What if Seeing Naked Women Actually Reduced Objectification?

The case for non-sexualized nakedness.

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Jacob was on a Mormon mission in Guatemala. A few months in, he was sent to a coastal area, surrounded by women in various states of undress every single day.

This was a massive distraction to Jacob and his companion, but they prayed and soldiered on as best they could in the face of so much temptation. Jacob described,

“I felt constant anxiety and powerlessness when a girl ‘not dressed to standards’ came into my line of view. And I felt victorious when I could somehow ‘banish’ her from my presence or my thoughts (which wasn’t nearly as often as I would have liked), and that I had won a battle against Satan.”

But then, 10 months into his mission, Jacob got a new companion who grew up in Hawaii. The new companion was excited to be out serving the Lord. Jacob hated to dampen his spirits, but told him that it wasn’t going to be easy in this area by the beach. Temptation was everywhere and would be a significant hinderance to the work.

The companion just smiled and shrugged.

“Well, he’ll soon find out,” Jacob thought.

But then, Jacob started noticing that the new companion really didn’t seem affected by daily exposure to these sirens. One day Jacob confronted him about it. He writes,

“As the weeks passed I was surprised to notice that he seemed unfazed by any of it. After encountering one very attractive woman who greeted us at the door wearing little more than a half-open robe, I waited until we were well down the road before letting loose a tirade of anger and frustration. I told my companion that it really bothered me seeing so many women in various states of undress. It was hard to focus and I felt weak and powerless around them. How were we to be strong and stay faithful? I had prayed and fasted about it constantly, and felt little strength in return. And I began to despise many of the women I encountered for ‘making’ me feel that way (I knew plenty of other missionaries who felt the same in the face of these hellish sirens). I then turned my frustration on him, wondering how he could possibly be so calm and seemingly indifferent to it all. Was he just pretending? Maybe he was on the edge of sanity, barely holding it together, putting up a brave though false front.”

New companion said that no, it really didn’t bother him or distract him. He said that in Hawaii, he went to the beach every day. From a young age, he was surrounded by women in bikinis everywhere. Not just girls his age, but his friends’ moms, his mom’s friends. He was used to it.

“Ah I see,” thought Jacob, so he has simply been surrounded by so much sin that he has become desensitized to evil and temptation. Or, perhaps he doesn’t desire women. “Um, no,” said new companion.

Jacob describes the exchange,

“Justifiably, he wasn’t happy with my response. He told me that becoming accustomed and desensitization were not the same. He still thought women were desirable, no different from any other heterosexual man, it was just that he didn’t experience anxiety and powerlessness according to what a woman chose to wear. He didn’t have to sing a hymn or think about watching baseball or look at the ground. He felt free and unperturbed…

In other words, his normal sexual desire was disassociated from crippling anxiety and the feeling of losing control, of being everywhere surrounded by harm and threat. He loved girls, he said, and had always wanted to be with them regularly. But he didn’t obsess over girls or think of them as sexual objects designed for his own titillation, to constantly flee from until you hopefully found the safe haven of marriage at some point in the future.”

The new companion, who grew up engaging with women showing skin, had learned to see women as human beings regardless of how they were dressed.

Jacob, who grew up only engaging with women who covered their stomachs, chests, shoulders and thighs, really struggled to treat women who showed skin like anything other than a sexual temptation.

And he was mightily disheartened to hear that his plight was not a universal male plight as he had always assumed.

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Jacob’s story and quotations are from an article he wrote on the By Common Consent blog called Men, Sex and Modesty written in 2013. I am so thankful to Jacob for writing it.

When I first read it, it blew my mind. It went exactly contrary to how I had been raised to think about men and the importance of dressing modestly. Men just simply cannot control themselves I was taught (not their fault, just how they come), so it’s up to us girls and women not to tempt them by covering up.

The idea that growing up regularly interacting with women of all ages in bikinis would somehow help a man be less focused on sex could not compute in my Mormon brain.

Now of course, it makes much more sense to me that de-coupling what a woman wears from seeing and treating her as a normal human being would in fact make you less likely to turn women into sex objects.

And lest you think this is purely a Mormon thing or a religious purity culture thing, think again.

Most of the schools in America still enact dress codes that outline how much shoulder, stomach and thigh skin is allowed to be seen of a girl’s body.

