Almost everything about clothes just depends on what you’re used to. If you’re from a family where no one shows their knees or elbows that will seem wild when you encounter it
You aren’t missing what you don’t know.
Kind of like how a baby being born without arms won’t know a life with arms. We will see them as aww poor baby life must be so hard- yet the baby will see us as a bunch of human octopi running around limbs flailing.
Why go all the way to nudists? Young children are notorious for taking off all their clothes at any moment. Couples will be naked around each other all the time – someone gets out of the shower and doesn’t bother putting on clothes for half an hour or more, or just lazes around in a towel or open robe. People regularly walk around locker rooms naked, including coed locker rooms. And that’s before you get to third world countries or for that matter most of history, where it is/was common for people to share a living space, and would have full-on sex right in front of each other, especially at night.
When you factor in all the times and ways people are naked in front of each other, it becomes clear that it’s actually people who constantly cover up who are the weird ones
I know a guy who was dating a girl in high school. When he finally went over to her house to meat her family, her parents were completely naked. No one told him ahead of time. He never got used to it in time. No one ever addressed the nude elephant in the room. Definitely awkward.
Nothing wrong with nudity until people start sexualizing it.
A lot of comments speak on perspective. And that’s huge here. Nudists see this as normal, others may not. What we perceive as normal, is simply subjective to what you know, what you’re familiar with.
I grew up around mostly women, and so I’ve seen my mother naked, my grandmother, aunts, etc, but I did used to bathe with my male cousins when we were little kids. We just dont see the body as sexual. My family is also Caribbean so it’s probably also a cultural thing. It’s not weird nor awkward tbh. I did think it was weird that there are people who’ve never seen a family member naked at least once not even their own mothers 😭
They just get used to it. I had a high school friend like this. His family wore clothes when guests were there, fortunately, but they would sometimes just walk around the house naked according to him
This isn’t as extreme as an actual nudist family but here is my experience: I grew up with just a mother and sister and we were all pretty much nudists at home. I wasn’t so much as a kid but by my teens I was and my sister definitely was from the get go.
In my teens I moved in with my grandmother and she found it bizarre – so my mother didn’t learn it from her mother. I’ve only ever been surrounded by females my entire life.
As a parent myself now, my two daughters are very similar and hate clothing… especially my youngest. It’s always been a struggle to keep her clothed.
It’s winter here now so we all wear a lot more clothing during the cold months but by summertime we go back to our nudist ways 😅.
People know how I am so they know not to come over unannounced. I work from home and if I have to go to the door unexpectedly I’ll wrap a blanket around me. I always am sitting under a blanket so it’s not a big deal.
I hate clothes. The second I walk into my house they are off. It’s so completely normal to me that I couldn’t imagine living any other way.
Having grown up in a naturist family (as in, going to naturist resorts and stuff in summers, as well as just people often being casually naked at home) and still going to semi-regular naturist events now – There is usually a period where the teenagers are awkward, and start covering-up and just not coming to naturist events, and then they either age back out of it and return to naturism in some degree, or they don’t.
But, we also lived somewhere where almost everyone saunaed and sunbathed naked even if they weren’t into naturism/FKK, so there was already a higher level of ambient nudity than there is in the States.
I am 75M. I was raised in a family clan that practiced casual family nudity.
That is we weren’t nudist in that we did not deliberately go around shedding our clothes at every opportunity.
It was just a matter where if you had reason to be without clothes you didn’t try to hide it and were not ashamed of it. We didn’t hide behind closed doors to change clothes, or bathe, or any other time a person might be nude. i.e. several of us, not all, preferred to sleep nude.
You say awkward, but if it has always been that way its perfectly normal to the person.
If people only see each other nude when its time for sex, they associate the two together.
