Is allowing nudity the only stable solution to the eternal debate on rules about how people can dress?
I'm curious to know if there's any possible rational way to create stable rules, expect just allowing nudity, about this subject without having anyone rightfully complaining that they should be allowed to dress their own body however they want to. Some countries already have a culture of nudist beaches for exemple, so it's already happening in some places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_where_social_nudity_is_practised
61 replies
I am not a nudist, but in principle I believe everyone should be allowed to be nude, pretty much everywhere.
I don't think this will happen in my lifetime.
"i control if you can be nude or not" is a weird thought
That is the current situation. My proposal is rather "we guarantee your freedom to dress however you want, including not clothing at all".
Trackie dacks and UGGs, just brings everyone to the same level.
Yes...simply order excretory end points to be covered sufficiently enough prevent direct contact between them and public surfaces/ other people. Cover the health concerns of it and just let the prudes stew in the anger that they so yearn for.
Sure but I think if you allow nudity you should require people to carry a towel to sit on benches with, people are not consistently hygienic enough for me to be ok with unwashed buttholes rubbing all over chairs and whatnot.
This is not sufficient. I have no problem with the visual of nudity, but living in proximity to other people requires certain caveats to limit the spread of germs.
A towel does not protect me from your holes when we are walking on the sidewalk, or standing in line, or protect the food while you are getting groceries, etc. A towel also has no defined "outside". It can be bootyhole side one sitting and chair side next time.
People have to cover their bottom holes with a garment. From there, I don't care if it's so perfectly fitted that I can see the wrinkles in your stinkle. I don't care if it's clear. But please, no netting, no lace, a genuine holes cover.
Always carrying a towel is really just basic common sense, naked or not. Books have been written about the usefulness of towels.
Although the useful towels aren't always clean. Despite that, they give off an air of "having your shit together".
Hoopy froods just know.
This is why I can't bring a towel with me. I would give off the wrong idea
"Don't forget to bring a towel!" - Towlie
If you're going to carry a towel everywhere, then might as well wear it. But at that point I'm just saying everyone should just wear kilts.
Agreed, nudity increases the potential of hygiene issues. I guess it would be fair rule to make it mandatory to carry some kind of cloth to prevent the non-conscensual sharing of body fluids and particles.
So you would not blame people for what they wear but for the dirtiness they are leaving.
Things exposed to air rather than kept humidly wrapped in cloth support less microbial growth.
👉👈😳
Ew no.
Being naked is different from dressing in sexualized clothing. However, I'm all for people to wear what they want.
Isn't sexualized clothing a very relative appreciation? A conservative religious person and a socially liberal person will have very different opinions about this.
Sexualization is in the eye of the beholder.
There's a chaps wearer within us all
Yes. In many parts of the world most Western women's dress would be immediately tagged as sexualized clothing (which, tbf it was originally; it just got normalized).
I would say it is relative culturally more than individually. We can see when someone is dressing in a sexy or alluring way.
I can see a conservative person thinking more things are sexualized than others, but that doesn't impact what this person is saying.
I don't want to be nude, I just don't want to wear a bra. But that's sexual for some reason because my nips are afab
I personally don't wear a bra except at work. Got so tired of the unnatural barbie doll look being enforced. Even at work I don't bother trying to pad so heavy there is no shape.
That too - padded look seems to be falling out of favor in the mainstream as well.
It's not a sexy thing for me, it's comfortable. I don't need the support so no bra feels best.
Sorry if I am misinterpreting, but I wasn't suggesting not wearing a bra is a choice I make to be "sexy", either for myself or others.
The only reason I ever wear a bra is if I am concerned that people will perceive and sexualize the shape of nipples under clothing. Even then, I have tank tops with padded front sections and a bit of elastic for "support" (not needed). Despite being way, way better than a traditional bra, they are still a sensory nightmare by the end of the day.
I'm clarifying this more for the post as a whole. There are quite a few comments on the post that seem to think that when people say they should be allowed to wear what they want the main conflict is people being restricted from expressing themselves in a sexual manner. Sure, that is one reason people want to have freedom of choice with clothing. Like you mentioned, some people don't want to be pressured into gender norms ("unnatural barbie doll look"). I guess my not wanting to wear a bra is also about gender norms. Nipples showing prominently on a male presenting person might be seen as uncomfortable sometimes but not nearly to the extent it is on female presenting people.
It does, because you want the rule to be applied equally, not depending on someone's opinion.
It feels like you are not understanding what I am saying (which isn't meant as a criticism).
The person you replied to said:
This isn't related to the fairness of a rule. Being naked may or may not be sexual to an individual, but when people say they should be able to dress how they want they aren't necessarily saying they should be allowed to be nude.
This is not a direct reply to this comment: Even if I am fully covered in loose clothing (my preference) it could still be considered sexualized. Policing "sexualized" clothing is about control. Saying "okay well we should just be nude" is just another form of control. There is more than one type of body that is policed but I will speak from my experience: Neither the current social norms nor the idea what we should all be nude allow me to choose clothing that is comfortable, practical, or just enjoyable just because I am AFAB whereas AMAB people can wear such things.
(Eta: my comment comes off as anti-nudity. I'm not anti nudity. I just don't want to be nude in public and not just because I don't want to be seen nude. I burn easily and prefer the ease of changing clothes when I get home.)
yeah this makes sense, half the time i'm putting together an outfit i try to be as close to nude as possible anyway. oh and i do also take every chance i can get to just go fully tits out in public at certain events lmao
The point is rather for you not to worry anymore if you are covering enough of your body to be legal or socially acceptable. If you push this far enough to accept everyone's freedom to dress more or less, you end up with nudity.
