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Why do we give children such confusing messages about their bodies?
Liz Fraser believes that millions of children in Britain, have been
indoctrinated with the idea that nakedness is rude, naughty or
shameful
By Liz Fraser
Last week, during one of the hottest Easter holidays on record in the
UK, my three children and I went to the local park.
It was sweltering, and after an hour or so of running about with a
football, my daughter, Phoebe, who has just turned 11, had turned into
a sweaty, par-boiled lobster and desperately wanted to take her T-
shirt off to cool down. But she didn’t.
When I asked her why on earth not, she said in an exasperated voice,
as if I didn’t understand anything, ‘Mum, I can’t take my top off in a
park. People will stare and point!’
Liz Fraser believes that millions of children in Britain, have been
indoctrinated with the idea that nakedness is rude, naughty or
shameful
Once I’d picked my jaw up off the grass and tried to make sense of
what she’d just said, I realised to my utter dismay that her fears
were probably completely justified.
Where boys often take their tops off in the hot summer months, many
girls, even as young and totally undeveloped as my younger daughter,
already feel that they ‘shouldn’t’ expose their top halves in public.
Because their nakedness is somehow . . . wrong.
To realise that my own daughter already feels this way came as a real
shock to me. I was raised by parents who never shied away from
stripping off and jumping in a mountain lake or sunbathing topless on
the beach, and I was never even aware of my own nakedness as a pre-
pubescent girl. Naked or not — it made no difference to me. I felt
totally free, and happy.
Now a parent myself, I’m trying to raise my children similarly: we are
very comfortable with our own nakedness at home, and I still often
share a bath with my younger children, both Phoebe and Charlie, who’s
7, and quite happily get undressed in front of them.
They see nothing strange about it at all, and the little ones aren’t
shy about dancing around naked. They’re kids, after all!
But despite all this ease around nudity within the family environment,
they have picked up on the message from outside our home that showing
naked flesh in public is something unthinkable, even for children.
Sign of the times: Liz Fraser remembers visiting the South of France
where everyone was sunbathing topless
Sign of the times: Liz Fraser remembers visiting the South of France
where everyone was sunbathing topless
They, like millions of children in Britain, have been indoctrinated
with the idea that nakedness is rude, naughty or shameful — and that
it’s always, always connected with sex.
Though the children are thankfully too young to know about such a
gruesome thing, the public’s media-fuelled terror of paedophilia is
now so strong that many parents don’t want their children to be seen
naked by strangers ‘just in case’ they are photographed and put onto
the internet, or peered at by sexual predators.
A naked child has become, for many, a potential sex abuse incident,
rather than the beautiful, pure thing it is, despite the reality,
which is that — mercifully — abuse by paedophiles is far less
prevalent than the furore that surrounds them would imply.
Turning the clock back to the Seventies when I was a pre-schooler, hot
summers were all about wearing almost nothing, and our photo albums
are bursting with pictures of us as children, naked and happy. There
we’d all be in the local paddling pool or swimming pool, splashing and
shrieking happily in nothing but our pants, and often not even that.
And nobody minded at all.
Then when I was ten we moved to the South of France for a while, and I
remember everyone sunbathing topless, completely relaxed about it.
Nobody thought about ‘covering up’ to hide their bodies.
In the local swimming pool, showers were communal and we’d all strip
and get washed and changed side by side in the middle of the changing
room, chatting away as we did so. Nobody stared. Nobody found it
embarrassing or weird. It was considered as normal as brushing one’s
teeth.
But when I came back to Britain the following year, the rules for
girls my age seemed completely different to the ones abroad. I found
that in the changing rooms everyone locked themselves away in separate
cubicles, to change in private, ashamed to let their nakedness be
seen. If they had to change on the beach they’d perform a bizarre
hopping dance ritual under a towel, attempting to remove pants, while
putting on bikini bottoms simultaneously, without showing an inch of
Forbidden Flesh. Not even for a millisecond.
None of my friends swam or sunbathed topless. Instead, they hid
themselves away, squeezing their pubescent breasts into bikinis whose
purpose was, paradoxically, to make the wearer look sexier than if
they had nothing on at all. It seemed that wearing sexy swimwear was
OK, but to be naked and natural wasn’t. Which I found very confusing.
Songs of innocence: 'Compare this [Britain] to other countries, where
nudity is seen as part of life, and where children are raised without
ever thinking to question it'
And to be honest, I still do. Beaches this summer will be full of
toddlers wearing bikini tops. One mum I know impressed upon her
daughter: ‘It’s to keep your boobies covered up.’ Her what?! She’s
three years old!
I always bought one-piece swimsuits or just bikini bottoms for my
girls when they were little. Why would I want them to wear a bikini
top that’s designed to cover breasts, which they quite clearly haven’t
got?
Most damaging in all of this is the bizarre paradox that this
whispering, blushing shunning of nakedness comes hand in hand with our
culture’s obsession with sex and sexuality.
As a scientist friend of mine, and father of one, put it: ‘Public
nudity is a crime here, and yet pornography and hypersexual
advertising is everywhere in the UK and North America.
‘The ever-present appearance of sex and sexual messages in our culture
and media goes along with fear and horror at actual nudity — and
causes all kinds of problems for people’s sexual activity and self-
confidence.’
When nudity is considered unacceptable, but highly-charged sexual
messages in advertising and pop videos are not, is it any surprise
that so many children are growing up with a confused attitude to their
bodies, or feeling ashamed to take their tops off in a park when
they’re hot?
What’s even more extraordinary is that violence and bad language are
tolerated far more liberally than nudity on television and in films,
especially in the U.S. and UK.
Millions of children every day are sitting down to watch programmes
that show grim acts of violence or aggression, yet when it comes to
showing a naked breast in a shower the censors come down like a ton of
bricks and insist it’s covered up, or blurred.
Public nudity is a crime here, and yet pornography and hypersexual
advertising is everywhere in the UK and North America
The message our children pick up is that blasting each other to pieces
and using foul, aggressive, threatening language is fine and dandy,
but showing a nipple? Perish the thought!
Compare this to other countries, where nudity is seen as part of life,
and where children are raised without ever thinking to question it.
One former classmate, who is Spanish and has a two-year-old daughter,
commented: ‘Kids run around naked in Spain on beaches and in parks in
the good weather and it’s totally normal.’
Another friend, who is Swedish, but now lives in Canada, told me:
‘Canada is on a par with the U.S. in terms of excessive prudishness.
When we go to the beach, it’s the Swedish mums who let their toddlers
run around naked — and they get lots of dirty looks from their
Canadian counterparts!’
And so despite the fact that I appear to be in the distinct minority,
I continue to fight hard against our very British culture of bizarre,
unhelpful prudishness.I still change in the middle of the changing
room at my local pool, without adopting body-shielding tactics. I know
my children find this a little bit odd, and probably wish I didn’t.
When nobody else is naked, why is Mummy?
Well, because Mummy happens to think that there’s nothing wrong with
it and she’d rather teach her children that their bodies are beautiful
and natural just as they are, and don’t need dressing up in sexy
clothes or to be hidden from view to be acceptable