And another random thought/question.

Is it possible to be a “modest nudist” (or “prude nude”)?

I know that question can get real complex due to varying definitions of the term “modest.” So for the purpose of this post we’ll just go with this definition:
“{…}appearance intended to avoid impropriety or indecency.”

In the textile world, modesty is pretty well defined. Someone “modestly attired” might be wearing neck-to-ankle clothing. Someone “immodestly attired” might be wearing very revealing or almost no clothing at all.

It gets a less clear cut when you take “attire” out of the equation. It would seem that modesty and nudity are incompatible from a textile point of view. But from a nudist point of view it gets a little more interesting. Because then it becomes more about “body language.”
One topic that came up recently is nude modeling. Would a lack of modesty be a prerequisite for sitting completely still and naked in front of people? I don’t think it’s necessarily so. By selecting a “closed” posture (as “knees up/arm bra”), it is possible to be almost entirely “concealed” whilst still being naked. “Modestly naked” can be a thing IMHO; as demonstrated below:
https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-nude-model/1189023/4785249/view

Can modesty also be expressed in a social nudist situations? I’ve seen it many times. From people who sit in the back of the pool area in a “closed” posture, to people who will not walk around without first putting on a sarong or wrap; there are nudists who clearly avoid being seen “openly” naked.
Now contrast this with playing ping-pong at a resort with a nudist you just met. More than likely you’re going to be facing each other – possibly naked. The ping-pong “ready stance” is legs open, shoulders forward. If your opponent is a male, there’s going to be a dangling penis. If it’s a woman there’s going to be dangling breasts. And then, as the game is played out; there will be bouncing, wiggling and jiggling body parts. A couple of years ago I was in that very setting playing ping-pong against a very energetic woman. It was a bit electrifying to see her jumping around naked with no visible concern about bouncing all over the place or standing legs apart as I got ready to serve. I’m sure I was flopping around quite a bit myself at the time.
In the first situation, is it really modest? In the second situation, were the woman or I being immodest “flopping around” in front of each other?

My wife had an interesting situation that challenged her concept of modesty. It involved her sitting on a paddle-board quite openly exposed. The situation occurred on her first attempt at naked paddle-boarding, after she kept losing her balance and decided to paddle her way back to the shore, sitting on the board with her legs dangling on the sides. When she got to the shore she was both a bit embarrassed and also a bit exhilarated. When she told me how exposed she felt, on the one hand she felt she had broken a taboo and had been immodest; on the other hand she actually thought it was quite funny! Because now she no longer had any body part left to hide. She has since then mastered paddle-boarding and will avoid any situation as exposed; but now she also a lot more carefree about how other people might see her when she’s being physically active.

Personally, I have no problem with modest nudists. There might be a body-shame issue they’re struggling with, or an ultra-conservative upbringing they’re carrying with them; so it wouldn’t be fair for me to judge them for it. And I don’t think modest nudists should try to force themselves to be less so…it’s better to be comfortable. As a social nudist, I personally like hanging out with nudists that would be considered “immodest” by non-nudists. They’re the people who are not going to have an issue playing a game of ping-pong naked with you. I just think it’s a more fun way to experience social nudity. The only “catch” is that going “too far” into “immodesty” (which is actually has too negative a connotation) can sometimes lead to voyeurism or exhibitionism. It’s good not to go down that slippery slope.

I have understood immodest as drawing attention to yourself
So if you go to church on Sunday without any clothes on you might be immodest. If you go in a business suit to a nudist resort you are probably immodest.
In both cases you would be purposely drawing attention to yourself saying look at me. So in scripture modest means to dress down, no gaudy dress to make it appear you are better, richer, more attractive or somehow better than someone else.
It’s possible to dress ankle to neck and give off the idea that you are better than someone else.
John

To me modesty is going to a nudist resort and not worrying about your personal parts (as the world calls them) being exposed or seen. Immodesty is going to an event like nudes-a-popping where the purpose of going there is to let your personal parts noticed.

I recall watching an interview with an indigenous South American gentleman from a mostly-nude culture, pretty sure it was Mincaye Enquedi (of the 1950s missionary plane incident). He observed how it was possible to be modest while nude, but the younger generation didn't know how to be that way any more. He explained that modesty is primarily about attitude. In this case, modesty was the desirable trait.

It is possible to do a knees-up / arm-bra pose provocatively and suggestively, and, as Nudony's wife found out, it is also entirely possible to do a legs-wide-open pose with no suggestive intent whatsoever.

Modesty is perhaps not about how much is showing, but how and why it is showing.

I concur with John that the word modest should simply mean the tendency to avoid deliberately drawing attention to oneself.

As I see it, the degree of acceptable nudity is not something that can be locked in to a church's rule book.
For instance, a friend of mine wore a low-cut dress to a singles class function at church; the dress left much of her bosom visible. This was a very conservative church as it pertained to clothing and quite a few other things and the church culture was such that most of the other women at the church would never show that much of their breasts.
I never had the chance to ask her why she bared that much of her breasts.
Should have one of the other women taken her aside privately and said, "Jenny, you are drawing way too much attention to yourself!"? We can assume that she got more attention by showing cleavage, but even that is just an assumption. Nudists have historically not taken the path of wearing more revealing clothing in textile settings.

Our dress tends to reflect that of those around us, but can a case be made for giving culture a nudge in the right direction or conforming strictly to the status quo? What if all the women at that church event had arrived showing the same amount of cleavage? No individual woman would have been more bare than the others. I am not just talking about women. Men used to wear briefer swim trunks than is currently popular, more like the Europeans. What could swing the pendulum back the other way? One person wearing less gets unwanted attention and even criticism. If enough join in, it's the new thing in fashion.

One year I attended a church singles trip to the beach and every one of the women wore a bikini. It was a bit distracting the first hour or two on the beach, but as time passed, one becomes accustomed to that degree of nudity and we carried on conversations, swam, sunbathed, played volleyball with very little lingering distraction. We still noticed one another, but our outward appearance wasn't some overwhelming source of temptation as some prudes might conjecture.

Of course as a naturist, I have been in mixed gender company enjoying hours of recreation in a state of total nudity, meeting single women and it simply wasn't a problem either. Some of these women were real cuties, but that would have been the case nude or clothed.

For those who grew up in nudist families it is, of course even easier to adjust to a nude environment, but virtually everyone can make the adjustment.

Some of the best advise I ever heard was to get yourself used to living life in just your skin; become a nudist by being nude. Practice at home makes perfect sense. Sleep nude and simply don't dress right away. Take a shower and remain nude as long as you find it practical. Nudity is the normal human condition, but you have to make it real for yourself by action, not contemplation. A sense of normalcy is a key prerequisite to modest nudity.

The one time I felt embarrassed at a nudist resort was when I was clothed for the "newcomer tour" and I was meeting nude people. It would have been so much more comfortable had I undressed for the tour, more modest in fact to be nude!

Great post, Nudony, and great comments by others.

I've written tons here about modesty, and struggling to overcome false modesty and shame and all that. I agree that how we define modesty is key. I agree with most of what people wrote here but some comments got me thinking.

I hate singling out Nudony. I almost always agree, not just here but other posts, and I think I know what he meant to say here, but I can't agree with what he actually said.

Nudony, I felt really bad after waking up this morning and re-reading my post criticizing you. Let's talk about things on which we agree.

First, John (and others who agreed) is right when he wrote this:

Thanks Nudony. Was really worried I'd offended you. Glad I didn't.

This week is spring break, both for the university where most of our lakefront cottage regulars in college attend, and for many of our local schools. It's also been absolutely wonderful weather, so last weekend, several people we know who saw the forecast decided to try opening their pools earlier than usual. The gamble paid off with a dramatic warmup this week, and quite a few people we know who are total textiles are enjoying the sun and warm weather.

Today during lunch, I went to a local restaurant that has an outdoor patio area behind the restaurant, and to my surprise, I saw a group of high school girls wearing bikini tops, regular canvas shorts that I'm guessing they put over bikini bottoms, and flip-flops. They started giggling as some male friends they knew from school walked past on their way from the parking lot and started staring at them. One of the guys pulled off his T-shirt, joined the girls at their table, and waited for his (male) friend to bring the food for both of them, at which time the male friend unbuttoned his shirt, pulled off his undershirt, and they all enjoyed some time chatting while very obviously being very interested in seeing much more of each other than they'd seen for a while.

From the women's hair being dry and put up in nice ponytails, I could tell they hadn't been swimming and probably didn't plan on water activities. Their bikini tops had no shoulder straps so my guess is they wanted to suntan, not swim. I was sitting far enough away that I could only hear snatches of their conversation. I heard enough to make out that the guys weren't boyfriends and the meeting was an unplanned chance occurrence, but it ended with an invitation by the girls for the two guys to join them at a scenic outlook we know where they'd be able to get a nice view of a river valley with just enough trees on the edge of the area that they could get out of the sun if they started to sunburn and needed shade, but otherwise would be able to spend the rest of the afternoon tanning, admiring the scenery, and from what I could hear of their talk, admiring each other.

At the beach, those women's clothing wouldn't be even slightly immodest or attract attention, but it definitely got a lot of notice on a sunny March day when it was probably their first time in months they were able to wear a swimsuit. The guys couldn't go in the restaurant without shirts but sitting on the patio that way was fine. Apparently one of the girls had gone into the restaurant in her bikini top and shorts to order for the rest of the group, and the manager let her in because she knows the manager, but she got told, "Next time please wear a T-shirt when you come in here."

Was it modest? All the right "parts" were covered. The canvas shorts on the women, and the jeans on the guys, covered MUCH more than a beach, but it wasn't okay for inside. We've seen people sitting on the restaurant patio dressed that way in July or August, or with even less clothing, since there's a public pool nearby. But it was very surprising in March, and they got lots of looks and some horn-honking from people in the drive-through line that goes past the restaurant patio.

The group of girls were definitely attractive. I don't think there's any doubt that group of high school girls got lots of attention, and that they didn't mind the attention at all, and likely wanted it or they wouldn't have sat on the patio next to the drive-through lane.

Wearing much less clothing than expected in a public place was perfectly legal, and they'd show much more at a beach or public pool. I don't think any of the women was under any impression they were being modest in what they were wearing, or more to the point, what they weren't wearing. And the guys clearly liked it that way.

BeachBunny, you hit on something a couple posts up that is vitally important, and that really made something "click" for me in helping to understand something I've been trying to contextualize for some time in our discussions here.

