Nudity and modesty

I’ve been wondering if my random thoughts are the type shared by other people, so I’m going to share this one.

Have you ever evaluated your comfort level with your own nudity?

I was getting dressed one day after a shower (as I often do!) and as I was pulling on my underwear, my random thought was how dressed would I have to be in order to feel comfortable if someone walked into the room?

Don’t ask me why or how these things pop into my head. I was standing in my bedroom, in my house, and the likelihood that anyone would walk in and see me was slim to none, and that includes my husband, who was working.

In thinking more about this – because of course I thought more about it once the thought popped into my head – the comfort level with nudity varies based on the gender of the person and my relationship to them. I never want my children to see me when I’m not fully clothed. It’s just… wrong. (This is not a position shared by DH, however, who seems to have a very low modesty quotient.) And while I don’t mind being seen in a swimsuit, and doesn’t a swimsuit cover only about as much as a bra and panties, I wear a one-piece swimsuit. I’m not even fully comfortable in a setting among women where total nudity is acceptable; for example, the shower and dressing room area at a gym or spa. In such a setting, I will make every attempt to cover with a towel until I can at least pull on panties.

I used to be much more modest. For one thing, I was raised that way. There are those of us who remember being made to kneel on the floor so our skirt length could be measured (skirts had to reach the floor) and girls weren’t allowed to wear pants to school. How anyone thought women in pants was somehow immodest is beyond me, but that’s another random thought and another post. Shoulders had to be covered, and usually upper arms as well. I became less concerned with how others viewed any display of skin on my part, however, as I got older. And I’m convinced that childbirth is a great modesty killer. Once you’ve been scooted down a hospital corridor from the labor room to the delivery room, past medical personnel and other patients and their family members, with all on display, there’s not much left to be modest about.

So the answer to my ponderous question (!!) is that my discomfort eases when I pull on my panties. Apparently, I am pretty comfortable being seen by strangers in only my panties. This is largely because I mostly don’t care what strangers think of me. After all, I don’t know them, I probably won’t ever know them, and I’m not likely to ever see them again, so there’s no reason for me to care what they think. Given this attitude, however, I cannot explain the panties thing because my logical brain tells me that I should be comfortable completely nude if I really don’t care, so I have to say I mostly don’t care – because apparently I care enough not to want to be totally nude in front of strangers!