Not Sexual, Just Human

Not Sexual, Just Human

I've always found it interesting how quickly an ordinary activity can become something else in people's minds simply because the person doing it isn't wearing clothes. I can sit outside reading a book, make coffee in the kitchen, water plants, swim, cook dinner, or have a conversation with a friend. Add clothing and nobody gives any of it a second thought. Remove the clothing and suddenly the nudity becomes the most important thing happening.

That's particularly strange when you consider that the body itself hasn't actually done anything.

If I'm sitting outside reading without clothes, the verb describing what I'm doing is reading. Naked describes the condition in which I'm doing it. Yet someone unfamiliar with naturism might describe exactly the same scene as "a naked man sitting outside," as though the absence of clothing were the activity rather than an incidental detail.

We do this remarkably often. We treat nudity as an action when sometimes it's merely a condition.

Maybe that's part of the reason I've become increasingly uncomfortable with one of the phrases naturists themselves use all the time: "Nudity isn't sexual." I understand the intention behind it. We're trying to reassure people that naturism isn't an invitation, a performance, or a substitute for intimacy. But the sentence still begins with the assumption that sexuality is the thing nudity must be compared against.

The human body doesn't announce its meaning.

The same unclothed body can be standing beneath a shower, lying on an examination table, changing in a locker room, posing in an art studio, swimming at a naturist resort, sleeping beside someone it loves, or being wheeled into surgery. We understand those situations immediately because context tells us what's happening. The amount of clothing may be identical, but nobody seriously believes the situations mean the same thing.

In fact, we're surprisingly good at making these distinctions when circumstances require us to. Nobody sees a naked patient being prepared for surgery and thinks the scene is sexual. A parent bathing a small child doesn't need to explain that the nudity is innocent. Someone changing clothes in a locker room isn't presumed to be making a statement about the human body.

Clearly, we already possess the ability to see nudity without automatically sexualizing it.

We just apply that ability selectively.

That becomes even more obvious when clothing enters the equation, because clothing itself can be considerably more sexual than nudity. Advertising figured this out a very long time ago. A completely dressed person can deliberately project sexuality through clothing, posture, expression, movement, setting, and behavior. Meanwhile, a completely naked person watering tomatoes at a naturist campground may be thinking about nothing more provocative than whether the plants need fertilizer.

The amount of exposed skin isn't what creates sexual meaning.

Context does.

Intent does.

Behavior does.

And sometimes the person looking supplies the meaning all by themselves.

Perhaps that's where things become complicated. We've attached an extraordinary number of meanings to the naked human body, many of which contradict one another. Nudity can represent shame, vulnerability, sexuality, innocence, rebellion, obscenity, freedom, humiliation, authenticity, poverty, purity, or simply comfort. The body hasn't changed between any of those interpretations. We have.

Even our language reveals some of those assumptions. We say someone was "caught naked," as though they were committing an offense. Someone was "exposed," which sounds like something unfortunate happened to them. Someone was "seen in the nude," a phrase that somehow makes an unclothed body sound like an event requiring witnesses.

Those expressions make perfect sense in situations where privacy has genuinely been violated. What's interesting is how easily the same language follows nudity even when nobody involved feels embarrassed, violated, or particularly concerned.

Naturism complicates all of this because it removes many of the usual signals we're accustomed to using.

At a naturist resort, someone may be swimming while another person reads. Someone else is making lunch. Two people are arguing about the rules of pickleball. Somebody is looking for sunscreen. Another person has misplaced their glasses even though there aren't many places left to put them.

And everyone happens to be naked.

After a while, that becomes one of the least interesting things about the scene.

I don't think naturists accomplish this by pretending bodies don't exist. We see one another. We notice people. Attraction doesn't magically disappear at the entrance to a naturist resort, and human beings don't stop being sexual creatures simply because they've taken off their clothes.

Nor do I think they need to.

That's where the familiar insistence that "nudity isn't sexual" begins to feel unnecessarily absolute to me. Of course nudity can be sexual. Human bodies can be sexual. They can also be hungry, tired, cold, funny, awkward, aging, athletic, sick, relaxed, uncomfortable, sunburned, or desperately in need of another cup of coffee.

Sexuality is one possibility.

It isn't the body's default setting.

And perhaps that's the distinction we've been missing.

The problem isn't that society sometimes sexualizes the human body. There are circumstances where sexuality is entirely appropriate and intentionally communicated. The problem is how easily we've learned to assume that sexuality must be present whenever clothing isn't.

That assumption creates a strange burden for ordinary nudity. Before anyone can talk about naturism, they often feel obligated to explain what it isn't. It isn't pornography. It isn't exhibitionism. It isn't an invitation. It isn't sexual. By the time we've finished explaining everything naturism isn't, we've almost made the naked body sound suspicious enough to require an alibi.

Maybe it doesn't.

Maybe a naked person doesn't necessarily need explaining.

Sometimes a person is naked because they're taking a shower. Sometimes they're changing clothes. Sometimes they're receiving medical care. Sometimes they're posing for art. Sometimes they're sharing intimacy with someone they love. Sometimes they're spending an afternoon at a naturist resort.

And sometimes they're just watering the tomatoes.

The body itself doesn't tell us which one we're looking at. We understand that from everything happening around it, just as we do with nearly every other human behavior.

Perhaps naturism hasn't taught me that nudity is nonsexual so much as it has taught me that nudity doesn't arrive with a meaning already attached. Human beings provide the meaning through circumstance, intention, behavior, culture, and sometimes nothing more than our own assumptions.

Take all of that away and there isn't much mystery left.

There's just a person.

Not sexual.

Not nonsexual.

Just human.

* The Turtle’s Diary is a collection of thoughts, insights, and stories based on true-life experiences – all born from the misguided trust in others.

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