German women here, I can confirm everything that was written and I am really grateful for growing up in an environment where my body was less connected to shame than in other regions of the world. We do have our own patriarchal problems but especially the connectedness between women showering in an open space, going to the sauna or skinny dipping in the sea together is amazing and really grows solidarity instead of competition.
Yet, with respect, there is no evidence that de-stigmatising nudity leads to less sexual predation. Unfortunately, the rates don't reduce. I fought to have a lock on my bathroom door as a child for a good reason. Sexual abuse is not about sex but power and control. We need to be aware, in my view, of the opportunists in every playground - for adults and children. We also need to give those who want it the right to their privacy and their boundaries. And to be aware of those who will intrude where such boundaries are less clear. Dismissing the very real fact that opportunists exist in all societies, minimises the fact of risk. Nudity does not reduce the risk. Nor does covering up. The problem is about power and control.
Power dynamics are definitely the underlying factor of sexual abuse and bathroom locks as well as other protective measure do not stand in contrast to normalizing the naked bodies in non-sexual contexts, I'd say.
The argument in the case of bathroom door lock was 'I have the right to see my daughter naked' those who don't think so have a dirty mind etc. Opportunists do love to use this one. I think we need to be aware that libertines can also abuse children and women and men. It is a space we need to explore and we need to listen to the voices of survivors. I once interviewed a woman and started down my own track of how much better and safer it must be to grow up in an extended family where beds are shared by children of different sexes and where nudity is normalised. She told me to be careful because she felt that freedom had put her at risk. Children aren't sexually aware but adults are sexually aware. I was constantly plopped into my grandfather's bed in the mornings and I saw him undress regularly. And I was abused.
I would also add that I swim regularly and dress on the beach under a towel. I felt pressured recently by a woman who told me I should just dress without a towel. I told her that is fine for her but I make a different choice. I have been the victim of rape and rape attempts and some of my family members have also experienced these horrors. Going into the sea - including the cold sea - is healing for me. The dressing under a towel is not about shame - I love my much scarred body and happily battle the lookism in our objectifying commodify-the-body society BUT I also cherish the feeling of that safe little house, the shelter, the loving warmth of a towel. I let some into that space and keep some out.
It's definitely a more complicated issue for those of us who have survived abuse (1 in 3 women). I hiked last summer with a couple from Germany for a day and we had basically this exact same conversation. They were completely mystified by how we treat the human body in public. At the same time, I asked the very lovely and beautiful woman in her 20s if she was ever made to feel 'icky' while naked in public and she said yes a few times. In Spain there's a similar culture but at the beaches it's mostly older people and young children who are naked I've heard.
Interesting piece. The question may not be nakedness itself, but the way a culture teaches people to interpret it.
As a man, I don’t believe a woman’s nakedness is automatically a man’s trouble. A woman’s body is not automatically an invitation, and men are not all helpless creatures who lose control at the sight of skin. I don’t close my eyes in front of a woman breastfeeding or at the beach.
But America often has a strange contradiction: it sexualizes women’s bodies everywhere — ads, entertainment, pornography — while treating ordinary nakedness as scandalous.
Maybe the body becomes less dangerous when we stop treating it like danger.
It's exactly the scandalization of nudity that makes its commercialization extremely potent and lucrative. Descandalize nakedness and it no longer sells products.
American culture doubles down on nudity = sexuality. At the pool, it's considered normal for young thin hot femme people to wear bikinis. But for fat people, older people, genderqueer people "nobody wants to see that!"
Like you owe the general public either hotness or modesty.
I had the chance to be a nude model for life drawing classes in college and it was kind of an amazing experience, maybe the one place where I could be naked without feeling body shame or threat of violence.
“Like you owe the general public either hotness or modesty” - such a good way to put it. And honestly it’s like you owe YOURSELF either hotness or modesty- this shit gets internalized deep
Growing up as a “good Mormon girl” far outside the Utah pocket meant every time I encountered a naked or partially naked women I immediately felt like she was sexualizing me by being exposed- Even if it was in the showers at the local recreational center and she didn't even look in my direction. How tragic we have so many people programmed to fear nudity.
Years ago, when I took my first life-drawing class, I decided that everyone should be required in school to take one life drawing class, regardless of artistic interest or talent, not so much for the art, but for the change in perspective that staring at a real, average, normal, naked person and drawing their body and its parts creates for people who see only perfect-or perfectly emaciated- photoshopped and airbrushed, sexualized bodies in the media in a culture that otherwise shames normal people for having bodies at all.