But, look at it like this. I was married to my late wife long, long time. When we were first together, you betcha I associated the sight of her bare skin with sex. Because that was the only time she was letting me see that much of her. But after 10 or 15 years she could parade around me nude all day long, and unless I was already horny and thinking about sex, her nudity did not affect me at all. But, have her flash eyes at me, give me that little smirk she had, or give her hips a little extra wiggle alerting me she was thinking kind of sexy, or she pulled her deal of coming up to me and biting my ear … THEN, oh yeah … that was utterly different now. Boing and I was paying attention to every curve, nook, and cranny.
Between 3rd and 4th grade, a Romanian family moved in down the road from us. I became friends with their youngest son. To make a long story short, they were a naturist family, so they liked to be nude outdoors.
It was the two parents, my friend, an older brother and a sister. I spent enough time with them and got close to the son, so they started inviting me to go. My mom finally reluctantly agreed to let me go. After a weird feeling to get undressed and then see my friend naked, then all of his family naked, and then complete strangers naked, as well as me being naked in front of all of them, the awkwardness lasted maybe half an hour. And then it was gone and never showed up again. I went with them two or three times every summer until I think I was a freshman in high school.
Honestly, the problem isn’t in people being comfortable being naked around each other, including families. The real problem is mostly with Americans, who are obsessed with the idea that being naked has to be something sexual. It doesn’t.
Because the hatred of nudity is a learned trait, and if you’re raised thinking it’s okay. Then you won’t have any problems with it.
There’s still tribes out there. Untouched by Modern society. They don’t give a crap about being naked.
It’s also largely a puritanical western thing. Nude beaches, and other places where nudity is not seen as weird/disgusting/sin, are quite common in the rest of the world.
When I was a kid I went to visit a friend of mine at the time that I was going to school with. We were in her room and her mom walked into her room butt ass naked. No shame whatsoever, no attempt to cover up. Not that it’s shameful to be naked in general, but not in your daughter’s room, and definitely not when your daughter has a friend over 😅😅 Not sure if that counts as a nudist family thing but yeah, that was my experience. Lmfao
being naked around other naked people is honestly weirdly normal. at my first onsen/bathhouse, i felt really vulnerable until i remembered “oh wait, everyone else is naked too and no one here cares about me because we’re all just here to get clean”. i imagine it’s even more normal when you’re raised around it.
it was a good experience for me. i remember bathing with my grandmother and aunt as a kid, it helped instill the idea of “no body is perfect” and that everything sags eventually. idk. i’m guessing you’re american? americans are weird about nudity.
I definitely didn’t grow up in “nudist family” but I did grow up in a tropical climate and my parents as well as all my aunts and uncles never worried too much about us kids wearing/not wearing clothes.
There’s lots of pictures of me and my siblings and cousins as kids at the local market or at the beach with no clothes on. It was very normal for us all the shower together naked. Even if we were wearing clothes, it was still very acceptable just wear underwear.
The awkward part was more when my parents moved us to a big city with a much colder climate. We left before we had hit puberty, but it was definitely a big adjustment! The degree of confidence I had in my own body was decidedly NOT normal to other kids.
I guess you’re American. I am half Canadian half Ivorian and I grew up partly in Burkina Faso as a kid. In the countryside where I was living, women often wouldn’t have a bra or a t-shirt to hide their breasts. In the 90’s it was just not perceived as a sexual part of the bodies in comparison to an ass or hair. I lived also a couple of years in Saudi Arabia and found out that forearms and ankles can be considered quite sexy. It’s always a question of habit and customs, if you start young it becomes as second nature. You don’t even see it anymore. In Canada if I see someone naked in public, I am like whoa there is something wrong and I will inquire more about the situation. If it’s in Africa I would be yeah like there is a thousand good reasons to be naked and not even think about it. Also, if you’re indeed American: your nation is quite prude.
We’re not necessarily nudist, we’re dressed most of the time. But we do naked walks to and from thw shower, walking around in different states of undress (including naked) when changing and stuff like that.
I think most awkwardness stems from the sexuality aspect. As for us nudity isn’t inherently sexy, it’s not really awkward. We don’t do it when guests are around at our house, obviously. We don’t want to flash anyone. But within our family we do feel comfortable and content, there is no need to hide away.
