There's no shame in a bit of public nudity

Don't be weird about it

You know, I reckon Australians would be much happier if they weren’t so bloody weird about nudity. Take this Sydney Morning Herald article There’s no shame in a little shame written by a freelancer called Cherie Gilmore. 

It starts thusly: 

“Yes, I see you looking at me in the change room at the pool, your mammaries doing the cha-cha as you dry what would be your short-and-curlies if you hadn’t lasered them off. I’m so pleased you’re immune to shame while displaying your naked flesh, a relief map of the life your body’s traversed. My five-year-old daughter loudly identifies your “BOOBIES” while I scuttle away behind the closed door of the shower to change awkwardly in a puddle of foot fungus. Each to their own.”

Here’s a tip, Gilmour. If you’re able to form an opinion on whether a stranger’s had their pubes lasered off, you need to take two big steps back. 

In this article, Gilmour has the temerity to imply the other woman should feel shame. Not her, the person lingering weirdly in the change room ogling people innocently drying off.

This is a bad start. It only gets worse. The author then slags off red carpet fashion, OnlyFans, Miley Cyrus for some reason, and then proudly asserts that she’s a prude (honey, we know). The article is a garbled mess of ideas that’s best ignored.  

Oh, if only I could. How I wish to be the kind of person who can go through life unruffled by bad takes. But as a fan of getting nude AND good writing, I couldn’t let this one go. 

So as a little palette cleanser, let’s look at a good piece of writing on the subject of nudity. In Ways of Seeing, art critic John Berger wrote: “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.” 

Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at Her Bath

He was talking about the depiction of women in European oil paintings. Rembrandt, for example, would often paint woman naked. If his subjects were unclothed, they had agency in that decision. They were depicted as unidealised, real. In contrast, Titian would paint women for the male gaze. Reclining, doe-eyed, sensual. A classy titty-mag centrefold, if you will. 

Titian’s Venus of Urbino

I read Berger’s essay in high school, but it wasn’t until I started visiting Japanese onsens many years later that I understood this concept as it applied to me. It was in the unselfconscious company of women I realised that, for much of my adult life, I had been treating myself like a nude. Even in my own company I was an object. But relaxing with women of all ages in a bathhouse, I learnt to be naked. 

I can now be comfortable in change rooms because I have not permanently inflicted an imaginary frame onto my body.

And neither should you. Your body is your home; it’s not inherently shameful, naughty, or sexy, though it can be these things if you choose. Yes, sometimes you can be the Titian reclining nude. But mostly when you’ve got your gear off, you’re just naked. 

If you want to be weird about drying off in a public changeroom? That’s entirely your prerogative, just don’t inflict your shame on everyone else.

Oh, and stop staring at other people when they’re getting dressed. It’s super weird.