Question for those of you who like to be seen naked

[Ed]

How old were you when you first realised you wanted to be seen naked?

Was it just a general growing awareness or was there some catalysing event/moment?

[Anonymous]

It’s complicated and it’s varied over time. I’ve copied and pasted these comments from various things I’ve posted here before. Warning though – the early experiences are a bit weird.

• “My upbringing has given me the confidence to be naked. I think aspects of my childhood were borderline weird though. My mum was an exhibitionist. My sister, not me, started us playing strip games. We were sometimes kept naked after a bath as a punishment.”
• “When we were teenagers, me, my friend, my sister and her friend used to play games, often with some degree of stripping involved. With board games, we had to take something off if we rolled a double. It’s good harmless fun, often with very few clothes removed, but there’s still a real risk of ending up naked.”
• “As very small children, my sister and I used to to share a bath but – again – that’s just normal family life. My mother had a slightly odd side to her. I remember that if one of us was naughty we’d have to wait a long time after a bath to be allowed to put our pyjamas on, even after we were old enough to be at school. I also remember us having to model our new clothes, even minimal underwear, and that was very weird. That went on for much longer. Her exhibitionism got a bit out of hand when we were teenagers but that didn’t involve me getting naked, just her leaving her dressing gown very loose all evening on many occasions…
• …So what about times when I stripped on purpose? That started when my sister asked me once if I wanted to see her naked. Of course I did but we were so young it was just about curiosity. That grew into playing strip games and we very soon started playing with one of my friends, one of her friends, and – at least once – her friend’s brother but he didn’t seem to enjoy it. We were going through puberty then, so say aged 11-ish???”

Also, up until a couple of years ago (it feels like longer), a group of us used to meet up occasionally and got into the habit of playing stripgames. It was just something we did. Some moved away and we lost the habit, but who know what would happen if we ever manage a reunion!

Going back to the question, when I was growing up I sometimes acted out fantasies of being visible naked, either tied to my bed or walking around outside at night. I now seriously believe that was a symptom of something not right in my juvenile head. When I was playing teenage stripgames I didn’t like losing at first but gradually got to the point of wanting to lose and eventually wanting to get the most “revealing” forfeits. More recently with friends, I didn’t mind at all. It was just a closely-knit group having fun. Most recently now though I’ve gone back to seeing it as a challenge. I’ve appeared naked on NE a few times and it gets more challenging each time. I enjoy the challenge but I don’t particularly like the results.

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[Ed]

Thank you for that comprehensive reply, @profgreen. One thing I am particularly curious about is this: You say you’ve appeared naked on NE a few times and “it gets more challenging each time” – Why do you think that is?

I usually find people get more at ease with nudity over time. I know you say you don’t particularly like the results. Do you mean you’re not happy with your body but you like the act of displaying it?

[Anonymous]

“you’re not happy with your body but you like the act of displaying it” – yes, that probably hits the nail on the head, even though I always find other people’s bodies interesting however out of shape they are 🙂

I enjoy the challenge though.

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[Steve]

Not sure I wanted to be seen naked, just enjoyed the feeling of it. The dares were good as it stretched me, surprised how far I went.

Intrested in an experiment wehen you can get them going again.

, Ed and Martin like this

[Anonymous]

Glad it’s not just me 🙂

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[Martin]

Can’t recall when I first wanted to be seen naked. But I do recall a strip game with the next door neighbour (female) when I was about 12 years old, and one at a camp when I was about 14 with others boys.

then a long period of not wanting to be naked, and that’s now turned round into an attitude of not caring or treating my skin as a costume in films. Perhaps trying to make up for lost time….

and Ed like this

[Ed]

I’m not sure the experiments will get going again this year, sadly. My area’s in a lockdown currently and it sounds like things are going to get worse on that front before they get better.

The best I can hope for is a socially-distanced, mask-wearing experiment with people from my immediate area, and that would need to be outdoors to be legal. Now I’ve described the requirements, I can see it’s not viable.

It does make me wonder if, in general, more people might attend experiments if masks were required? It’s got to be easier to be naked when you’re shy if no-one can see your face.

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[Sangroid5k]

Lot to say, but I’m on a phone, so who knows?