At burning man you arrive and see a naked lady prancing down a dirt road. Whoa!….look at that. Then another one…and in a few minutes it’s not a big deal. I’m not trying to eat a ham sandwich next to a dude with his junk dangling near me but just seeing nakedness can be normalized very quickly. It’s no big deal. I would assume ina. Family where people are regularly naked would be like people walking around barefoot indoors is normal to most people.
Same way you dont feel weird wearing clothes around your family, you might think its not the same but it is, you grew up wearing clothes around your family, they didnt, its the same 😛
Depends. I dont consider myself nudist but if im out of the shower and my moms needs to enter to the room for something (lets say to grab something) and im naked i dont care, im just used to
Ok so I used to live by a nudist colony (for lack of a better word– pretty much anyone was allowed to live there I think. The colony leaders owned a large bit of wooded property) and from what I gathered, they have the understanding that isn’t normal, per se, but have a “to each their own” philosophy about it. They don’t think it’s weird because it’s something they somehow picked up along their journey of life, or were born into it, and hence have it as an established background. I’m sure some of them feel a bit weird about it when confronted with the reality that it clashes with most of society, but all of the people I encountered seemed perfectly content to be naked outliers to societal norm
I am not from a nudist family, but my country in general has a very casual look on nudity because of saunas. Almost everyone has seen their family members, some relatives (usually same sex) etc nude. It’s also completely normal to be naked in public saunas. I have seen my parents, my aunt and my grandma naked because i have gone to a sauna with them. You don’t wear clothes in saunas.
There are also sauna events at both workplaces and universities where you go to a sauna event with your fellow coworkers or students.
my family wasn’t a nudist one but nudity was never sexualized or stigmatized in my household growing up. it was normal to see my mom walking around without a shirt or bra on, and a couple times i saw my dad naked as well (though much less often, but dude was ALWAYS shirtless). it’s just not weird because… it’s just not. that may sound trite but it’s true. i was taught what all my body parts were at a young age, that they belonged to me, that no one should touch them without my permission, and that there was nothing shameful about any of them. of course i was also educated on the societal norms of what’s considered “decent”. but yeah, bodies are only weird if you make them be weird.
My dad had a little bit of a mental breakdown when he got home from Vietnam and “ran away to live in the woods with the nudists.” By the time I was born he was back in civilization, but nudity was extremely normalized in my family.
We backed off a bit when my older brother hit puberty and became a little uncomfortable about the whole thing, but to this day I truly don’t understand being weird about seeing your family in the nude. Bodies are just bodies.
Well my 6 year old son just has no concept of personal space and just barges in when we are showering or changing. Be it to poop, ask us about fruits, ask for more screen time etc.
When you’re raised in a thing, that thing is normal. Also see: religion, abuse, behaviors adapted to navigate poverty. Nudists just happen to be a harmless example.
Dated a girl from Finland. She took Saunas with all of her family and even strangers. Everybody naked. She shrugged it off.
It’s not weird to people who are accustomed to life in that manner. Cultures where nudity is much less sexualized, and embrace nudity have more body positivity among their people.
I took part in a Spencer Tunick photo in Sydney. Everyone arrived around 7am and then when he was ready, everyone stripped. The was over 2,500 people of all ages and it felt weird for about two minutes and then you completely forget you were naked. It was very equalizing and nobody was staring or being inappropriate. Spencer Tunick Sydney
I think it’s just a matter of getting/being used to it. Years ago before I met my current partner I was dating a girl who was interested in checking out a nudist resort in the area where we live. I thought oh yeah, naked in the sun, we’ll go get freaky in the outdoors. Couldn’t have been further from the reality of it. It quickly became apparent that while no clothes were allowed in the resort, this was 100% a family place. People were out there with their kids doing all the usual things you’d expect families to do at a resort, they were just doing it naked. Kids were running around, people were swimming and playing pickleball and grilling burgers, etc. We got roped into a game of pool volleyball and went swimming in a pond. The most awkward part was when we encountered some people that were friends of my date’s family. You ever have one of those moments when dating when you’re out with a girl and you run into her family and get unexpectedly drawn into a family event? Yeah, that happened but everyone was naked and we were invited for a cook out and drinks at the cabin these folks were staying at
The conservative place I come from, showing your arms is considered scandalous. The stares I got from people when I once wore sleeveless, made me feel like I’m naked.
