Undressing Nudity, Part One

I have a real hang-up with nudity. When I was a kid, it was a scary, unnatural, disgusting thing. Then when puberty hit, it was still scary, but I strongly associated it with sexuality. As I’ve matured, I find it easier to be casually naked. Better yet, I’m not bothered that my kid is comfortable seeing and being seen naked. Still, I recognize that I have deeply-entrenched associations with nudity. They are not healthy and I want to address them. In fact, I believe my obsession with it is core to my problem with sexual fantasy and pornography.

The central issue is that I associate being naked with being vulnerable. Of course, there is literal vulnerability to being unclothed, meaning that there are no physical barriers to direct contact with genitalia or penetration of body orifices, no protection from hypothermia or sunburn, no avoidance of abrasion of sensitive skin. Of course, generally speaking, those aren’t practical threats. Nude dancers have men to hold customers at bay, strip club customers don’t care to be tackled and arrested, locker room visitors have no interest in bothering other customers and prefer to keep to their own space, people who move about their home freely in the nude generally don’t have to worry about a random hand in search of a grope, and nudists know better than to camp in Minnesota in January.

Yeah, let’s move beyond the obvious. I think it’s just as important to acknowledge that to me nudity implies that you are giving something away, that you are submitting to whoever sees you. Isn’t that the thrill of Playboy? I mean sure, you say you are admiring God’s handiwork, but it excites you to your core to see an innocent face on the same page with the “private parts,” the areas that her daddy must have worked so hard to avoid seeing himself and so hard to keep from your eyes. But you do get to see them! Whenever you want! As long as you like! And now that you know that Brittany (sure to be her real name) likes ice fishing and line dancing, that young lady has absolutely no secrets to which you are not privy. Don’t you feel an unbreakable bond with her? Perhaps, like you own her?

I guarantee there’s no way to make erotic and pornographic images of nudity toothless or unappealing, but in the next part of this series, I will address what nudity means and how I’m trying to redirect my emotions about it.

The essay continues here…