The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

This is sad news:the Naked Guy just died.

The Naked Guy was a Cal student during the time I was there who became famous for being, well, naked. But not in a lewd way: he simply went about his life normally - and nakedly (or sometimes with a strategically-placed bandana).

But it sort of sent the Powers that Be into a tizzy. Even as non-conformist as Berkeley often is, it did trip up both city and university authorities while they tried to figure out how to react. My memory is that the city was much more flexible about it, but the University not so much and it expelled him for it.

Anyway, before that happened he'd become a minor celebrity around campus. I think he got to appear on Oprah or some such show and ended up inspiring lots of other people to embrace nudity. (I particularly remember an increase in the number of women who now felt able to walk around topless.) I never met him myself - Cal was a big place, and we had no classes together - but I did see him walking on the streets once. And actually, I should have seen him twice: I was walking around campus one day when a friend said, "Look, there's the Naked Guy!" and I looked around confusedly and asked, "Where?" Sometimes I guess I can be pretty oblivious, because I just didn't notice anything unusual…

But that's just it - it was Berkeley. If there's any place where challenging the norm can blend in, it's there. So I always thought it was a shame he got expelled for it. His nudity never struck me as problematic because it clearly wasn't sexual in its purpose. And although I'm not personally interested in being publicly nude myself, I do think it's noble and valid to challenge stodgy, old, restrictive and largely pointless puritanical conventions. Plus his presence in Berkeley helped enhance the place and make it more dynamic and interesting. Kicking him out therefore didn't make it better; it just made it more boring.