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“Today is an auspicious day dedicated to lounging around and indulging in all things leisure,” writes Architizer.com. “For today is National Hammock Day!”
“On July 22nd,” advises the National Day Calendar, “relax in the shade, enjoy the summer and let it all hang out.” This buxom nature lover sure seems to have the hang of it!
“A hammock is a sling made of fabric, rope or netting,” notes Wikipedia, “suspended between two points, used for swinging, sleeping or resting. Early examples were woven out of bark from a hamack tree by native inhabitants of South and Central America for sleeping”—and proved popular by providing an elevated and isolated place for people to rest suspended above dangerous animals, disease, poisonous insects and snakes.”
When explorer Amerigo Vespucci—from whom our nation gets its name—discovered the West Indies in the late 1400s (above), he first encountered the natives nearly naked and lying in hammocks.
However, the silky sling—the tree name hamack derives from an Arawak tribe term for “fish net”—traces its origin back to centuries before when the great Mayan civilizations of Mexico and Guatemala used them for swinging…in both senses of the word!
“The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu text widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature written by the philosopher Vatsyayana,” explains a historian. “A portion of the work consists of practical advice on sexual intercourse. However, the Maya had their own version of this classic, but unlike the first, they describe the carnal worship rituals on top of a hammock.”
“It is believed that in the names of the various positions” found in the ancient Mayan texts and drawings, “there is an attempt to reinforce concepts related to animals and the 4 elements (earth, wind, fire and water), clearly responding to the idea of sex as a sacred act and necessary for spiritual growth.” Call it the Hammock Sutra, if you will, and observe how similar their favorite positions are to ours! Here’s ‘The Grip of the Vulture’ …
… and the equivalent of ‘doggy style’ that they called La Nueva Luz del Sol de la Mañana, or ‘New MorningLight of the Sun.’
“The ancient Mayans are far too often known for their predictions,” observes a researcher, “and way too little for their creativity when it came to sexual pleasure and imaginative sexual positions.” And they didn’t just pay lip service to the fine art of fellatio…as unearthed artwork of the La Lengua Larga de Lagarta, which translates as ‘The Long Tongue of the Lizard,’ depicts.
It also appears that women were equally entitled to oral pleasure, as what we would call ‘69’ was a little number the Mayans practiced as El Instincto del Perra or ‘A Dog’s Instinct.’
As Venezuelan philosopher and historian Carlos Torrealba said of his ancestors and current countrymen: “The hammock is the cradle for the Latin American. It is your delivery room, birthplace, where we make love, it is the shroud. Sexuality is the first language in touch and skin. In Caracas, for example, 30% of the houses and apartments have a hammock hanging on the patio or balcony, and more than half use it occasionally in the sexual act.” Hanging and banging, as it were.
Nearly a thousand years after the Mayan Sutra, an article entitled ‘The Best Furniture to Have Sex On’ also highlighted the Hammock (below left)…saying “a little bit of motion really adds to hitting the spot.” This gal certainly seems to have a grip on the situation.
And it would seem that hammocks have been associated with sex and sensuality for centuries. Here is Louis-Camille d’Olivier’s 1852 photograph entitled Nude in Hammock …
… and an 1885 print of the same saucy subject matter.
Just two years later, the inventor of the motion picture, English photographer Eadweard Muybridge published his landmark Animal Locomotion studies, in which “he arranged a battery of 12 cameras in a row to track movement as it unfolded.” As Sleuth’s hometown Washington Post remarked: “The fact that most of the men and women Muybridge photographed were shapely and nude” added to the attention and “such full frontal nudity no doubt enlivened his public showings.” The most shocking of his motion studies was simply called Nude Woman Getting Into a Hammock.
The model, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, was more svelte and toned than the ladies of the day, though the plates had trouble getting printed in Philadelphia in 1887. As one account from the time made clear: “The extended contemplation of an image or series threatens to draw the viewer into a dreamlike state which, in the case of Muybridge’s photographs, poses the risk of prurient or obscene thoughts.”
