There are few things as controversial as the naked human body – and few things as obsessively adored.
Beyond its function as our vehicle through the world, it bares symbolic resonance across every facet of our lives: in art, the naked body is beauty and desire; in religion, it is lust and sin; in general society, it is offensive; in politics and the working world, the body is a resource; and in your self-conscious brain, well, it could be any of the above. One idea that does not come up often in relation to the naked body is power. Our nude forms offer an opportunity for empowerment and self-determination that can improve our overall wellbeing – provided we’re not afraid to face the naked truth.
Hidden away on the far side of Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard lies the nude beach, Sandy Bay. In the Summer, my boyfriend and I are regular visitors. It’s a good fifteen-minute hike from the Llundudno parking lot to the beach itself – but man is it worth it. Emerging from the bushy trail, one is greeted by a pristine shoreline and a rainbow of umbrellas. As you get closer, you’ll find every kind of naked body nestled against the dunes or braving the icy-cold ocean. It is a veritable wonderland of the human form.
The last time we were there, over the December holidays (and a couple of drinks in), we began a game of taking nude pictures of each other and sending them to people we knew over Instagram (with consent, of course). Shy at first, I eventually warmed up to the camera and found that, to my surprise, I was enjoying myself – I liked the feeling of being looked at. With encouragement from my boyfriend, and positive responses from those receiving the photos, I felt desirable and beautiful – and I was really just having a good time.
Nudity is one of humanity’s oldest preoccupations, just look at our art. The first known depiction of the naked body is widely accepted to be the Venus of Willendorf, an eleven-centimetre-tall figure created sometime between 28 000 and 25 000 B.C. After that, nude figures became prominent in ancient Greece, favouring the athletic male body or romantic idealisations of female goddesses. These works of art were not created purely for sexual objectification (although sex and desire are inherently tied up in them), but as a way to see ourselves and represent the ideal form. They are a celebration of humanity in its most natural state.
In the digital age, nudes can accomplish the same thing – but better. For one, if you are sending nudes, you generally have way more control over who is seeing them and what they are seeing (revenge porn excluded) versus the subject of a painting or sculpture, whose image is managed by the artist and then viewed by entire crowds.
In contrast to art, taking nudes can help you become familiar with your own body. I would not be naive enough to suggest that it will cause you to fall in love with every curve and wrinkle, but at the very least it can give you a real and honest sense of your form. It’s also a way of subverting the ‘ideal’ body. If you can idealise your own body, you can begin the work of unlearning desire and comparison with what we’re told looks good.
It’s not that easy for most people. For those who’ve had a difficult relationship with their body, the idea of documenting it – never mind sending the picture – can be riddled with shame and anxiety. A friend I spoke to about the topic mentioned that they had to unlearn a lot of the hate they’d developed towards their body and also to not feel ashamed for liking sex or wanting to feel sexy. It took a lot of self-work for them to feel comfortable and confident – but once they had, that’s when taking nudes became empowering.
Again, we can look to art for some context here. Following the rise of Christianity, nudity all but disappeared from Western art. Some exceptions include depictions of Adam and Eve, whose nakedness served only to reveal their sin, and Jesus, whose naked body revealed his wounds. In the Middle Ages, naked bodies were depicted more grotesquely. Institutions like religion introduced an aspect of shame into nudity, sex, and desire. They told us to cover up and keep quiet about these things (largely to control women, but that’s another topic). Being nude was no longer associated with athleticism, fertility, or having awesome public orgies, but rather with weakness and defencelessness.
Since then, capitalism has taken over as the major world religion and uses the suggestion of nudity to sell us things. Since these bodies are always perfectly and unrealistically athletic, it’s had almost the same effect as Christianity in terms of inducing shame on anyone who doesn’t look the same way. With that in mind, I would argue that taking and sending nudes of your beautifully imperfect body is, in fact, an act of resistance.
Feeding your own and others’ desire and sexuality in this way is revolutionary because it puts you back in control of what is real and what is sexy. On top of that, research suggests that building a positive body image is of significant practical importance since it impacts aspects of well-being – including self-esteem, optimism, proactive coping, safer sex intentions, sexual satisfaction, general health-related behaviours, and sexual health expectations. Learning to love yourself nude can quite literally improve your life.
As it turns out, visiting your local nude beach may be a stepping stone to getting on good terms with your naked body. The British Naturism organisation suggests that communal naked activity leads to improvements in body image. A 2018 research article titled The Right to be Publicly Naked: A Defence of Nudism explains that the effect occurs due to a recalibration of one’s perceptions of normal bodies and thus, of one’s own attractiveness compared to other people.
Public nudity and taking nudes also help to separate being naked from sex. While both can be sexual when they want to be, depending on the context, they can also be intimate and empowering, revealing the parts of ourselves we’ve been told to hide or be ashamed of. They can also both just be fun – if that’s where you’re at.
That day on Sandy Bay, buoyed by the thrill of nude-taking and sending, I suddenly fell in love with every single body in the vicinity. They were all here, and all naked, of their own accord. Deciding to enjoy your body is no small feat – it makes you vulnerable and opens you up to potential criticism and judgment. But why should you care, if you’re doing it for your health?
If you’re not quite at the nude beach stage yet, don’t let it stop you from taking private pictures in the meantime, Sometimes, it’s enough to keep the images in your secure gallery, like love letters from yourself to yourself. In the iconic words of television’s Moira Rose, “take a thousand naked pictures of yourself now. You may currently think ‘Oh, I’m too spooky,’ or, ‘nobody wants to see these tiny boobies.’ But believe me, one day you will look at those photos with much kinder eyes and say, ‘dear God, I was a beautiful thing.’”