Here in Utah, I went hiking with a couple from Germany for a day and was fascinated by this same exact story and their confusion at the way we treat nakedness here. They hypothesized that our view of female nakedness created a culture of exploitation and abuse and over-sexualization. This was last summer. They were visiting America and decided to change after a hike in the parking lot and someone called the police. Our discussion about it was very similar to this article.
Purity culture and rape culture are two sides of the same coin. Several years ago I met a woman from Italy who was dumbfounded by Americans' attitudes towards nudity. She really opened my eyes to how weird we are about nakedness. As someone who was raised Mormon, I had so much shame about my naked body. It has taken years for me to rewire that part my brain and to understand that a naked body is not inherently sexual.
I love the comment about being seen naked by other women being protective. How much silent suffering can be avoided if a woman’s friends would immediately notice physical signs of abuse or an eating disorder?
I imagine there is less bullying around body size and shape too, if kids are aware from young ages that there is a wide range of normal.
I once spent two weeks in the backcountry, rock climbing with a male friend and a female friend. Towards the end of the trip, we went into a town to do laundry and waited in a coffee shop for it to finish. My male friend picked up one of the coffee shop’s magazines and read it for a few minutes. Then, he slapped it on a table and exclaimed, “My God! I haven’t obsessed about sex once in the past two weeks and I’ve been out in the backcountry with two women. But I pick up this magazine, look at a couple of ads, read a couple of articles that aren’t even about sex and now I can’t stop thinking about needing and wanting sex. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how culturally influenced I am. All the obsessive thoughts I usually have about sex aren’t biological - they’re cultural manipulation.” He sat back and shook his head. “Wow.”
I had a student who wanted to be naked under his graduation robe just for the shock factor (maybe to turn on some girls). All year, he’d talked about nakedness as titillating, basically available for his and others’ gratification. I tried to explain that naked bodies weren’t like it was shown in movies, on TV, in porn and that normal, naked women weren’t there just for his pleasure; I tried to explain that naked men also don’t drive women crazy with desire, so the opposite is actually true. He didn’t believe me. Fast forward a few months after graduation: he apologized to me for not believing me. His dad had taken him to Europe for a graduation gift, and they’d gone to beaches. He saw all shapes, sizes, ages, etc., and he finally understood what I’d been saying all along: uncurated naked bodies are just bodies, not there for his pleasure only. I haven’t seen him in over a decade; I hope the lesson stuck.
I grew up LDS in Oregon. In Jr High we had to wear PE uniforms and it was required to shower - part of the hygiene portion of physED in the open wall of showers. When I moved to ID later I was shocked that people wouldn’t shower and wouldn’t even undress in front of each other- but I adapted. In my 20’s I had a c- section everyone & their dog was in the room…At age 38 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had a sweet older friend to offered to show me her mastectomy… at first I said NO but a few days before surgery I called and said “ can I come and see?” It really helped calm my fears and reinforce my decision to do a prophylactic mastectomy on my non- cancer side. I remember my plastic surgeon showing me a book of pre mastectomy snd post mastectomy bodies and I also wanted to participate because that helped so much. Post surgery I was having concerns about swelling and skin changes and I ended up emailing photos for him to give me advice… I see my breasts as just a part of me and talk about them and my experience with breast cancer often- but it still makes my brother with a wife and 7 daughters uncomfortable. My ex husband was a physician & I took several anatomy and physiology classes ( I was the virgin sex ed instructor for my engaged roommates) When I moved to Utah in my mid 30’s I realized I was the weird one for being comfortable breastfeeding in public and talking about body parts with their proper names. In my 50’s I stepped away from
the church entirely and last year I went to Brazil. I was lamenting that my beach body has disappeared with all the trauma of Breast Cancer , leaving an abusive marriage & church and going through menopause. My young friend said - “all you need for a beach body is a beach and a body” It was so refreshing and I took a deep breath and put on a bikini and enjoyed the beach in my American “unbeach” body. I loved reading this article and wish I could go back and do even more things differently to help my son not be so traumatized by serving a mission in Brazil. He says I taught about not looking at porn but he didn’t really “know what it was” until he got to Brazil and saw the billboards. It’s awesome that my adult kids are also unraveling mormonism so we can talk about these things together!
This is brilliant. I grew up being told that my body was dirty and shameful. For years, I wouldn't even look at my OWN body! It makes so much sense that growing up seeing nakedness in a non-sexualized context reduces not only dehumanization of women by men, but also lessens competition between women. I loved the house analogy. The thought of being able to share my naked self without judgment or ogling would be incredibly freeing.