The French friend of my husband was meeting his in laws in Finland for the first time. He had to shake hands with a big chunk of the family while they were sitting naked in their sauna. The French are not prudes, but they certainly love their ‘good manners’: this guy was horrified!
My friend has naturist in-laws: they permanently live on a camp site with other naked people who also live there, (there are also short-stay people around). They can visit them clothed, with their toddler, but it alsways feels a bit weird for them. My friend told me that when her MIL came to visit, she was just wearing a long t-shirt, but ‘forgot’ underwear and pants: it was a bit of a happening at the birthday party of my friends daughter.
My own family is quite relaxt about nudity, to quote my mom: ‘swimming is most comfortable naked’. But we will not sit around naked, like both families above. Every family is different and has their own ‘normal’.
Oooh my good friend in art college did her final year project on the body and she did loads of cool research with naturist groups in our country (they preferred the term naturist over nudist lol – I was surprised there were any bc we’re from a very cold country😂) and basically the answer is no bc they’re just used to it and it’s completely devoid of sexual connotation for them.
I couldn’t imagine it at first but then I thought of it more though I was thinking about how I’ve seen my mam getting changed or being topless and stuff loads of times and I don’t even register it bc she’s my mother lol so it’s probably like that for them except they’re fully naked around family a lot more often 😅
Had a gf where they weren’t exactly nudist but all children had seen everyone else naked frequently from the time they were born til they were in their twenties (at the time) so it was never an issue. So while my gf would be dressed at home during the day. But she would not get dressed to go pee at night and if her father would see her on full display while she walked to the loo he would not have cared at all and would most likely have been fully nude himself.
With them, it wasn’t awkward at all, it was just very relaxed.
I actually think this is more healthy than mystifying the naked body and whipping up a big deal out of it.
I guess you just don’t notice? I grew up in a nudist house but me and my brother stopped around the aged of 11.
My parents would always put clothes on when other people came around and they kind of stopped doing it around us at about 16/18
…went on plenty of nudist holidays and unknown my parents still do.
I dunno….it’s just not a big deal?
As someone who is very much not from a nudist family and does have hang-ups about being naked… rationally I think being freaked out by nudity is weird. I have a lot of cultural biases baked into me at this point but logically… what’s actually weird about being naked? It’s the human body. That’s it.
If you are literally born into it, i dont see how it could be weird. You’re only weirded out by it because you’re not thinking abt it from their viewpoint, you’re thinking abt it from your current one
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Almost everything about clothes just depends on what you’re used to. If you’re from a family where no one shows their knees or elbows that will seem wild when you encounter it
Cultural upbringing I guess. Some families find X odd, other families don’t realize it. Nudity can be just like that, I assume.
You aren’t missing what you don’t know.
Kind of like how a baby being born without arms won’t know a life with arms. We will see them as aww poor baby life must be so hard- yet the baby will see us as a bunch of human octopi running around limbs flailing.
They will find it weird that we are so modest.
Your weird is their normal.
Adults trying to start a nudist homestead in a cold ass state is a bit sus. Weird idealism at best, pervy and controlling at worst.
Forcing that lifestyle upon kids is whack.
Why go all the way to nudists? Young children are notorious for taking off all their clothes at any moment. Couples will be naked around each other all the time – someone gets out of the shower and doesn’t bother putting on clothes for half an hour or more, or just lazes around in a towel or open robe. People regularly walk around locker rooms naked, including coed locker rooms. And that’s before you get to third world countries or for that matter most of history, where it is/was common for people to share a living space, and would have full-on sex right in front of each other, especially at night.
