CARNAL NATION

The fracas over Kathleen Neill’s photo shoot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has brought up lots of questions about our attitudes towards public nudity, and exposed the discomfort and horror with which many people still view the (real life) naked human body.

With this in mind, I decided to experiment with public nudity myself. Thanks to modeling, I have become used to taking my clothes off for photographers, and to the idea that both friends and strangers will see naked pictures of me. However, I wanted to test myself to see if I really am comfortable and confident in my body, or if I’m just fooling myself. So I asked myself as the last rays of summer sunshine encouraged me to go to the seaside, would I be brave enough to go sunbathing on the beach—naked?

Swatting fears of uncontrollable erections to one side, my partner agreed to join me on my adventure. However, getting to the actual nudist part of the beach proved slightly more complicated than I had originally thought. Banging a right at the entrance to the general beach when we should have taken a left, reaching the naked area took three hours instead of the one hour it should have taken us.

The weather wasn’t trying very hard to help matters. Although it had been sunny and warm in Amsterdam, it was decidedly cooler along the coast, and strong winds continuously whipped against our bodies, tearing at our skin.

About 200 metres before we reached the nudist beach, I did see a naked man rearranging his clothes—maybe he too had taken a wrong turn, decided that he was tired of walking and had simply stripped right then and there.

By the time we did reach the nudist section of the beach, I really didn’t care who saw me naked. After working so hard to get there, I was going to take my damn clothes off, and I didn’t care what anyone thought!

However, to my keen disappointment, there was hardly anyone else there whom I could potentially be self-conscious in front of. There was an empty towel and set of clothes near to where we sat down, but the owner was nowhere in sight and didn’t return until we were about to leave. After about 15 minutes, another naked, middle-aged man walked by, as did numerous clothed people (I didn’t realize they were allowed on the nudist beach!). My partner did get excited when we saw a woman, with just her bikini thong on, running in the water, wet breasts glistening in the sun, but that was about as exciting as the whole thing got—and it was only on an intellectual level anyway; it was too cold for any physical manifestations of excitement.

The only person I felt slightly self-conscious in front of was the clothed bar tender, but that was mostly due to the fact that he had spoken rudely to me earlier.

So, my trip to the nudist beach, in which I would discover amazing things about myself and my body, proved to be fairly disappointing and weird—but for none of the expected reasons. Not to be deterred, though, I decided that I would visit one of the saunas here in Amsterdam, in which everyone takes their clothes off. There, surely, I would truly learn what it was like to take my clothes off—in a non-sexual context—in front of a group of people.

Looking up the opening times for various places, I must admit that I was tempted to go to a sauna during one of the “Ladies’ Nights”—designated times in which men are not allowed. However, I figured that would not be much of a challenge (I’m happy to take my clothes off for just about any lady!), and would even, perhaps, be chickening out. So, I decided to go to a sauna on one of the mixed days.