“Nobody Wants To See That!”

“There are some people you just don’t want to see naked.”

This is a phrase I’ve heard bandied about so often that it almost seems like a truism, especially when I hear it from the mouths of people that I value and respect. These are, generally speaking, good open-minded people, and so when they say something that sounds so obvious, the first response I think is “well, yeah.”

Then I thought about it.

And I thought about what it meant. I thought “is this true?” and “is this shaming?” The answers were no, and yes.

The first question: Is this true? For me, no it isn’t. There is not a single body on this planet that I wouldn’t love to see with enough confidence, freedom from fear, and shamelessness to be exposed openly. If every person I saw walking down the street every day was nude without fear of reprisal or violence, without self-consciousness about their sexual appeal, and without the baffling moral notion that to be exposed is to somehow disrespect oneself, I’d be downright thrilled. I would look at each and every body with respect and pleasure, and there is no person on this earth that I would not want to see that way.

The second question is, I think, more important because it applies more to the rest of the world that doesn’t have my desire to liberate naked bodies. “Is this shaming?” Absolutely yes, and I think that’s a question that more of us need to ask ourselves every time we open our mouths. The shaming question goes back to an issue I’ve already tackled, the fact that sexuality and nudity are needlessly conflated, and that a body that is not sexually desirable is considered repugnant. “There are some people you just don’t want to see naked,” translates to, “If a body is not sexually appealing to me, it ought to be covered up.” There are many bodies in this world that are not sexually appealing to me – in fact, I’d venture to say most of them – but I have no right to expect my sexual preferences to control others’ bodies. Nor should those preferences affect the way others feel about their bodies.

So, you know. Think about what you say. Don’t say shaming crap. If you think you might possibly be saying shaming crap, imagine someone was saying it about you. If that hurts your feelings, then it’s shaming. Don’t say it.