When you factor in all the times and ways people are naked in front of each other, it becomes clear that it’s actually people who constantly cover up who are the weird ones
I know a guy who was dating a girl in high school. When he finally went over to her house to meat her family, her parents were completely naked. No one told him ahead of time. He never got used to it in time. No one ever addressed the nude elephant in the room. Definitely awkward.
Nothing wrong with nudity until people start sexualizing it.
A lot of comments speak on perspective. And that’s huge here. Nudists see this as normal, others may not. What we perceive as normal, is simply subjective to what you know, what you’re familiar with.
I grew up around mostly women, and so I’ve seen my mother naked, my grandmother, aunts, etc, but I did used to bathe with my male cousins when we were little kids. We just dont see the body as sexual. My family is also Caribbean so it’s probably also a cultural thing. It’s not weird nor awkward tbh. I did think it was weird that there are people who’ve never seen a family member naked at least once not even their own mothers 😭
They just get used to it. I had a high school friend like this. His family wore clothes when guests were there, fortunately, but they would sometimes just walk around the house naked according to him
this is a thing? Does that mean no one wears clothes in the house even the kids? I dont believe that tbh
One sibling can love being naked while the other hates it.
This isn’t as extreme as an actual nudist family but here is my experience: I grew up with just a mother and sister and we were all pretty much nudists at home. I wasn’t so much as a kid but by my teens I was and my sister definitely was from the get go.
In my teens I moved in with my grandmother and she found it bizarre – so my mother didn’t learn it from her mother. I’ve only ever been surrounded by females my entire life.
As a parent myself now, my two daughters are very similar and hate clothing… especially my youngest. It’s always been a struggle to keep her clothed.
It’s winter here now so we all wear a lot more clothing during the cold months but by summertime we go back to our nudist ways 😅.
People know how I am so they know not to come over unannounced. I work from home and if I have to go to the door unexpectedly I’ll wrap a blanket around me. I always am sitting under a blanket so it’s not a big deal.
I hate clothes. The second I walk into my house they are off. It’s so completely normal to me that I couldn’t imagine living any other way.
Having grown up in a naturist family (as in, going to naturist resorts and stuff in summers, as well as just people often being casually naked at home) and still going to semi-regular naturist events now – There is usually a period where the teenagers are awkward, and start covering-up and just not coming to naturist events, and then they either age back out of it and return to naturism in some degree, or they don’t.
But, we also lived somewhere where almost everyone saunaed and sunbathed naked even if they weren’t into naturism/FKK, so there was already a higher level of ambient nudity than there is in the States.
I am 75M. I was raised in a family clan that practiced casual family nudity.
That is we weren’t nudist in that we did not deliberately go around shedding our clothes at every opportunity.
It was just a matter where if you had reason to be without clothes you didn’t try to hide it and were not ashamed of it. We didn’t hide behind closed doors to change clothes, or bathe, or any other time a person might be nude. i.e. several of us, not all, preferred to sleep nude.
You say awkward, but if it has always been that way its perfectly normal to the person.
If people only see each other nude when its time for sex, they associate the two together.
But, look at it like this. I was married to my late wife long, long time. When we were first together, you betcha I associated the sight of her bare skin with sex. Because that was the only time she was letting me see that much of her. But after 10 or 15 years she could parade around me nude all day long, and unless I was already horny and thinking about sex, her nudity did not affect me at all. But, have her flash eyes at me, give me that little smirk she had, or give her hips a little extra wiggle alerting me she was thinking kind of sexy, or she pulled her deal of coming up to me and biting my ear … THEN, oh yeah … that was utterly different now. Boing and I was paying attention to every curve, nook, and cranny.
Get what I am saying?
Between 3rd and 4th grade, a Romanian family moved in down the road from us. I became friends with their youngest son. To make a long story short, they were a naturist family, so they liked to be nude outdoors.
It was the two parents, my friend, an older brother and a sister. I spent enough time with them and got close to the son, so they started inviting me to go. My mom finally reluctantly agreed to let me go. After a weird feeling to get undressed and then see my friend naked, then all of his family naked, and then complete strangers naked, as well as me being naked in front of all of them, the awkwardness lasted maybe half an hour. And then it was gone and never showed up again. I went with them two or three times every summer until I think I was a freshman in high school.
