In Search of...Positive Body Self-Image

I grew up in a modest household, not puritanically so but modest just the same.  Like all children, I was curious about how grownups looked undressed, both men and women.  My mother had several nursing textbooks that showed pictures of naked people but since there was always some sort of disease or skin problem being illustrated, these weren't too helpful.

I tried to satisfy my curiosity in the usual manner of kids; a stolen peek at the pages of an unattended Playboy magazine and, of course, art books.  We had lots of these books in my house.  Early on, it struck me that renditions of the female form were definitely more prevalent than male ones.  As for observing male anatomy, all I had to go on for years was a picture of Michaelangelo's statue of David and, frankly, that didn't offer a whole lot of enlightenment.  Once when I was quite young, I walked in on my father unintentionally while he was undressing.  I was out of the room so quickly he didn't even know I'd been there or seen him.  What I did see in that brief moment stayed with me a long time.  I was embarrassed and shocked.  I was also both fascinated and repelled.  Had he known I had seen him, I think my dad would've been embarrassed as well.  Why is this the initial reaction to seeing a naked individual?

I recall a picture of one painting in particular that I found very interesting.  It was of a woman stretched out languidly on a red flowing piece of material alongside a river or stream.  She was relaxed or she may have been asleep and she was completely naked.  Peering out from behind a tree she was lying next to was a rather nasty looking little man.  He was staring at her and the lurid expression on his face clearly showed that his intentions were not honorable.  However, at my young age, I didn't have a clue as to what he might've been thinking.  This picture held my attention for years and it was only a few days ago that the memory of it bubbled up to the surface of my memory.

I recall the woman in the picture as being beautiful with a lovely body.  She was neither slender nor Rubenesque.  She was perfect in my eyes.  I think the look and shape of this female subconciously became my ideal, how I wanted to look when I grew up.  This didn't quite happen!  When I was growing up, I didn't think about it but there's a great deal of mystery about the human body.  Children who grow up in nudist households don't share this curiosity.  To them, the sight of a naked man or woman is as natural as breathing.  The bodies they see are those of ordinary people, not air-brushed perfectly sculpted forms.  This allows acceptance of varied body types as well. 

I'm not quite sure exactly where I'm going with this.  Perhaps if we grew up seeing all sorts of body types and accepting them as normal, there wouldn't be this obsession with extreme weight loss and the constant pressure to try to look exactly how society has deemed we should.  Not many of us have what our current culture calls a beautiful body.  We owe it to our health to try to take care of the bodies we inhabit; so many people don't.

Embracing a naturist lifestyle enables you to see that we all look pretty much alike and I find comfort in that.