Collective Nudity

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Did you ever have one of those are you kidding me? Moments?
When you read something and then it happens blows your mind.
I was reading an article in The Atlantic written by
Jacob Beckert about nudity. I didn't know what his motivation was,
but when the word nudity is in the headline, like
ninety nine percent of every other guy out there, I
had to look. It was about a basketball game that

(00:20):
he played in a neighborhood gym, and when it was
over in the locker room, he started taking off his
clothes intending to take a shower, only to be stopped
by another guy in there with You can't do that here.
Undressing is only permitted in small, private stalls. And then
I found the same thing in my exclusive country club.

(00:40):
The message was clear. In twenty twenty five, even locker
room space must be redesigned as universal, once a place
for casual or normative nudity where modesty was expected. Seems
we've been ushered into a new shift away from collective nudity.
The locker room, the school shower, public pools, even bathhouses

(01:01):
are gone. There. Nudity, the unclothed part of life, was
once acceptable, at least in same sex environments, guys around guys,
girls around girls, a by gone era from the first
time we entered a collective shower, probably middle school. Through
my workouts today, this nudity was a non sexual event
for me. Seems I need to get with the times.

(01:22):
Today nudity is either sexual or private, nothing in between.
It's explainable in twenty twenty five. Culturally, we are told
by some there are more than two sexes. You are allowed,
even encouraged in some places, to identify yourself sexually. Don't
look down, you won't find it there. Just get a
cat scan. It's in there. Whereas before we just wanted

(01:45):
to take a shower, now we must consider consent, assault,
even vulnerability. Throw in phone cameras and social media, and
getting naked might get you sued or worse. It's made
us uptight about it easy to explain. Younger folks have
no experience in nakedness. Today. The only naked body many
Americans will ever see as their own their partners, are

(02:07):
on screen. Sure, as Jacob points out, we no longer
experience the unvarnished points of physical comparison, the unposed, unrefined,
not necessarily beautiful figures of everybody else. Instead, it's the
ideal body, advertising models, AI porn. See what's going on here?
By practice, we are victimizing ourselves to unfair comparisons, just

(02:30):
like social media used to be. We judge ourselves against
the starting quarterback or the head cheerleader. Now we compete
with movie stars and celebrities. Sure, the starting quarterback and
head cheerleader we're good looking, but they also might have
been dunces and sluts. Things level off. Celebrities and movie
stars are apparently perfect. Social media makes it that way.

(02:52):
We aren't perfect. But without exposure to the normal, are
we growing less comfortable with ourselves? Suddenly what used to
be common care arcturistics are now flaws. We also forget
that sometimes everyday nudity can bring a sense of ease.
Think of older men. They stroll around locker rooms with
a complete lack of modesty. Heck, check out guy's mull

(03:13):
and lawns in the summer, or walk into the edge
of the driveway to collect the morning paper blissfully unaware
or very aware the rest of us would prefer. They
keep the bathrobe closed, while the rest of us wish
shame upon them. They see it as liberating. They're thinking,
is I'm past my body being a big deal, and
so should you. It's very liberating. In many countries, such

(03:36):
beliefs are not confined to sixty five plus men either.
In Europe, communal nudity is common because they treat the
body as quite ordinary. Maybe we could learn from that.
Rather than continually looking for curtains, stalls, and extra towels,
let's reimagine our bodies not for somebody else's entertainment or envy,
but simply a natural component of human life. Stop getting

(03:59):
so hung up on exposure and think of it as
comfortable