Honestly, the problem isn’t in people being comfortable being naked around each other, including families. The real problem is mostly with Americans, who are obsessed with the idea that being naked has to be something sexual. It doesn’t.
when i was younger id get an erection if the wind blew. add in my girlfriends naked mom and i woulda been knocking over lamps.
Why are you asking my boobs?
Because the hatred of nudity is a learned trait, and if you’re raised thinking it’s okay. Then you won’t have any problems with it.
There’s still tribes out there. Untouched by Modern society. They don’t give a crap about being naked.
It’s also largely a puritanical western thing. Nude beaches, and other places where nudity is not seen as weird/disgusting/sin, are quite common in the rest of the world.
When I was a kid I went to visit a friend of mine at the time that I was going to school with. We were in her room and her mom walked into her room butt ass naked. No shame whatsoever, no attempt to cover up. Not that it’s shameful to be naked in general, but not in your daughter’s room, and definitely not when your daughter has a friend over 😅😅 Not sure if that counts as a nudist family thing but yeah, that was my experience. Lmfao
They don’t really sexualize nudity the way you do.
Do you feel weird seeing your parents ankles? How about your mom’s hair?
These things are literally considered nudity in some cultures. It’s pretty much the same thing.
being naked around other naked people is honestly weirdly normal. at my first onsen/bathhouse, i felt really vulnerable until i remembered “oh wait, everyone else is naked too and no one here cares about me because we’re all just here to get clean”. i imagine it’s even more normal when you’re raised around it.
it was a good experience for me. i remember bathing with my grandmother and aunt as a kid, it helped instill the idea of “no body is perfect” and that everything sags eventually. idk. i’m guessing you’re american? americans are weird about nudity.
You’re right, it does seem a bit weird
https://youtu.be/0cAIHJ6f6zQ?si=pF2_Uzx_WUqhLDSj
I definitely didn’t grow up in “nudist family” but I did grow up in a tropical climate and my parents as well as all my aunts and uncles never worried too much about us kids wearing/not wearing clothes.
There’s lots of pictures of me and my siblings and cousins as kids at the local market or at the beach with no clothes on. It was very normal for us all the shower together naked. Even if we were wearing clothes, it was still very acceptable just wear underwear.
The awkward part was more when my parents moved us to a big city with a much colder climate. We left before we had hit puberty, but it was definitely a big adjustment! The degree of confidence I had in my own body was decidedly NOT normal to other kids.
I guess you’re American. I am half Canadian half Ivorian and I grew up partly in Burkina Faso as a kid. In the countryside where I was living, women often wouldn’t have a bra or a t-shirt to hide their breasts. In the 90’s it was just not perceived as a sexual part of the bodies in comparison to an ass or hair. I lived also a couple of years in Saudi Arabia and found out that forearms and ankles can be considered quite sexy. It’s always a question of habit and customs, if you start young it becomes as second nature. You don’t even see it anymore. In Canada if I see someone naked in public, I am like whoa there is something wrong and I will inquire more about the situation. If it’s in Africa I would be yeah like there is a thousand good reasons to be naked and not even think about it. Also, if you’re indeed American: your nation is quite prude.
If you were born and raised with it , it ain’t weird or awkward , it’s just the way it is
Dont sit on the couch
My Dink sister is open about being nude when home with husband. We always plan event out when going over and ring the door bell.
Do you feel weird seeing your aunt’s elbows?
If you were raised in a fundamentalist Muslim family, you would.
Upbringing decides what we consider “weird “
We’re not necessarily nudist, we’re dressed most of the time. But we do naked walks to and from thw shower, walking around in different states of undress (including naked) when changing and stuff like that.
I think most awkwardness stems from the sexuality aspect. As for us nudity isn’t inherently sexy, it’s not really awkward. We don’t do it when guests are around at our house, obviously. We don’t want to flash anyone. But within our family we do feel comfortable and content, there is no need to hide away.
