Psychobabble

WHY SO MUCH HUPLA, WE ARE BORN NAKED AND IN REALITY WE ENJOY SEEING OTHER PEOPLE NAKED.

Our society's taboo against nudity can be understood fairly well through several proximate explanations such as the rise of religion or the emergence of a sense of social convention and custom. Whatever the case it seems the taboo against nudity arose very recently in our evolutionary history, perhaps with the rise of civilization as our social systems became more complex. As for the functional evolutionary purpose of this social phenomenon, I think an interesting explanation would be that the taboo developed in a way similar to the way Freud explains the creation of religion through the use of the totem. I'm a little unclear on the exact details of his theory, but it involves the deification of particular animals as symbols based on imposing a ban on eating or killing them except during special ceremonies. I figure this same kind of method could have been used to exalt sex. By establishing a taboo on nudity and overt sexuality and reserving the sex act to a divinely-ordained consummation of the institution of marriage, sexual intercourse is imbued with a wealth of meaning and value outside of the purpose of reproduction. If sex were merely a pragmatic means of passing on one's genes, it seems to me that modern men and women would be much less eager or even willing to copulate. I think that much of the seemingly primal lust and sexual attraction observed in say adolescent boys today could very well be as much attributable to social influences as it is to our genes' desire to replicate. Because sex is taboo except for at certain ordained times, it is glorified and thus our society pressures young men and women to lust after members of the opposite sex, This explanation surely wouldn't explain all sexual desire, but I think this type of social adaptation could be very useful in assuring the propagation of an increasingly intellectual and individualistic species for which copulation of itself has become a relatively low priority.

Nudity is fun and exciting. In our society, we like to make fun and exciting things illegal to make them more fun for people who have enough gall to do them.
Nudity being illegal is synonymous to public nudity being found inappropriate by the majority of society, but it also serves to make the times when we get nude with each other tantalizingly different, almost magical.
And then public nudity: there is nothing so fun. Imagine- a full crowd at the Patriots' stadium with the weather around 25 F, all of them to be your audience when you run nude out to the 50 yard line at half-time. People are chasing you, your family's watching, laughing histerically, and after running around in your birthday suit for about 1 minute you are tired and let yourself be tackled by burly security guards. Nothing beats it!

For whatever reason, nudity at some point became unacceptable in our society. Some things have simply become so widely accepted as wrong that there is hardly any chance of them changing. There are certain words, for example, that are considered unacceptable in public and on television while other words meaning the exact same things are totally acceptable. As is the case with many traditions, customs, and taboos in our society, the idea of nudity being unacceptable is simply so deeply ingrained within our culture and ourselves that the unacceptability of it will no doubt be taught to our children and theirs as well. For generations and generations, this has happened. The fact that most religious texts also do not allow public nudity obviously does not help either. That fact only makes us more sure that for whatever reason, there is something wrong with it. Because for so long this has simply been "the way it is," people have rarely questioned it and the unacceptability of it has only grown until very recently.

The issue of nudity seems, to me, to be stemmed from the issue of religion. As a nation the US is puritanical in origin, and, as such, has draconian laws that seem archaic in mordern society. When given a closer look, the criminal offense of being nude in public seems to be associated with pagan worship.

Worship of multiple gods brings about the image of things such as Roman baths, and, more importantly, nudity among the sexes.

As for being more obsessed with what is underneath when we are forced to cover up, that too seems to hold water. But, does it seem to hold water because we have been raised by the phrase "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence," or, did that phrase sprout out of truth? Again, was it the chicken or the egg?

The last comment brings up a chicken and egg issue. Are we a more sexualized culture because nudity is taboo, or vice versa? I suppose one could do an interesting sociological study to see whether countries with more progressive values toward nudity spend less money on pornography and suggestive clothing. Anecdotally, Amazonian tribes that don't make an effort to conceal, certainly don't seem oversexualized.

It just seems that there is some need to signal our physical assets to others. If laws crop up to prevent this, we find work-arounds like string bikinis. Also, isn't the case that the more we cover something up, the more interested we become in what's underneath?

Yes, nudity is our natural state because we are born nude, but there is nothing sexual about being nude as a baby. But by the time we reach adulthood, nudity has implicit sexual connotations and I don't see anything wrong with having some limits about when and where a person can expose themself. It would be nice to think that allowing nudity on television would result in a more progressive public understanding of the natural beauty of the human body, but I don't think this would ever happen in today's hypersexualized society. So it's fine by me not to risk seeing genitalia when I channel surf since it would probably be in a raunchy music video rather than in a more tasteful manner. As for nudity in public, even when you take away the sexual aspects of the argument, it's still a hygenic issue isn't it? I'd rather not have to sit in a desk that has had other people's naked bits sitting in them all day. It's bad enough just using public restrooms! Did clothes first appear as a solution to sanitary issues or just as a form of modesty?

Amy has hit on the key issue, in my opinion - sex. It's not that we're uncomfortable displaying or viewing flesh. Having visited the indoor water park at Masanutten fairly recently, I can only assume that the vast sea of Virginians I encountered favor public exposure of skin. The only things that are off limits are genitalia (both male and female)and breasts (or more specifically, the region of the breast with nipples - female only). The former tend to be guarded in most other cultures as well, the latter are hidden and obsessed over only in certain societies. Is there some societal evil that will reveal itself if women reveal themselves?

It's an interesting question, and I have never really put to uch thought into why I wear clothes. The terms people often use to refer to nudity are "gratutitous" or "offensive". And come to think of it, I would probably feel "offended" if I saw someone walking around naked. What I don't understand is why people find this natural state offensive, especially because everyone looks like that under clothes.

I agree with Walker that clothes have become a cultural status symbol. In the same way, I think nudity is often equated with sex in our society. I guess that public nudity is classified as a crime because people see it as sort of a live, walking pornography. Yikes.

It seems like although we all came into the world naked, clothes began to show a functional purpose of protecting us from the elements. Today there are certainly many times of year in which clothes probably are not necessary, but we would still never think of going out in public naked. It seems that the reason for this is simply conformity. Everyone wears clothes, and it makes us uncomfortable when people do not conform to the rules of our society. It is also interesting to note that although clothes were probably first created because of their functional value, today they have evolved into an integral part of our culture and even a status symbol.