Biblically speaking, modesty is really about humility (a heart issue), not about what someone is or isn't wearing, or what someone's "showing off", or even the posture in which one does so. It's not even fundamentally about the "richness" and expensiveness of the adornments (clothes, jewelry, etc.) we wear, although the way we choose and wear them can often be a manifestation of the modesty or immodesty within our hearts. And just as the term "modesty" is often misunderstood in our culture, so is the term "humility". There is true and false humility just like there is true and false modesty, and these are ultimately reflections of the same questions of the heart. True humility is about truth in our conception and presentation of who we are in relation to God, others, and the world around us. When we see ourselves and our place in the world as God does, we are being humble; and when our outward presentation matches that, we are being modest. Obviously, when someone puffs him- or herself up and makes himself out to be something he's not, that's pride and is the opposite of humility. But something people often forget is that making yourself out to be less than God has made you, in an attempt at currying social or religious favor by projecting "humility" or "modesty", can be just as prideful, un-humble, and immodest as the former. (This is by no means unique to our modern times or culture; Jesus had plenty to say in the Bible about the Pharisees' prideful attempts at projecting "humility" in their "good" works that were designed to be seen by men rather than to please God.)

Now, this is by no means to say that those who humbly underestimate their own attributes (beauty, intelligence, etc.) are universally or even usually guilty of "false humility". Quite the contrary: people with a humble heart tend to be keenly aware of their own faults, even those that others don't tend to notice, and therefore tend to see themselves less brilliantly than others do. Hence, a certain degree of diffidence and self-effacement is recognized as a very positive and comely quality in a person, as it reflects a pure heart within. False humility and false modesty occur when un-humble people become jealous of the respect genuinely humble people receive and try to ape that humility to steal some of that respect.

More to the point of the discussion here, many of our culture's unfortunate fixations and neuroses regarding "modesty" are a result of society internalizing and normalizing those disingenuous attempts at it. Cultural norms (particularly fashions of dress and the perception thereof) unfortunately tend to be defined by those of "elite" power and status (celebrities, leaders, etc.), who, for many reasons, are frequently not-so-humble people. This leads to rather tragic absurdities when these norms "trickle down" to genuinely humble individuals trying to "fit in" to the culture. Such is often the case with people (women in particular, to the point of BeachBunny's discussion) who are genuinely humble and want to do their best to present themselves in a godly or "modest" way. A "double-reverse-psychology" effect can end up happening that leads to counterproductive clothing choices ("modest" outfits that actually end up attracting more unwanted attention) and a fearful neurosis where the woman may feel uncomfortable even trying to "look good" and to have her beauty noticed at all. You end up with absurd situations where genuinely humble people well-intentionedly put on the mannerisms of "false modesty".

I think this is exactly the paradox that BeachBunny has put the finger on here. This is what leads to the "fear, shyness, guilt, and shame" that (truly) modest women often struggle with, not only in the context of being introduced to social nudity and learning to take off their clothes without shame, but even on a day-to-day basis with the clothes they put on in the non-nudist world, as they try (and inevitably fail) to live up to the world's self-contradicting (and therefore not really attainable) ideas of "modesty".

(continued...)

(part 2/4)

Growing up in a home with two strong Christian female role models (my mom and sister), both of whom have a strong sense of true modesty/humility (but are not nudists, i.e. have been taught the "conventional" mistaken concept of modest dress), and are also both quite stunningly gorgeous (moreso than they often realize!), I've witnessed many examples of these contradictions in action. In retrospect, observing these contradictions played a key role in God's opening my eyes to the truth about nudity and modesty. The biggest red flag that maybe these "rules" about clothing weren't really coming from God was that nobody could really agree on what they were and exactly why they were important, even within a particular church where we supposedly all agree on the essentials of Biblical interpretation; or within a single family; or even with themselves on different days! Clearly, these "rules" stood on shifting sand...

Both my mom and sister (younger) are, in their own ways, women "without guile" (Ps. 32:2, John 1:47). They're not ones to "tease" or flirt with men, particularly other than their husbands (both are married now). For precisely this reason, they can be very charming to men without realizing it. When they do realize that a man is taking particular notice of or being "distracted" by them, they're instinctively quite mortified. Being (through experience) aware that men see them as very beautiful, they've developed illustratively typical cases of exactly this self-consciousness surrounding "modesty" that we are discussing here. A few particular anecdotes illustrate this.

My mom has several times shared with me a story of the first time she realized she was "noticed" by a boy around her age when she was a young teenager. She grew up in a small-town Catholic home that was somewhat less "intentional" about modest dress than the non-denominational Protestant church we attend now; in that context, "modesty" was more a matter of following the crowd than something a pastor would preach about. So, when all the other teenage girls in the neighborhood were wearing bikinis to the pool (this would've been the early '70s), her mom bought her one; she hadn't asked for it but was excited to try it out. She very much enjoyed the freedom of wearing so little in and around their backyard pool during the hot summer. One day however, she was hanging out with friends at the town pool, and noticed that a nice boy her age couldn't take his eyes off her. She was rather oblivious at the time and didn't think much of it (just that he really liked hanging around her and was tripping over his words). Only later did she put two and two together and realize that he had been rather smitten. She was mortified - especially since she was in no way seeking to date someone at the time - and felt bad for distracting the poor guy so much. It was the last bikini she ever wore (even though she wore it very well, and still thinks back on it, and pictures of her in it from that time, somewhat wistfully).

Going forward, she learned to be very cautious about how she dressed, both in swimwear and everyday. To this day, she's quite reluctant to show even the smallest bit of her midriff outside of the bedroom, even when it's just her family around (even though she'll begrudgingly admit her belly button isn't going to hurt us when we remind her there's no need to apologize for her shirt coming up a bit :-) ).

Of course, the attention she received from this boy was entirely harmless, and she knew that - he was obviously more curious than anything, and was a bit overwhelmed by his encounter with such a sweet, maturing, unassumingly gorgeous girl wearing so little. But my mom felt so bad realizing that she had this kind of power to render a young man dumbfounded, and took from it the "lesson" that women's visual power over men was something to be greatly feared. "With great power comes great responsibility" and all that. She seems to have attributed this effect she had on him largely to the bikini, never mind that she was hardly the only pretty girl wearing a bikini at the pool that day; more likely, she was simply the most charming girl this pubescent boy had yet encountered (she's always been naturally "approachable"; we joke that people walk up to her and feel compelled to tell her their whole life story), and he might've paid as much attention to her in street clothes. :-)

(continued...)

(part 3/4)

Would you know, in a moment of her characteristic common sense, my mom gave nearly the opposite advice to my young-adult (then-recently graduated college) sister in a similar moment a few years back. (Good advice tends to be easier to apply to others than to oneself. :-) ) My sister was visiting a friend's family over Thanksgiving and they had a number of guys and girls her age over. In the evenings, the extended family hung out in their pajamas around the living room, and my sister followed their lead. Being in pajamas (a simple, non-see-through T-shirt and light pants), she was braless - and was mortified to realize that one of the young men around her age seemed quite visually smitten by her. She immediately became self-conscious about her "compromised" state, but she couldn't come up with a good excuse to leave the room, so she worried about it the whole evening. Talking with our mom and I on the phone the next day, she recounted the event and asked Mom what she should do; she didn't want the young man to think she was leading him on (she had recently gotten engaged to her now-husband, who wasn't on this trip with her, but her ring had been up in her room with her day clothes). My mom matter-of-factly replied, "Well, he seems like a nice guy, harmless enough. He's probably just curious; you're really quite stunning. Just let him look and don't worry about it, he'll get his jollies and settle down once his curiosity is satisfied." My sister, of course, was mortified: "Mom!!!", and changed the subject immediately. ;-)

From moments like this, my mom certainly seems to have the instincts to make a great nudist, if (when, I pray!) God provides the opportunity to open her heart to it as He did mine! :-)

Plenty of times, I've seen how confusing and contradictory the "rules" are about what clothes are considered "modest" to wear in a particular context. Because the fear is about "distracting" or "stumbling" men, there's constant worry about what to wear, even when it's admitted there's nothing inherently immodest about a particular outfit. One time in the summer when my mom was picking out something to wear to church, she'd chosen a nice knee-length sleeveless dress that she'd recently gotten with exactly this sort of outing in mind. She would be perfectly content to wear it to the grocery store, but once she tried it on, she decided it wouldn't be right to wear it to church because she didn't want to risk distracting men with "bare shoulders", so she'd "have to" wear it with a jacket, which the day was too warm for. Never mind that half the women in the sanctuary would be wearing sleeveless outfits, as I tried to remind her; she'd made up her mind that it just wasn't appropriate, and switched it out for a short-sleeved dress. What's crazy is she was actually more "noticeably" attractive in the short-sleeved dress: it's red, has a (mild) V-neck that shows a tiny bit of cleavage (unlike the sleeveless dress which went all the way up to her neck), and short sleeves tend to complement her height proportions better than sleeveless. To most male eyes (or at least me and my dad), she was substantially more of a "looker" in the short-sleeve dress, whereas she would've been more anonymous in the sleeveless one. But somewhere along the way, she'd gotten the idea that bare shoulders were "distracting", and wouldn't be convinced otherwise.

Similarly head-spinning "logic" applies to swimwear. A one-piece is considered by our society to be the pinnacle of modesty, even though it shows as much of the wearer's legs as a bikini and is usually extremely form-fitting. Realizing that this could be "distracting" to men, my mom always paired her one-pieces with a set of swim shorts when in the company of men outside our family, and advised my sister to do the same. As the 2000s came and two-piece "tankinis" came into style, they gravitated to ones with more "modest" short-shorts or skirt-style bottoms that supposedly solved the "legs problem". Meanwhile, I shook my head with confusion, noting that the tankini tops typically showed quite a bit more cleavage than the one-pieces they replaced, and the separate bottoms displayed the shape of one's torso and buttocks much more naturally than the "shrink-wrap effect" of a one-piece. To me, all of that seemed much more "distracting" than any amount of legs or tight spandex could ever be. I guess every man will tend to "notice" different things, and every woman seems to have a different idea of which parts of her body feel the most "immodest" to expose.

The "rules" of "modesty" and how we communicate it through clothing can be truly bizarre, which is no doubt why there's so much misunderstanding about people's intentions in the textile world, even when people try their very best to "play the game" faithfully.

(continued...)

(part 4/4)

Bringing this back around to BeachBunny's points, it's quite interesting that she shared this:

Great comments, UnlikelyConvert. You pay much more attention to how women choose what clothing to wear, and when to wear it, and how to handle men's attraction, than most men I know. Maybe your mother and sister discussed it in your home and helped you learn, both by words and example.

