NAKED AND AFRAID

 

It's been a while since I last posted. Just no topics catching my eye or rambling around my noggin.

However I just read a rather disheartening blog post from a man lamenting his own body issues but celebrating his own children's unabashed approach to being naked. 

The writer, Jeremy, has made his home clothing optional as a way to raise his kids in a body-positive environment. But, as it turns out, Jeremy is the one with body issues not the kids.

As a little boy - and by that definition anything up to the onset of puberty at 14 - I was pretty uninhibited. I've recounted nude swims at a friend's house and with the cub scouts at the scoutmaster's home. The time I fell in the pool at a different friend's house and spent the next forty or so minutes playing naked in his bedroom while his mother dried my clothes in the dryer. Swimming in rivers and ponds with the scouts. And I would guess a lot of adults have similar stories, or stories about their own kids being uninhibited and free.

But with puberty most of us seem to develop a pretty negative body image. (Is that why it's become so trendy to shave pubes? Asking for a friend.) The media fill us with images of supposed perfection, and anything with our bodies which doesn't conform to the public perfection is automatically the subject of embarrassment and shame. To the extent that I understand kids are no longer even showering after PE, and while in its own way that's worse than a shame - personal hygiene being ignored - it's also emphasizing the problem.

It's teaching young adults that the body is something to be hidden, to be ashamed of. It teaches fear of judgment and predation. And when you are embarrassed or afraid, it harms you psychologically. We all have bodies, and virtually none of them are perfect. 

Even my buddy Mike, who I've mentioned a fair amount and who is, notably, in terrific physical condition. Mike's told me that during his teen years he was worried his cock was small and so didn't lose his virginity until he was 17. (He went through puberty at around 13, same as me.)

Mike was a tennis player and was/is quite strapping, sporting an above average penis. But he was convinced he didn't measure up.

On the other hand, I lost my virginity at 15, and I did okay for myself sexually for the next ten or so years. 

And I believe part of the difference is explained by the fact that I went a junior high school that required showering, and Mike did not. His school gave students the option and most of them didn't. Mike didn't go to a private gym until he was around 18, although he was certainly an athlete. He played tennis at nearby courts so didn't shower at school, instead going home and showering there.

Not only did my school require communal showering, I also went to the YMCA and to various military gyms starting at around age 8 for swim classes. At both, at the time, swimming was done in the nude. 

By the time I was fifteen and starting my sexual activity, I'd seen dozens of other penises - adult as well as other boys' -and wasn't too caught up in the size comparison thing. Yeah, I'd seen bigger cocks, and a few smaller ones. I knew I was average. I was much more excited by the fact I had pubic hair and discovered the wonders of stimulation and orgasm. (My cousin taught me to masturbate at 10 and I never looked back. The advent of ejaculation a few years later was a wonderfully, if messy, development.)

We moved many times when I was a boy, and when I was around 10 at a new school I joined the swim team, getting into terrific shape for a few years. (A couple chunky years around 13, 14, before I temporarily found my way back to fitness) (It's a long story.) 

The team practiced at another school's outdoor olympic-sized swimming pool. It was an elementary school, so no locker room facilities were available. 

The boys on the team wore tiny red Speedos, and our "changing room" was a group of cement half walls near the pool that were basically around chest level for our age group. Girls, in red one pieces, went first, then the boys and we didn't think much about taking off our swim suits and getting dressed. None of us had entered puberty, so seeing girls shirtless wasn't a big deal, and the walls covered everything from the waist down.

It was just how it was. No muss, no fuss.

But like Jeremy above, we're taught to be modest and even embarrassed by a less than perfect body. To hide our boobs and dicks, despite everyone having one or the other (and a few people having both!). This is the sort of absurdist thinking that leads to the infamous hand bra or cupped dick and balls. "I'm naked, but you can't see these things." Or the towel dances that are so laughable in the men's locker room.

It's a shame that our society has created generations of people like Jeremy. Envious of the freedom and uninhibitedness of children, yet constrained by our own sense of inadequacy and embarrassment brought on by the years and social pressures in between.

For my own part it kind of forms my rebellion against feeling modest or embarrassed when I'm naked.  Challenging myself to accept my body as it is isn't easy. (And I don't, always. I really want to lose another 30 pounds). But I've found that being naked - as thousands of nudists will tell you - is emotionally freeing in a big way. It's not just the constriction of the clothing, it's the constriction of the concept. 

Once you move past the initial embarrassment it can be empowering and even invigorating. It's deeply bonding, in that you're literally opening up and vulnerable. It's demonstrating a trust in another person. At least, for me that is the case. For many people, if not most, it can be the opposite depending upon your history. And that's my point: we, as a culture, take away that sense of community and bonding through nudity. It becomes a bad thing, a nasty thing. Criticizing a nude body is like taking a knife to someone's sense of worth. And that's the tragedy.

So, applause to Jeremy and people like him. Overcoming fear and feelings of inadequacy that society has placed on us is healthy. We all have bodies, and nobody's is perfect. Not even yours.