At burning man you arrive and see a naked lady prancing down a dirt road. Whoa!….look at that. Then another one…and in a few minutes it’s not a big deal. I’m not trying to eat a ham sandwich next to a dude with his junk dangling near me but just seeing nakedness can be normalized very quickly. It’s no big deal. I would assume ina. Family where people are regularly naked would be like people walking around barefoot indoors is normal to most people.
I’m more curious as to why people dont feel weird trapped in an artificial net all day long
Same way you dont feel weird wearing clothes around your family, you might think its not the same but it is, you grew up wearing clothes around your family, they didnt, its the same 😛
Depends. I dont consider myself nudist but if im out of the shower and my moms needs to enter to the room for something (lets say to grab something) and im naked i dont care, im just used to
It’s not s problem because, as Skeletor points out, “nudists do not have private parts”.
It’s the way they’re brought up. Nudity is natural. Shame about your body/shame about nudity is a learned trait.
Ok so I used to live by a nudist colony (for lack of a better word– pretty much anyone was allowed to live there I think. The colony leaders owned a large bit of wooded property) and from what I gathered, they have the understanding that isn’t normal, per se, but have a “to each their own” philosophy about it. They don’t think it’s weird because it’s something they somehow picked up along their journey of life, or were born into it, and hence have it as an established background. I’m sure some of them feel a bit weird about it when confronted with the reality that it clashes with most of society, but all of the people I encountered seemed perfectly content to be naked outliers to societal norm
I am not from a nudist family, but my country in general has a very casual look on nudity because of saunas. Almost everyone has seen their family members, some relatives (usually same sex) etc nude. It’s also completely normal to be naked in public saunas. I have seen my parents, my aunt and my grandma naked because i have gone to a sauna with them. You don’t wear clothes in saunas.
There are also sauna events at both workplaces and universities where you go to a sauna event with your fellow coworkers or students.
Being nude is only weird if you make it weird.
my family wasn’t a nudist one but nudity was never sexualized or stigmatized in my household growing up. it was normal to see my mom walking around without a shirt or bra on, and a couple times i saw my dad naked as well (though much less often, but dude was ALWAYS shirtless). it’s just not weird because… it’s just not. that may sound trite but it’s true. i was taught what all my body parts were at a young age, that they belonged to me, that no one should touch them without my permission, and that there was nothing shameful about any of them. of course i was also educated on the societal norms of what’s considered “decent”. but yeah, bodies are only weird if you make them be weird.
My dad had a little bit of a mental breakdown when he got home from Vietnam and “ran away to live in the woods with the nudists.” By the time I was born he was back in civilization, but nudity was extremely normalized in my family.
We backed off a bit when my older brother hit puberty and became a little uncomfortable about the whole thing, but to this day I truly don’t understand being weird about seeing your family in the nude. Bodies are just bodies.
Well my 6 year old son just has no concept of personal space and just barges in when we are showering or changing. Be it to poop, ask us about fruits, ask for more screen time etc.
Yes we are teaching him not to barge in.
When you’re raised in a thing, that thing is normal. Also see: religion, abuse, behaviors adapted to navigate poverty. Nudists just happen to be a harmless example.
Dated a girl from Finland. She took Saunas with all of her family and even strangers. Everybody naked. She shrugged it off.
It’s not weird to people who are accustomed to life in that manner. Cultures where nudity is much less sexualized, and embrace nudity have more body positivity among their people.
Prob how being nude around a partner is. Eventually u don’t give a dam
We aren’t nudists but we all sleep naked. No big deal. There’s nothing sexual about it unless you make it sexual.
You could have looked through their window first and read the mothers lips
My childhood friend’s mom was always walking around with her boobs out.
It was no issue for her & she had 3 boys who thought it was completely normal.
My friend was the oldest who was my age. I was never warned nor did we ever speak about it.
I used to just awkwardly stare like a virgin whenever I went to his house. ugh my 10 & 11 year old days were fun.