Neat that your mother was comfortable discussing with you, as her son, how she felt as a young woman when a male friend reacted to seeing her in a bikini. Very sad that her first experience in a bikini at the town pool, rather than in backyard pools, was:

(part 2/3)

To respond more specifically to this:

(part 3/3)

As to this:

(part 4/3...err, 5! :-) )

As an addendum...something happened just today (while I was sitting on a draft of the above 3-part post) that I want to share as it continues this "story" in a very remarkable way. :-)

Today, the Lord opened the first real door for me to discuss some of this with my mom! The message shared at our church today led into some conversation about the nature of temptation, how people can be "stumbled" by it, and how that ties into addictions (e.g. with pornography) that are rampant in our society and in the church. The message was specifically about digital addictions (of all sorts) and how they can rob us of our ability to appreciate our relationships with God and others around us, and how, as the apostle Paul said in Scripture, "all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful unto me, but I will not be a slave to any". (I don't have the chapter and verse reference handy as I'm going from memory, but it's easy enough to find if you'd like the context.) My parents and I all found the message quite impactful and edifying, but to me it was also a perfect mirror of how God had helped me learn to not be afraid of being "stumbled" by the sight of a woman's body or "too much" thereof.

I had the opportunity to discuss this later with my mom and share how freeing this realization had been for me, and how it had changed my life (and our own relationship) for the better. (We'd discussed some of this previously, but only on a surface level that I could tell she didn't really understand at the time.) The conversation veered into how legalistic misconceptions on the concept of temptation and "stumbling" can lead modest women to be too hard on themselves and blame themselves for "tempting" men into seeing them lustfully by how they dress and carry themselves. I brought up the Scriptures where Jesus talked about how things entering the body from outside of us have no true power to tempt us, and that temptation (or the lack thereof) really comes solely from our own hearts; and how Paul explained that legalistic "safeguards" like "do not eat this, do not touch that, do not look at this" can seem quite reasonable to our fallen human reason, but are really not from God, and actually have "no value in restraining sensual lusts" (emphasis mine).

This led to discussion of how a man can see a woman in a bikini and react either with a wholesome appreciation of her beauty and respect for her as a person, versus a lustful reaction rooted in his own heart. "Well", my mom predictably responded, "it's still not exactly appropriate for a woman to be walking around half-naked like that - really, almost completely naked." But the responses of Jesus and Paul to such reasoning stand in stark contrast to the idea of such attire being even partly responsible for a man's response. When I made this connection, I could tell my mom was really thinking about it, and genuinely puzzled, but in an open-minded way. We talked about Adam and Eve covering themselves in the Garden, and I mentioned how when they chose of their own sinful wills to cover themselves with fig leaves, God didn't respond "Good for you, covering your shameful selves, you filthy sinners" - but simply asked "Who told you that you were naked?" The unspoken answer being, who else but Satan could have put into their heads the idea that they could, or even should, hide from God by covering His own image in their bodies!

From this, we pivoted to talking about the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and I mentioned C.S. Lewis's excellent explanation of this oft-misunderstood topic - that the tree wasn't about hiding the truth about good and evil from Adam and Eve, but that its very existence in the Garden - as a tree that was good to eat like the rest, but forbidden only because God said so - was His way of teaching them the difference between good and evil in a perfect world where the idea of "bad consequences" from doing a forbidden thing would be completely foreign, as everything was created good and not to harm them.

Remarkably, my mom seemed to "get" this right away - I could see the "lightbulbs" coming on quickly in her head! This was amazing, since I had mentioned some of this before to her in previous conversations, but it didn't seem to really "click" at the time. But it is God alone who can open doors of understanding in our hearts, and when He does, they are truly opened!

(continued...)

(part 5/5)

We talked further about how cultures with highly legalistic standards of "modest dress", like in Islam, Mormonism, or even more "conservative" Christian denominations like the Amish, have extreme problems with pornography (something she had already learned before and actually brought up, to my surprise); and how modern Europe, for all its (relative) spiritual darkness compared to the U.S., remarkably doesn't have much of a porn problem. I mentioned how my own perspective and struggles on these issues had been shaped by which parts my mom and sister had "let me see" growing up. I was never "tempted" by women's legs because I frequently saw them in one-piece swimsuits, but the upper part of a woman's body was a different story. Other young men I knew at college had different experiences based on what was "normal" in their homes and communities, and past generations throughout history had very different senses of which body parts were "tempting" to see.

It used to puzzle me how the movies and culture of the 1940s and '50s spoke of men considering a "nice pair of legs" as being the sexiest thing a woman could possess, despite popular fashions of the time tightly wrapping and even accentuating their busts. Yet this makes sense when you consider that they had just come out of a generation where a "modest" woman was expected to have petticoats so long they dragged in the mud, and "showing a bit of ankle" was considered scandalous. No wonder, then, that subsequent generations obsessed over skirt length to the point of taking out rulers to measure them at schools! Older generations cared a lot about legs but were far less harsh on cleavage and accentuated busts. For instance, in the early 19th century (1800s), "modest" women frequently showed abundant cleavage in both casual and formal wear (as anyone who's seen the old movie adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice - one of my mom's favorite movies - can attest); and the idea of breastfeeding in the presence of male family members was far less sensitive than it is today, as was the depiction of breasts in artwork.

I could tell that this discussion was quite thought-provoking for my mom, as the experience I was sharing on these matters as a young man ran quite contrary to the bad advice she'd heard and always held to - that parents needed to be careful to not let their kids see them or each other naked, lest they develop sexual obsessions and perversions as a result. This false advice really came from since-debunked secular psychology literature of the mid-20th century, and the church had picked it up too eagerly because it "confirmed" their legalistic inclinations on the matter. But I could tell that today, my mom was hearing this and really thinking about it with an open mind.

From there, we talked about what "lusting" really means in the Bible - that in the original Hebrew it is the same word as "coveting", as used in the Tenth Commandment regarding coveting one's neighbor's house, herds, servants, wife or daughter, etc. In none of those, except of course the latter, does the modern church expect a man to cover those things with a tarp to prevent them being lusted after (coveted), nor do we use the lack of such covering as an excuse for someone who does covet them in his heart.

I didn't push the conversation farther, as I saw that my mom was - for the first time! - really processing the implications of this in a thoughtful, open-minded way. Finally, the lightbulbs were coming on for her, just as they had for me nearly three years ago! These are truly radical concepts in our culture - a "hard bit of good news" that's not easy to digest, because to do so requires one to reject an unexamined assumption that we've been taught our whole lives, and which society expects us to share (and very much looks down on us for "violating"). So I didn't want to push too hard, knowing from my own experience that these "shackles" cannot easily be thrown off in a single sitting. For her part, my mom was eager to get back to the TV show she was watching, as excited as she had initially been to pause it and chat with me about this morning's church message. I can tell the wheels have started turning in her head, and they'll need time to turn. :-)

At any rate, this was a total answer to a longstanding prayer - praise the Lord! :-D It took a while for the right opportunity to come to discuss this, but God rewarded my prayers and patience (challenging as it has been at times). He does not fail us, particularly when we rest in confidence upon the knowledge that He can and will open the hearts of those who truly share His Spirit within them to be on the same page with us in seeing the truth. He did it in the 1st century A.D. with the apostles and early church who sought unity on painful questions of law and grace; and He is still faithful to do it today in all the issues we face together with our brothers and sisters in Christ!

Thanks, Unlikely Convert. You wrote so much good stuff I'm just going to touch on a few highlights.

Your point is great that people at different times looked at (and let's not deny reality, fantasized about) different things clothing covered up. When dresses went down to the ankles, men loved even a glimpse of a woman's leg. Today, even in a modest one-piece swimsuit, seeing women's legs all the way up to the hips is normal, so legs are less interesting to men.

But not so fast. What women cover up and what we (partially) reveal still gets men interested.

Many women's hemlines today, even professional business attire, are barely below the knee. Very modest women today "show more leg" at work, the store, and even church than "loose women" in bordellos back in the 1800s.

Longer skirts aren't necessarily more modest. I have pencil skirts with hems halfway between my knee and ankle that clearly show the shape of my rear and hug my legs, and because they are form-fitting, have a slit that allows me to walk easily but reveals some of my legs. Even when sitting "ladylike" with legs properly crossed, I may deliberately show my knee and most of my leg below my knee when following all the rules of how women are supposed to dress and to sit.

In high school or college, that would be flirting by trying to get a guy's attention, or rewarding the attention he's already given me. Even as a married young professional businesswoman, I get my hair done, put on makeup, dress professionally, and present an image that I am successful in my career. Women get judged much more harshly on our appearance than most men, so I don't really have a choice unless I want to give the impression that I don't know how to dress and act professionally.

I'm not naive what men think when I wear a form-fitting blouse and skirt, but there are socially acceptable ways men who usually see me in professional business attire may see much more.

There's an indoor public swimming pool not far from my office where I sometimes swim on a nasty cold day, or if friends who regularly swim for exercise invite me. Most of my friends who use that pool are women, but almost always men are there too, and sometimes I invite a male client or male friend from work, or my friends invite a guy we know. How do male colleagues react when they see me walking out of the locker room, even if I'm wearing a one-piece with a neckline showing only a few inches of cleavage, and even though my hair is sopping wet and messy from showering?

For many male colleagues used to seeing me in professional business attire, when they saw me in a swimsuit, it was obvious they were undressing me with their eyes. I might as well have walked out of the locker room fully nude. For a few guys who I knew well, liked, and trusted, their inability to take their eyes off me led me to invite them to join me and my husband at the lakefront cottage where they actually WOULD be able to see me undress and satisfy their desire to know what I look like nude.

I sometimes use that example when explaining social nudity to friends who don't understand how someone can be "nude but not lewd." What's going through the mind of a male colleague who is used to seeing me in a skirt and blouse when he sees me walking out of the women's locker room at a public pool in a one-piece swimsuit? Not much different from what goes through that same man's mind as he sees me at the cottage taking off my blouse, bra, skirt, heels, and panties.

What's the difference? Not much, except perhaps the most important thing. Once we both see each other nude, there's nothing left to hide.

Do men enjoy seeing me nude? Of course. I also enjoy seeing male friends nervously pulling down their shorts, and I enjoy telling them to leave their hands at their sides and not try to cover up as I undress. It's even more fun for me to see young couples squirming with a mix of embarrassment and enjoyment as they undress together in our group, and then watch their friends, including me, undress.

It's normal, natural, and healthy for young men and women to enjoy seeing each other nude. As that desire gets satisfied, half an hour after we're all nude, we'll be interacting naturally. The enjoyment and attraction don't go away, but it's actually less when nude than when I'm wearing a nice blouse and skirt.

Many reasons people give for rejecting social nudity would be better reasons for banning men and women from swimming together, or for going back to when women were required to wear much more "modest" clothing that covers much more of our bodies than women have worn since the 1800s or even the 1700s, or for keeping men and women from working together or socially interacting. Nobody today says women today have to dress like that, or that women shouldn't work with men.

Social nudity is exciting and enjoyable, but as I tell people, it's less exciting than many swimsuits.

BeachBunny, I'm very sorry to hear of your experiences that very rightly made it hard for you to trust again. I'm so glad that there has been a happy ending to the story and you have found someone trustworthy that respects you.
This issue of covering spirals back to the unfairest and most misguided post-fact question: "But what was she wearing?"
The real issue is in the eye (and mind) of the beholder.
Come to think of it, though, I have seen horses in paddocks wearing coats. Maybe they are modesty blankets to stop the neighhhhbours lusting :laughing:

Well said, BeachBunny.

