[…]For more than a century, the cultural norm in the United States was that nudity was acceptable—at least within same-sex environments. Over the past couple of decades or so, that idea has largely dissolved. This sort of nudity is so rarely discussed that we don’t really have vocabulary for it. The term nonsexual nudity feels inadequate, because for some, changing in a locker room could carry a charge of eroticism. Communal nudity is no better, evoking images of orgies or nudist colonies rather than once-routine forms of unclothed life. The fact that the practice never really had a name suggests how unremarkable it once was.
This decline partly reflects shifts in the culture: In a world that recognizes a wide range of gender identities and acknowledges attraction across those boundaries, the old mainstream assumption that same-sex facilities were inherently asexual—and therefore appropriate settings for nudity—no longer holds. At the same time, broader conversations about consent, sexual assault, and vulnerability, as well as the ubiquity of phone cameras, have raised questions about the discomfort or even legal liabilities that such spaces can create.
Although these changes are largely positive, they also introduce a new reality: Today, the only naked bodies that many Americans will likely ever see are their own, a partner’s, or those on a screen. Gone are our unvarnished points of physical comparison—the ordinary, unposed figures of other people. In their place, we’re left with the curated ideals of social-media posts, AI-generated advertising, and pornography. The loss may seem trivial, but it also may change how people see themselves. Without exposure to the normal variety of bodies, we may become less comfortable with our own, more likely to mistake common characteristics for flaws—and more inclined to see every bare body as an inherently sexual object, making nudity even more charged.
Story time: I was at the gym and my son and I (then 6) had just finished showering after swimming. We’re finishing getting dressed and this older dude, not a handsome fella, was walking all around the he locker room with his hog out. He easily qualified as a gross old dude, apparently, to the guy behind us who said of my son, “he doesn’t need to see that”.
I thought the comment odd, thought the nude dude did look a little gnarly, the locker room is the place for that.
That said, my son and I choose to wear towels between the showers and the lockers, but that’s for us.
As I side note, I asked my kid later about the nude dude and he too though the guy fell squarely into the “gross” category.
I think Australia has inherited the British prude-ness of it being very normal and possible to go your whole life never ever seing another person naked IRL, Europe has co-ed saunas being normal, Japan has sex-segragated bathing (both things are weird to the other culture) and then UK is like, no nude ever~!
Hard disagree. Go to the beach or a public pool and you’ll see a wide variety of body types. There’s not much covered by a swim suit that you were staring at in a locker room. The loss of locker-room nudity changes little or nothing of how much nudity the average person sees.
The issues they mention are real–people comparing themselves to people in porn and social media–but casual nudity in a locker room has little impact on that. These issues have existed for as long as people have lived in organized society.
And even if there were some small positive that we’re losing, the positives so massively outweigh them that the article’s take seems laughable.
Genuine question: what are the positives, in your view?
Students at College Station shower at the gym with underwear on. Because they will send gays out of control.
USA is so fucked up about the body, but completely numb to violence.
American born and raised here. Since I started swimming at the local gym I now get naked in the locker room pretty regularly. It still has novelty in that I always think about if I should put on a towel to wak to/from my locker to the shower, how my body looks (which is funny because I know virtually no one cares), and whether anyone is silently judging me for being naked too much. And if there is a kid I get even more in my head. But I am happy to be doing it because I want to have a more neutral connection to my and others’ bodies.
When I was a kid, I’d go to Zuerich every other year to visit family. My cousins would be frolicking in the nude with their friends around the pool, and it was, frankly unnerving. We’re so used to nudity being “bad” that standard practices throughout history are now anachronisms.
Americans are fucked up about nudity. It’s no thing. Relax.
Thank god for that, it was horrifying as is to be a middle school locker room.
This article completely ignores that bully/harassment aspect of it.
