Clothes close people's eyes

As I write this, I'm listening to a Dutch naturism podcast made by the Dutch Naturist federation. It's an interview with someone who needs a wheelchair, and she makes lots of interesting remarks.

Simple things like going to the bathroom / toilet, for instance. For healthy people that's not a big deal when dressed, but for her it's the difference between ten minutes, dressed, or three minutes naked.

Things that, for her, are daily life and that we don't even stop to consider.

One thing that came up in this podcast, which has nothing to do with disability as such, was the view of clothes making people blind for the diversity of bodies. Clothes cover and hide all the differences, flaws, scars and all those things that people's bodies have. As they spoke about that, the title for this post jumped at me.

Clothes close people's eyes.

The concept of 'norm' and 'normal' came up, and the fact that the fashion industry influences (almost) everyone to follow their standards of normality. This lady spoke about this and the fact she's in a wheelchair, making it very clear how cumbersome and uncomfortable clothes are for her. Because of her disability, a muscle disease, her body is deformed a bit, and it gets worse as she ages and her disease progresses. She sits all day because of her illness, and clothes are plain annoying at times. Think back to the bathroom issue, and then you should see how much sense that makes.

Also, the way she described being at a naturist camping, seeing real bodies that you normally don't see, because of clothes, was touching and a constant 'yes'-nodding moment for me.

Being clothes free means you see real life, real people. Missing limbs, missing breasts, to name just a few things. Things that people who always stay in the clothes-'safe' zone will probably never see. Their clothes close their eyes.

More reading: in Dutch on the NFN site. In English on the site of Naked Wanderings.