Like a lot of us, I’ve struggled with body image over the last few years. As someone who definitely wouldn’t be considered skinny, I’ve always needed to juggle my desire for confidence with society’s insistence that my body isn’t worthy of it.
As a result, being naked always made me somewhat uncomfortable. Even when I was alone, it felt like something that I shouldn’t be doing. When getting out of the shower, I would avoid the mirrors in my room and quickly get into my pyjamas.
Once I became aware of my uncomfortability with being naked, however, I started to force myself out of my comfort zone. I tried sleeping naked, cleaning naked, and doing my homework naked. Surprisingly, it worked. While my body image issues didn’t disappear overnight, I did feel a drastically positive difference in how I viewed my body. I became more confident, comfortable, and even proud of the curves that I used to hate.
So, why don’t you do it too? Here are four lessons that I learned after doing more things naked.
It forces you to look at all of your body
Doing more things naked made me realise how rarely I stare at my whole body in the mirror. And when I do, I almost never look at my entire body. I stare at places that I love, like my tits and ass, and blatantly ignore areas that make me want to jump out of my skin, like my stomach and arms. When doing things naked, however, I am forced to look at my body as a whole, rather than in bits and pieces. Instead of only considering parts of my body to be beautiful, I started to see how lovely my entire body was. I even began to see how portions that I despised, like my stomach, make my curves look natural and complete.
It makes you sexier with clothes on
Doing things naked doesn’t just have benefits while you are alone. I found that doing more things naked allowed me to be more confident while I was fully clothed. Because being naked helped me recognise which parts of my body I love most, I was able to wear more clothes that highlighted these parts. For example, one part of my body that I grew to love while naked was my waist. Therefore, when selecting what clothes to wear, I knew that highlighting my waist would make me feel a lot sexier and confident during the day.
Even when I wasn’t wearing clothes that highlighted my best parts, however, I still found myself significantly more confident than before I did things naked. Because I became so much more comfortable with my body, I knew that I didn’t really need to be wearing my favourite outfit to affirm my body. Why do you need sexy clothes when you’re already sexy underneath them!
You can desexualise (or sexualise) your body
Before doing things naked, I was generally only naked for long periods of time while having sex. Consequently, I always felt awkward when I was naked by myself. It made me feel like being naked (even when alone) was something provocative or vulgar. As a result, I viewed my naked body as something that was inherently sexual. Because parts of my body are already highly sexualised by society (like my tits), I always felt somewhat objectified while naked. However, doing more things naked allowed me to detach inherent sexual meaning from my own body. Being naked helped me feel beautiful in ways that weren’t dependent on my sexuality.
Still, sometimes I like to be sexualised lol. And being naked more often helped me do that too. However, rather than just seeing my waist/titties/ass as sexual, I started to see how areas like my thighs and stomach were hot too.
It becomes less weird to be naked around others
The act of taking my clothes off for the first time in front of another person always freaked me out more than actually having sex with them. While being naked in front of another person can be extremely vulnerable, this is even more exaggerated if you can’t even be naked in front of yourself. After doing more things naked, I found myself becoming less scared to take off my shirt or pants in front of a sexual partner. While having sex, I also became less worried about how my body looked or whether my partner was looking at areas I was self conscious about. Instead, I could focus more on my own pleasure, which made sex a lot more fun.
Although I kind of jumped into the deep end when deciding to do things naked, you totally don’t have to. If wiping down your windows while naked is scary, try laying on your couch naked while scrolling through Instagram. Or, rather than being completely naked, try being in underwear or a bra. You can start slow!
While you may not experience the same lessons that I did, you may learn even better ones that are unique to your body image journey. So, get to it! If you’ve had enough time to read this blog, you have enough time to do it naked :)