The "spirit of the evil interpreter" is far more alive and well in our culture (and in all human cultures) than we often realize. "Little" lies that become culturally normalized and internalized form the basis for rationalizations of behaviors and attitudes that people would generally be quite ashamed of, if only they had some perspective on how they've been unwittingly (but in some cases culpably) "used" by the "ruler of this world" to attack and demoralize others (not to mention the spiritual hurt to themselves).

Your ex-boyfriend rationalized his atrocious behavior to himself based on a culturally accepted lie, promulgated by the so-called "sexual revolution" and evil, anti-God "philosophers" like Sigmund Freud, that he was somehow just helping you "liberate" yourself from your inhibitions to give you what you "really" wanted. His behavior was in fact thoroughly selfish and prideful, but he lied to himself and to you to pretend that it was "loving". Satan uses lies like this to entice a great many people into doing things that hurt and damage people they claim to love, and in so doing, to warp and pervert our culture's concept of what "love" even is in the first place. One could argue that, more generally, lies of this sort are in fact at the root of most of the interpersonal, cultural, and even (inter)national brokenness that afflicts the whole world with so much human-caused pain and suffering.

As you noted, real damage can be caused not only by outright violations of boundaries like this, but also by simple, unwitting repetition of culturally internalized "evil interpretations" of things that were supposed to be innocent as created by God. When my mom's friend assumed that her exposing most of her body by wearing a bikini implied an intent to "flaunt" her body to the young men present in a sexually enticing way, she was repeating an interpretation that is prevalent and even mainstream in our culture, both then and now. One need look no further than the (unfortunately) hard-to-ignore "entertainment" headlines on popular news sites to realize that "mainstream pop culture" eagerly embraces the interpretation of the bikini as a "thirst trap" and an invitation to lust, and this was equally true when my mom was growing up in the '70s era of bikini-clad "pin-ups". Although many wearers may simply enjoy being free, unencumbered, and unashamed of "seeing and being seen" in near-natural beauty, our culture tends to laugh at and deride such innocence as unworldly, clueless, or even disingenuous. After all, to those of a "worldly" perspective, why would you want to be innocent when you can instead eagerly embrace the "empowerment" of "taking control of your sexuality" to bait and hook others around you in a world mutually enslaved by selfish lust?

In Part 1 of Ramblinman's testimony written up in Sunny's "My Friends' Stories" section, he tells a story remarkably parallel to my mom's experience at the pool as a young teenager, but in his case, told from the perspective of the curious young man. :-) But because nobody piped in with an "evil interpretation" of the innocent scene, the outcome was quite different, certainly for him (and, for aught we know, for the girl as well). It ended up being a good witness to him (and perhaps to others) that God "watered" to bear fruit later on. My mom's encounter could and should have been like this if not for the intrusion of one of the world's "little lies".

The sad thing is, my mom's friend wasn't exactly "wrong" in explaining to her how the world would "see" her choice of attire. As BeachBunny has expounded at length in several of her posts, clothing can communicate a great deal through how it frames and presents us, and through the cultural lens of what certain outfits are understood to mean in certain contexts. Some outfits imply professionalism; some imply familiarity or peership; and others, for better or worse, are taken to imply a suggestive allure.

The fact that clothing communicates ideas is not wrong or problematic in itself. The "Biblical Naturist" site has some good posts discussing how clothing is used throughout the Bible (including in contexts clearly endorsed by God, e.g. in descriptions of Him in heaven) to communicate rich symbolism in contexts where it is neither "needed" for functionality nor serves to "hide" any particular body parts. But in our sinful world, perverse hearts can lend evil interpretations to particular attires, and can unfortunately attach negative implications to things that "should" be innocent in and of themselves.

(continued...)

(part 2/2)

I've read that the (male) fashion designer who invented the bikini named it after the "Bikini Atoll" island chain in the Pacific where the U.S. conducted its early nuclear bomb tests, precisely because he intended it to be a "bomb" that would confound traditional concepts of "modesty" and undermine Christian sexual morality. As many have pointed out here and elsewhere, bikinis can be far more alluring and sexually implicative than simple nudity because of how they place outsized emphasis on the few parts they "hide". It seems this designer was well aware of this, as he intended to make a mockery of "modesty" that would satisfy the "letter of the law" while egregiously violating it in spirit. So it's hard to say that our pop culture is "wrong" to interpret the bikini exactly the way its designer intended.

Where the "little lie" comes in is the confusion this has (intentionally) wrought amongst the unwitting general public, most of whom simply "followed the crowd" with no intent to consciously embrace the promiscuous philosophy of the bikini's creator. It wasn't "sold" as a sex outfit; it was sold as the next logical step in swimwear freedom, to a generation which had just recently come to embrace a wave of more practical, unencumbering swimwear (boxer trunks for men, and one- and two-piece styles of varying coverage for women). No doubt its exotic-sounding Pacific name added to the confusion by conjuring up images of foreign cultures known to innocently wear and swim in far less than Westerners of the time. I would guess many consumers just assumed it was an adaptation of a native style, rather than something invented by a dirty-minded Western fashion designer with explicit intent to "bomb" moral norms.

Meanwhile, though, Hollywood and the fashion and porn industries wasted no time in promoting the deceptive intent behind the new style. Glamorous movie stars donned it on the silver screen in "mostly clean" general-audience films, seeming to underscore the style's pragmatic, innocent sales pitch - but then turned around and posed for "pin-up" posters and centerfolds in those same bikinis. The genuine freedom of being able to wear so little on the beach was used as a shiny wrapper for the false "freedom" of "sexual liberation", which, far from being truly liberating, merely reduces both men and women to corrupt animals enslaved by chemistry and selfish intent, and human society to a craven, perpetual mating dance.

The general public ended up internalizing the lies pushed by those "influencers" in ways people often aren't consciously aware of. There's always been a healthy, innocent element of "chasing" between men and women in the process of courtship and dating - of playful, friendly "give and take" as people get to know each other and draw out expressions of true feelings. But our corrupted, so-called "liberated" culture tells us that the "correct", "grown-up" way to do this is by dangling our bodies in front of others as lures, flaunting our supposed sexual prowess in an animalistic, Darwinian mating competition.

Both men and women (but especially women) are expected and encouraged to be "sexy", both in how they dress and how they act, particularly in designated social contexts such as beaches, parties, and nightclubs. The "game" of attraction is no longer about honestly discovering and appreciating others' inner and outer beauty for what it is, but about "peacocking" to compete for the "hottest" mate. Women in particular are subjected to immense pressure to "flaunt" their sexual desirability out of fear that their husbands' and boyfriends' eyes will wander to other "hotter" women if they're "out-peacocked" in the Darwinian competition. "Sexy" attire like bikinis and tight cocktail dresses are a major part of that "game".

Our culture has a lot to answer for in the body issues it's caused by its emphasis on the "bikini body" as the epitome of "hotness". We were all created to look good in our birthday suits (at least when healthy), but every body was not created to look equally good in all styles of clothing. Many body types, even when perfectly healthy and proportionate, simply don't look ideal in the highly contrived lines of a bikini, or even in other popular styles. Sadly, many women have written themselves off as "not good enough" to win a desirable mate (or even just to go swimming) because they don't have a "bikini body".

That wasn't the case for my mom; she looked great in her bikini and she knew it. But I can hardly fault her for swearing them off after being informed (accurately) by her friend that it would be perceived by society as "sexy". She didn't want to play the "peacocking" game, and didn't want boys to see her that way. She realized that in our "textile" culture, warped as we know it to be, the kind of man she would attract by wearing "modest" attire would be far more likely to appreciate her for who she really is.

UnlikelyConvert, I really like what you say about your mom and your relationship with her. I can't go into this here, other than saying I could never, ever, not in a million years, be open with my mother the way you and your mom are open with each other.

I also like your discussion of the history of the bikini, and how what could be seen as a natural and more practical way to swim was intended by the original fashion designer to be a "bomb" against traditional moral values.

I'm thinking today of a (somewhat) older German woman I know, married to an American of German ancestry who she met when he was overseas in Germany. The woman is attractive compared to most women of her age (she has kids in college), quite physically fit, and looks great in her swimsuit. She's the first to say that when she swims in America, she gets tons of guys looking at her, and she's reminded of her experience as a girl growing up in what used to be East Germany where her family regularly went to nude beaches. Certainly as a teenager and young adult she had young men enjoy seeing her nude, especially guys from school who enjoyed undressing with her on the beach. But over there where nudity was normal, fellow students who watched her undress were also taking off their own clothes. The enjoyment of seeing and being seen was mutual, and there was less staring at her when nude in Germany than when swimming or suntanning in America, even with a one-piece swimsuit.

She wouldn't say her experience on nude beaches as a teen and young adult was "pure" or "innocent." It was not. Part of why the East Germans decided to tolerate the FKK culture was it contradicted traditional morality while providing freedom through nudity even as the East German government repressed its people in almost every other way.

My German acquaintance said it was really fun taking her American boyfriend (now husband) to the nude beach after they started dating. It went very differently from German boyfriends who were used to seeing her nude and being nude themselves with other girls. For her boyfriend, being nude in public was forbidden fruit, and while he said it felt great, he was also very nervous in ways German men usually weren't. His girlfriend thought it was very sweet to see a man nervously pulling down his swim trunks and trying to figure out where to look as his girlfriend undressed.

Young men and young women are going to be attracted to each other. To deny that is to lie about facts known to every teenager and young adult. The best part of social nudity is that as friends who are attracted to each other take their clothes off, their natural desire to see what is under those clothes gets satisfied. Yes, there's going to be a lot of looking at first, and that's not wrong. It's great! Men and women can overcome their false modesty by undressing together and learning to enjoy seeing each other nude, and particularly for women, learning to enjoy it rather than being ashamed or embarrassed as male friends enjoy seeing parts of our bodies they've never seen before, but probably spent lots of time wishing they could see.

Related to that, I'm interested that you're now regularly skinnydipping in your home pool and your family is okay with it. We are almost always nude in our home pool, but of course we're nudists and we bought this home with nude plans in mind. Much more unusual to have family members accept that when it's a new development.

It's also interesting how you compare your mother to SunnyDay's older female mentor and friend Ann. I realize female-female relationships are VERY different, but I was struck years ago reading SunnyDay's stories about how open Ann was with Sunny in talking about sexuality and physical enjoyment -- within marriage, of course, but sexuality nonetheless.

As a (somewhat) younger woman than I am now, I remember reading Sunny Day's comments about Ann telling her things about her marriage and Sunny thinking that Ann was taking pleasure in talking with her about things that Sunny couldn't have (at least not yet, meaning before marriage). Sunny didn't go into lots of detail, and probably for good reason.