Thank you for this piece, so rich with insight. I’m an Italian living in southern Germany — a region that still feels culturally hybrid and strongly influenced by Catholicism — and while reading I immediately started tracing correspondences between my own Italo-German experience and the dynamics described here.
I can almost feel the shifts in cultural approach simply by moving through space: from southern Italy up toward the north, then again from southern Germany further north.
I’ve often thought I could write an entire essay just about nudity and sauna signs. In Italy: “Swimsuits must remain on for hygiene reasons.” In Germany: “Swimsuits are forbidden for hygiene reasons.”
The fact that the exact same justification can sustain two opposite cultural norms always makes me think of Mary Douglas and her idea that dirt is simply “matter out of place” according to the cultural categories we inhabit.
Even the sexualization of nudity itself feels deeply tied to cultural patterning rather than something universal or self-evident. Looking forward to the next piece!
Oh that’s funny! I had an elderly Swedish minister who visited my family complain about the American requirement to wear a swimsuit at the beach, saying “we need our Vitamin D!”
Yes! The normalization of women’s bodies. If they are not seen as so much more than sexual objects, just normal, different shapes and sizes just like noses, then the fantasy objectification begins. In France it is not unusual to see mothers with their children at the beach naked. It is absurd how we cover up, manipulate and contort the humanness we live in, and give birth from. The more women uncovering with no fuss, the better. I know women who don’t like undressing in front of their husbands outside of a sexual context, because they feel objectified and don’t always want to be oogled!
I’ve been getting skin checks at the dermatologist 1-2 times a year for the past 2 decades. I have always thought it was weird that you put on a gown, for them to part-by-part reveal all of your skin. At my old derm, at least it was a cloth gown, and she’d do it standing up. My new derm has paper gowns, and I have to stay on the table the whole time. Rolling over on an exam table while wearing a paper gown that apparently everyone else in the room thinks is necessary to keep you covered, is NOT FUN. At the end of the exam they want to have a conversation with me, and I’m sitting there with the gown ripped in multiple places, my hair is all disheveled, and I’m super sweaty. It would be so much better if they could just look at my naked body. Especially since that’s what I’m there for!
Oh man I’ve had a similar thought at the doctor - like are we playing hide and go seek with my body parts bc YOU are uncomfortable seeing my naked body all at once? Or bc you think I’M uncomfortable showing my naked body all at once? Bc I’m good - literally what I’m here for, let’s get it done.
On the flip side, I've been in offices that insisted on gowns for exams that did not require any more undressing than lifting a shirt, or maybe taking it off and leaving a bra on for stomach access. I refused to wear a gown and just moved my clothes around. They worked around me.
I've read that gowns can also affect you psychologically by reinforcing the power dynamics. Putting patients in gowns can make them more "compliant" when you are talking to a doctor in a white coat.
However, I'm not sure that being totally naked while talking to a doctor in a white coat would be different -- at least in the US.
I'm having trouble finding what I originally read, but there is this report:
Also, providing gowns for everyone may make visits more comfortable for some survivors of SA, rather than asking or assuming that they are OK being fully naked in front of strangers.
I love that you addressed here the impact this has on boys too.
I’m raising six of them. No sisters. Which means no casual, normalized, humanizing female presence in the house. Just six boys learning to navigate women in a culture that taught them anxiety and called it virtue.
The cost shows up everywhere. Marriages. Family relationships. The loneliness of men who never leaned that women are just people like them.
Purity culture wounded my boys as much as it wounded me. It just looks a bit different.
I live in San Francisco. My local YMCA just updated their locker room policy that includes minimizing nudity to the shower area and dressing right away and not hanging out naked talking and chatting. Totally insane. Who is going to police this nudity? What of I am accused of being naked for too long? I loved the vibe in the locker room and all the beautiful bodies. Now they want us to ashamed.
I think there is some issue around locker availability and people lingering in the locker room. But this is insane.
German women here, I can confirm everything that was written and I am really grateful for growing up in an environment where my body was less connected to shame than in other regions of the world. We do have our own patriarchal problems but especially the connectedness between women showering in an open space, going to the sauna or skinny dipping in the sea together is amazing and really grows solidarity instead of competition.
