The New American Home

Every American home should be filled with as much nudity as its walls can hold. 

Unfortunately, not everyone in this ever-growing conservative country holds the same belief, so I’m resigned to keeping my personal art collection hidden away from pearl-clutching visitors.

Our house is split into two levels. The top floor is where we entertain for the most part. It’s generally safe to walk a stranger through. A few illustrated nude pieces are hanging up in our bedroom, and there is a stack of older Playboys displayed on our coffee table that we hardly ever flip through. Otherwise, the upstairs space is aggressively wholesome—wedding photos, tapestries, and art we’ve collected from our stateside travels. 

The basement, on the other hand, is where the good stuff is.

My office sits tucked away in the corner downstairs with no door to conceal it, which means that while watching the Nuggets game from the couch, I can casually admire my framed Noelia Towers prints or a handful of framed 1970s porno bills featuring era-appropriate bush.

This is where I protest.

Social stigma about nudity and sex is today’s book-burning. I feel like Guy Montag, having to hide contraband behind his ventilator grille from Fahrenheit 451’s firemen. My basement has become a secret hideaway for all things erotic, hoping to never be found by someone who could find it at all offensive. 

And the country keeps getting weirder about sex. Conservatism seeps into American culture both loudly and quietly: trad-wife aesthetics, anti-intellectualism, and Gen Z reacting to nudity and sex in media with the same energy as Satanic Panic-having Boomers. This prudishness only makes me want to collect and display more smut. Out of principle.

So I do. And I will continue to collect this art until my house is filled with as much nudity as its walls can hold.