But she helped me by teaching that, contrary to some online nudists, social nudity does NOT deny or minimize the sexual attraction part of relationships. Social nudity just puts sex in its proper place, which is in the bedroom, not in public.

Garbage can be sexy! (kinda, sorta)
If a guy takes the garbage out without being prompted, it may indicate to the lady of the house that her man cares about her in detail, tending to the little things in life that make her home more pleasant, or at least less pungent, (particularly in summer)
Garbage has nothing to do with sex or nudity, but handled properly, it can open the door to both. It's a manifestation of love.

Marital nudity - sometimes cozy, sometimes HOT
Mom and Dad had their nude time in the tub, but tub time was more cozy than sexy. They'd talk about the day, make plans for the week, and sometimes share a joke, all in the nude. After a quick check on kids and pets on Dad's part, they'd retire to their bedroom, still nude. Some nights the bedroom door was firmly shut; it was a time for them to unite fully in body and soul in complete privacy and without clothes to muffle the sense of touch of skin on skin. Private, yet joyful and even a holy moment, just for the two of them.

Nudity for health
I had a neighbor who sunbathed for vitamin D on doctor's orders. She had a high brick wall that wrapped around her patio on 3 sides, but open on the sunny side. When I wanted to visit her sons on a summer day, my Mom asked me to call out to her from around the corner before walking right up on her. It gave her a moment to adjust her top and then I could call out to her sons to come to the door. Then we boys could all go to the creek or play baseball in the vacant lot nearby and she could continue making vitamin D undisturbed by pesky kids.

Nudity for the purpose of being one with nature
As a Boy Scout, we sometimes camped by water in places secluded enough that a swim was as simple as dropping all your clothes by the river bank and jumping in. Suddenly it would dawn on you that you had become one with the natural world, leaving the trappings of human civilization well behind you. Scouting taught us about the natural world in numerous ways, imparting a confidence that stays with you for a lifetime. In recent years, the organization frowns on skinny dipping (due in part to tragic moral failure of adults in leadership), but all I can say is that in my particular troop, skinny dipping was an unofficial event that added to the experience of being one with nature in a carefree fashion. Nudist camps offer a higher level of security than the outside world; kids are in plain sight of their parents and there is no reason to deny their children of the nature connection afforded by total nudity outdoors.

Our family was a member of a swim club for several summers. Boys, girls and teens were in brief attire all summer every day. The cute girls didn't lose their cuteness by the end of the summer, but their bikinis lost the shock value the fashion designer intended so many years ago, it was now modest. And I have seen firsthand that total nudity is the height of modesty poolside at the nudist camp. No tan lines, no binding, no endless tugging on fabric that rides up. The human body is well-designed for swimming, as is. Not only that, the mind can adapt to the natural unclothed body, give it time!

It's taken me a while to write this up (and rewrite it several times, as it prompted some very deep questions to ponder), but I didn't want to leave BeachBunny (or myself! :-) ) hanging on this, as she asked some very good questions that are worth thinking about. So here goes... :-)

(part 2/7)

I'd pulled down the driveway just as they were getting out (the pool is down a hill from the driveway and only partially visible to someone pulling in), so my mom "panicked" (albeit light-heartedly) and had him quick cover up with a towel. She was a lot more embarrassed about the situation than either I, or, I suspect, my dad were. I laughed and told them both repeatedly that it was no big deal and I was glad they were enjoying the opportunity; he's a fellow guy and it was nothing I hadn't seen before (we'd gotten changed together plenty of times in locker rooms or at people's houses when swimming elsewhere). Nonetheless, my mom didn't seem interested in being "un-convinced" of her concern, acknowledging the truth of my reasoning but still clinging to a refrain of "still, it wouldn't be quite right", for some reason that she couldn't articulate. I shook my head with a smile and we all moved on.

So, on that evening later in the year when I was swimming alone and decided to slip my trunks off underwater and hang them on the pool ladder, I rested somewhat assured that, no matter what happened, I wasn't going to rock anyone's world too much. :-) Still, I was intensely self-conscious about it, and did my best to tuck my trunks under the ladder as unobtrusively as possible. I kept my swimming close enough to the house-facing side of the above-ground pool (it's a fairly large oval-shaped one, 15'x30') that, even when looking down from the house's second-story windows, the pool wall would likely make my lack of attire unnoticeable.

No one "caught" me that evening, which was a relief as it'd been stressful enough to get over the emotional "hump" of deciding to do it. Still, I realized that this wasn't something I could or wanted to hide forever, so on future evenings, I got a bit bolder, swimming out across the open water and allowing myself to utilize freer strokes that would leave me more exposed from a top-down view, versus just "floating" or "walking" hidden by the pool wall (it's about a 4.5' water depth, allowing both swimming and standing). I also started hanging my trunks more openly on the ladder instead of going out of my way to tuck them away, and started taking them off before getting in the pool so they wouldn't get wet (at the expense of a brief moment of exposure climbing up over the ladder - this certainly motivated me to get in the sometimes-chilly water faster! :-) ). In general, I continued to "play it cool" and not go out of my way to draw attention to myself; that, of course, was never my interest. What changed is that I was increasingly unashamed of the way I was swimming and at peace with the consequences of being noticed if and when that came.

My mom's eyesight hasn't been great for a while (unrelated to her more recent health issues), so sometimes I overestimate what she'll notice even when she's looking right at it. :-) For a while, she remained oblivious to my nudity even when coming outside and talking with me a few times while I was in the pool. In the end, it was the trunks on the ladder that gave me away. She didn't say anything at first, but one evening after I'd come back in and cleaned up, she made an off-hand remark with a smirk about "catching me skinny-dipping". She didn't seem too bothered by it but said something about making sure I couldn't be seen from the road, which I assured her wasn't an issue (I had checked before the first time). Nothing more needed to be said and I let it sit, figuring that the quiet witness was exactly the "gentle introduction" I was hoping for.

Now further emboldened by this tacit approval, I continued the practice, sometimes even leaving the trunks inside and going out with a towel wrapped around me. Nothing further was said until one day, I pushed it a little earlier into the evening, and my mom noticed and came outside to check if I had my trunks nearby. I mentioned they were in the house, and she insisted on going in and getting them, fearing that an Amazon driver would come by to deliver a package soon - "you don't want to get in trouble for indecent exposure!". (I decided not to launch into an explanation of how one cannot be held liable for indecent exposure if you're on your own property and only visible to people who expressly leave the road and enter it.) She tossed the trunks into the pool and I begrudgingly put them on. Lo and behold, an Amazon van did come within the hour (I guess she had been watching the tracking), and it had a female driver, so it was much to my mom's relief that I was covered. I was well aware that the sight lines were far more restricted than she realized, and that I could see any car coming soon enough to swim over to the pool wall before anyone could see me, which would render nudity indistinguishable from ordinary male shirtlessness. But that wasn't as obvious to someone who hadn't previously checked the sight lines in detail.

(continued...)

(part 3/7)

Soon the season ended, and we had to close the pool for the winter. The next summer (2021), when we re-opened it, I promptly resumed my evening dips.

Once fairly early in the season, my mom came outside while I was swimming and chatted for a bit from outside the pool, as she would often do. Normally, my lack of attire went uncommented except perhaps a light wisecrack like "there's a naked man in our pool!". More commonly, she would remark generally that she was glad I was enjoying the pool so much and getting some good use out of it during the relatively short summers we enjoy around here. This day, however, she took a surprisingly negative tone with an offhand remark: "You know, this naked thing is going to have to stop." I was puzzled and disappointed inside, but I decided not to argue the point, as she didn't seem to be pushing it too hard. She wasn't asking me to immediately cover up or giving any hard "orders", and I could tell from all her previous comments on the subject that she wasn't deeply opposed or offended by it. So I let it sit, figuring that she was still trying to process and make sense of this relatively recent, yet surprising development - still trying to figure out what she thought about it.

So I continued, and went skinny-dipping again the next evening. My mom didn't happen to come out and chat that time (it was after dinner and she was settling down inside), but she clearly noticed that I hadn't changed my practice. When we were chatting in the living room later that night, she mentioned again, "I'm really glad you're getting so much use out of the pool and enjoying it so much. I'm glad it's been a blessing." For context, the fact that she would say this often - both related to myself and my dad enjoying the pool (in our own ways; him clothed as usual, and usually at different times) - is rooted in the fact that in years past, she often had to "push" us to go swimming and use the pool. Getting the pool had originally been her idea. Myself, growing up, I enjoyed swimming but often was far more absorbed with "indoor activities", and had to be "dragged away" from that reluctantly. My dad, for his part, had been rather grouchy about the expense of the pool when we first got it and has only recently loosened up to be able to admit that he enjoys using it and finds it worthwhile. :-) So it's been a great blessing to my mom to see us both, in these recent years, enjoying it so prolifically.

Back to that evening...after remarking how glad she was I was enjoying the pool, my mom made another light-hearted wisecrack about her "skinny-dipping son", with a smile. I was glad to see that, as I had hoped, her opposition expressed the previous day was fleeting and not too serious.

I'd recently shared with her how, as an adult, I had found myself changing and appreciating the outdoors and the summer more than I'd used to as a kid. As a kid, I hated warm weather, both because of pollen/grass allergies and because, as I would always say, "it's easier to get warm when you're cold than to get cool when you're hot". I still have the allergies, but have come to enjoy warmth in its place, especially now that I'm more willing to relax and enjoy it rather than see it as a distraction from the "geeky" indoor activities I've always liked (and still like in their place). But I'd mentioned to my mom that I could now understand more why "grown-ups" liked the warmer months better than the winter. I'd always been rather attached to the comfort and cleanliness of wearing clothes, and to weather where I could be largely covered by them, but I found myself letting go of that as I matured.

So when she reflected with a smile on her "skinny-dipping son", I took the opportunity to share: "You know, if you'd asked me even just a few years ago, I never would've thought I'd be one to want to go skinny-dipping. You know well how I was always the one who compulsively wanted to wear as much as possible - how you had to talk me into begrudgingly taking my T-shirt off in the pool so I could get a tan and some Vitamin D. Yet now, here I am, growing as an adult, and my perspective is totally different than it used to be." She responded with a bit of striking insight that affirmed, once again, that she understands me quite well deep down: "Well, you love your freedom." That was very encouraging to hear, as I knew that was a clear acknowledgement that she understood and valued why I wanted to do this.

My mom and I have long enjoyed chatting about politics in great detail (to the extent that we drive the rest of our family a bit nuts with it), and we've both always been very passionate about freedom both in the abstract and the particular; so it was nice to hear her connect my appreciation of nudity to a positive virtue we both respect and appreciate. I knew then that she had finally come to accept my new practice; perhaps not completely, but enough.

(continued...)