I took part in a Spencer Tunick photo in Sydney. Everyone arrived around 7am and then when he was ready, everyone stripped. The was over 2,500 people of all ages and it felt weird for about two minutes and then you completely forget you were naked. It was very equalizing and nobody was staring or being inappropriate. Spencer Tunick Sydney
I think it’s just a matter of getting/being used to it. Years ago before I met my current partner I was dating a girl who was interested in checking out a nudist resort in the area where we live. I thought oh yeah, naked in the sun, we’ll go get freaky in the outdoors. Couldn’t have been further from the reality of it. It quickly became apparent that while no clothes were allowed in the resort, this was 100% a family place. People were out there with their kids doing all the usual things you’d expect families to do at a resort, they were just doing it naked. Kids were running around, people were swimming and playing pickleball and grilling burgers, etc. We got roped into a game of pool volleyball and went swimming in a pond. The most awkward part was when we encountered some people that were friends of my date’s family. You ever have one of those moments when dating when you’re out with a girl and you run into her family and get unexpectedly drawn into a family event? Yeah, that happened but everyone was naked and we were invited for a cook out and drinks at the cabin these folks were staying at
Because nudity is not sexual, it’s just being unclothed.
What is normal at home is normal until someone tells you it’s not and shames you for it.
Are there Islamic nudists?
The conservative place I come from, showing your arms is considered scandalous. The stares I got from people when I once wore sleeveless, made me feel like I’m naked.
The French friend of my husband was meeting his in laws in Finland for the first time. He had to shake hands with a big chunk of the family while they were sitting naked in their sauna. The French are not prudes, but they certainly love their ‘good manners’: this guy was horrified!
My friend has naturist in-laws: they permanently live on a camp site with other naked people who also live there, (there are also short-stay people around). They can visit them clothed, with their toddler, but it alsways feels a bit weird for them. My friend told me that when her MIL came to visit, she was just wearing a long t-shirt, but ‘forgot’ underwear and pants: it was a bit of a happening at the birthday party of my friends daughter.
My own family is quite relaxt about nudity, to quote my mom: ‘swimming is most comfortable naked’. But we will not sit around naked, like both families above. Every family is different and has their own ‘normal’.
Oooh my good friend in art college did her final year project on the body and she did loads of cool research with naturist groups in our country (they preferred the term naturist over nudist lol – I was surprised there were any bc we’re from a very cold country😂) and basically the answer is no bc they’re just used to it and it’s completely devoid of sexual connotation for them.
I couldn’t imagine it at first but then I thought of it more though I was thinking about how I’ve seen my mam getting changed or being topless and stuff loads of times and I don’t even register it bc she’s my mother lol so it’s probably like that for them except they’re fully naked around family a lot more often 😅
Nudity is just nudity, im not a nudist and it would be extremelly weird and off putting for me but technicallly is weirder to wear clothes than not to
Had a gf where they weren’t exactly nudist but all children had seen everyone else naked frequently from the time they were born til they were in their twenties (at the time) so it was never an issue. So while my gf would be dressed at home during the day. But she would not get dressed to go pee at night and if her father would see her on full display while she walked to the loo he would not have cared at all and would most likely have been fully nude himself.
With them, it wasn’t awkward at all, it was just very relaxed.
I actually think this is more healthy than mystifying the naked body and whipping up a big deal out of it.
I guess you just don’t notice? I grew up in a nudist house but me and my brother stopped around the aged of 11.
My parents would always put clothes on when other people came around and they kind of stopped doing it around us at about 16/18
…went on plenty of nudist holidays and unknown my parents still do.
I dunno….it’s just not a big deal?
As someone who is very much not from a nudist family and does have hang-ups about being naked… rationally I think being freaked out by nudity is weird. I have a lot of cultural biases baked into me at this point but logically… what’s actually weird about being naked? It’s the human body. That’s it.
If you are literally born into it, i dont see how it could be weird. You’re only weirded out by it because you’re not thinking abt it from their viewpoint, you’re thinking abt it from your current one