“Today, the only naked bodies that many Americans will likely ever see are their own, a partner’s, or those on a screen. Gone are our unvarnished points of physical comparison — the ordinary, unposed figures of other people.”
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Comments 4
Nudity in the locker room was a point of topic recently at work as younger employees haven't had to be in an environment where unabashed nakedness is the norm and while people my age might have experienced it moreso in the past, we are not exhibiting the same nudity practices as those who are now retired. I do find it more off-putting to walk into a shower space nowadays where boxers are hung over shower dividers or hung on towel racks as men choose to not fully undress until they are in the shower stall.
That said, as someone in my 40s, I don't think I ever would have been naked in front of anyone besides a family member or doctor prior to my first relationship, and I very rarely would have been naked in front of my doctor. The communal nudity that the author describes is not anything that I recognize in my lifetime. There might have been public showers in my high school, but that just meant most kids were going back to class smelly.
I saw an unintentional counterpoint to this yesterday: Kendra Gaylord's video asking "What happened to bathroom doors?"
See also https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/nov/12/thought-something-wrong-with-body-then-shared-shower-with-50-strangers
I shared the Atlantic article with my friend group. And the link here is also interesting.
I think we were all in the generation after "naked swim class" (?) and I'm all for locker room, etc arrangements that make people of all genders comfortable - our community has been moving to the "small closets that all can use" approach.
But, I really do think that body image positivity would be vastly improved if we saw much more of us naked more regularly - in a totally non-naturist way. I think the germans have been on to something in this regard...
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