(part 4/7)

Since that day, I continued to skinny-dip through the rest of the 2021 pool season, and got bolder in doing so. I now did it sometimes much earlier in the day when my parents were out of the house, and made no attempt to change or hide it when they returned. It was no longer a point of contention. My mom did ask me once when I was skinny-dipping around noon, "Are you sure you can't be seen from the road?" I assured her that I had checked all the sight lines very carefully, and with my (dry) trunks accessible on the ladder, I could get them on lightning-fast before any car could make it down the driveway. Assuring her that I had done just that on previous occasions when she and my dad were the ones driving in, she accepted that as good enough to be confident that I wasn't going to get in trouble for "indecent exposure".

So that's the (long) story of how my family is OK with me skinny-dipping in our pool. :-) It'll be interesting to see how it continues this 2022 season. We still haven't gotten the pool opened yet since we've been working on replacing its liner (which didn't survive the winter) and subsequently getting it refilled. But we're hoping to have that finished within a week or two so, Lord willing, we can enjoy some swimming again as the weather gets hot! (It's already hot enough that it'll be plenty of motivation to finish the remaining work. :-) )

My mom, due to her health issues (surgery followed by chemotherapy for uterine cancer) hasn't been able to use the pool herself the last two years, but (she very much hopes) might be able to resume this year, having turned some major corners in her treatment and no longer being quite as "under the weather".

From the more recent conversation I had with my mom that I shared several posts up (Mar. 28), it's clear that her own views and hangups regarding nudity are complicated and actively developing. At one level, she seems to be non-begrudgingly jealous of the freedom I'm enjoying, and more generally that men have (e.g. to be shirtless). That's something she's brought up repeatedly of her own volition over the years: when encouraging me to take my T-shirt off to get more sun, she'll say things like "I wish I could do that, you should make sure you take advantage of it when you get the chance." Yet she seems to have a strong mental block against even considering "pushing the envelope" herself, even in private settings where it would be "safe" to do so.

One time in the pool a couple years ago, she expressed, somewhat unprompted, a bit of frustration with the kinds of swimwear women "have to" wear compared to men. She mentioned needing to shop for a new swimsuit, which puzzled me since the one she was wearing seemed fine. She explained that the elastic and foam elements of women's swimwear break down over time, much more readily than the simpler and stronger materials in men's trunks; bottoms would become loose and start to fall down, and foam bra cups would disintegrate and lose their shape. She further expressed what a discomfort it was to have to have all that hot, sweaty foam on her chest while swimming, and how much she wishes she could wear even as little as I was wearing at the time, a T-shirt over my swim trunks. (This was in 2019, before I became a nudist but right around when my mind was starting to open up on the issue.) I suggested, why not go with a simple T-shirt like I did, as it would cover all the right parts just as well? She responded, "Well, in that case I might as well not even be wearing a shirt at all! My breasts would be totally visible once it got wet." I responded, "Well, sure, if it were a light color, but just pick a dark one, right?" Nonetheless, she considered the skin-tight exposure of breasts' contours to be essentially just as bad. I responded, "Maybe it's different for other guys, but I never really understood the fixation with skin-tight outfits. To me, the bit of cleavage on your swimsuit now is way more noticeable than a clingy shirt. I mean, clothes don't, and can't, keep us from knowing the general contours of how bodies are shaped; who cares about the outlines as long as the parts we're not supposed to see are all covered?" But this assertion seemed instinctively absurd to her - "If you can see the shape, then how's it covered?" - and we let the conversation drop.

In retrospect, I realize this kind of "talking past each other" is par for the course with how our culture's nudity taboos work. There's never been a truly rational basis for why we "need" to have these taboos or where we draw the lines, but since everyone assumes there must be a reason, people guess and come up with what they think that reason is, and end up inventing completely different answers. Since these issues are rarely discussed head-on, people go through life assuming their personal interpretation is "common knowledge", never realizing that it's only "common" to themselves.

(continued...)

(part 5/7)

Her position started to become clearer in a later conversation that year, when we were fellowshipping on the subject of my desire for a future wife. I mentioned that I was looking forward to the opportunity to get to really, meaningfully look at how a woman's body was put together and study the incredible beauty God had created - not as part of a passionate sexual encounter, but just to get the chance to observe and admire someone I deeply loved in calm detail. I hoped, therefore, that my future wife would be someone completely unashamed to be seen by me in her "full glory" and vice versa - that we could trust each other so much as to not feel any need to hide or protect our bodies from each other.

She respected the romanticism of this, but felt she needed to "explain" some things to me about how I should expect a "modest", godly Christian woman (of the sort she knows I do indeed want) to relate to me as a wife. She agreed very much that we should be completely trusting and open with each other, and that there is no "shame" to hide between a husband and wife; but she seemed to romanticize the idea of "shyness" as a comely quality in a Christian woman. While I would agree (then as now) that a certain degree of self-effacing diffidence is an evidence of a beautifully humble heart, I mentioned that (as my mom and I both know and agree, and have discussed before in other contexts) true humility exists in truth, not "over-humility". It's one thing to not be prone to over-estimate one's beauty and pridefully flaunt it; but it's another to act like you're ashamed of it when you have no need or right to be. She agreed that "shame" wasn't right, and that "shyness" wasn't really the right word, preferring "modesty". She couldn't really define what that meant in this context, so to explain how things were supposed to work, she chose to launch into a very long explanation of how intimate moments play out in practice between a husband and wife (i.e. her and Dad), going into more detail than she'd ever gone before with me. (Apparently she'd had a similarly detailed discussion recently with my sister when she started thinking seriously about marriage with her now-husband.)

For one of the first times in my life, I realized that my mom didn't really know or understand what she was trying to tell me. I was used to her having clear, Biblically rooted answers on most topics of moral import. Even if she couldn't always express them as articulately as she might like, it was always clear that she understood in her heart what she meant to say, and with patience and understanding her wisdom would eventually become clear. This time was different. I started to realize she was trying to justify something that maybe wasn't really rooted in Biblical wisdom, but which she'd simply taken for granted because it's all she'd ever known.

One thing she expressed repeatedly was how she felt it was important to "protect" her body from being seen too readily, not just from outsiders but even from her husband as a way of guarding the "specialness" of their intimacy. Now, to be clear, my parents are not one of those couples that never sees each other nude, or that only has sex with the lights out. They very much have seen all of each other, and are happy with that, but she felt it was important to preserve that as something special for intimate moments so as to not "cheapen" her husband's appreciation of her body. For instance, she wouldn't herself join in skinny-dipping with him in the backyard, but would do so in a private hot tub on a special vacation where it was understood and welcomed as a prelude or sequel to loving sexual intimacy. I countered that, as we'd both noticed and marveled at over the years, my dad's attraction to and appreciation of her physical body has only grown even as they've aged - a clear sign it's rooted in a growing and deepening love rather than skin-deep. But she then pivoted to anecdotes from her past that I realized were more about other women she was afraid of being like, rather than something that was real for her.

She mentioned that, over the years, she'd interacted with female friends, both in the secular world and even the "church world", who had different degrees of comfort with their bodies being seen. Some women, for instance, had no qualms with being seen naked or topless by fellow women while getting changed in a locker room, i.e. were more "exhibitionist", in her words - something she very much doesn't consider herself. She recognized that being seen by fellow women like this could be innocent in principle, but observed that those women "just happened" to be the ones in her friend groups who were "looser" not just with being seen, but sexually. The "exhibitionist" women, in her experience, were always the ones who ended up going too far with men and losing the "specialness" of intimacy.

(continued...)

(part 6/7)

All of my mom's concerns and fears regarding nudity, I realized, were rooted in the specific life experiences she's had and the particular people whose witness she's seen in the world. Some of it, no doubt, goes all the way back to that time at the town pool as a girl when her friend "explained" to her that girls who wore bikinis were looking to flaunt themselves and get noticed by guys. All of her life experience since then has confirmed that: the women she met who chose to wear bikinis and were comfortable being seen in their skins just happened to be the ones who treated their bodies more "cheaply" with respect to sex.

Really, this is a classic case of mixing up correlation and causation. No doubt those two categories of women - those who were comfortable and unashamed in their skins, and those who were sexually "loose" - were and are strongly correlated in our confused culture. But they were not "loose" and (negatively) "shameless" because they were comfortable in their skins. Some of them may have just been naturally comfortable like that. But in a lot of cases, it was probably more that, because of their loose morals, they hadn't been "scared off" by the world's warnings of how that "shamelessness" would be seen by men; they instead embraced it to their hurt. By contrast, the female role models my mom looked up to, and found herself relating to, tended to be more "shy" in their presentation both to men and other women; they placed a high value on their bodies and didn't want the kind of shallow relationships the "loose" women sought and got. Hence my mom "learned" that wise godly women are "supposed" to be shy about their bodies to ensure they aren't treated "cheaply". It was how she rationalized her life experiences with the church's wildly incoherent teaching on "modesty" that nobody really understands (and thus people have to backfill rationalizations for).

The sad thing is, tying nudity to sex like this actually does cheapen sexuality, by tying it (in part) to the emotional rush of "forbidden fruit" rather than exclusively to a heart desire born of deep-rooted love. Without going into unnecessary detail, my parents have always had a very good and rewarding "sex life" (at least before my mom's surgery); God has richly blessed and rewarded their faithfulness in honestly seeking His plan for marriage. Yet I've seen over the years how the tying of nudity to sex has been a stone in the proverbial shoe of an otherwise solid intimate relationship. Since my dad rarely gets to see my mom naked outside of sex, he's often trying to "sneak a peak" or responding with an annoyingly immature comment if she happens to show a harmless bit of skin, or if her (or his!) body, clothes, or changing are discussed in any way. Some of the way he chooses to express that may just be his personality, but it's also tied to the unfulfilled curiosity of rarely getting to see the most beautiful woman in his world "as she is". He's never really gotten the chance to calmly look at her unclothed body outside of the moment or aftermath of an adrenaline-charged sexual experience, so it's no wonder that he seems to be incapable of responding to that body with any serious degree of maturity.

I'm reminded of something BeachBunny quoted one of her non-nudist friends as saying: "If I went skinny-dipping with my husband or he found me walking around the house naked, he'd want to rush me off to bed right away!" While such a response can be sometimes healthy and welcomed, it can feel demeaning and discouraging, and self-centered of the husband, for a wife to be reflexively treated that way if she just wants to enjoy a bit of freedom from her clothes, or to be calmly appreciated for her beauty rather than feeling like her husband only appreciates her body because he's "getting something" from it. Men, unfortunately, are often oblivious to how this makes their wives feel; they tend to project their own feelings and desires onto their wives and assume that a presentation of nudity means they're as "horny" as they themselves often are.

