#26 - This is an Essay on Nudity

The Whole Body Problem

Hello, my friends,

Glad tidings to those of us in the Los Angeles area who survived Tropical Storm Hilary with little or no trouble. There was lots of rain in our hamlet and that’s it. Michael waited all day for lightning and thunder but, in the end, was disappointed. Hoping for sky theatrics, we let him stay up late to watch Mrs. Miniver with us. It’s a 1942 movie portraying WWII in an English village. A good rainy evening movie, it had everything: Young love, middle-aged love, characters with strong moral character, bombs and bomb shelters, death, an old lady who changes her mind, and a rail car. Michael asked a few questions, but less than Ashley and I expected. How a four-year-old makes sense of the world, I do not know. In any case, the next afternoon the sun had come out and dried things up enough that I was able to read a bit during a break from work. We can now add “Survived a Tropical Storm” to our list of life accomplishments even if it was anti-climactic.

“Green Elephant” (1936) by Maria Primachenko

The Whole Body Problem

A couple of issues back (#24), I talked about the Natura Spa, a Korean spa where folks are naked in the wet area (separated by gender). Nudity came up in the comments of that issue and then, from a totally unrelated angle, in a men’s group I belong to. Why is nudity such an opinionated topic anyway? How has culture around it formed? For instance, bare bodies are a standard fixture in bathing culture around the world — the bathhouses of Japan, the spas of the rest of Asia, in the saunas of the former Soviet Union it was either towel or nothing. Parallel to bathing culture is changing room etiquette in American gyms where it’s not unacceptable to strip down to shower and change. In the latter, coverage seems to be left up the individual. At the YMCA I go to, the norm when entering the male-only dry sauna seems to be towel or swim trunks, but can one sit in there naked? I doubt anyone would mention it.

It seems to me that for most people nudity is either completely ho-hum or level-10 terrifying; few are those who find in the topic only mild excitement. Or maybe it just appears polarizing because one has to care enough to express their opinion about it. I don’t know how much I care about it since I’m wholly on the ho-him side, finding it odd when a naked bodies raise alarms. The controversy around Janet Jackson’s nipple a few years ago befuddled me. Why did so many people care so much? Don’t they have nipples, too? For many members of the American public, it seems that the naked body elicits either arousal or revulsion, and nothing else. That must be uncomfortable! Moreover, how can we be simultaneously so obsessed with physical appearance and yet be so terrified of it’s essential nature?

I won’t blame people, though, I’ll blame their parents! Consider: Babies don’t enter the world with opinions about naked bodies; Penises, vaginas, butts, and breasts hold no more significance to children than do feet or bellies — they’re simply parts of the body. We can imagine, then, that what shapes their view of the “private” parts are cues from caretakers. Guilt and shame from a response to a young boy’s experimentation or a young girl seeing her own mother’s discomfort as she covers up. Not to mention how some religions really up the ante on bodies. Whether it’s home culture or religion, body views among neighbors can easily vary from discomfort to unremarkable acceptance.

In the western world, privacy when using the bathroom is desired by kids around the age of four (I think I read this in Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, but I can’t find the page), but this is distinct from nudity since it relates to waste removal and is almost universally accepted as standard in the West. Separation along gender lines begins a little later. Are these natural instincts or societal expectations? My opinion is that it’s a little of the former, but mostly the latter. Little humans begin to notice differences in body parts pretty early on but the meaning and behavior around them is taught. Certainly there’s nothing consciously sexual about perceptions of bodies in the those early years.

Sticking with this default view of bodies as non-sexualized entities, what would the world be like without clothes? Setting aside sunburn and cold, most of our initial reactions would be overstimulation and embarrassment. In polite society, we try not to let our gaze linger on bodies just as we avoid eye contact in the subway. But what if the sights we were trying to avoid were everywhere? Eventually (probably relatively quickly), social mores would have to form around how much looking was okay. So then, if some looking becomes okay, we’re all going to be seen! I suspect a we’d all be hit be a few insights: 1) Nearly everybody is funny-looking — round, squat, long and narrow, we’re all a bunch of fun-house mirror reflections of circus performers, 2) Dermatologists would make a killing with all the random rashes and skin conditions people would hurry to treat since they’re uncovered, 3) Books with boobs (and other exposed body parts) would stop being banned, 4) Despite this thought experiment’s view of bodies as non-sexualized entities, I’m sure approaches to sex would have to change, too. I don’t know how, though: Would we be as titillated by our preferred types if their wasn’t the mystery of what lies beneath? Clothes do build shapes, smooth edges, emphasize colors, and other body-modifying acts. Would lack of all that turn us off? Or conversely, would lack of buttons and buckles simply make it easier to consummate various tawdry acts? I have no idea.

As a way of being, I don’t expect other people to agree with most of my beliefs or opinions so I’m not going to put forth value judgments on how others should view nudity. I do know that in the best of all possible worlds everyone would feel comfortable with bodies (their own and everyone else’s) meaning no one would suffer from shame or guilt about them, or inflict those emotions on others. Further, everyone would maintain a respectful attitude towards the physical attributes of others. Celebrate bodies in the appropriate context, never denigrate, and at least once daily repeat the mantra: Nipples are not evil!*

* - As a point of clarification, they’re not good either. Bodies do not have inherent moral qualities.

“A Wild Boar Piglet” (1578) by Hans Hoffmann