Yet, with respect, there is no evidence that de-stigmatising nudity leads to less sexual predation. Unfortunately, the rates don't reduce. I fought to have a lock on my bathroom door as a child for a good reason. Sexual abuse is not about sex but power and control. We need to be aware, in my view, of the opportunists in every playground - for adults and children. We also need to give those who want it the right to their privacy and their boundaries. And to be aware of those who will intrude where such boundaries are less clear. Dismissing the very real fact that opportunists exist in all societies, minimises the fact of risk. Nudity does not reduce the risk. Nor does covering up. The problem is about power and control.
Power dynamics are definitely the underlying factor of sexual abuse and bathroom locks as well as other protective measure do not stand in contrast to normalizing the naked bodies in non-sexual contexts, I'd say.
We need the right to both.
The argument in the case of bathroom door lock was 'I have the right to see my daughter naked' those who don't think so have a dirty mind etc. Opportunists do love to use this one. I think we need to be aware that libertines can also abuse children and women and men. It is a space we need to explore and we need to listen to the voices of survivors. I once interviewed a woman and started down my own track of how much better and safer it must be to grow up in an extended family where beds are shared by children of different sexes and where nudity is normalised. She told me to be careful because she felt that freedom had put her at risk. Children aren't sexually aware but adults are sexually aware. I was constantly plopped into my grandfather's bed in the mornings and I saw him undress regularly. And I was abused.
I would also add that I swim regularly and dress on the beach under a towel. I felt pressured recently by a woman who told me I should just dress without a towel. I told her that is fine for her but I make a different choice. I have been the victim of rape and rape attempts and some of my family members have also experienced these horrors. Going into the sea - including the cold sea - is healing for me. The dressing under a towel is not about shame - I love my much scarred body and happily battle the lookism in our objectifying commodify-the-body society BUT I also cherish the feeling of that safe little house, the shelter, the loving warmth of a towel. I let some into that space and keep some out.
It's definitely a more complicated issue for those of us who have survived abuse (1 in 3 women). I hiked last summer with a couple from Germany for a day and we had basically this exact same conversation. They were completely mystified by how we treat the human body in public. At the same time, I asked the very lovely and beautiful woman in her 20s if she was ever made to feel 'icky' while naked in public and she said yes a few times. In Spain there's a similar culture but at the beaches it's mostly older people and young children who are naked I've heard.
Interesting piece. The question may not be nakedness itself, but the way a culture teaches people to interpret it.
As a man, I don’t believe a woman’s nakedness is automatically a man’s trouble. A woman’s body is not automatically an invitation, and men are not all helpless creatures who lose control at the sight of skin. I don’t close my eyes in front of a woman breastfeeding or at the beach.
But America often has a strange contradiction: it sexualizes women’s bodies everywhere — ads, entertainment, pornography — while treating ordinary nakedness as scandalous.
Maybe the body becomes less dangerous when we stop treating it like danger.
It's exactly the scandalization of nudity that makes its commercialization extremely potent and lucrative. Descandalize nakedness and it no longer sells products.
I absolutely agree with this. "It's the way a culture teaches people to interpret it."
Ordinary nakedness in 🇺🇸is a basis for arrest for a man and to call women sluts
American culture doubles down on nudity = sexuality. At the pool, it's considered normal for young thin hot femme people to wear bikinis. But for fat people, older people, genderqueer people "nobody wants to see that!"
Like you owe the general public either hotness or modesty.
I had the chance to be a nude model for life drawing classes in college and it was kind of an amazing experience, maybe the one place where I could be naked without feeling body shame or threat of violence.
“Like you owe the general public either hotness or modesty” - such a good way to put it. And honestly it’s like you owe YOURSELF either hotness or modesty- this shit gets internalized deep
Growing up as a “good Mormon girl” far outside the Utah pocket meant every time I encountered a naked or partially naked women I immediately felt like she was sexualizing me by being exposed- Even if it was in the showers at the local recreational center and she didn't even look in my direction. How tragic we have so many people programmed to fear nudity.
Years ago, when I took my first life-drawing class, I decided that everyone should be required in school to take one life drawing class, regardless of artistic interest or talent, not so much for the art, but for the change in perspective that staring at a real, average, normal, naked person and drawing their body and its parts creates for people who see only perfect-or perfectly emaciated- photoshopped and airbrushed, sexualized bodies in the media in a culture that otherwise shames normal people for having bodies at all.
Yes the zero sum game of perfection hotness or modesty
Here in Utah, I went hiking with a couple from Germany for a day and was fascinated by this same exact story and their confusion at the way we treat nakedness here. They hypothesized that our view of female nakedness created a culture of exploitation and abuse and over-sexualization. This was last summer. They were visiting America and decided to change after a hike in the parking lot and someone called the police. Our discussion about it was very similar to this article.
