Day 15: Nude
I’ve been to quite a few nude beaches in my life. And I’ve been nude on a lot of beaches.
Mostly as a baby, though. Just to be clear.
Growing up there was one beach we thought of as “our beach.” Not like we owned it. We just spent a lot of time there. For sunrise, sunset, afternoon picnics, lazy Sundays, you name it. Even Christmas.
My parents believed that it was normal for babies to be naked. Especially somewhere like the beach. To them there wasn’t anything offensive about it. It was natural. We were born naked after all. Might as well let the kids wear their birthday suits when they went swimming.
But not everyone saw it the same way.
My dad tells me a story about how this didn’t always go over well.
One day he took me and a friend (we were probably 2-3 years old) to our beach. As usual, we had our beach towels laid out on the sand, folding chairs set up, snacks, water, etc. My dad probably camped out in the chair with a book, looking up now and then to keep an eye on us. And as usual, my friend and I ran around naked, splashing in the water, digging holes, hunting for shells. As kids do.
All in all, a normal day on the beach.
But then the cops showed up.
“Excuse me sir.” Their boots crunched in the sand next to my dad’s chair. “Are those your kids?”
Someone had called them, but not on us. The cops pointed down the beach toward a woman laying topless on her towel.
Our beach was not a nude beach. So this wasn’t normal — or legal. The cops had been called to get her to put her clothes on.
She wouldn’t. She told the cops: “If those kids can hang out here naked, why can’t I?”
And so they approached my dad. Would he please put some clothes on us?
As babies, it’s perfectly natural to bare it all. There’s no masquerade. We’re not embarrassed about our bodies. We don’t try to hide who we are. We laugh, we cry, we sing, we dance. We show our bums and we don’t care. There’s nothing sexual or offensive about it.
And on a nude beach — at least the ones I’ve been to — that’s how adults get to be. Free to feel comfortable in their own skin. Free to be themselves. Free from being offensive and from being shamed. (Notwithstanding a few creeps, of course.)
But the woman on the beach that day was caught in a grey area. Had she been on a different beach, there would have been no problem. But because of where she was, she was being inappropriate — even though she was less naked than us kids.
As adults a lot of us find ourselves in a similar position.
At some point — whether we’re at school, at work, at home, or with friends — we try to be ourselves, and someone steps in to shut us down.
The places in which it was once ok to be ourselves become off limits. We learn that in most areas of our lives it’s not ok to show who you really are. Where we could once laugh, cry, sing, and dance, we learn we must sit still and do our work.
And so, like a nude beach, some of us find spaces where we’re allowed to (try to) be ourselves. The bar. The therapist’s office. Our showers where, if we’re brave, we sing.
But many of us don’t. And over the years, we forget what it’s like to be free.