Naked And Afraid is a show about being dropped off in the wilderness while wearing nothing but your birthday suit. The show airs on a cable network, Discovery, and is about survival despite the word naked in the title. For those reasons, boobs, butts and any genitalia have to be blurred out by none other than the blur editor, who in this case happens to be Erin Gavin. If I had to guess, I would have thought that the basic blurring would be the grossest part of the job. But in a recent editorial, Gavin cleared that right up. Here’s the grossest part of editing Naked And Afraid:
The nudity itself isn't gross. But we first see these people fresh out of their hotels. As the days go on, 21 of them for those who last, they become more deteriorated and you start seeing things. Things like ticks in places they shouldn't be.
Now that he’s putting it that way, he certainly has a point. I’ve stood next to some rank-smelling and looking individuals at weekend-long music festivals before, and those moments have been personally cruddy. Twenty-one days is a heck of a lot longer than a three or four-day festival and during that time these people have traipsed through the wild, encountering mud, bugs and a variety of ticks, all without ever shampooing their hair. I can see how that becomes gross, even during the editing process. These people totally don’t look the cleanest:
In the feature Gavin penned over at THR, he also talks about how difficult it can be to edit a show like Naked And Afraid. For instance, when a woman is walking around, not only does the show have to blur any vagina out, the series also has to do the same with breasts. This can make the job extremely long and tedious. Plus, the contestants who appear on the series sometimes have bizarre requests. Some of those even have to do with a, well, certain package.
we've had guys ask for a bigger blur. We won't necessarily accommodate that.
That response from people on the show is actually less unexpected, but no less odd. Considering this is this guy’s job day in and day out, it’s nice to see he has such a sense of humor about editing a show that is chock full of nudity. If you loved gems like these, you’ve got to read the full thing, which also references "danglers," "weenie wagglers" and more phrases with funny meanings. Or you can catch new episodes of Naked and Afraid on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET, only on Discovery. Here’s what else the networks have coming up.