When the female body is treated as inherently dangerous, tempting or inappropriate, it encourages the view that women are primarily sexual tools of either temptation or consumption.

Fraternity culture—trying to sleep with as many women as possible—and purity culture—refraining from sex until marriage— can have a lot in common.

Both can train people to see women primarily through a sexual lens. Fraternity culture just sees women as sexual objects to be used, whereas purity culture sees women as sexual objects to be avoided.

Either way, if the primary context where we see a naked woman’s body is in a sexual setting like pornography or using boobs to sell burgers or in a sex scene in a movie, it’s a whole lot harder to see a naked woman as something other than a sexual object. Regardless of whether you avoid them or not.

There is a difference between a naked woman and a sexualized naked woman, but that difference is lost if the only place we see nakedness is in sexual contexts.

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I thought of this blog post a few weeks ago when my friend Emily was talking about sauna culture in Germany over Marco Polo.

Emily grew up in Utah and then moved to Germany with her husband as newlyweds and has lived there for over a decade now.

Her descriptions of families being naked together in the sauna as a completely normal occurrence seems shocking to my puritanical American sensibilities.

I’ve also heard her report that in her experience, German men are a lot more likely to treat her as a human being than American men.

Coincidence?

I asked this question in a recent discussion roundtable and all of your responses were so interesting I wanted to keep the conversation going.

Instead of speaking for her, I wanted to hear Emily’s take on the potential link between having access to non-sexualized venues for nudity and not objectifying women, so I called her up and interviewed her.

I’ll post our conversation below, but first a few disclaimers:

This is a sample size of 1. It is not meant to be universal. Emily does not speak for all Germans or all Americans or all Utahns or all white ex-Mormon basketball playing blonde moms of two.

She speaks for herself and her experience.

So are there German men who see women primarily as sex objects? Of course. Are there German cultural patterns of abuse? Yes. Are there American men who see women primarily as human? Of course. Are there American cultural patterns of non-abuse? Yes. Are there prudish Germans when it comes to nudity and nudist Americans when it comes to purity? Presumably.

Next week, I’ll do more of a quantitative exploration of non-sexualized nudity with stats and studies and such. This week is a qualitative look into one woman’s experience.

Everyone clear that it’s valid if you’ve had a different experience than Emily?

Ok cool. Let’s roll. Here are some snippets of my conversation with Emily Lind:

Me: Ok, so tell me about nakedness in Germany.

Emily: So many examples come to mind about the normalcy of nakedness in Germany compared to the US. And it starts so early.

In Germany, it is unheard of to not shower after you exercise. So starting from elementary school, the kids get naked and shower at school after PE or sports. It’s normal from such an early age. Whereas, I was on the basketball team in high school in Utah and we had very nice shower facilities and no one ever showered there. Even for away games, we’d just sit in our sweat for five hours on a bus rather than shower in the locker rooms.

And in Germany like at the beach, it’s super normal for people to just strip down to change into your swimsuit outside. No one stares, no one thinks it’s weird.

If you are in nature, like on a hiking trail and there’s a lake, it’s totally normal to get completely naked, jump in, get back out, put your clothes on. No one cares. There are swimming pools where you can go top-free. And at the beach of course.

Even if you’re at a pool, if you change outside next to the pool, no one makes a big deal out of it. In America, you could be arrested if you did that.

Or when you go to the OBGYN, they don’t give you one of those little robes, they are just like, Ok, now take off your shirt. And they do the top part. And then they are like, Ok, now take off your pants and underwear and then you do and they do that part.

It’s insane to me now how nervous and weird everyone is about nakedness in America. Like even going to the doctor where it’s medically necessary, your boobs are treated like bombs that are going to explode and must be avoided by everyone at all costs.

And here, breastfeeding is not covered up in public. You just do it and no one stares or makes it weird. It’s totally normal. You don’t use a cover.

And I had all my kids here, so when I would go home and I would start breastfeeding like at my mother-in-law’s house not thinking anything of it, but then everyone would jump up and be like, “Oh do you need a blanket?” And I would be like, no, I’m fine.

In Germany sometimes there will be secluded areas for breastfeeding like the corner of a store or something, but it’s not to cover up a woman’s breast, it’s just so the baby can feed in peace without getting distracted.

