We often hear about normalising nudity and how natural nudity is for naturists and nudists and other folk who plain enjoy being clothing free. Yet, the question remains, just how natural is nudity in our modern world? We hear responses such as “we are all born naked” and “we are all naked beneath our clothes.” However, that still begs the question. More responses come about bathing and showering while nude. There, we can safely assume that this is a truth, at least for most of the developed world. In the shower or in the tub, it is normal to be clothed in our bare skin.
There are no sexual connotations about taking a shower when solo or without an audience. Yet, should one post an image such as this one, the radars of the nude police are activated and knee-jerk reactions kick in. Regardless of the naturalness of the scene, it is too much for many people to cope with.
That unconscious response is nothing new. I remember an image from the late sixties of Frank Zappa sitting on a toilet. Though we all sit on toilets, the image wasn’t taken to portray a natural life scene, it was taken to promote Zappa’s first concert in 1967. If anything, the poster was a protest of disdain.
It definitely had nothing to do with sexual titillation. The poster was in my home along with a number of his albums with the Mothers of Invention. I did get to see him in Edmonton in the winter of 1970-71. At the concert, Zappa pulled down his pants and urinated on the front row of the audience, much to their joy. I think everyone attending was stoned.
Another album in my collection was the Two Virgins album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Like Zappa’s image, the album cover had no sexual intent. It was a daring to be vulnerable. The two risked almost everything in their lives by daring to do the unthinkable.
The record sold well, but it had a brown paper bag hiding the album cover on the record racks. People didn’t take well to the image. It may portray a moment of naked trust, but that wasn’t and still isn’t, something that is acceptable.
Nudity is not normal in our world. For too many, even the thought of sleeping while nude with blankets hiding one’s nakedness, is too much to cope with. In our world, paradoxically, it is more acceptable to be nude in a porn flick [soft or hard porn] than it is to be nude during one’s normal day. Is the scene getting better as the years go by? Yes and No. The use of social media to attempt to normalise nudity has met with limited, but promising success.
Yet, more and more social media platforms are banning images that depict nudity even with all of the “sexual” bits unseen. For FB and its ilk, just the hint of nudity is enough to be banished from the platforms. Yet, in what can best be described as the “Internet Underground” there is a growing trend featuring images that are deliberately showing just how “natural” nudity can be.
For the foreseeable future, natural nudity will remain in the realm of deviant behaviour, with deviancy being defined as outside of normal societal behaviour.