It's hard to promote an activity or lifestyle - especially when you're promoting it as wholesome (which then tends to come off as suspiciously insincere) - when society doesn't allow you to do it in front of children. Like, consider this. Children aren't allowed to drink alcohol. But you're allowed to drink alcohol around children. You don't have to hide it. You don't have to pretend you don't do it, or pretend you don't like it. You can do it right in front of them! You can even make it an integral part of your family get-togethers. Children aren't allowed to smoke, either. But you're allowed to smoke around them - even though this is demonstrably harmful to their health. They can't drive, but it'd be ridiculous to suggest that you should never drive in their presence.
But just because - what? children aren't allowed to have sex? - not only is that a taboo subject of conversation in the presence of children (hampering any effort to educate and promote good health practices), but you can't even be naked in front of them, despite the fact that nudity isn't automatically related to sex. Everyone has a naked body of their own, that they can look at as much as they want to - exactly what are we hiding them from? Yet, if you like to lounge around naked at home, you're expected to scramble for clothes (while feeling like a fugitive) whenever there comes a knock on the door. Even at a backyard barbecue on a hot summer day, when everybody else is in the pool, you can't swim comfortably the way you like to. You have to pretend you're one of those loopy textiles who swims with their clothes on, no matter how much you hate wearing wet clothes, or how much you enjoy the feeling of drying out naturally in the fresh air and sunshine. And you'd better think twice before making a joke about skinny dipping, because if there are any kids within earshot, somebody might think you're being inappropriate!
It's (obviously) a harder pill to swallow being an experienced nudist. What makes it weird is that I've been naked in the company of children who were complete strangers. Because we're all nudists, there's an understanding between us, and it's fine. But I can't reveal this aspect of my life to some of my closest friends and family? Even though they might be curious - if they're still minors, and their parents are too jaded to ever conceive of a context in which social nudism could be a wholesome and nonsexual activity - you have to button your lip and sweep it under the rug, and go on feeling like an outcast with a shameful secret you can't divulge. Even though, in reality, it's something you're proud of.
I don't want to put innocents in peril, and it bothers me that we live in a world filled with dangerous people, so that we can't have nice things. But sometimes we expose children to things that can harm them - like secondhand smoke (we're getting better at this), or a culture of alcoholism (why is getting shit-faced drunk a teenage rite of passage?), not to mention the violence in our entertainment (Deadpool might be rated R, but nobody's being put on a registry for taking their kids to see it). All the while other things that are wholly positive and life-affirming take on a disparate tone of foreboding, just because society has deemed them "harmful to minors" - whether or not (as in the case of wholesome nudism) that is factually true.
It's the same with dancing and modeling and fashion - things that, left to their own devices, kids love to play with (you'd think that, judging from some of the repressive messaging out there, kids naturally want to play with dolls and fire trucks until the night before their 18th birthday - and that's just not reflective of reality). These things aren't vices. They can be empowering, and a source of self-confidence. A medium for expression, and just plain fun! It's not indecent to admire both the human body's form and function. But because some people would prefer to interpret it in a sinister way, it's imbued with a veil of seediness. Like an art nude being slapped with a censor bar, giving it the impression of illicit pornography. It poisons the well, because now you can't defend any of these things without sounding like a sicko...
I completely agree with you zharth. And you are expressing yourself in such a way, with honesty and in a very comprehensive way. If only peoples were able to think by tem selves instead of perpetuating an invasive and harmful restrictive and religious culture. But it is a small consolation to know that our attitude, our way of living and being within these imposed limits is the right and the most healthy and natural one there is.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what satisfaction being right has, when the rest of the world imposes wrong on you. I might have agreed with you more when I was younger and less jaded (not unjaded, but less jaded).
DeleteWhat shocks me is how effectively religion and "civilization" brainwashes people that even dumb apes who should do nothing but follow instinct have been taught to regard said instinct as evil.
Like, is it so easy to forget what it means to be human?
It is true that we are prisoners of social conventions, and since there is nothing we can do about it unfortunately, I console myself by telling myself that I like who I am and that I find others insignificant and contemptible. But it is a small consolation.
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