Tattoos are no longer restricted to biker and sailor culture but have been sanctioned by the mainstream of liberal societies. Nudity has become more visible than ever on European beaches or on the internet. The increased use of the veil by women in Muslim and non-Muslim countries has developed in parallel with the aforementioned phenomena and is just as striking. This book shows that tattoos, nudity, and veils can be traced to similar social and psychological patterns.

The cancellation of essentialized notions of nature that were still current during modernity, has inaugurated a new approach towards tattoos and nudity; and veiling needs to be read in precisely this context. In postmodern culture, neither the naked nor the nude can be seen as “pure”; nudity no longer functions as an ideal of civilization (or non-civilization) in the classical sense. The consequence is that within a semantic constellation that no longer recognizes the “absence of signs” as a natural and naked “degree zero” of the body, nudity is not necessarily different from veils.

Just like nudity is no longer an expression only of nature, the veil is no longer only an expression of religious belief but appears as an ambiguous signifier engaging in cultural play instead of criticizing culture and attempting to replace it with religion. Similarly, nudism has become “nude culture” incorporating all mediatized and commercial aspects of nudity. Finally, tattoos have lost their anti-civilizational agenda and have become “tattoo culture,” which, in return, contributes to “nude culture” because the nude body is now more than ever covered with traces of culture and civilization. Any ambiguity contained in this constellation is paralleled by the paradox of “veil culture”: is it in favor or against liberation? Does it work against objectification or does it objectify? Does it eroticize or de-eroticize the body? Does it prevent fantasies or promote fantasies?