I gotta say thanks for that question. It lead me down a rabbit hole of exploring the laws and rules of nudity. It's quite interesting
Nope. Whether nudity is acceptable and whether clothing I don't like is acceptable are two different questions, not two sides of the same coin. In particular the latter seems to be always rooted in xenophobia, which makes it more or less independent of how one feels about the former.
I'm not saying it's too sides of the same coin, more like nudity is a null solution to the problem of setting dressing rules.
What would be your solution?
I understand that, but ultimately the assumption being made here is that arguments about nudity and arguments about, say, hijab are coming from the same place when they're just not. The nudity people and the "clothing I don't like is bad" people are running on fundamentally different logic, so there can be no one response to both. For starters, it's not a coincidence that the latter usually get riled up about Muslims. The solution is to address the relatively uncontroversial subject of nudity as the local community sees fit and address the "hijab (and similar) is bad" problem by getting people to stop being bigots. To repeat, these are two different debates and there's no reason to expect one to apply to the other.
They are exactly two sides of the same coin. We just think it's different because we're indoctrinated into thinking so. Just like people in Islamic countries think the question of whether a woman wears a hijab is way different from whether she wears, say, gloves.
They both were rooted in xenophobia since historically many cultures did not share the same norms around covering body parts as western people did. However, our ethical and fashion norms have been so widely imposed by colonialism that there's hardly any cultures left who do things differently.
If you read older texts you can see how Europeans saw such cultures. They were widely regarded as animalistic savages. And to the extent that some few indigenous groups still practice their own traditions around body adornment, many people still view them that way today.
in a utopia yeah, but we're savages
Define nudity. I some places, topless is not considered nudity. In some places, an uncovered female face is considered nudity and punished harschly.
A human body not being covered by any cloth.
OK, sane definition.
As far as I know there's no such thing as a perfect law or rule. It's per se arbitrary where you draw the line. So the rule of not being nude, or having an exact percentage of your bodies skin covered (which for women in certain Islamic interpretations is a thing) is exactly as stable a rule as the nudism you propose.
That being said, I think that it should be up to everybody to wear what they like, but there is a surprising admit of people that cannot deal with those kinds of liberty and that cling to societal framework for those kinds of decisions. And also a great many that can't seem to deal with the concept of nakedness.
I am arguing nudity is more stable in the case of dressing because you can't go further than no clothes. It's like hitting the bottom of a valley.
Why would you see this as a solution when burkas and face coverings are being argued about even more than nudity?
Ban clothes!
I understand there is also this side of the problem. But I was not thinking about this one when I posted but the maybe older social debate about the degree of covering shoulders and legs, hiding nipples, etc.
I think in Western countries the old debate still impacts more people than the Islamic dressing one, this oen is mostly far right media making a lot of noise about it for baiting.
I see nothing wrong with "just allowing nudity", there are no rational arguments against it. It's not "already happening some places", so much as it's been going on since forever. Social acceptance has waxed and waned, but those who see the wisdom of going nude have been with us always.
I think it's the opinion of most rational people who aren't in the business of controlling large groups of people for their own personal gain, that everyone should wear whatever the hell they want, wherever and whenever they want to.
We all look the same, when nude. You can't tell the "landed gentry" from the poors. That's the whole problem for the oppressors, they need an easy way to sort us quickly by sight when the thugs with clubs are released (the thugs with clubs having their own uniform). Skin color works beautifully because it doesn't wash off. But, what about all the folks with the same color skin as the oppressors? That's where clothes come in. Also, tattoos, whether by choice, or forced upon us.
How Dressing in Drag Was Labeled a Crime in the 20th Century
Sumptuary laws have been with us for thousands of years. Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furniture, or shoes, etc. Historically, they were intended to regulate and reinforce social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures, often depending on a person's social rank.
There's a hygiene issue with places to sit.
Not really though. But since many people think this it's probably best practice to just bring something to sit on until people get used to the idea.
Yes, really. There's a reason nudist communities have towel rules.
The reason is for people's psychological comfort. The risk of ass to ass disease transmission is negligible. Far lower than say, a handshake or breathing near someone.
"How people can dress"??? You may want to think again: Nudity is when people do not dress... ;-)
That is just a modern form of anarchism = wanting to be exempt of any and all rules.
It doesn't have to be taken seriously in every case.
Not without rules, without a ruler. Not the same thing in theory or practice.
Anarchy opposed hierarchy, it does not oppose having rules.
So your thinking is that we should have rules for dressing, is it? Which logic would you follow to define them?
I do not define the rules for dressing. Each society has defined them already.
It's grey, unclear, usually sexist and mostly made of social pressure. I would not say the rules are defined nor fair.
Nope, keep clothes on. I simply do not want to deal with how trashy some people would react to legal nudity all over.
What if it actually puts an end to some of this trashiness because there's no further point, once it gets normalized?
I don't like the way some people dress as is. But it's none of my business and trying to ask the government to violently enforce my preferences on other people would be unhinged.
Where did violence enter this discussion? Lol ohh Lemmy...
The prohibition on nudity is enforced through the state violence we call policing. So when we're talking about the decriminalization of nudity, the question is less whether we want people to be nude or not, but rather whether we want this violence to continue. It is an incredible triumph of propaganda that this routine violence has somehow been obfuscated from most people. Your puzzled response is exactly why I needed to bring it up.
Once we see the question with the proper framing, I think the answer is fairly straightforward. Threatening people with violence for not following our fashion rules is ridiculous.