Nakedness

What is it that people find so upsetting about nakedness? 


This weekend I had the pleasure of camping with about 50 other family groups at our annual gathering of friends.  The festival atmosphere & the freedom it gifts our children & teenagers are precious to us all.  The children charge about in wild abandon; there are marshmallows to be toasted once they've helped to build the fire; music to be heard & felt & danced to; sticks to collect & wooded copses to be explored.  And for some of the littlest people in our group, there is the chance to be completely naked, or just simply pants or nappy free for a while.  This weekend, I heard one young teenager commment on the "disgusting"ness of a 20 month old who was apparently "always naked".  Then we had a cluster of boys laughing at our own boys (almost 3 and just over 5) who were naked inside our tent.  I get that kids are easily embarrassed, that bodies are strange & interesting & a little bit rude...But disgusting?


And then a friend went to school today for her son's show & tell, with her baby as the subject.  She was asked not to say breasts or breastfeeding, and not to answer the question where do babies come from.


It got me thinking.  These kids are not wrong, they are young people learning their way.  But our generation owes them - we need to help them learn respect for themselves, for the wonder of the human body & for other people.  We need to guide them through the confusion of 24 hour media that sexualises adults and children indiscriminately and shames us if we are not air-brush perfect.  We owe them love and respect for their bodies.  Call breasts breasts, call a penis a penis, call a vagina a vagina.  These are not dirty words.  They are not body parts to hide and be ashamed about.  We should be able to know that nudity and private areas of the body can be loved, appreciated...even adored.  We just need to help our children learn when it is appropriate to display them.  But they should never be ashamed of their bodies, their bodily functions, and nor should they be frightened or embarrassed by the nudity and bodily-ness of others.


Nakedness scares us because it can reveal so much more than our lumps & bumps.  These children don't know that yet but they are beginning to pick up on the fears of the adults in their lives.  We are bombarded by overtly sexual imagery.  Constantly reminded of the insidious dangers of the internet.  Subjected to photoshopped perfection at every turn.  Image is everything.  The human body needs to be disguised, reshaped, hidden, improved.  We have become disconnected from our bodies.  


Nakedness is about innocence & freedom and exposure of skin reminds us how much we hide.  


Nakedness is about truth & honesty.  Clothes, make-up, hairstyles.  It's all to create an image that we want to convey our "truth", the "me" that we want to be.  Strip it away and we are terrified of revealing the real "me".  


Nakedness is about fearlessness and acceptance.  How we clothe it so often reflects the depth of our fear and disengagement from our truth.  Or we overcompensate and reveal what is pure & sacred if we only save it for those who deserve to share in our truth.


If I sound confused, I am.  I'm doing plenty of soul-searching at the moment; struggling to expose my truth and I have to see it in all its glory myself before I can bare it to the world.  But realising that nakedness goes beyond a lack of clothing has helped me to realise at least that I want my children to be raised naked.


I want them to bare their all so that they can be accepted for who they, how they are, every moment of every day.  They will know that I love them unconditionally because they will know who they are and so will I.  


There will be no hiding.  Their flesh and bones barely disguise the shining light of their pure souls.  They radiate love.  They ooze raw energy.  And I sincerely hope they always will.  Naked, truthful to themselves and other people.  I want their nakedness to be full frontal and unashamed.  


What they wear doesn't matter; how they feel, how present they are, that matters.  That they feel and know I love them matters.  That they feel and know they are perfect as they are right now, here, in this moment.  I don't always have to love everything they do or say or wear.  No one does.  I will love them, right now, always and forever and so they will rejoice in their "me-ness" and I hope flaunt their nakedness for all to see.


May all our children be naked!