This is a comment by Not Me on the post “Monday Roundup“.
“There’s a lot of people claiming that women’s breasts are different and therefore sexual (and similar things along those lines). I’m not posting there because it’s over a week old so not many of those people will still be reading the comments, but …
“When I was growing up, my family was poor, and there were six of us (including my cousin who lived with us for a time) and we doubled up on baths/showers in order to save water. There was no segregation of the sexes in this, and occasionally someone would do something in the bathroom while others were bathing or showering. While we didn’t really run around naked, we also didn’t bother to hide getting dressed or undressed (aside from avoiding uncovered windows that faced into the front yard). It wasn’t a big deal until other people found out about it and were horrified at my parents (and it wasn’t even due to any of the kids talking about it; my mother did that) but by that time all but the youngest of us had passed puberty.
“Results: nudity = not sexual. Not even if the other person is very attractive. Seriously, it’s not a turn on at all. As an adult I’ve spoken to nudists, and while not all of them share that kind of childhood experience, they all agree—once you get used to it, it’s nothing. I’m fairly certain that any claims about *any* part of the anatomy being inherently sexual are wrong. They’re sexual only because enough people believe they are.
“(If anyone wonders what I *do* find a turn-on, it’s certain articles of clothing, rope bondage, and people having actual sex. The latter works better if they’re people or characters whom I’m familiar with; random stranger porn doesn’t hold my interest for long. It’s not like I’m asexual or anything.)”
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This comment seems to gloss over an alternative explanation: desensitizing.
People can become desensitized in ways that help them to get past many situations that cause otherwise inherent emotions: fear, anger, jealousy, can all go away over time if someone is repeatedly exposed to the same stimuli. An aggressive act that would spark anger in anyone the first time it happens is given over to resignation by the hundredth time it happens. A fear of deep water can be overcome by repeated swimming lessons. There are many examples.
How is this any different? Someone who is constantly expose to nudity will probably become desensitized to its effects. But this does not mean that nudity lacks “inherent sexuality,” it simply means that the desensitized individual has overcome sexual proclivities relating to that stimulus.
Isn’t nudity the default state, though? One could argue that there wouldn’t be anything to be desensitized by if the culture didn’t first desensitize people to wearing clothing.
You raise a good argument, however, we know that humans have a LONG history of wearing clothing, often for non-survival purposes. When humans have worn clothing for thousands of years, it’s difficult to describe what the “default state” is.
It’s entirely possible that over 10,000+ years clothing has crossed the line from culture to instinct. We see this in other animals: beaver dams are the best example, they are built instinctually even though the knowledge to build a dam makes certain assumptions about the environment that a beaver must be raised in.
It’s not inconceivable that at this point “clothed” is the default state even though we’re born without clothing (just as beavers are born without a stack of wood used to assemble a dam).
That assumes that the reason people wore clothing was for modesty. Is it not possible that humans began wearing clothes to denote their position in their community or as some personal or religious expression? If so, would that support the idea that nudity is the default state and that wearing clothes is primarily a cultural thing?
I would counter with two points:
First, we routinely see the genitals hidden by clothing, across a multitude of cultures. The breasts not so much, but the genitals frequently. It’s difficult to believe that this is completely divorced from modesty (or hygiene for that matter), it would just be a fantastic coincidence.
Second, even if the original reasons for clothing were solely to promote status, this has clearly been lost to time, but the drive to wear clothing has not. So long as the instinct exists, what caused it doesn’t really matter. If, instead, we saw that in cultures with a multitude of alternative status symbols if was more acceptable to go around naked, then the argument might hold weight (because the desire is being otherwise sated). But we do not see this.
“There’s a lot of people claiming that women’s breasts are different and therefore sexual (and similar things along those lines)”
Claiming? women’s breasts are different in the most atavistic way. Short of the human face, breasts are the most depicted items in art, yeah I know Playboy isn’t art.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/07/17/science/Conversations-8.html
“The Venus of Hohle Fels, a figure carved in mammoth ivory, is around 35,000 years old. “There were remarkable things happening in Europe at least 40,000 years ago, with the painted caves, with flutes, with the statuettes and so on,” Dr. Stringer said. “But the seeds of that revolution were sown in Africa more than 100,000 years ago.”
My family is Finnish and we have the sauna culture, which means that since childhood, you see a range of ages and shapes of nude bodies regularly. First, nudity =/= sexual in Finnish/Nordic cultures. A body is a body and if it’s a sexy time, there’s more to it than someone without clothes on. Second, it really helps to have a good realistic idea of what actual people look like naked, i.e., not airbrushed magazine pics, not porn, not models/celebrities. Western, and especially USian, culture has such a complicated concept of sex and shame that gets tangled up with body parts and gender and expectations….hard to navigate for anyone.
