The tendency for embellishing and decorating our appearance coexists with and is probably expressed through organic, natural needs, so that clothing declares innermost wishes, submission to general restrictions and symbolic commands.
The need of the individual to cover, one way or another, a small part of his/her body is an anthropological commonplace, which, however, refers to an exceptionally important constant factor throughout history.
The constitution of a naked human physiognomy is almost unthinkable. Thanks to the attire chosen, the dressed individual is transformed to a composed surface of symbolic signs and at the same time to a projection surface for the observer. Clothing, finally, serves the expansion and formation of communication codes, which surpass the potentialities that the body morphology and the muscular expression offer.
The morphology and symbolism of the body are provided by the clothing, the manifestation of cultural conceptions and subjective fantasies.
The covering of the body is obviously interwoven with decency, a pivotal feeling for the human psychism and, by expansion, for the individual behavior in a group or in society. Decency, that is, is the nucleus of the very sexual existence, which coexists with the command for its dissimulation or distortion. Therefore, the covering of the genitals is one of the symbolic prerequisites for social coherence and a condition sine qua non for the constitution of the impulsive repression.
Decency refers to the socialization of sexuality. It is the feeling through which the moral demands and their conflict with the subjective sexual inclinations are proved.
Clothing contributes to the broadening of the expressive potentialities of an individual, because it enriches the standard morphology of the body with a new “vocabulary”, through which the intimate inclinations are represented and realized.
