A couple of years ago postings on the Naked in School Yahoo discussion group about avoiding the great NiS clichés prompted me to try my hand at shaking up the concept whilst staying broadly within the genre. One of the major clichés listed is being called to the Headmaster's office and told to strip, but for me another is the parents joining their children in the nude later at home as part of the outreach program. It has always seemed to me that the parents who are signing up their children to take part in the program really ought to be playing a more proactive role earlier on.
Watching a scene from the BBC's production of I Claudius (not in the original novel), suggested one way in which this might be justified. In episode seven Lollia tells of her daughter Camilla being summoned to the Imperial Palace. The lecherous Emperor Tiberius has taken a fancy to the child and to save her Lollia offers to take her place. The child is sent away and Lollia is "subjected to acts of such filth, abominable filth; to bestial obscenities with him and his slaves of both sexes” that she can no longer live with herself and commits suicide.
So in this take on the Naked in School concept a parent who signs up their child for “The Programme” also gives an undertaking to join them in school in the nude until they have completed their full week. This would be quite a commitment on their part but would have a number of advantages for the administration. The parent would be able to ensure that the child turned up, supervise their participation and ensure their safety. It would even be the parent who demands that the child strip off.
It may seem to readers that this story is in many ways unrealistic and that many of my characters do not react like modern teenagers. On the first point I must make it clear that I left school almost thirty years ago and have based all details of the timetables and lessons on my own experiences in the late seventies. I know nothing about the modern school system. On the second point I have deliberately chosen not to give my characters realistic attitudes and reactions, because if I had to write about modern teenagers I would have given up writing before the end of the first paragraph. I know about modern attitudes only from what I have seen in the media, but what I have seen sickens me. My characters are the way I want them to be in order for me to tell the story I want to tell. I don't care whether they are believable or not.
I am labelling this story as "Pedo". I wish to make that quite clear. In parts of this story there will be naked children as young as three. Accordingly this story is clearly labelled as Paedophilia. I am not saying what happens to those characters, I am simply taking the precaution of labelling this story as Paedophilia. I am not placing any other warnings around parts of this story or advising readers to skip certain sections. This story stands as a whole, if readers choose to read it then they can make up their own minds as to whether this classification was justified.