Whoa! Case in point! That’s wild someone called the police
Purity culture and rape culture are two sides of the same coin. Several years ago I met a woman from Italy who was dumbfounded by Americans' attitudes towards nudity. She really opened my eyes to how weird we are about nakedness. As someone who was raised Mormon, I had so much shame about my naked body. It has taken years for me to rewire that part my brain and to understand that a naked body is not inherently sexual.
I love the comment about being seen naked by other women being protective. How much silent suffering can be avoided if a woman’s friends would immediately notice physical signs of abuse or an eating disorder?
I imagine there is less bullying around body size and shape too, if kids are aware from young ages that there is a wide range of normal.
I once spent two weeks in the backcountry, rock climbing with a male friend and a female friend. Towards the end of the trip, we went into a town to do laundry and waited in a coffee shop for it to finish. My male friend picked up one of the coffee shop’s magazines and read it for a few minutes. Then, he slapped it on a table and exclaimed, “My God! I haven’t obsessed about sex once in the past two weeks and I’ve been out in the backcountry with two women. But I pick up this magazine, look at a couple of ads, read a couple of articles that aren’t even about sex and now I can’t stop thinking about needing and wanting sex. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how culturally influenced I am. All the obsessive thoughts I usually have about sex aren’t biological - they’re cultural manipulation.” He sat back and shook his head. “Wow.”
Oh wow- what a great example! Thanks for sharing
Great awareness for him!! So glad he shared it out loud with you👍
I had a student who wanted to be naked under his graduation robe just for the shock factor (maybe to turn on some girls). All year, he’d talked about nakedness as titillating, basically available for his and others’ gratification. I tried to explain that naked bodies weren’t like it was shown in movies, on TV, in porn and that normal, naked women weren’t there just for his pleasure; I tried to explain that naked men also don’t drive women crazy with desire, so the opposite is actually true. He didn’t believe me. Fast forward a few months after graduation: he apologized to me for not believing me. His dad had taken him to Europe for a graduation gift, and they’d gone to beaches. He saw all shapes, sizes, ages, etc., and he finally understood what I’d been saying all along: uncurated naked bodies are just bodies, not there for his pleasure only. I haven’t seen him in over a decade; I hope the lesson stuck.
I grew up LDS in Oregon. In Jr High we had to wear PE uniforms and it was required to shower - part of the hygiene portion of physED in the open wall of showers. When I moved to ID later I was shocked that people wouldn’t shower and wouldn’t even undress in front of each other- but I adapted. In my 20’s I had a c- section everyone & their dog was in the room…At age 38 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had a sweet older friend to offered to show me her mastectomy… at first I said NO but a few days before surgery I called and said “ can I come and see?” It really helped calm my fears and reinforce my decision to do a prophylactic mastectomy on my non- cancer side. I remember my plastic surgeon showing me a book of pre mastectomy snd post mastectomy bodies and I also wanted to participate because that helped so much. Post surgery I was having concerns about swelling and skin changes and I ended up emailing photos for him to give me advice… I see my breasts as just a part of me and talk about them and my experience with breast cancer often- but it still makes my brother with a wife and 7 daughters uncomfortable. My ex husband was a physician & I took several anatomy and physiology classes ( I was the virgin sex ed instructor for my engaged roommates) When I moved to Utah in my mid 30’s I realized I was the weird one for being comfortable breastfeeding in public and talking about body parts with their proper names. In my 50’s I stepped away from
the church entirely and last year I went to Brazil. I was lamenting that my beach body has disappeared with all the trauma of Breast Cancer , leaving an abusive marriage & church and going through menopause. My young friend said - “all you need for a beach body is a beach and a body” It was so refreshing and I took a deep breath and put on a bikini and enjoyed the beach in my American “unbeach” body. I loved reading this article and wish I could go back and do even more things differently to help my son not be so traumatized by serving a mission in Brazil. He says I taught about not looking at porn but he didn’t really “know what it was” until he got to Brazil and saw the billboards. It’s awesome that my adult kids are also unraveling mormonism so we can talk about these things together!
“All you need for a beach body is a beach and a body.” LOVE that!
