When promoting naturism, nudism, or any other sort of naked lifestyle we often talk about what we do as being ‘non-sexual nudity’ to distinguish it from what people might assume about us. But is routinely calling it ‘non-sexual nudity’ helping or hindering? By changing how we think and talk, could we begin to flip the narrative?

I have no detailed figures, but it seems to me that there is a lot more non-sexual nudity in everyday life than there is sexual nudity. Even people who would never describe or think of themselves as a naturist or nudist still get changed, have showers and baths, go to bed, try on clothes, go to saunas or health spas, have medical appointments, and do many other activities where some form of nudity is normal or necessary. Many non-nudist people even sunbathe or go swimming in the nude from time to time, especially if they are pretty confident they are not going to be overlooked. All this adds up, and in a global population of however many billion people we have reached at the moment that means a lot of people are experiencing some small part of every day naked.

Compare that to sexual nude activities, whether involving physical intimacy, photography or filming, self-pleasure, flirting, performing, or however else nudity is linked to sex, and – whilst there is definitely a huge amount of this happening all the time – I doubt it all adds up to even a small part of the amount of everyday non-sexual nudity that goes on.

Sex-linked nudity is far more visible than the everyday kind. People film themselves having sex, using toys, or performing for the camera because that gets attention and it sells. Sex is an asset, and if you have an asset that people want to pay money for then why not use it? But far fewer people film themselves naked when doing the hoovering, doing the washing up, getting dressed in the morning, or all of the other nude activities we do every day without thinking about them. And so the perception is skewed. People see a vast amount of filmed and performative sexual nudity, and then automatically assume that any nudity of any type falls into the same category. Add in the tabloid gutter ‘journalism’ [sic] where everyone seen NAKED is SHOCKING or OUTRAGEOUS and the perception is reinforced.

But that belief does not change the facts. There is far more everyday nudity around than people realise, and so maybe it is our job to start to change that narrative. Stop calling what we do ‘non-sexual nudity’ and start calling the other kind ‘sexual nudity’. We need to reclaim the ‘nudity’ tag without any modifiers or qualifiers, because even ‘non-sexual’ has the word ‘sexual’ in it and that association is not what we are after.

Fan Sites and Content

Many nudists, naturists, and other naked people have started posting their everyday nude activities on sites that were traditionally set up with more sexual content in mind, and this is already starting to shift the narrative a little. I set up an account on OnlyFans a while ago to do exactly that, and it is becoming surprisingly popular (well, surprising to me anyway). If you want to check it out, click the button below.