Naked as a Jay

Inger in Photoplay, December 1964

In 1964, Inger spoke to a Photoplay writer on the topics of nudity and sex. This was a controversial move for the popular star of a family television show, but Inger never shied away from such topics—a fact that alienated her from an industry that expected her to play by their rules, but endears her to this particular blog writer. Inger shared:

How wrong it is to teach children that there is something evil, something shameful in showing the human form! Why, the human body is a thing of beauty and it should be regarded as such, without shame or without sniggering. The Swedes realize this and so they think nothing about nudity. 

I can remember my own childhood. My father, my brother and I would go to a sauna and absorb the luxury of the hot steam. Then we would go outside and roll in the snow just as God made us. Oh, how alive and fresh we felt! We didn’t think about being nude. It just seemed as natural as it could be. As I grew older, my mother taught me that there were times when it was not convenient for a boy and girl to appear in the nude before each other. But that was part of nature, too, and Swedes accept it as being perfectly natural. 

That theory of hiding an element of nature is not healthy. It takes something that is basically beautiful and makes it into something dirty. And there should be nothing dirty about nudity—or sex...Sex is nothing to hide in a closet. When you do that, it becomes something perverted, and that can be a dangerous thing. Sex is the ultimate, the most beautiful expression between a man and a woman. 

When it can create such happiness, why shouldn’t it be used? It is better to have such wonderful experiences, even without marriage, than to be married and miserable. But I do believe the element of love must be present for the right kind of relationship. Without it, sex becomes promiscuity, which is just as much an offense against its beauty as is trying to hide it from view. Certainly, I’ve had affairs. I’m a woman, am I not? Why shouldn’t I? 

When asked if she was afraid of offending conservative viewers of her television show, Inger responded directly and not without a great amount of risk to herself, "Well, I am sorry for them if their lives are so cramped and stilted that they can’t discuss such a basic matter as sex with freedom and reality."

In 1969, reporter Bob Thomas asked actresses Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bissett, Joan Hackett, and Inger how they felt about nudity in film. Jean, Jacqueline, and Joan responded in traditional answer form. Inger, ever creative and unique in her approach to the press, wrote and submitted the original poem "Naked as a Jay" as her answer:

Source: 

“Inger Stevens’ Outspoken Story.” Photoplay. December 1964.

Thomas, Bob. "Nudity in the Movies: To Shed or Not to Shed—The Actresses Speak. The Gazette Sun. July 13, 1969.