This is brilliant. I grew up being told that my body was dirty and shameful. For years, I wouldn't even look at my OWN body! It makes so much sense that growing up seeing nakedness in a non-sexualized context reduces not only dehumanization of women by men, but also lessens competition between women. I loved the house analogy. The thought of being able to share my naked self without judgment or ogling would be incredibly freeing.
Your articles always pry my eyes open a little more, which is annoying bc i thought I already was enlightened. Jk I love it. Ty!
Hah happy to help and annoy 🫡
Thank you for this piece, so rich with insight. I’m an Italian living in southern Germany — a region that still feels culturally hybrid and strongly influenced by Catholicism — and while reading I immediately started tracing correspondences between my own Italo-German experience and the dynamics described here.
I can almost feel the shifts in cultural approach simply by moving through space: from southern Italy up toward the north, then again from southern Germany further north.
I’ve often thought I could write an entire essay just about nudity and sauna signs. In Italy: “Swimsuits must remain on for hygiene reasons.” In Germany: “Swimsuits are forbidden for hygiene reasons.”
The fact that the exact same justification can sustain two opposite cultural norms always makes me think of Mary Douglas and her idea that dirt is simply “matter out of place” according to the cultural categories we inhabit.
Even the sexualization of nudity itself feels deeply tied to cultural patterning rather than something universal or self-evident. Looking forward to the next piece!
Oh my gosh fascinating! You should definitely write an essay about this!
Oh that’s funny! I had an elderly Swedish minister who visited my family complain about the American requirement to wear a swimsuit at the beach, saying “we need our Vitamin D!”
Yes! The normalization of women’s bodies. If they are not seen as so much more than sexual objects, just normal, different shapes and sizes just like noses, then the fantasy objectification begins. In France it is not unusual to see mothers with their children at the beach naked. It is absurd how we cover up, manipulate and contort the humanness we live in, and give birth from. The more women uncovering with no fuss, the better. I know women who don’t like undressing in front of their husbands outside of a sexual context, because they feel objectified and don’t always want to be oogled!
I’ve been getting skin checks at the dermatologist 1-2 times a year for the past 2 decades. I have always thought it was weird that you put on a gown, for them to part-by-part reveal all of your skin. At my old derm, at least it was a cloth gown, and she’d do it standing up. My new derm has paper gowns, and I have to stay on the table the whole time. Rolling over on an exam table while wearing a paper gown that apparently everyone else in the room thinks is necessary to keep you covered, is NOT FUN. At the end of the exam they want to have a conversation with me, and I’m sitting there with the gown ripped in multiple places, my hair is all disheveled, and I’m super sweaty. It would be so much better if they could just look at my naked body. Especially since that’s what I’m there for!
Oh man I’ve had a similar thought at the doctor - like are we playing hide and go seek with my body parts bc YOU are uncomfortable seeing my naked body all at once? Or bc you think I’M uncomfortable showing my naked body all at once? Bc I’m good - literally what I’m here for, let’s get it done.
I wonder what kind of response I’d get if I was just like “hey, can we skip the gown?”
On the flip side, I've been in offices that insisted on gowns for exams that did not require any more undressing than lifting a shirt, or maybe taking it off and leaving a bra on for stomach access. I refused to wear a gown and just moved my clothes around. They worked around me.
I've read that gowns can also affect you psychologically by reinforcing the power dynamics. Putting patients in gowns can make them more "compliant" when you are talking to a doctor in a white coat.
However, I'm not sure that being totally naked while talking to a doctor in a white coat would be different -- at least in the US.
I'm having trouble finding what I originally read, but there is this report:
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024/12/19/Hospital-gowns-make-patients-feel-vulnerable.html
Also, providing gowns for everyone may make visits more comfortable for some survivors of SA, rather than asking or assuming that they are OK being fully naked in front of strangers.
I love that you addressed here the impact this has on boys too.
I’m raising six of them. No sisters. Which means no casual, normalized, humanizing female presence in the house. Just six boys learning to navigate women in a culture that taught them anxiety and called it virtue.
The cost shows up everywhere. Marriages. Family relationships. The loneliness of men who never leaned that women are just people like them.
Purity culture wounded my boys as much as it wounded me. It just looks a bit different.
I live in San Francisco. My local YMCA just updated their locker room policy that includes minimizing nudity to the shower area and dressing right away and not hanging out naked talking and chatting. Totally insane. Who is going to police this nudity? What of I am accused of being naked for too long? I loved the vibe in the locker room and all the beautiful bodies. Now they want us to ashamed.
I think there is some issue around locker availability and people lingering in the locker room. But this is insane.
Ugh! So frustrating!