Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Why is nudity considered sexual?

I have finally figured out why it is strange to me that nudity is considered sexually arousing! Finally!

All right. Imagine a society where everyone is entirely naked all of the time. People never wear clothes except maybe if they want some protection from the environment or something, or if it gets a little chilly, throw a blanket on or something. In this sort of place, people aren’t going to make a big deal out of seeing some breasts or pubic hair, because they’d be constantly surrounded by them, and kids aren’t going to be tittering among one another that “boys have penises and girls have vaginas.”

It is precisely because we have been taught that our bodies and sexualities are shameful and sinful and that they should be hidden when one is past a certain age, that we have strip clubs and issues of People magazine where the best and worst bodies of 2008 are showcased. Fear and rejection have caused dysfunction to an enormous degree, but we are so used to it we think of the customs of our culture as being just fine. Imagine explaining the purpose of a strip joint to someone from a place where the women rarely wear anything but something to hold their hair back. Chances are, they will see such an establishment as ridiculous.

Now imagine this culture without mirrors, where a person doesn’t think about his or herself in terms of a face or a form but instead as a heart and mind, of one who loves and is loved, one who does things and is things that have nothing to do with the shape of one’s features or the clothing one wears. Would these people define themselves more by their interactions with others than by the clothing style one prefers?

We are a culture obsessed with appearances because we have been taught to hide so much. And when we do reveal ourselves, we hope and pray that it’s good enough for the other person to accept, where, in a culture that hides little, certainly not one’s natural form, we are already accepted and desired just as we are—body, mind, heart, whatever.

So many of us think small tribes halfway around the world are backwards and primitive when it is we who pass great immaturity on from generation to generation and do such damage to each other we spend large portions of our lives trying to undo what we learned as children as we grow into an uncomfortable adulthood. Does this make sense? Does this work well for us?

Why should we spend so much of our time trying to appear superficially attractive? Do we really want people to be superficially attracted to us? Why are we so busy trying to hide ourselves from one another? Why are we still clinging to customs that not only do not serve us but damage our psyches? Are we, who have been made to feel inadequate, less worthy or rejected by our society’scustoms going to continue to promulgate (holy crap that’s a word. It’s even the RIGHT word!) these entirely fictitious “truths” onto ourselves and others? Are we going to enforce the separations that keep us from experiencing great intimacy when that deep connection is what we really crave deep down beneath it all?

When we continue what we have been given, we are merely replicating, not creating. When we are given the answers to our questions, we cease to seek and find and grow as a result. Machines replicate with the information they are given. Only life can expand its former boundaries and extend into unexplored expressions of itself.

I’m not saying we should all become nudists or anything of the sort. It usually doesn’t work well to compensate for one thing by going to the opposite extreme. When I behold a human form without cloth draped about it, male or female, I do admire its shape, I do admire the flow of lines and the unique symmetries or asymmetries—the human form is pleasing to whatever aesthetic we have instilled within our senses. But I do not imagine that by this show of skin I have gained intimacy, and the person has not become objectified or sexualized in my imaginings because it’s not the body I wish to experience connection with.

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