For my mom, therefore, "protecting" her nude body from being seen outside of moments where she's actively desirous of sexual intimacy has been a way of warding off that kind of immature "attention" and ensuring that her husband doesn't "take her for granted". Rather than questioning or challenging that "norm", she seems to have begrudgingly accepted that this is just a fact of how men are "wired" to perceive women's bodies - a "boys will be boys" logic. Understandably, then, the idea of being "innocently" seen naked by anyone other than her husband is unthinkable to her. Even the idea of going braless seems similarly perilous to her, because she sees how her husband reacts immaturely to even that. If it's so easy to "stumble" her husband into falling head-over-heels with hormonal desire, how much more problematic it would be with anyone else!

(continued...)

(part 7/7)

She seems to be starting to realize that it is possible for men to be more mature about this. But I think she fears that other men are just more tactful in hiding their "natural" responses than her husband, who tends to blurt out whatever's on his mind without much "filter". Popular culture and "common knowledge" certainly do little to dissuade this fear; women are well aware that men often engage in "locker room talk" amongst themselves (or even just to themselves), and tend to have a pretty one-track mind regarding their wives's bodies, whether or not they blurt out "hubba hubba" when catching view of them in any state of clarity. 🤦‍♀️

Given that she felt the need to "clear up my confusion" about my hope of being calmly and unashamedly nude with my future wife, by launching into a long explanation of "how things work" between her and her husband, I think she expects, at some level, that my "maturity" on this is at least in part an aspect of my virginity that will dissipate when I become one with my own dearly beloved. She's well aware that I appreciate the sight of a beautiful woman's body, and I don't think her life experiences allow her to seriously contemplate the possibility of that being orthogonal to the natural sexual desire that God created men and women to experience within loving marriage.

I can tell that the conversation I had with her more recently (shared in this thread Mar. 28) was rather eye-opening and "turned some lightbulbs on" regarding what the Bible actually has to say about this. The idea of comparing "lusting after" a man's wife to coveting his house, or herds, or fields, none of which we consider obligatory to "cover up", is certainly eye-opening. But there are still a lot of fears and contrary experiences to get through before she can drive that realization home.

It's clear that she's never (at least knowingly) met a "true" nudist who would've been a positive witness contrary to the "exhibitionist" women or "one-track" men whose negative witnesses have "taught" her about these issues. I suspect it will take meeting one to open her eyes to the possibility of a better way. And I've realized that person can't be me, because both as a man, and as her son, I'm just not in a position to demonstrate that witness contrary to what she's "learned". Her misconceptions seem to be centered more on the risks of women being nude; she understands that men typically think about their bodies differently and are seen and treated differently by women than women are by men.

Interestingly enough, based on some random things she's said over the years, I get the impression that my mom has heard of the concept of nudism in some form that goes perhaps beyond the popular ignorance on the subject. It's gotten me wondering if maybe she's encountered some negative examples in the past of people who called themselves "nudists".

Prior to raising my sister and I as a stay-at-home mom, she worked professionally as a trained therapist, having gone through college for it in the late '70s followed by an internship in liberal California, the home of the "latest and greatest" innovations in the field. In the '60s, '70s, and '80s, the psychological fields were positively rife with New Age occultism, and my mom encountered tons of it over the years, all of which God used constructively to sharpen her discernment and awareness of the spiritual warfare behind our daily lives. She butted heads over the years with several individuals who she later learned were deeply involved in occult practices like witchcraft and Wicca - the spiritual-warfare dimension of which became quickly apparent when they reacted with almost violent, uncontrolled hatred upon realizing she was a Christian (or sometimes, even just "knowing" without being told; it was quite remarkable and really "woke her up" to the reality of modern spiritual warfare). I wouldn't be surprised if some of those Wiccans identified themselves as "nudists" in some form or fashion, given that they tend to have an open view of the body that (for them) is interpreted in line with their "free love" polyamorous lifestyle. It's not at all in line with the Bible-based view of the image of God that we Christian nudists embrace; but it's definitely a known (albeit minority) element within nudist culture even today.

Actions speak louder than words. If my guess is correct that my mom's "experience" with the concept of nudism may include past encounters with individuals who were openly involved in clearly satanic practices, I think the only thing that could truly counter that and set her heart at ease would be to meet and witness a godly, Spirit-filled Christian woman who's comfortable and experienced with good, "clean" examples of social nudity. I pray that God will bring such a witness into our life, because this is too great a task for "might and power", particularly my own.

Great post, UC!

I'll touch on one point. Sometimes I hear or read about husbands trying to convince their wife to be comfortable with nudity; while at the same time sexualizing it. Then they wonder why she refuses to try social nudism. Of course, if her husband continually "gets naughty" when she's naked around him, she might automatically assume that his desire to pursue social nudity is to have her be objectified by other men as well.

Of course I'm preaching to the choir here, but the goal should be to actually make her feel "a lack" of objectification when she's naked around the husband. Doing activities such as watching TV or cooking nude, without any focus on the nudity itself, confirms to the wife that nudity can be non-sexual.
My wife and I practiced casual nudity at home for a while before heading to the resort. During those times I would maintain eye-contact while interacting with her, and keep things strictly non-sexual. That made it easier for her to agree to going to a resort; because she knew that at the very least, she could be comfortably naked around me. Beyond that, it became just a matter of acclimating to the idea that it was also safe to also be naked around other people.

Thank you, Unlikely, for your in-depth response to me. I agree with Nudony: Great post!

I'm a bit sad this board seems to be going dead again, and especially disappointed to see it quieting down at the same time we all know nudist activities (and also non-nude swimming, suntanning, and beachgoing that can help textiles transition to social nudity) are starting to take off. We had a great Memorial Day weekend. Surely others enjoyed social nudity on the traditional kickoff for the summer season. Why no posts? My post on May 27 got no response so I didn't feel comfortable sharing more, even though my husband's two co-workers, Lizette and Aaron, had a great weekend at the cottage before she leaves for her summer internship down in Miami.

Unlikely, you helped me understand it's your parents tolerating you skinnydipping, not that you're swimming together, and not that you're nude out of the pool or even skinnydipping when your sister or other family are around. My time in pools is almost always accompanied by suntanning, so when people see me swimming nude in the pool, most of the time they also see me nude outside of the pool.

I hope your mother changes her mind about swimming topless. She's right to envy the freedom men have with not needing to cover up above the waist. If she tries it, perhaps alone or with her husband, she'll soon learn the sensations of water on her bare nipples when swimming feel great, and also the feeling of having her bare body (or at least bare top) being dried by warm sun and warm breezes.

I understand her sensitivity about people outside the pool seeing much more of women's bodies than men when skinnydipping. If a man swims nude, from a distance most people can't tell, If he's treading water or standing in the pool, even someone at the edge of the pool may not know. Differences in female anatomy make it much easier to tell that women are swimming nude or topless.

That's not bad. I've used that to help both men and women get used to nudity.

The water covers just enough to help overly modest women feel more comfortable nude, and to help men who fear something might happen. Several women who felt very comfortable swimming nude in women-only swims learned that it's not much different when guys arrive if the woman are already in the water nude. The men can tell the women are nude, and of course the women are watching as the men take off their clothes poolside so they see the entire bodies of their male friends before they get in the pool, but just enough of the women's bodies are covered that quite a few women learn to enjoy the “you can kind of see me but not quite” experience of swimming nude in a pool with male friends. Sooner or later the inevitable happens and women let their breasts show while swimming or when jumping up to hit a volleyball while playing a game in the water, or women standing in the shallow end talking to a male friend realize that because pool water is clear, the man sees pretty much everything above her waist even if she's in water up to her neck. That realization often leads women, when it's time to get out of the pool, to climb out without first putting on her swimsuit or wrapping herself in a towel since knows her male friends saw and enjoyed seeing much of her body anyway.

It's not just women who are overly modest. At our home, we insist first-time men be nude and almost always insist they undress with us in a group, unless it's a husband or wife or boyfriend and girlfriend who absolutely refuse to undress in a group but are okay with undressing in a side room, or showering together in private (remember, showers are a hygiene necessity with pools) and walking out nude.

Why is undressing together important? Some men feign interest in social nudity to see female friends without our clothes, Even men with right motives sometimes “chicken out,” and since they can't unsee what they've seen, it permanently harms friendships if a first-time man backs out after seeing female friends nude. It's much better to undress in a group, with first-timers undressuing first as their friends watch and encourage them, and then, once the newbies are nude, watching their more experienced nudist friends undress.

Some of our friends are less strict, allowing first-time guys to get into the pool with their swimsuits and take them off underwater, or to undress poolside while we all look away and then they get into the water when we aren't watching. Personally I'm not comfortable with that but some of my friends are.

It's great fun when an overly modest male friend struggles to get used to standing next to me when we're both nude in the shallow end, or we're talking to each other while treading water. But it's even better when it's a couple learning to enjoy being nude together in the pool with other nude friends.

(CONTINUED)

The topic of this post is modesty and social nudism, so I want to point out when men and women swim nude together, water helps overly modest people by providing the illusion of concealment, but the reality is different. Many swimming strokes ensure women's breasts will be seen at some point. When a man and woman are treading water next to each other, or standing in the shallow end of the pool, water won't conceal very much of a woman's anatomy even if she's in water up to her neck.

That reality helps many women learn to accept that their male friends in the pool have already seen their “private parts.” It's rare for women, no matter how modest they may have been before getting into the pool for a nude swim, to object to getting out of the pool naked. For a lot of overly modest women, and also overly modest men, the experience of getting out of the pool fully nude, or walking out of the water nude on a nude beach, is exhilarating and a great confidence-builder. I had plenty of friends in college who went into the water at the nude beach with their swimsuits on, took them off underwater and tied them to their arms, but after half an hour swimming nude, they walked out of the water as a dating couple holding hands, either abandoning their swimsuits in the water or one of them holding the swimsuits in a free hand while enjoying the excitement of walking out of the water, being seen fully nude for the first time by everyone on the beach, and enjoying not only seeing each other nude but enjoying nude people on the beach watching them nude. Sometimes a very modest roommate was accompanying her more experienced nudist roommate and her roommate's boyfriend, with the three of them learning to enjoy swimming nude together and then walking out of the water nude.

With a married or seriously dating couple who are very used to seeing each other nude, the experience of social nudity is less about being nude together and more about getting used to other people seeing them nude, and learning to handle their own physical attraction for other men and women who are nude. I think that's the normal experience at resorts.

Nearly all of my early experience with social nudity was on a beach near my college campus where almost no students were married, and many of us were still in the early stages of dating where we were flirting, and enjoying the attention of male friends. We were used to being teenagers when physical attraction and flirting is a HUGE part of why high schoolers go to pools and beaches.

So how does flirting work when the man and woman are nude?

I want to reply to some of Unlikely's other comments made earlier.

Well that's embarrassing. I was trying to reply but I guess I got timed out.

