Avris

There’s obviously a big taboo around nudity. And I don’t think it makes much sense. Our norms regarding nakedness seem quite arbitrary...

Just think about it. A guy without a shirt on a hot day in the middle of a city? Sure, why not! An equally topless girl in the same situation? Hell no!

Sure, her breasts are different than his, their roundness and size are sexy and tempting. But if you’ve gotta censor it, just censor the areola and you’re fine. The areola that looks in a woman exactly like in a man. Stupid, isn’t it?

We claim that we forbid nudity because showing our sex organs would sexualise the public space, right? And what exactly counts as a sex organ? Half of our bodies are sex organs, if you use them right! The biggest human organ, which we almost never cover in whole, is our skin – certainly a sex organ (well, if you like good sex).

And what about our mouths? Giving somebody a blowjob is for sure sex, even if you didn’t use your genitals the whole time. But does the Western culture have any taboo regarding covering your mouth because of their possible use during sex?^[1]? The same goes for giving handjobs and not having to cover our hands.

I find male calves very sexy. Thank goddess we don’t have any taboos about them! Can you imagine having to sweat through a heat wave in long trousers just because someone might like your legs? Yet we did have such a taboo – showing woman’s ankle used to be considered daring and inappropriate. What changed? Did they slowly become less and less sexy? No, we just got less prude.

Different cultures and different groups have different rules regarding showing your body – nuns cover their hair as a sign of modesty and chastity, some Arabic countries require women (and only women) to cover their whole body in public, while some ethnic groups in New Guinea only use a koteka to cover their (male) genitals. Can’t you see how arbitrary it all looks?

If you wanna be truly consistent, you’d have to either ban showing any part of human body for any gender, or admit that nudity ≠ sex and let people wear whatever the fuck they want.

Nudity doesn’t necessarily mean sex. And sex doesn’t always require nudity. I’m sure you’ve seen hundreds of adverts trying sell a non-sex-related product using a sexy photo of an attractive girl. There’s not an inch of nudity more than you’d normally see on a beach – but it is using sex to get to your wallet. On the other hand you have naturists, not wearing an inch of fabric, but still being totally not sexual in their nudity.

By the way, isn’t it funny, how the naturist being all natural and “how the god created us”, are looked down on by the same prudes, who condemn homosexuals for being so unnatural?

Anyways... I’m obviously not saying that wearing clothes is in any way wrong – our species is not naturally adjusted to all the environments we ended up living in, so clothes are an obvious necessity for most of us most of the time. I’m using their goodness right now for keeping my feet from freezing. But in an outfit consisting solely of socks, I wouldn’t go out on my sunny balcony, would I? I don’t want any shocked and judging looks from my neighbours, so for getting a tan without tan lines I need to walk/ride a couple of kilometres.

Right now I’m not even trying to convince anyone to become a naturist themselves. It’s really awesome, liberating and everything, but if you don’t try, it’s your loss, not mine. I respect your decisions about your body and whether or not you want to cover it^[2]. I’m just asking you for the same thing: respect other people’s choices not to cover theirs.

On a beach, there’s not really much use for clothes, is there? (Except for hats, do protect your head from sun!). Quite the opposite, they make your tan uneven. But we wear them anyway, because of some stupid taboo. Yes, it is stupid. All of us have bodies, half of the population have the same kind of genitals as you do. They come in different shapes and sizes, and that’s fine. There shouldn’t be anything embarrassing about them, nothing shameful, nothing immoral, nothing intrinsically sinful.

So let’s get over that taboo. We’ve already freed the ankle – now it’s time to free the nipple, the pussy and the cock as well.

^[1] It certainly does, when it comes to yawning and chewing, but that’s a different story
^[2] Unless your choices are actively harming people around you. Wear the damn mask!