I grew up in a household where my father let it all hang out…literally. He wasn’t a nudist – he just didn’t care that the family saw him in all his glory. I was always a little repulsed by this, so one day I finally said, “Dad, you never wear any pants!”
His response? “Well, at my age, you forget to zip up, you forget to zip down…”
I never ever let my parents see me naked after I was 9 or 10. Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m an adult and I don’t feel it’s appropriate.
On the other hand, I have a friend who is 30 years old and doesn’t care. Her mom will walk in while she’s bathing and hand her the phone when she has a call (yes, she lives with her family again, but has good reason for it). If she doesn’t have any clean underwear in her room, she’ll walk down to the laundry room completely in the buff to get some, passing her dad and brother on the way. She’s not a party girl who tears it all off, either. She’s a sexy, attractive woman, but dresses very conservatively and never exposes her midriff.
So I ask: Do you still let your parents/siblings/extended family see you naked? Why or why not?
Considering my mom is fairly conservative and would flip if she knew I had one tattoo (let alone two!), I don’t even walk around the house without a shirt on. My dad, however, knows about the ink so I’m not too uncomfortable shirtless around him. Pants have to stay on, though.
We’re not terribly self-conscious about it in my household, but we’re the parents - we won’t wander about all day in the nude, but we generally don’t bother to cover up between bathroom and bedroom and nobody really thinks anything of it. Different if there are guests in the house, obviously.
Well, I wouldn’t mind if my parents saw me nude, except that I’d miss them after they spontaneously combusted of embarrassment. So all things considered it’s better that I respect their rules and stay covered when they’re around.
As for my household, I don’t care if the four-year-old sees me nude - which is a damn good thing, let me tell you, because we’re having a wee bit of trouble getting him to understand that the rule that states “If a door is closed, knock and wait for an answer before entering” does not end with “unless you just built a really cool Lego structure that you want to show off, or your brother won’t let you into his room and you’re coming to tell on him, or you really want a glass of milk, or…” On the other hand, our older son is 10. Somewhere along the line, and I don’t remember where, we just started sending off signals to one another: I don’t want you to see me nude, and you don’t want me to see you nude, so let’s be a bit more alert about this, shall we?
The other remaining male in the household is, of course, my husband. He sees me naked whenever he wants and sometimes when he doesn’t
I’ve seen both my brothers and my sisters-in-law nude in our hot tub. My oldest brother’s wife was really proud of her new boobs - justifiably so, they look great.
My wife’s family apparently never bothered covering up during daily activities, so she and her family seem to have continued to see each other naked long after most families would have stopped, but it doesn’t seem to be any kind of issue for them.
In my family, on the other hand, I don’t think any of us ever saw any of the others naked once we were past the age where our parents gave us baths, and we certainly never saw my parents naked – closest we came was one time in a hotel room on a famliy trip, when my dad was stripped down to his boxers (which is how he usually slept), and one of his testicles made a break for it.
With our kids, we skew more toward her family’s style than mine – neither my wife nor I regularly close the door to the bathroom when we’re in the shower for instance, but I have to admit that I’m starting to be somewhat uncomfortable about it as the kids get older (they’re now 7, 5, and just under a year). I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem, but I don’t relish explaining to their teachers or the DFCS why my kids would be able to describe what I look like naked with such accuracy. I’ve started taking a pair of boxers into the bathroom with me when I shower and putting them on as soon as I’m out and dry, instead of going into the bedroom naked to get them afterward.
The only person in my family who would be okay with it is my mom. She’ll walk from her bedroom to the living room naked if that’s where the laundry basket is and she needs something from it. She also doesn’t care if she walks in on someone else naked. It used to horrify me when I was younger.
Same sex yes, opposite sex, no . . . but then, my dad and brother have passed on now, so it’s just me, my mom, and two sisters who, by the way, are far more modest than I am. Unlike my siblings, I was raised a good deal by my Nana, who was very much about letting it all hang out, and I picked up the habit, I guess . . .
I still have this sort of whacky philosophy that the person with the most power in a household is the one who can be naked in front of everyone when nobody else can (for example, my mom could have been that person after my brother went off to college, because the household consisted of my dad, who’d already seen plenty of her stuff, and three daughters, who had basically the same stuff–or like when I lived with my best friend and her husband, she could run through the house with everything free and flapping, but he and I were forced to be a bit more modest).
I have no trouble being seen shirtless by my folks, but anything more than that is a tacit “no.” I can’t imagine any of them showing more skin to the family than they do the outside world.
My family attends several “clothing optional” festivals each year, and we’re all OK with various levels of undress there. It’s camping, it’s nature, it’s all good. But when we’re home, I notice my son has a higher level of discomfort with nudity, so we cover up, mostly. We’re not panicked about it or anything. I suppose if I had left the laundry basket in the living room I’d get it in whatever I was wearing or not wearing, but he’s usually not in that room. If I knew he was in the room, I’d cover at least the bottom half. If he’s showering, he comes out wrapped in towel and walks (actually dances, it’s kinda cute) across the living room wrapped like a mummy to get to his bedroom.
If it was just WhyDad and me, we’d be naked as jaybirds until the pizza guy came.
My birth family was pretty much the same: bodies are OK, let’s not freak out here, but no need to make others feel uncomfortable, either. So my mom and stepmom would often put on their makeup nude while I was chatting with them in the morning, but my brothers and I (female) didn’t see each other naked much past puberty. My dad slept in the nude and without covers, even for daytime naps, and he’d often leave it all hanging out if we went in the bedroom to talk to him. In fact, I remember the first time he covered up was just days after I told him I was pregnant! (I was 17.) He saw me entering the room and did this odd leap/jerk thing and scrabbled for the topsheet. His covering up made me feel weirder than seeing him naked ever had.
So “casual courtesey” is perhaps the best descriptive phrase for our household.
I grew up in a household where everyone went to no special effort to remain clothed. I saw all of my family nude hundreds of time and they saw me the same way.
Now that I am grown and have my own house, I walk around with whatever level of clothing I feel like at the moment. I think that to do otherwise would be a little too Victorian.
Nudity and clothing puzzle me…my GF will shreik bllody wurder if anybody opens the bedroom door while shes naked. But, what does she wear to the pool? A bikini about the size of a postage stamp. Ain’t much difference.
I don’t mind being nude in front of my mom or sister, but would be mortified if my dad saw me the same way. (Un?)fortunately none of us lives close to the others, so it’s not an issue much anyway.
In my own household we grown-ups don’t much walk around in the altogether. Our kid (who is four) has no problem with showing it all.
Like many people, my parents didn’t care too much about nudity when we were young children; that faded away around, oh, age 8 or 9 or so. Now I wouldn’t think of it, even though I go naked in my own house whenever possible. (I also don’t go naked around Hamish, though – his request.)