Apologies

I noted in another forum a discussion about young people not knowing what it was like in the 70's and before regarding nudity and modesty. Time was showers were required after PE and athletic events. Locker rooms were wide open and there were open gang showers. Same story in the girls locker rooms since I was in many of them as a member of a visiting team. People walked around the locker room casually naked and no one complained about it. It was the norm. I noticed starting in the 80's things started changing regarding taking showers after PE and athletics. Now this is not done at all and it seems being overly modest has become the norm. We have gone completely backwards in this country. Why?

On a different note: I notice when people mentioning visiting a nudist club or resort they never mention the name of the place. Is there a reason for that here? I would like to know the names of these places so I can make an informed decision as to if I would like to visit the place or not. Especially now that money is tight I don't want to go to a place some people did not care for. For example, many nudist clubs clientele look like they're all from a retirement home and some younger people would like to know that. Just wondering.

Ok I’m going to try this again; and make it shorter so I don’t time-out again.

DAK, sure, a fair number of resorts and some parts of the country tend to have older clientele, but it would be too easy to judge a campground or resort by a random sample.

If you go to a campground on a summer weekend, young families with kids and unattached young adults may be numerous during the day. That same campground may be overwhelmingly senior as the evening wears on and the older folks gather in the lodge.

I participated in a nudist swim club in the dead of winter that rented a health club for the night. It was typical to find young single women basically there on their own and open to meeting single guys, provided they were friendly, without being too overbearing. This was in a northern city where the nudist community was well-established. I can't guarantee that this particular club will always remain gender-balanced and be a great place for singles. It was low-risk for me because I lived in the area at the time and was willing to risk disappointment at minimal expense and drive time.

In Florida, a place known for seniors state-wide, there is a group of young people "Florida Young Naturists" who make that irrelevant when they visit one of the local nudist resorts. Now I learned a lot from the seniors I have met, but I can see that young adults fresh out of college would generally prefer to meet people their age. FYN provides an answer to that need for peers.

Long and short of it: you can time your visits to find your peer group and you can find your peer group in the form of a travel club to make the demographics of the destination irrelevant!

I know the title was about modesty and social nudism and yet I know there are several believers in this group. I saw a tweet that Laura Robinson posted on Twitter that invented to share because there is so much truth in t about modesty and our society that I thought it was fitting here. Sorry for the length but I think you will like it.

Laura Robinson @LauraRbnsn ---

Can’t believe I’m degrading myself by wading into The Modesty Debate.🧵
One thing I learned really quickly as I got older and started meeting people from other countries is that things that seem really obvious to you aren’t obvious at all and someone had to teach you the rules.
For instance, the idea that women should wear shirts. After meeting Christians from the Global South, I learned a lot of them grew up with parents and grandparents who remembered women going around shirtless just like men did. Does this mean everyone in these cultures was
Incredibly turned on at all times? No. One consequence of topless women being no big deal and a normal sight was that people didn’t really fetishize breasts the same way we do. It was just another part of the body.
I think this illustrates something that I’ve seen to be true
From my own experience growing up in a purity culture, and that’s that modesty regulations and purity ideals aren’t really a response to what straight men are inherently like but shape straight men’s experience of what sexuality is. If you grow up with non-sexualized
Nudity, there’s a better chance you’ll be able to distinguish between bodies in sexual situations and bodies not in sexual situations and respond appropriately. If you grow up in settings where the female body is a permanent site of surveillance, anxiety, fascination,
Control, and (frequently) property disputes, you’re going to – well, not be able to do that.
When I remember getting sexually harassed in churches as a younger woman you could absolutely see the effects that surveillance-based purity culture had on the men in those churches.
A shirt is close to being acceptable but is slightly low in one spot. A skirt that was fine when you were standing up is sexual when sitting down – or the other way around. Your clothes were fine but then you picked something up and now you are standing in a sexual way even
Though your clothes were fine. All this required comment and critique, because The Rules were the line of what was sexual or not.
So I think it’s only fair to warn you guys if your church wants to be really counterculture and expand purity restrictions to be even stricter and
Even broader – ie, women in lingerie, hospital gowns, and breast pumps are all equally erotic now – you are absolutely driving the bus the wrong way. It’s hard for me to imagine a situation where that ends any other way than greater and greater restrictions as The Rules
Become ever more consuming and being on the wrong side of them becomes more and more eroticized. Today it’s nursing moms, but tomorrow it’ll be women holding babies, because babies make men think about nursing and nursing makes them think about breasts (if you think I’m
Exaggerating remind me to tell you the story of the time I was reprimanded for hanging a swimsuit to dry where boys could see it at church camp, or discussions about whether girls could put on chapstick in public). The rules create the fetish, not the other way around.
For us, making sure we followed the rules, and noticing and pointing out and sexualizing us when we didn’t, became the new fetish. You can’t make a rule that’s strict enough to undo that.
Addenda: Women from Christian and other really patriarchal circles like to catalogue ridiculous things they’ve been told to not do or wear for the sake of modesty, and I get it because it’s fun to commiserate and laugh at. I also think it’s why it’s inevitable there


Will be a lot of commotion over men frankly showing their asses by revealing that they find pictures of immediately postpartum moms holding their babies unbearably erotic. I think oxygen and attention for the ass-showers is ultimately counterproductive and I don’t think
Reasonable people need to be persuaded that women shouldn’t, among other things, eat hot dogs, wear dark colored underwear, give face to face hugs, have their mouths open for any reason, exercise where their fathers can see them, or whatever new thing your inexplicably respected
Local pervert warns has recently made him horny. But I do think it’s a really outstanding example of how modesty is less a code and more an arms race between men who want to leer and women who don’t want to be leered at. The field of what becomes immodest
Gets wider and wider as the explicitly sexual is taken out of the public sphere, and the onlookers expand their field of consumption to include the nonsexual, the implied, the suggested, and the reminiscent. Once you keep socializing younger and younger boys into thi

Once you keep socializing younger and younger boys into this
Model and heavily supplement with porn, it’s not hard to see why no one feels seen, valued, or respected in this situation. We’re basically left with a lot of neurotic men insisting that this time more deference to their dysfunction will help, and women who have had enough.
It’s because the rules aren’t helping. And if you think I’m wrong, ask Saint Paul.
I actually do have some empathy for the slightly frantic tone of 19 year old Athanasius Calvin from Classical Education, Florida when he begs his sisters to cover up and ease his struggle. Athanasius Calvin didn’t pick this and it’s not his fault. But buddy, we can’t help you!
• • •

One aspect of this I don't see mentioned much, is the effect of one's physique on perceived modesty. When I was in my early 20's in Bible college, a very conservative school and church, one female friend my age was distressed at being accused of immodesty.

She had very large breasts, so almost anything she wore that exposed anything below her neck, would show some cleavage. Skinny small-breasted women would be upset with her.

This was a decade before I discovered social nudism, but I still defended her - her heart was modest, and she couldn't help how she was built. As I told her, it was her heart that mattered, so forget their criticism. She could wear a one-piece suit and couldn't help but show cleavage in the exact same style of suit that a lesser-endowed woman would show no cleavage at all.

I told her that God looks on the heart; immature men and women looked at the outward and judged her heart wrongly.

Firstly, Happy New Year!

That was good of you to defend your friend, Just Me.
Large breasts have long been a symbol of fertility; and as such have been objectified and sexualized ad nauseum. Which is totally unfair to women who do not have a choice on the matter and are just "built" that way. Not only that but it can cause physical issues as well (my stepsister had to have breast reduction surgery due to back pain).

This reminded me of a nudist penpal I corresponded with for some time. His wife also had very large breasts. In her case though, nudism did not help her deal with her self-consciousness. He would tell me that even after several years of going to nudist resorts, his wife would still spend the majority of her time - when not swimming or privately sunbathing - wearing a sarong to cover up her breasts. In those rare instances where she was topless or nude, and someone tried to initiate a conversation; she would immediately grab something or switch to a "knees-to-chest" position to cover/hide her breasts. This made socializing near impossible; as her "palpable discomfort" de facto made others uncomfortable.

Which leads me to my next point on modesty. We all - and dare I say mostly women - bring some level of learned modesty to nudist settings. Our SMB friend BeachBunny has herself mentioned "carrying over" her conservative/"ladylike" posture etiquette - as my wife (with some exceptions.) But, at the end of the day, they are still socially nude and (mostly) comfortable being seen naked. Like anything else, there are "levels" to modesty. And my penpal's wife is at the level of total discomfort with her breasts being seen.

I would be very hesitant to say who should or shouldn't attend nudist venues. But, at a certain level, modesty does translate as body-shame. Expressing body-shame at a nudist venue - even if inadvertently - can have an impact. There have been accounts of women becoming hesitant to get naked - when surrounded by other women expressing body-shame by choosing to cover up just out of "modesty." Especially when "sarong-clad" women forming cliques congregate, and render a nude environment "non-nude." My wife - by her own admission - would probably not have chosen to embrace being completely naked, had it not been for the "all-nude" environments we've encountered on our journey.

I didn't suggest to my penpal that he should just "quit." I simply suggested asking his wife if she accompanied him to the resort JUST to make him happy. Clearly, if she was just too modest to ever be comfortable with her breasts being seen in their natural state after YEARS of resort visits; it should be a consideration and maybe, if she was willing, some counseling/therapy would be in order. I know it's an unpopular opinion; but if someone is clearly not going to be comfortable being seen openly naked - and there's no indication of that ever changing - perhaps social nudism at nudist venues should be reconsidered.
Some have said to me (in other forums) that the goal was not to "get their wives to walk around naked in front of other people." My response is: "if your wife truly enjoys being there (at a nudist venue), "walking around naked in front of other people" won't have to be a "goal"; it will just happen naturally, as her modesty becomes an after-thought.

Unless someone joins a theatrical or musical group at a nudist resort, enters a nudist beauty pageant (a bit of an anachronism these days) or assumes a public speaking role in a campground or resort, chances are good that he/she will never be in a situation that could be described as "being in front of" others.

People who use that sort of language either have never been involved in social nudity or (in the example Nudony gave) are very poorly acculturated to nudist/naturist culture.
Imagine that you are in the middle of a group of 50 people who are milling around, talking in small groups, swimming or reclining on a cot, how can that possibly be construed as being "in front of" those people, particularly if they are just as naked as you are and many are roughly your age and build.

The feeling of being the center of attention at all times is a delusion, a very sad one indeed. These feelings and fears are real and must be acknowledged of course.

As helpful as social nudity is for most of us, some people have such a pathological self-awareness that psychological counseling is their only hope and even that is not a guarantee of helping them be comfortable in their own skin and breaking that notion of "all eyes are on you". I suspect that they would feel this way in almost any textile setting, not just in nudist settings.

Sports was a great way for me in my early nudist days to forget about myself. It's a wonderful feeling to simply enjoy the game, to enjoy conversation.
Thankfully most of us do get there if we put in the time.