How do jump to the conclusion that since you didn’t want to bang your naked sister (normal
I’d say) that nudity is not sexual???? Seriously I can’t connect the dots. Help me.
Cosign. I thought most people were not sexually attracted to their family members (with or without clothing).
I quite agree to the point of the article that nudity and sexual can be quite disjoint. Nudity can be sexual, but the sexual nature of it is more defined by context, behaviour and expression. Nudity can be a form of both non sexual expression and sexual expression. Some paintings would use nudity to emphasise poverty, suffering or mourning. And yet there would be countless pieces of art where nudity is used to worship the human body, and the sexuality of it.
There is a strong association between nudity and sex, but they are two distinct things. Sometimes I think the reason people see nudity as something sexual, is because both their nudity and sex are something they consider intimate, and both are involved in one of their most intimate experiences.
I have to agree that nudity in itself is not attractive because most people are not attractive with their clothes off. At age 45, I am the first to admit that my body looks much better covered by clothing! Most people, naked, look truly awful. A small subset of young, in shape people actually have bodies that others would want to look at at. Which is, actually, why I would never be a nudist. I took a trip to Club Med once where there were a lot of older European women on the beach topless, and most of them looked TERRIBLE. They weren’t fat but they were wrinkled and leathery from years of sunbathing. Personally my breasts are saggy and I have cellulite, I look like a 45 year old woman. Why would I want to show that off?
So, people, do us a favor and DON’T take your clothes off. We don’t want to see you!
Sounds like you are not very attractive with or without your clothes on. Why don’t YOU do the rest of us a favor and NOT go OUTSIDE? No one wants to look at ugly people, right?
(If it’s not obvious, I am just trying to make a point there.) Nudism is not the same as exhibitionism. Some folks may enjoy being naked because it turns them off, nudism is not that. In fact, the whole point is to love your own self and your own body regardless of what you look like, wrinkles, rolls and all. And to be able to see the beauty in others beyond how tight their skin and ass is. You obviously don’t HAVE to be naked to do that, but if you are open enough, it is a great, soul-freeing experience.
If we can get past worrying about what ourselves and others LOOK like, and get past viewing an unclothed body as simply something to f***, it’s a whole new dimension of freedom and love for our fellow imperfect humans.
edit: ….”Some folks may enjoy being naked because it turns them *ON*”
I do wonder at the idea that Nude = Sexual.
If it was that simple, why would people snapping images of themselves naked on camera phones be so laughable?
Is it the camera phone that is the turn off?
I completely agree. I walk around the house naked or semi-nude all the time with my partner because it’s more comfortable (I don’t have kids or anything). A lot of the time it’s not sexual at all. Sometimes it’s just there (doing dishes, sleeping, watching tv, showering together..well that can vary
). Sometimes it’s playful (slapping each other’s asses, doing the ‘you’re sexy’ whistle, or making funny vulgar comments at each other). And sometimes it becomes extremely sexual and sensual and we can’t keep our hands off each other in THAT way.
I forgot what it is called but isn’t there something in psychology that basically when you grow up with someone, such as family members, that sexual attraction is turned off? A mechanism that helps avoid incest?
Westermarck effect. Which has nothing to do with OP, i assume the author had a chance to verify her views on nudity on non-family members already.
Doesn’t that also work on non-family members? Although she said it was her immediate family n cousin unless I am missing something?
Yes, it does. That’s why most tribal societies arranged inter-tribal marriages, and why capturing females from other groups was considered such a high-value task in early and tribal warfare.
Indeed, it doesn’t apply to family members you didn’t know until you were both adults, either. Byron being perhaps the best known example. Especially troubling given the degree to which attraction and compatibility maps to genetic similarity.
We’re Westerners, so our idea of sex gravitates toward looking. So how could nudity fail to be sexy, since for us it would entail so much looking and being looked at? Of course, among the primitive peoples who still live naked or seminaked, bodies aren’t just standing around for visual inspection. They’re working. Maybe it defeats the sexualizing eye to see a naked body while it’s grinding corn or butchering animals. Maybe the sex in those societies is in touch—and smell. Which—uh-oh, that’s precisely what we hope mountain cabins and space rockets will take us away from.
So it must not be that nudity is sexy. Looking is, if very specific conditions for looking are met.