The Weirdest Thing About Social Nudity Is How Normal It Is

Sep 10

Written By Neville Tulloch Jr.

At first, you notice every body. Then you start noticing everything else.

Before you ever step into a social nudist space, you may already have built the whole experience up in your head.

You picture what it might look like.

Who might be there?

How awkward it could feel.

What everybody else might look like.

And probably a few things that have absolutely nothing to do with what actually happens.

If you have never been to a nude beach, nudist park, campground, club, resort, or anything similar, the idea of being around that many naked people can do a lot of heavy lifting inside your head.

You picture naked people everywhere.

Which, to be fair, is accurate.

But you might picture the nudity as the event.

You might imagine walking in and having your brain start screaming:

PENIS.

BREASTS.

ASS.

OH MY GOD, ANOTHER PENIS.

Look how big her breasts are.

Okay... that looks different.

I did not expect that.

Look at all the different skin tones.

I never realized how different bodies can look.

That scar is huge.

I have never seen an older person naked before.

I have never seen someone younger than me like this before.

I wonder if that person is trans.

I’ve never seen that before.

Do I look like that?

Do people see me the way I am seeing everybody else?

Am I staring?

Did I just stare?

Oh shit, I definitely stared.

And honestly, maybe you need to let all of that happen.

Your eyes and your brain are taking in a lot at once.

For some people, this may be the first time they have ever seen that many naked bodies in one place. All shapes. All sizes. All ages. Different skin tones. Scars. Bodies that do not look anything like the narrow versions of bodies we are usually shown.

That is a lot of input.

So maybe you need ten minutes.

Maybe you need an hour.

Maybe you never completely stop noticing the nudity.

That is fine too.

The point is not that everybody eventually becomes completely unaffected by it.

The point is that if you made it through the gate, onto the beach, into the park, or through the door, then some part of you was already curious enough or comfortable enough to be there.

Now you may simply need time to sit with what you are seeing.

Let your eyes take it in.

Let your brain catch up.

Let the shock, curiosity, awkwardness, or whatever else showed up have its moment.

You do not have to force yourself to act like none of it is registering.

Because, of course, it is registering.

You are seeing something your brain may not be used to seeing.

So give yourself time to absorb it.

And then see what happens after some of that noise starts to settle.

For some people, maybe that whole mental circus lasts a few minutes.

For others, it might be more like:

Well, alright. Everybody is naked.

And then they keep walking.

That is the first thing worth remembering.

People do not all react the same way.

Some people need time to settle in.

Some people adjust almost immediately.

Some people may not be particularly bothered by the nudity at all.

They are more concerned with whether they know anybody, where they are supposed to go, or whether they are standing around looking like the new kid on the first day of school.

Because sometimes the weirdest part is not being around naked people.

Sometimes it is simply being the strange one.

Everybody else may already be living their Tuesday.

You are the new person.

And being the new person anywhere can feel awkward.

Maybe you become extremely aware of where you are looking.

Maybe you do not.

Maybe you are wondering:

Am I looking too long?

Did they notice me looking?

If I look away immediately, does that somehow make it worse?

Should I look people in the eyes?

Why have I suddenly forgotten how human eye contact works?

Meanwhile, the person you are having this entire internal crisis about may simply be trying to remember where they left their sunglasses.

Or maybe none of that bothers you.

Maybe what bothers you is that everybody else seems to know each other.

They are talking.

Laughing.

Walking around like they have done this a hundred times.

And you are standing there thinking:

Okay. I made it here. Now what the hell do I do?

That is where something as simple as somebody saying hello can matter more than the nudity itself.

Because the bodies may not be overwhelming you.

The feeling of being alone might be.

And that is something people do not talk about nearly as much.

The other thing people do not always talk about is how quickly the nudity can become background.

Not for everybody at exactly the same speed.

Not necessarily completely.

But once you are no longer trying to process every single body in front of you, you may finally start noticing everything else that is happening.

Absolutely normal shit.

Somebody is drinking coffee.

Somebody is reading a book.

Somebody is arguing with their spouse about whether they remembered the sunscreen.

Some guy is standing beside a grill holding a spatula with the seriousness of a surgeon.

