Why Is Nudity Always Condemended Into Shame?

After reading and reporting about incidents of lower caste women being paraded naked, I curated my topic for my PhD. Centering around the nudity of women, I walked into the supervisor's office with my synopsis. But unfortunately, rather than seeing nudity as a change, my supervisor saw it as a shame. I walked in with nudity in revolutionary writing and she saw me walking in shamelessly nude. 

I never wanted to do a PhD. But I had to enrol because of pressure from my parents. Gradually, I felt I was gaining interest as I had the open platform to pick up any idea I wanted to work on. Being really concerned about the perception of nudity, especially among lower-caste women, I chose it as my topic. 

Why is nudity a bad word?

However, the word- nudity -made my professors and supervisor so uncomfortable that they couldn't say the word. In the first discussion about the topics, my professor asked me to change the 'first word'. When I asked why, he replied that there are other 'good' words for it. 

I laughed and before I could say anything further, he moved on to the next candidate. But I was still left with the question- why is nudity a bad word? 

Nudity is natural 

Nudity is as much a part of us as is our breath. We cannot separate it from us no matter how much we make it negligible. In our society, nudity is considered a shame and that is why parading naked is done to shame women. Nudity is so big a stigma that people can't bear mothers breastfeeding their babies. 

But there is a hypocrisy or double standards here. People hate nudity but when it comes to sexual urges, nudity becomes important. People who rape women also come from a society that considers nudity a shame. How does the definition of nudity change based on the needs of the onlookers? If an onlooker is a moralist by day, they will shame nude bodies. But if the onlooker is a sex addict by night, nudity is all they want. 

When nudity is so much a part of society, why, then, is it considered a bad word? Naked body and nudity define a human body as it is. Why has shame been related to the word? Why has nudity, the natural human body, become a shame and cultural definitions as the norm? Why don't we understand that nudity is the most natural thing I'm the universe while culture is a subjective term which changes with eras? 

But these things didn't hit the minds of my professors. When I went to meet my supervisor, who was a lady, she was appalled by my idea. The idea of removing the taboo around nudity provoked her so much that she asked me to remove that question. 

She said, "Removing taboo means practising it regularly. Do you want people to roam around naked? If traffic rules are broken, people will walk wherever they want." 

The entire department was against me. They considered my idea against the culture, norms and modesty. They said that I wasn't adding anything to society through my topic, and hence, it was irrelevant. 

Why must culture define nudity? 

But my only question was who created the culture, modesty and rules? If there are certain rules, it means there is a presence of a certain perspective. And how can we be so sure that the perspective is right? 

However, I couldn't fight the entire department so I had to be quiet. Even if I tried to say something, I was stifled by the repetitive question of people walking around naked. 

So I found this platform to say what I wanted to. I don't know if this will reach my supervisor, whom, by the way, I have replaced with a more accepting professor, but to whomever it reaches, I hope it creates an impact. 

I never meant walking around naked while talking about nudity. I meant accepting it as a norm and not as a shame. When our hands and legs can accepted as bare, why can't the entire body? Who said that certain parts of the body must be covered? Walk around naked if you want. But to stop the onlookers from judging and sexualising you is what I mean to address. 

Views expressed are the author’s own.