Indeed, the Hammock photos were one of the few from this acclaimed academic study to be censored and kept from the eyes of the public. “Evidence exists in the form of blank spaces where frames have been removed,” reads one scholarly treatise of the Collection today. “The Art Institute of Chicago’s plate 261 contains a blank space where a female nude should be. This series captures the movements of a nude woman as she lies down in a hammock. The missing frames in the Art Institute’s copy would show the model from the front as she sinks into the hammock and lifts her feet from the ground. It is precisely the two frames in which the woman’s legs are spread while the rest of her body remains in the awkward position of arranging and steadying itself in the hammock.” Sleuth restores the dual images below!
Just five years after Muybridge, the hammock’s place in art was set in stone with Antonio Frilli’s 1892 marble masterpiece Sweet Dreams …
… followed a year later by laid back Odette on this 1893 “filthy” French postcard.
At the turn of the century, future French author extraordinaire Coletteswung with both men and women … and became “a scandalously talented topless stage performer.
While Brazilian Oscar Pereira da Silva painted his alluring Nude in Netting in the 1920s.
Glamour photographers got caught up in the net in the late 1930s and 1940s …
… just before British sculptor Sir Sydney Harpley brought bronze to the form in the Fifties, when “he was particularly famous for his naked girls in hammocks” displayed in private gardens of the rich and famous.
Playboy magazine jumped on the bandwagon with its first-ever hammock honey being 1968 Playmate of the Year Angela Dorian—now serving 9 years in California state prison for the attempted murder of her husband under her real name of Victoria Vetri …
… with the theme being repeated by 1977 Playmate of the Year Patti McGuire (below left)—married to tennis ace Jimmy Connors for the past 37 years—and as recently as October 2000 centerfold Nichole Van Croft (below right), who claims she was denied being the Millennium PMOY when she refused Hugh Hefner’s request “to move into his bedroom.”
But perhaps the most famous representation of the genre is influential American painter—and Carnegie Institute classmate of Andy Warhol—Philip Pearlstein’s seminal 1982 etching Nude in a Hammock, which sold for millions at auction recently.
“He paints the nude not as a symbol of beauty and pure form,” wrote Arts Magazine, “but as a human fact—implicitly imperfect”…as exemplified in Pearlstein’s earlier etching Nude in Striped Hammock, which hangs in London’s prestigious Tate Gallery.
The imperfect but evocative natural body produced by Pearlstein is remarkably similar to this very recent middle-aged amateur submission …
… which puts us in position to present Sleuth’s Top 10 Laid Back Ladies for National HammockDay!
Beginning with the greatest-ever sex symbol of the languid land best known for taking life slow and loving leisure…
BRIGITTE BARDOT
FRIDA KAHLO
The Mexican artist inspired painter and longtime husband Diego Rivera to produce his famous The Hammock (above) in 1956, two years after her early death…yet posed topless in a similar sling 18 years earlier while cheating on him with lover Julien Levy in New York.
JENNA JAMESON
IRISH McCALLA
The iconic Sheena of the Jungle signed this similar supine pose for her friend The Sleuth
GABRIELLE RICHENS
Exotic British TV hostess who says, “I love nudity. I’m always nude.”
JEWEL SHEPARD
TERA PATRICK
The half-Thai trained nurse turned AVN Hall of Fame inductee declares: “I love men. I love making love to men.” Don’t leave us hanging …
MONICA BELLUCCI
Named ‘The Most Beautiful Woman in the World’ in a 2004 poll, the Italian eyeful believes: “My body is so important to me…my face, my arms, my legs, my hands, my eyes, everything. I use everything I have.”
OLIVIA WILDE
KELLY BROOK
Suspend your disbelief … Can you think of a more natural END to this celebration of hanging loose?
