotiate with them for better resource management and for environmental justice. Public nakedness catches eyes, makes headlines, and sometimes, as in the Chevron Texaco case, gets things done. Yet Naminata Diabate , assistant professor of comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences, seeks a more nuanced analysis of this and other incidents of naked protest, particularly by women in Africa. The act of disrobing, Diabate said, has been used as a form of deviation, protest or resistance in many times and places, including ancient Greece, 18th-century China, the French Revolution and the present day. In fact, insurgent nakedness has proliferated worldwide since the late s, with nearly instances of public nakedness around the world in response to issues including globalization, race relations, capitalism, war, animal rights and other causes. Not all unclothed protests are the same, Diabate said. In Africa, women have historically used the power of their nakedness in political protest, specifically to shame and punish male adversaries.

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Nudity is a state of being in which a human is not wearing clothing or specifically is not covering the genitals. Nakedness , or the loss of body fur, was one of the physical characteristics that marked the evolution of anatomically modern humans from their hominini ancestors. For many thousands of years, humans wore no clothing, which continues to be the norm in some isolated indigenous societies in tropical climates. It is generally accepted that the widespread adoption of clothing occurred as people migrated to other climates which required protection from the elements. In addition, as societies developed from being hunter-gatherers to being agrarian, clothing became part of cultural evolution as individuals and groups became differentiated by status and class.