Nude Awakening

As public nudity goes, the Dutch attitude is rather hardnosed: take if off. This posture equally applies to their windows—shutter- or curtain-less, in a word: exposed—for the Dutch intently believe they’ve got nothing to hide. “Act normal,” goes the national maxim, “that’s already crazy enough.”

My education in “normal” began the moment I was escorted nude through a local sauna. An American, I found the idea of stripping in public unnerving, but with only one changing room it appeared I had no choice. “If you wear a bathing suit in here, everyone’s going to think you have a terrible disease—or you’re a tourist,” my boyfriend explained, as a man disrobed behind him. “Just do it.”

A new arrival to Amsterdam, I have often, if mistakenly equated a public state of undress with “Live Sex Act.” While I don't find nudity terribly surprising—not at the tender age of 30-something and not as a savvy American who knows that Europeans, and Swedes in particular, bathe bare en masse—what startled me was my reaction. I felt absolute dread.

Such reserve made maneuvering around confidently naked locals tricky, but I tried to look nonchalant. Yet, it was nearly impossible to ignore the impulse to cover myself. Bemused, my boyfriend attempted to reassure me. “You’re a…is ‘prude’ a word?” he asked in blunt Dutch fashion. Yes, I told him, it was a word, arguing weakly that I, on the other hand, was not.

Yet schooled in the cultural ideology that “nude is naughty,” I had to admit, maybe I was—at least from a European perspective. Perhaps I could chalk my reserve down to my cultural forefathers, the Puritans, whose deeply religious, moral zeal made them fear nudity so much they refused to bathe. Unlike more robust Europeans such as the East Germans, who prefer skin to skivvies and have reserved miles of beaches to flaunt it, Americans see nudity as something to hide rather than something to celebrate.

Now ever since Adam and Eve first sported fig leaves, nudity has provoked every emotion from disgrace and contempt to reverence. But stateside, being plain naked is overly complicated. Because our associations are limited to porn, trailer park retreats or hippy naturalists, nudity is either sexualized, or seen as a gimmick.
Sexually, America operates through paradox. Focused on sex while remaining prudish about standards is a huge, if confusing, burden to shoulder. Yet how to explain last year's fury over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” and the networks rush to clean-up before facing clampdowns and stiff fines? A further inconsistency is what Americans regard as risqué: barely-clad teenagers simulating sex for MTV, or a nude grandmother? As Carmel, California proved, it’s clearly the latter. In 2004, the city rejected proceeds from a calendar featuring mature older ladies, fearing potential lawsuits for sexual harassment. Clearly older nudity is threatening because our culture rarely separates nakedness from sex—something the retired crowd, at least until Viagra, wasn’t supposed to be having.

Sweating publicly in my birthday suit, I quickly discovered the experience was the Absolute Opposite of Sexy. While some bodies may attain the media’s high physical standards, most naturally do not. Sitting amongst hairy backs, saggy breasts, dimpled buttocks, beer bellies, scarred or tattooed appendages, odd tan lines, and idiosyncratic pubic borders did not make me want to corner my boyfriend in the nearest shower stall. Hiding eroticizes in a way that being in the buff—direct, upfront and unwaxed—does not.

As for gimmicks, as a writer I’ve tired of seeing colleagues conducting “undercover” exposes, a choice phrase given the situation, on nudist colonies (“just look at those guys playing tennis!”) or the media’s buzz over photographer Spencer Tunick and his nude landscapes. Tunick, who specializes in photographing hundreds of naked bodies sprawled together against an urban backdrop, has definitely pushed social boundaries at home—successfully taking New York City to the Supreme Court for shooting (film, that is) rights on its streets. But I’m more in line with a European friend, who remarked over Tunick’s photos, “Is it a big deal that everyone is naked when everyone is naked?”

In Europe, neither moral outrage nor public disorder greets nudity. Men don't go wild, women remain safe and the zero fashion statement remains just that—something with zero impact. Since returning to the sauna, I’ve gained an appreciation for nudity because here, it’s not tagged as “self-expression,” sold as titillation, nor isolated into a holiday resort. The Dutch seem to understand a plain and simple fact: underneath our clothing, everyone’s naked. That’s definitely normal enough.