Every human enters this world naked. Why have we strayed so far from this most pure, natural state of being? For The Common Reader, Jeannette Cooperman recounts a trip with her husband to the Forty Acre Club, a family nudist resort in the Ozarks, and contemplates the body, vulnerability, and self-acceptance.
There are problems with exposing the body, of course, but there are also problems in cultures that conceal. The more artfully we cover our bodies, the more mystique there is. But the more mystique there is, the greater the desire to own, steal, guard, or violate that alluring, luring, concealed body.
The paradox is built in. Our bodies are our most personal possession, yet they signify our entire species. Privacy and modesty protect what is tender and intimate, but they also wall us off from one another, cover our skin, dress us up until we forget we are animals like any other. Soon the word “animal” becomes pejorative, justifying our dominion over the hairy, unclothed “beasts” that lack our angelic superiority.
One of those hairy beasts, my standard poodle, stretches after a snooze, ready to go anywhere. No need to dress first, nothing to conceal. I watch a tiger leap from a rock, unhindered by hiking shorts, or a horse gallop the prairie with no skirt or scarf to trip over, and I feel deep envy. They are living as they were born, unashamed and unimpeded.
For women, leggings were a revolution.
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