And my friends on my basketball team, a lot of them grew up naked sauna-ing with their whole families—brothers, fathers, grandparents, no big deal. I have friends who immediately when meeting their in-law family were sauna-ing naked with their in-laws.

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Me: Did it take some adjustment at first for you to get used to all the nakedness?

Emily: So at first, my little Utah brain could not comprehend being naked in front of another person, but when we moved to Germany, my husband would travel for work and sauna with his co-workers in the evenings in their hotel and it was always naked.

In our city, all the gyms have saunas and they are naked saunas. Like, there are signs that say ‘textile free’ so you aren’t allowed to wear clothes or swim suits in those ones.

I was so nervous at first, do I really take my clothes off? Ok, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna take all my clothes off and sit with these other naked people. And now it’s no big deal and I think it’s so much healthier than only seeing nakedness when bodies look perfect in magazines or having sex in a movie.

Now I’m on an adult basketball team in my town in Germany and the changing room just has a wall of shower heads and we all strip and shower after practice and it’s no big deal at all.

I’ve been purposely bringing my [toddler-aged] daughter into the shower room after games so she can hang out with us. I asked the girls if that was ok and they were all like, “Oh for sure. That’s very important for her to be seeing this.”

Whereas, I don’t remember ever seeing a naked body growing up except an almost naked one in Cosmo magazine, and that was a super model.

So when I was 11 I remember standing in front of the mirror naked being stressed that my eventual husband would one day have to see my body naked. Like, really stressed. Thinking I could never show it to anyone. And I had such a normal body.

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Me: So how did you go from that 11 year old ashamed of her naked body to being naked in mixed-gender saunas like it’s nothing?

Emily: Well, I remember the first couple of times I did, whenever I would be chatting and make eye contact with a man, I would be like “Whoa! He’s ok? Like he’s not turned on or obsessing about sitting next to a naked woman?”

Because I was told a man just simply can’t control himself even next to a woman showing a bit of her thigh, so sitting next to a naked woman would surely throw him into fits of sexuality, right?

But no, they’ve all been totally fine. Totally normal. No uncontrollable fits of erotic frenzy.

(One time a man made me feel weird, but he wasn’t from Germany.)

And I do feel like women are treated more like people and less like sexual objects here. I feel like I’m not treated any differently here based on what I wear. In situations where I’ve had fewer clothes on, I’ve never once had any sort of interaction that led me to believe that a man was thinking of me sexually.

Definitely not the case in Utah.

The fact that men were fully capable of being normal and able to control themselves around female nakedness was shocking to me.

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Me: If you have any other examples of how you have felt humanized as a woman in Germany, I would love to hear those.

Emily: I remember when I had my first kid back before I was working, I met up with my husband’s colleagues, and I was kind of expecting to be ignored or dismissed as a mom or as a woman in a group of a bunch of men, but they were asking about what I studied, my career goals, my expectations for my life and I was just like, “Whoa these men are interested in my brain? My thoughts? My dreams?” I remember that feeling really novel and exciting at the time.

Another example is here the co-ed basketball tournaments are the first tournaments to sell out. Everyone loves playing in mixed games- men, women, everyone. They are so fun.

I was shocked when I found out that co-ed tournaments even existed when I moved here because in America, men will not touch you when they play basketball with you. Like, I would show up to open gyms to play and the men would be visibly upset. They would say things like, “You just ruined our pick up day.” Or, “Oh my God you really want to play with us on our team?”

So I would be so apologetic just to want to practice basketball. I remember telling my Dad once in high school that I wished I could turn into a boy while I played sports and then back into a girl afterwards because the boys wouldn’t play against me for real. They either wouldn’t play at all or treat me like I was made of glass.

But here the men love playing with women. It’s a blast. They treat you great, make plays for you. It’s so fun because they actually respect you as just another player. That shocked me. I had never been treated that way by men basketball players in America.

Another example: the other day I was with my boss and a client in a meeting, and the client was so fidgety. I think he was nervous so he kept rubbing his hands on his pants. And afterwards my boss, who is a man, checked in with me asking if I was ok. He said, “I just don’t think that was fair for you as a woman to have to deal with that amount of fidgetiness from a man.”

