Why Were so Many Children Born after Mass Disrobing?
It has been more than two years since photographer Spencer Tunick persuaded 450 nude women to pose for a group photograph in glitzy Grand Central Station in New York City and then 1,800 people of both sexes to do the same thing in Buffalo, New York’s decaying Central Terminal.
During the photo shoots, Tunick created two more of his ground breaking nude assemblages. But medical researchers say he created something else as well: 379 babies, including one set of triplets, six sets of twins and 183 girls and 181 boys.
And that’s not all, say the researchers, whose study of the two photo shoots and the reproductive aftermath is being published today in the Journal of Reproductive Human Biology. Tunick also fostered a medical mystery.
“To have three hundred and seventy nine children result from bringing more than two thousand nude people together for two group photographs is an astonishing birth rate, just astonishing,” said Dr. Harold Festerman of Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
“What was it about standing around nude for several hours in two cavernous, drafty buildings and then going home and jumping into bed with the significant other that lead to so many, many conceptions? What happened to their reproductive body chemistry, to their hormones that control such things as ovulation, sperm potency and what have you,” Festerman asked.
In the article, “The Effect upon Conception Rates in Middle Class Americans of Posing Nude in Mass Photographs”, the authors, who include Dr. Festerman and three of his colleagues at Mt. Sinai, pose a number of human reproductive biology questions.
Why was the conception rate among Buffalo participants nearly twice as high as among the New York City group?
Did the fact that men and women posed together in Buffalo somehow lead to release of pheromones or other hormonal entities that stimulated ovulation among the Buffalo females?
Did the New York City women come from a higher socioeconomic group than the Buffalo mixed sexes group and thus perhaps were more likely to use birth control methods?
Fertility experts have long known that massive storms, prolonged power outages, and other external forces that throw men and women together in unusual circumstances for long periods of time are always followed nine months later by an unusually high number of births.
“But being present at either of these photo shoots, while somewhat bizarre in of itself, wasn’t like a power blackout or a long winter storm,” Dr. Festerman said. “They took off their clothes in a group setting a couple of hours and then went home.”
But what happened when they reached home, or work, or whatever their next destination was, Dr. Festerman asks. Did nude photo shoot participation somehow unleash a reproductive hormonal storm?
“Even if every last one of them immediately jumped into bed with someone, we are still left with the mystery of why unions of such extreme fecundity resulted,” he said.
The researchers discovered the unusual brith rates after obtaining a list of participants in both photo shoots and contacting them with mailed questionnaires and then telephone follow-ups.
“It was a fishing expedition, from the reproductive biology research standpoint,” Dr. Festerman said. “We thought we would see a spike in births, but nothing like this.”
The Mt. Sinai researchers are now preparing a series of follow-up studies in which each of the photo shoot participants will be interviewed in detail and then a cross section randomly chosen for medical tests.
“My gut tells me that we could be on the verge of learning something of great importance about human reproduction from what started out as a simple photographer expressing his artistic vision,” Dr. Festerman said.