Coming to terms with naked truths of nudity

Nudity has been in my face this week — literally — and it appears to be all about context. Not just cultural context, but situational context, writes Suzanne Harrington. 

On a work trip, I find myself in a country where nude sauna is the norm. No way am I doing that, says a fellow writer, wrapping themselves tightly in their complimentary fluffy robe. Another ‘forgets’ to come to the sauna entirely.

And who can blame them. We are terrified of nudity. In Ireland, we prefer to stagger about on windswept beaches clutching towels as shields with one hand as we try to hop and wriggle in and out of swimming costumes with the other. Even in single sex changing rooms, we are afraid. (Huge respect to the 2,500 naked ladies of Magheramore Beach — perhaps one day they’ll be joined by 2,500 naked men, and it won’t be a big deal).

This is unlikely to happen just yet, given how our culture has sexualised nudity to the point that we are offended by public breastfeeding. We are also profoundly conditioned to have zero tolerance of ordinary bodies, because our images of the naked human body have been so intensely pornified. We are only ever shown physical perfection by the media. We never, ever see representations of lived in, baggy, lumpy bodies beyond our own bathrooms. Bodies, we are told, are about sex, sex, sex, and if your body does not conform to received notions of desirablilty, then keep it hidden. Because it’s disgusting.

What absolute liberation then, once the initial ‘yikes!’ moment wears off, to witness a group of men and women share a large sauna where the only towels are for sitting on. Fat, thin, old, young, hairy, smooth — all together, enjoying the shared experience of a very hot sauna in an environment where total nudity has been totally desexualised. It’s just bodies, like a Spencer Tunick installation, except without needing the justification of art.

I sit next to a very large naked lady, because I am intimidated, conditioned, hung up, self-conscious — until I realise that I am the only person in the sauna still wrapped in my towel. My head tells me I am too fat, too scarred, too old, too saggy, to dare expose my body; my eyes tell me that there are fatter, older, saggier bodies all around me, and nobody cares.

My towel slips away, and the heat covers me all over. Nobody looks, nobody cares. It feels glorious. It feels free. It feels suffocatingly hot. These sauna people are hardcore.

The next day, coming home through Brighton, I get caught up in the annual Naked Bike Ride. Once again, the context of nudity hits me in the face. The bike riders seem cheerfully exhibitionist, the general public cheerfully voyeuristic. It seems desexualised mixed nudity only works when everyone participates, when it happens in a designated place free of the ogling clothed, and where such desexualisation is embedded in the culture. Only then does it feel truly free.