And I didn’t even clock it, but he was so concerned that I was treated as a sexual object that he wanted to be sure I was ok and felt respected and safe.

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Me: Ok, I kind of know what I want to write about in my essay about nakedness, but I’m curious if you were to write an essay about your lessons in nakedness from Utah to Germany, what would your main points be?

Emily: Oh I love that question. Ok! I think being naked around other women makes you a girl’s girl. It just breaks down the judgment and the competition. Like literally stripping down makes you figuratively strip down, ya know? Like just, here I am, this is me. Naked. Unpolished.

I think the more women have to hide their bodies, the more disconnected they are to each other.

There is an interesting parallel I think about with bodies and houses. Like in my experience growing up in Utah, you only invite people over to your house if your house is perfectly clean, if everything is in place and if you have the perfect meal for hosting.

Everything curated.

But if someone were to just show up and you’re eating cookies and watching a show in your ugly pajamas and the house is a mess, that’s like showing off your “naked” living space. They see the more hidden parts of you.

But then you have a better connection because you aren’t trying to hide and put on an act. Seeing each other as you are, unpolished allows you to connect more deeply.

That is so similar to actual nakedness.

I used to be so uptight when I would go swimming when I lived in America. There’d be this checklist. Like I need to have my legs shaved, my toes painted, my bikini area waxed so there’s no bumps, ideally a spray tan.

Everything prepped and perfect. Just to expose my partially naked body and get into water.

But here, like you are showering at the gym after a workout session next to other naked women every day. It’s completely unrealistic to have the perfect pedicure, bikini wax, spray tan, whatever.

Your real naked self is just … there. And then you’re having these conversations with the women next to you, and there’s these opportunities to connect because you are just seeing each other for who you are. The competitiveness and judgment loosen.

Like, after our basketball practices, we just blast a boom box and sing shower songs together. It’s really fun and really freeing.

It also allows us to check in with each other in ways we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. For example, we told one girl, “Oh you have a spot on your back, you should get that checked out.” And she was like, “Thanks! I never would have seen that.”

One of my teammates asked another about her breast reduction surgery because her good friend is about to get one.

All these conversations that could otherwise be awkward are so open and natural.

And one of the members of our team struggles with an eating disorder, but we can kind of lovingly keep tabs on her. Like, she’s not alone, hiding in her room.

So some difficulties that stem from so much isolation are broken because you are not isolated in places like that. Literally and figuratively.

Like, I was thinking the other day, it would be really hard to hide if one of the girls on my team were being physically abused. We would know.

So that, or I would write about if Americans grew up sauna-ing with their family and normalized female nakedness in a non-sexualized setting we wouldn’t have such an incel problem.

Me: Say more…

Emily: If a boy grows up seeing his mom and grandma naked in a sauna, he has a longer path to incel-dom just by virtue of seeing real, realistic female bodies as HUMAN, and not a platter of parts for consumption.

Not automatically making seeing skin into a sexualized thing.

I was yelled at in my home if I came out of the shower in my towel to walk to my room. I had to change into my clothes in a wet, steamy bathroom.

That way of thinking immediately sexualizes nakedness even if it’s your sibling, which is so weird. If you are seeing your sister get yelled at for showing her body as she’s running from shower to bedroom, that is dehumanizing your sister. It reduces her to her body. It intrinsically devalues her.

Rather than, yeah that’s just my sister, she has a body like a normal human, why should she be punished for that? She has a body. I have a body.

I just feel like there would be a longer path to dehumanizing women if we normalized women’s bodies in a non-sexual way from the jump.

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Thank you for sharing your experience with us Emily! If you have a similar experience or a completely different experience- feel free to share.

And stay tuned for next week’s article where we will discuss what does it mean that a naked female body in pornography is treated as ordinary while a naked female body in a non-sexual context is treated as obscene and inappropriate?

What does it mean that a woman could be arrested for showing her boobs in public, but that boobs are everywhere in ads, online and in art?

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And if you are wanting to have discussions about patriarchy face to face, come join us at our Matriarchal Blessing book club. By popular demand, this quarter we will read The Flowering Wand: Rewinding the Sacred Masculine by Sophie Strand. We will meet on zoom in July to discuss. Join us: