The nudity of women is another question.
In parts of West Africa, between the Niger and the Gaboon
(especially on the Cameroon River, at Old Calabar, and in the
Niger Delta), it is, or was, customary for young women to go
about completely nude before they were married. In Swaziland,
until quite recently, unmarried women and very often matrons went
stark naked. Even amongst the prudish Baganda, who made it a
punishable offense for a man to expose any part of his leg above
the knee, the wives of the King would attend at his Court
perfectly naked. Among the Kavirondo, all unmarried girls are
completely nude, and although women who have become mothers are
supposed to wear a tiny covering before and behind, they very
often completely neglect to do so when in their own villages.
Yet, as a general rule, among the Nile Negroes, and still more
markedly among the Hamites and people of Masai stock, the women
are particular about concealing the pudenda, whereas the men are
ostentatiously naked. The Baganda hold nudity in the male to be
such an abhorrent thing that for centuries they have referred
with scorn and disgust to the Nile Negroes as the 'naked people.'
Male nudity extends northwest to within some 200 miles of
Khartum, or, in fact, wherever the Nile Negroes of the
Dinka-Acholi stock inhabit the country.
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