Easy To Be Naked With Your Body
I would be lying if I said my body shape doesn’t give me privilege when it comes to being naked. I’m an able bodied white man in my early 30’s with a gym fit body that more or less fits the conventional ideal of today. So it’s no surprise that I often receive comments saying that it’s easy for me to be naked with my body. Sometimes people take a more accusatory tone, as if I’m a hypocrite to promote naturism with my body, or that I’m naive to the struggles of other people in accepting their bodies. I can understand these comments, given the world we live in. Our culture has such an obsession with physical appearances, and even within naturism there are a lot of non-genuine people, who’s comments lead many people to become disillusioned and skeptical of our promise of universal body acceptance. I have spoken to so many people about their body image struggles, and I understand how damaging our culture’s beauty standards can be, even though I haven’t been the victim of them personally.
Humans come in such a wide variety of colors, shapes and sizes, and I think that’s both a beauty and a strength of our species. I’ve recently gotten into bouldering, and as much as I enjoy it, I’ll never be a great climber. Top level climbers have strong, wiry muscles, but aren’t bulky, because they need to be light. I’m simply too heavy to match their abilities on the climbing wall, and both of us would lose a foot race to a sprinter, but put a barbell on my shoulders and I could out-squat them both any day. It just goes to show that there is no perfect body, but only bodies better adapted to specific circumstances. It’s because of our varied bodies, and our ability to co-operate and use our differences to complement each other that our species has survived and adapted to so many challenges throughout history.
Our standards of beauty have also adapted over time, reflecting these changes in circumstances. Biologically speaking, our perception of beauty in others is an adaptive trait, to help us choose mates and allies who are best equipped to survive and thrive in the current environment. In times of food scarcity, beauty standards favour people carrying more body weight, because it shows that they have means to procure enough food, and to survive longer in its absence. In other circumstances, strength or speed might be more important for survival, which results in different body types being favoured. Social structure also comes into play, as our bodies reflect our work and lifestyle and diet, which historically could indicate if we fit into more or less desirable positions on the social hierarchy. In times past, tanned skin marked you as a peasant who had to labour outside, whereas now that most work is indoors, a tan is a sign of outdoor leisure time.
This is all to say that beauty standards are a cultural phenomenon, subject to change over time, and no body is objectively superior. But today, in most of the world, food security is not a concern. Our survival is unlikely to hinge on strength or speed, and a person’s physique is more likely to be a reflection of time spent in the gym than of manual labour. Instead, our cultural ideals of beauty are driven by corporate interests, who want us to be ashamed of our bodies so that they can sell us stuff. This makes a lot of people angry, and so it should. It makes me angry too, even though it puts people with my body type in a privileged position.
As a nudist, I don’t want a world where my body is glorified while other people feel ashamed, or even resentful. I don’t to get hundreds of unwanted sexual comments, at the same time as other people are ignored or denigrated for their appearance. I don’t want people assuming that I’m only a nudist because I want to show off my body. I just want to be me, free of judgement, and I want others to have the same. I want a world where everyone is respected and comfortable in their body. That’s the world where people will be happy, and it is also the world where taboos around nudity will finally begin to erode.
In pushing back against beauty standards, I can understand the desire to label people with my body type as part of the problem, and to try to shoot us down. But to police who can promote nudism based on what their body looks like goes completely against the philosophy of body acceptance. It also ignores the fact that body image isn’t the only obstacle to embracing nudism. Even the most conventionally beautiful people can be ashamed or afraid to be naked due to a myriad of factors, such as their upbringing, religion, sexual repression, trauma, the threat of legal repercussions, and general cultural conditioning. I may not have had to struggle so much with body image, but I did have other struggles related to childhood experiences and sexual repression. If you don’t know what another person has been through, then don’t dismiss or diminish their struggles.
I love nudism and what it has done for my life. I don’t post photos to show off my body, but because I want people to see them and think “that looks so fun and liberating, I want to try living a more naked life too.” I don’t post my thoughts and experiences of nudism to rub my confidence in other people’s faces, but to inspire people to become more confident themselves. And from all the comments and messages I get, I know that I have had that effect on many people, which is why I keep doing it.
