The Danish TV show where children watch adults take off their clothes

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The programme aims to counter social media that bombards young people with images of perfect bodies

Preparing to disrobe for Ultra Strips Down. Photograph: Betina Garcia/The New York Times
Thomas Erdbrink
Martin Selsoe Sorensen
Thu Sep 24 2020 - 06:00
“OK, children, does anyone have a question?” the TV show’s host, Jannik Schow, asked. Only a few in the audience of 11- to 13-year-olds raised their hands. “Remember, you can’t do anything wrong,” he said. “There are no bad questions.”
You can't blame the children if their thoughts were elsewhere. On a stage before them in a heated studio in Copenhagen, Denmark, stood five adults in bathrobes. There was a brief moment of silence as faces turned serious. Having discussed it for days before in school, the children knew what was coming next. Schow gave a little nod, and the adults cast off their robes.
Facing the children, and the cameras, they stood completely naked, like statues, with their hands and arms folded behind their backs.
And so began a recording of the latest episode of an award-winning Danish children’s programme, Ultra Strips Down, which is shown on Ultra, the on-demand children’s channel of the national broadcaster, DR. The topic today: skin and hair.

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The show’s producers say the programme is meant as an educational tool to fight body shaming and encourage body positivity. And so, first reluctantly, later enthusiastically, the children from the Orestad School in Copenhagen asked the adults questions like, “At what age did you grow hair on the lower part of your body?” “Do you consider removing your tattoos?” “Are you pleased with your private parts?”
One of the adults, Martin, answered that he had never had “negative thoughts” about his private parts. Another adult, also named Martin, admitted that when he was young he had worried about size. “But the relationship with myself has changed over time,” he said.
With serious looks on their faces, the children nodded.
The programme is now in its second season, and while perhaps a shock to non-Danes, it is highly popular in Denmark. Recently, however, a leading member of the right-wing Danish People’s Party, Peter Skaarup, said he found Ultra Strips Down to be “depraving our children.”
“It is far too early for children” to start with male and female genitalia, he told BT, a Danish tabloid. At that age, he said, they “already have many things running around in their heads”.
“They have to learn it at the right time,” he added, saying this information should be presented by parents or schools “so that it is not delivered in this vulgar way, as the children’s channel does”.
For the most part, though, Danes have long been comfortable with nudity – at public beaches, for instance.
Schow (29), who helped develop the concept of the show after a producer came up with the idea, said the point was also to counter the daily bombardment of young people with images of perfect – unrealistic – bodies. The adults are not actors but volunteers.
“Perhaps some people are like, ‘Oh, my God, they are combining nakedness and kids,’” Schow said. “But this has nothing to do with sex

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Pub: 18 Sep 2023 08:13 UTC
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