that naked feeling

I don’t always wear nothing around the house. I’m not completely naked.

Well okay, sometimes I am.

But right now, for example, I’m wearing socks and the new blue knit hat I bought the other day.

During the winter I often wear socks. It’s a little chilly. But between hat and socks, I’m wearing nothing but a smile. I find the knit hat does a lot to keep me warm. The next thing I might put on would be a long-sleeve t-shirt or one of several sweatshirt hoodie type things. Pants are always last. It’s not about having my penis hanging out. It’s that the back and shoulders seem to want to be warm more than my legs and butt, etc.

So, I was cooking earlier. The kitchen gets a little warmer than the rest of the apartment, so I took off the knit hat before I went in there. And I had this sensation of being “naked”.

It’s happened before. It’s an interesting sensation. The part of me that most people would consider the defining element of nudity is uncovered the whole time. It’s something else—in this case, the hat—that makes me feel naked when it’s removed. Sometimes it’s happened when I’ve gotten accustomed to wearing socks. It doesn’t happen every time I take something off, but when it does happen it usually lasts several seconds, maybe even as many as 10 or 15.

I think the first time I noticed it was a few years ago when I was at the beach for the winter. I was doing some writing and walking on the beach a lot and making necklaces of shells I’d picked up. I started wearing one—the first one I’d made—almost all the time. So when I was “at home” (in the apartment where I was staying) I was wearing nothing except that necklace. And my glasses. After several days, I took it off, and suddenly felt very naked. It was strange. Interesting, though.

I’ve even had the sensation when I wasn’t technically naked. Not long ago I had a friend over who insisted that I wear something. So I was wearing a thong. And there was a moment when I suddenly had the sensation of being naked. It was just a moment. I guess that’s a little different. I hadn’t taken anything off. In fact, I was wearing more than I normally do, but it wasn’t when I put it on. We’d been hanging out for a while, and I have no idea what prompted it.

That also happens occasionally—a momentary awareness of the fact that I’m “naked” without having taken anything off. But in that case, it’s just for a moment, a second, or less than a second.

The sensation of “feeling naked” isn’t about how much or little clothes one is wearing. I think it’s mostly a matter of what you’re used to. And it doesn’t take all that long to get used to a certain level of clothed-ness or unclothed-ness.

Well, I suppose if you have serious issues with your body image then it might not be quick to happen. But that puts me in mind of something I’ve not ranted about here lately: that people’s being more comfortable with nakedness, and being naked more, would lead to a healthier body image, especially if one grows up that way—seeing normal people with normal bodies naked sometimes, outside of a sexual context. Less shame about what you look like and a better sense of what’s “normal”. 

That’d have to be good for the world, right?