Radio Scope Woman's Hour: Female nudes with multiple sclerosisBBC Radio Four, Wednesday, 10am
Despite our 21st century sophistication our attention can still be captured by the simplest things. Take nudes.
We have moved on from the dim, dark days when a "decency" campaigner in Dublin died of a heart attack while watching an RTÉ drama, which showed a nude woman posing for an art class with her back to the camera.
We've got over all that sort of thing.
The "pagan English", as we were once encouraged to think of them, got over it quicker than we did.
But even they have had their interest piqued by an exhibition of nude paintings which includes three models with multiple sclerosis.
The result has been newspaper articles and this item on Woman's Hour.
Artist Melissa Mailer-Yates suggests that she wants to get beyond stereotypes and enable people to see these women in their own right.
Hence, the title See me . . . now see me given to the exhibition at Birmingham's Nine Gallery.
You can see some of the pictures by following links from the blog www.beautythroughstrength.com. The paintings on the web look like any other paintings of nudes and one wonders whether, in that case, they have achieved any radical aim.
The blog is maintained by one of the models, Julie Howell. She is 36 and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 19.
There is nothing about her, to look at her, that would tell you she has a disability.
When the Multiple Sclerosis Society, which dreamt up this wheeze, asked her to be painted nude, "I said yes before I could say no," she says in her blog.
People find it difficult to equate beauty with disability, she told Woman's Hour, and part of her aim was to change perceptions.
Her main problem was her bottom. She reckons her bum is too big, an issue she addresses with "a strict diet of chocolate and cakes to ensure its natural beauty is maintained as long as possible".
So she got a shock when she discovered that one of the two paintings of her was, as she puts it, "no face and all arse".
How could Melissa have done such a thing to her, she wondered in dismay?
Luckily Melissa, who is a good saleswoman, told her what a wonderful bottom she has and lamented that you can't find models with bottoms like that anymore. So now Julie is happy again and, yes, the picture, called "Classicism", is on her blog.
You can hear the programme again by going to www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/ womanshour/ and navigating back through the 'listen again' button.
But, really, everything you want to know is in the blog. Bottoms up.