I have worn clothes every day of my life. There has not been even one single instance where I have gone twelve hours without putting on at least a sock, and I think this is probably true of almost everyone on every continent on the planet. In fact, from the moment you’re born you’re wrapped in a towel and shoved into a diaper, and the worst experience for both the parents and the infant are the brief moments where nudity is thoroughly unavoidable.
Our society is a little strange in that way. Deep down we all want to be naked. What is a young couple looking forward to the most early on in a relationship? Progressively escalating moments and degree of nudity, culminating in the total nudity of one of life’s greatest pleasures. As soon as the weather is nice girls wear low-cut shirts and high skirts, and it’s not a question of temperature; there are a vast assortment of clothes they could choose to wear, but they often choose the clothes that are as close to nudity (perhaps “sexy” is a better word) as they can get away with. In fact, generally speaking I would go so far as to say that the more attractive a person is, the more they want to show off unclothed parts of their body. A man with great abs will go running without a shirt, and a beautiful woman is more inclined to wear clothes revealing her legs, arms, midriff, neck, cleavage and back. One way or another, physical confidence seems to instill people with a desire to be unclothed as much as possible.
The bathing suit industry, at least for women anyway, considering that men often don’t have a clue why a woman is attracted to them, has dedicated itself to cultivating a direct relationship between attractiveness and progressively smaller and more sheer bikinis, to the point that often it would be more modest to wear underwear. At least in this country, I would say it’s nearing an expectation that a more attractive woman perform her due diligence to the rest of us by showing off more of herself. This trend, along with some help from the porn industry, has infested feminine culture to such a degree that women are sporting far more tattoos, far less pubic hair if any, and many more piercings and ornaments for very sensitive parts of the anatomy. I will extend an olive branch to tattoos as they can also manifest as empowerment, but female pubic hair is a particularly revealing example; a lack of waxing and extensive grooming in the nether regions is bordering on an indecency these days. A woman could be subject to judgement simply for not being more naked than naked under her clothes.
It is a fairly complete argument that the most relaxed and liberated any human being can be is when they feel totally comfortable to choose to be or not to be, as it’s said, "tackle out", with total judgmental immunity. Everyone knows that a private residence is basically a chimpanzee enclosure with better furniture. We walk around naked all the time, and why not? The only courtesy we extend to our significant other is to observe the direction we are facing when we bend over to pick up the remote, and frankly, it’s a great feeling to know that you can be naked around someone who loves you for who you are and isn’t going to judge you physically. Imagine how functional clothes might become if our society somehow instantaneously eliminated physical shame of our fellow humans. That’s not to say that physical aesthetic would disappear, just the geometrically increasing Western zeitgeist of physical expectation.
I think the greatest disservice we do the the human condition in terms of self-esteem and non-chemically-related psychological disorders is that we measure the freedom to be less clothed by a negative standard rather than a positive one. Those considered farther away from the whims of our current social trends (look at a few 18th century paintings for some perspective regarding hard-wired physical attractiveness standards) are the measuring stick for what we “don’t” want to see in terms of nudity as opposed to a neutral acceptance of all nudity and a greater appreciation for what we “do” want to see. This may sound like a trick of the tongue, but the paradigm shift is profound:
In our current age people have more access to images of our personal physical preference both male and female than humankind ever has. Comfort with homosexual and alternative-gendered experimentation and relationship investment has certainly increased, whether above board or otherwise. Who is on your arm at the company party matters far less, but the judgement persists. All of us—myself and any person being honest enough with themselves to pursue the thing they find attractive regardless of the gender or packaging included—has said under their breath to a friend after a hearty handshake, “What do they see in that person?”
The few characters required to answer the question exactly identifies the offensiveness of the question:
They see what they desire.
It is the height of cynicism to presume to pass judgement upon a person who has achieved the rarest and most beautiful occasion of human serendipity simply because it is different than yours. At the same time, the ease of it is worthy of some pity. How can a person who is longing for a perfection—whatever that is—embedded in the core of their universal conception possibly understand how someone could see things differently? How can someone be the luckiest person in the world for being loved by their ideal and simultaneously acknowledge that this sweet rose among thorns could be disposed of with ease by someone else?
I think one of the great ironic tragedies of our current social state is the ignorance that love—the most noble and powerful of all human experiences—sees that object of one’s affection completely naked and perfected both spiritually and physically, and yet we cannot bring ourselves to revel in the empathy of shared experience of pure happiness because we are also cynical creatures who seem unable to understand our experiential human beingness as symbiotic rather than selfish.
Of course, I must bring this to a close with reference to my limitations. Do I advocate nudity as a universal state of affairs? No. However, I don’t for only one reason: one of life’s greatest pleasures is the tantric, almost painful excitement of slowly revealing oneself and having that object of passion and desire slowly reveal themselves to you. After all, what makes for great sex? Is it an explosion of passion? Well, sometimes. However, this kind of relationship has sharply diminishing returns. True sexual satisfaction is not just a buildup in one experience, but a long-term physical revelation about someone without whom you could not do.
That’s the nudity we truly desire: the shedding not only of one’s clothes, but the shedding of one’s socially imposed inhibitions of cloth proprieties in the presence of pure acceptance.
I think we would all be much better off approaching the world and our fellow astronauts, flying out into the unknown tomorrows that have been the one unity of the human experience on this tiny little blue orb, in that way. The measuring stick of that could well be the comfort and confidence in the solidarity and love by those who with whom they share this wonderful world, to fearlessly walk the sidewalks clothed or naked as we so choose.