On Chronically Clothed: Thoughts on Nudity | The State Times. I found this text:
Last year, my cousin posted a link to an article about World Naked Gardening Day, an event celebrated by many horticulturists the first Saturday of every May. The idea behind the event is to tend to your crops and flowers in as raw a state as they are: completely unclothed. My first reaction was pure excitement, followed by extreme disappointment. Sure, I would love to step into my backyard, dig in the dirt and help something grow exactly as I am, but what would the consequences be? What would my family think? My neighbors? Would I be breaking the law?
Laws on nudity fit into Joel Feinberg’s offense theory. This theory states that in order for something to be outlawed, the action doesn’t need to be intrinsically harmful to another, it only has to produce an unpleasant feeling for others (e.g. shame, disgust, anxiety.) So what is it about nudity that makes people feel so shameful and anxious?
I believe one of the main reasons for these negative feelings is our tendency to equate nudity to sexuality. Because we have been conditioned to think of bathing and sex as the only acceptable times to be undressed, we are chronically clothed: it is even expected that while alone you have something on. Reasons such as hygiene and protection from the environment do not need to be answered by law, but rather by common sense. Only we have a say in whether or not we put on a coat while it’s snowing, so why should a shirt have it’s own law? As for people going fully nude in public places, nudist colonies have already established common etiquette to keep everyone healthy, happy and clean.
I believe that nudity has the potential to facilitate better attitudes on body image and sex. Outlawing your natural form in public causes people to be ashamed of their bodies, and in turn perpetuates the cycle of sexual confusion and shame. People ogling at the naked body does not spur from nudity, but from a puritanical school of thought that demonizes the very essence of what it means to be human.
As a fashion design major and apparel business owner, I am as big a clothing lover as they come. However, my interest in fashion is how it supplements a person physically and artistically, not in how it covers something that is supposedly short of perfect. The change would demand a huge psychological shift in seeing nudity as commonplace, and not a form of forbidden fruit. I am not talking about a full-fledge shift into a constant state of undress, (that would be impractical on many levels) but just the acceptability of me sitting in my garden, as exactly the person that I am.
Nude is normal…
It makes no sense to outlaw natural nakedness just because “someone” may have an unpleasant feeling if confronted by the sight of another human being clad in their own skin.There are huge problems going on in this world – violence,robbery,hunger,poverty these all need much more attention and to make it any sort of crime to be simply naked in a public or private place is senseless.
“it only has to produce an unpleasant feeling for others (e.g. shame, disgust, anxiety.)”
So if someone in a public place such as the sidewalk, city bus, etc., with pants half way down their butts, and using the “F” word regularly, can be cited as a sexual predator simply because I feel “disgust, shame and anxiety”? That is how nudists are perceived in many states and some countries. Yet these people get away with it all the time.
I believe “chronically-clothed” has become COMPULSIVELY-CLOTHED. Clothing, particularly in western culture, has become an addiction. Having the latest fashions has become a status-symbol, which has reached all the way down to pre-school children. This clothing-addiction is fueled by the media, which always says that “enough is NEVER enough”. A person always has to have MORE.
The media’s fashion-frenzy is fueled by the highly-lucrative fashion industry, which can only stay in business if they are making customers want the latest and the greatest. Of course the fashion industry is fueled by GREED. The fashion industry spends mega-bucks on advertising, so the media can’t ignore them.
Speaking of advertising, it isn’t just aimed at girls and women, it is also aimed at men. The only advertising ditty that I remember from my childhood starts with “Look for the union label…”. It was sponsored by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and at that time, they were pushing underwear. BTW, this dates back over 50 years. Why can women not have enough underwear? Men have that dapperly-dressed Men’s Wearhouse spokesman who says “You will love how you look. I guarantee it.”
The church (organized religion) has gotten into the fray with their Puritanical “theology” which equates “modesty” with being “properly-dressed”. I was raised in that kind of environment, so I know how it affects people first-hand.
Most nudists aren’t very good customers of the fashion industry, myself included, and we go against the grain of prevailing church “doctrine”, so we are attacked from both sides. We are an odd bunch of folks, and I like it that way.
Well put!