But I get that for some people I’m not going to be the inspiration they need, because I don’t have the same lived experience that they have with their bodies. That’s OK. No-one is for everyone. That’s why we need a groundswell of people of all body types standing together to promote nudism. I want to be there to lift people up to new levels of confidence, and I want those people to then go on to lift up others too. Because at the end of the day, I’m just one person, and I can only promote nudism with the body and experiences that I have, but if we all do the same, we can change the world.
Humans come in such a wide variety of colors, shapes and sizes, and I think that’s both a beauty and a strength of our species. I’ve recently gotten into bouldering, and as much as I enjoy it, I’ll never be a great climber. Top level climbers have strong, wiry muscles, but aren’t bulky, because they need to be light. I’m simply too heavy to match their abilities on the climbing wall, and both of us would lose a foot race to a sprinter, but put a barbell on my shoulders and I could out-squat them both any day. It just goes to show that there is no perfect body, but only bodies better adapted to specific circumstances. It’s because of our varied bodies, and our ability to co-operate and use our differences to complement each other that our species has survived and adapted to so many challenges throughout history.
Our standards of beauty have also adapted over time, reflecting these changes in circumstances. Biologically speaking, our perception of beauty in others is an adaptive trait, to help us choose mates and allies who are best equipped to survive and thrive in the current environment. In times of food scarcity, beauty standards favour people carrying more body weight, because it shows that they have means to procure enough food, and to survive longer in its absence. In other circumstances, strength or speed might be more important for survival, which results in different body types being favoured. Social structure also comes into play, as our bodies reflect our work and lifestyle and diet, which historically could indicate if we fit into more or less desirable positions on the social hierarchy. In times past, tanned skin marked you as a peasant who had to labour outside, whereas now that most work is indoors, a tan is a sign of outdoor leisure time.
This is all to say that beauty standards are a cultural phenomenon, subject to change over time, and no body is objectively superior. But today, in most of the world, food security is not a concern. Our survival is unlikely to hinge on strength or speed, and a person’s physique is more likely to be a reflection of time spent in the gym than of manual labour. Instead, our cultural ideals of beauty are driven by corporate interests, who want us to be ashamed of our bodies so that they can sell us stuff. This makes a lot of people angry, and so it should. It makes me angry too, even though it puts people with my body type in a privileged position.
As a nudist, I don’t want a world where my body is glorified while other people feel ashamed, or even resentful. I don’t to get hundreds of unwanted sexual comments, at the same time as other people are ignored or denigrated for their appearance. I don’t want people assuming that I’m only a nudist because I want to show off my body. I just want to be me, free of judgement, and I want others to have the same. I want a world where everyone is respected and comfortable in their body. That’s the world where people will be happy, and it is also the world where taboos around nudity will finally begin to erode.
In pushing back against beauty standards, I can understand the desire to label people with my body type as part of the problem, and to try to shoot us down. But to police who can promote nudism based on what their body looks like goes completely against the philosophy of body acceptance. It also ignores the fact that body image isn’t the only obstacle to embracing nudism. Even the most conventionally beautiful people can be ashamed or afraid to be naked due to a myriad of factors, such as their upbringing, religion, sexual repression, trauma, the threat of legal repercussions, and general cultural conditioning. I may not have had to struggle so much with body image, but I did have other struggles related to childhood experiences and sexual repression. If you don’t know what another person has been through, then don’t dismiss or diminish their struggles.
I love nudism and what it has done for my life. I don’t post photos to show off my body, but because I want people to see them and think “that looks so fun and liberating, I want to try living a more naked life too.” I don’t post my thoughts and experiences of nudism to rub my confidence in other people’s faces, but to inspire people to become more confident themselves. And from all the comments and messages I get, I know that I have had that effect on many people, which is why I keep doing it.
But I get that for some people I’m not going to be the inspiration they need, because I don’t have the same lived experience that they have with their bodies. That’s OK. No-one is for everyone. That’s why we need a groundswell of people of all body types standing together to promote nudism. I want to be there to lift people up to new levels of confidence, and I want those people to then go on to lift up others too. Because at the end of the day, I’m just one person, and I can only promote nudism with the body and experiences that I have, but if we all do the same, we can change the world.
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