I think the quarantine makes for a very appropriate time to explore more individual challenges. It’s feasible, virally safe, and…

One of the elephants in the nudity room regards where eroticism and nudity intersect. Formal nudism seems to pull a muscle, and not the fun one, insisting that this is all clean, natural, healthy, and that only someone with his mind in the gutter would dare let an erotic thought a moment of attention.  (Ok, that’s a bit extreme, but sometimes you have to exaggerate to make the point.)

Nudity is not necessarily erotic, but it’s more so than many of its advocates suggest.  This is my tortured way of saying that, in isolation, any kind of human engagement that may even tangentially involve that in an bright, fun, inventive way is healthy.

Regarding my interest in nudity?  Always. We had Playboys around the house, and from a very, VERY early age, they triggered erections and those felt great. So, there was no way I could not associate nudity with pleasure.  It didn’t take much advanced reasoning to identify what was different about Playboy and why it got different results: the people in it were naked.  Thus, I associated anyone being naked, including myself, with something positive.  Clothes of course were a default state, but my thought then and now when wearing them is that a special and powerful state is possible by removing them. It can still distract me from almost anything.  In some ways I personally dislike the attitudes at camps and colonies because, in their effort to make it safe, they take some of the fun out of it.

The moment I was alone, I would strip. Still do. I was fascinated with a Superman comic where he was shot by some kind of alien weapon and people thought he was dead because only his costume came fluttering to Earth.

Psychotics often manifest a sense of delusional self-importance by having mental breaks and disrobing.  They consider themselves beyond limits.  Yes, they’re mad.  But I get a little of the reasoning.  Naked, I feel more confident and more myself.  Not because it’s natural, but because it has an almost occult, evocative power to intrinsically acknowledge the erotic energy we have along with all of our other qualities.  Clothed, we can call upon all dimensions but one of our personalities to solve problems and represent ourselves.  Nudity is the state that allows us to include one more dimension and exclude nothing.  How we are taken by others?  That’s another matter.  That, in some ways, is up to them.  But the inner power of nudity is something I’ve always felt, and I feel it more and more as I age.

 

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[Anonymous]

Depending on the context, the erotic side to nakedness is part of the fun so I agree – saying the two are never connected is doing a dis-service to nakedness and to erotica. I think there is more of a problem in the other direction. Using nudity to represent eroticism is like using a grain of rice to represent a curry, with the added problem that people who want to keep everyone’s eroticism out of sight then feel a logical need to ban nudity, even breast feeding, from public sight and that’s not good.

“Psychotics often manifest a sense of delusional self-importance by having mental breaks and disrobing.” Well, maybe that’s a symptom of some kinds of psychosis and I know that loss of inhibitions can be a symptom of other mental health issues. I definitely wouldn’t put all psychotics under the same umbrella though. It’s a very broad diagnosis, ranging hugely in symptoms and severity. Mine became “serious” because of its duration, not its (very mild) severity.

When I was writing earlier (above) about the me finding it more challenging now to strip completely naked on camera than I used to, it did cross my mind that perhaps I used nakedness as a way of confronting my mental health issues, and now that I’m well again (and have been for some time), maybe that’s why it’s becoming more difficult for me. I don’t have the incentive of needing to distract myself from what’s in my head and I do have the barrier of increased inhibitions to overcome.

[Sangroid5k]

I thank you for refining the psychology reference.  That was how my own psychiatrist depicted it to me in 2006, when a very unhappy woman tried to break down the door to my mother’s home on Christmas night.  She was naked, banging on the door, insisting someone named “John” was within. She then identified herself as Jesus Christ and demanded to be let in. Unfortunately, I’m an atheist.  Anyway, my doctor later said that it was not wholly uncommon with people with certain diagnoses.  He said that in some instances, you’d occasionally find a shoe, then a block or so later, another shoe, then trousers, etc, until at the end you found a naked man claiming some incredibly powerful identity.

I have wondered if growing lack of inhibitions is something related to a mental imbalance.  I don’t think so.

Ed and like this

[Anonymous]

No, I don’t think so either. Having fun is a lot different from going insane. (At least I hope so!)

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[Author]

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