A woman is looking through her bag for something she swears she packed.

Somebody has lost their keys.

Again.

There is always somebody looking for something.

Apparently, removing your clothes does absolutely nothing for your organizational skills.

That might be one of the funniest things about social nudity.

People imagine the setting will somehow become exotic simply because everybody took their clothes off.

There must be excitement.

There must be temptation.

There must be some kind of secret naked-person energy floating through the air.

No.

Sometimes there is a man sitting in a lawn chair eating potato chips.

That is it.

That is the scandal.

Barbecue flavor.

And once you see enough ordinary behavior happening around naked bodies, the bodies can stop being the headline.

At first, you may notice everything.

Tall bodies.

Short bodies.

Skinny bodies.

Big bodies.

Old bodies.

Young adult bodies.

Bodies with scars.

Bodies that have clearly spent decades living actual lives instead of preparing for a swimsuit commercial.

Eventually, the naked guy walking past you becomes the guy carrying a cooler.

The naked woman by the pool becomes the woman who has been reading the same paperback for two hours.

The couple across the way becomes the couple who apparently cannot agree on where to put their chairs.

The body moves into the background.

Life moves to the front.

That is what undercuts many of the expectations people bring into nudist spaces.

Some people imagine everybody is looking.

Everybody is comparing.

Everybody is judging.

Everybody is secretly evaluating everybody else like some deranged panel of naked Olympic judges.

Six point five for posture.

Seven for symmetry.

Points deducted for excessive body hair.

Except that most people are busy living their own lives.

They are wondering what is for lunch.

They are checking the weather.

They are deciding whether they feel like getting in the water.

They are trying to remember if they locked the car.

They are having the same ordinary conversations people have everywhere else.

Work.

Kids.

Food.

Money.

Travel.

Some idiot on the news.

The difference is that nobody is wearing pants while complaining about it.

Another assumption that tends to follow social nudity around is that removing clothes automatically makes everything sexual.

But context matters.

Behavior matters.

Intent matters.

A naked person asking whether you know where the restroom is does not suddenly make the moment erotic because their ass is visible.

They still need the restroom.

You still either know where it is or you do not.

This is not foreplay.

You are giving directions.

And that normalcy can be surprising.

You may have built this enormous thing in your head.

You imagined crossing some psychological frontier.

You expected trumpets.

Lightning.

Maybe a naked choir.

Instead, fifteen minutes later, you might be wondering whether the coffee is any good.

That is the weird part.

Not that people are naked.

How quickly naked can stop feeling like the most important thing happening.

For some people, that adjustment may take minutes.

For others, longer.

Some may never completely stop noticing it.

And some may never experience a dramatic adjustment at all because they arrived curious, comfortable, or simply ready to see what the place was like.

The point is not that everybody reacts the same way.

The point is that once the nudity stops demanding all the attention, ordinary life is still sitting there waiting.

People still have insecurities.

They still compare themselves sometimes.

They still have moments when their own brains decide today would be an excellent day to criticize their stomach.

Walking into a nudist space does not magically turn anybody into some enlightened woodland creature who has transcended every body issue they have ever had.

But it can be interesting to look around and realize that nobody else appears to be auditioning for anything either.

They are just there.

Existing.

And maybe that is why the ordinary moments end up being the memorable ones.

Not the nudity itself.

The guy is trying to carry too many things at once.

The woman is yelling across the pool because somebody forgot a towel.

A conversation that starts about the weather and somehow ends with somebody explaining their lawn mower.

People laughing.

People eating.

People walking around.

People doing absolutely nothing worth writing home about.

Except everybody is naked.

And somehow that can become the least interesting detail.

There is something almost hilarious about how much fear, fantasy, embarrassment, curiosity, morality, and general nonsense we manage to attach to the human body.

Then you go somewhere where bodies are simply present and discover that life refuses to become exotic just because pants disappeared.

Bills still exist.

Mosquitoes still bite.

Coffee still gets cold.

People still lose their keys.

Couples still bicker.

Someone somewhere is still talking too long about something nobody asked about.

Civilization survives.

Turns out pants were not holding the whole thing together.

Who knew?

Maybe that is the real surprise of social nudity.

Not that nudity is revolutionary.