I love being naked – and it’s so easy to do! Step 1: take off your clothes. There is no step 2. That’s it. You’re naked.

That said, it is remarkably transgressive, nakedness. So revel in your skin – it belongs to you!

I grew up in a skin-friendly family – by which I mean: peeing with the door open; wandering from bedroom to bathroom (and vice-versa); sleeping in the nude. I knew very well what my parents looked like, and what my brother looked like. They knew what I looked like. I could tell you the story of the scars on my mother’s leg, and the mole on her shoulder. Skin was normal.
And yet. The first time I went outside, naked? (As an adult, that is.) The first time I stepped outside the door, felt the Spring breeze across my belly, fretted that someone might freak out – even though there was no one but cats and cows for miles? It was a transgressive act.

I was 22, and recovering from a breakdown after my mother’s suicide, hiding in the middle of the Wairarapa. And I went and lay, naked, in the daisies and daffodils under the apple trees. It was me, and logy bumble bees, and two farm cats. Me and my skin, and the sunshine, and the breeze.

These are the words I wrote 11 years ago, and shared online then as I do now:

I am going to share with you something that I have rediscovered today, a human joy that I had forgotten existed – that of being at one with the world around me, myself with no additions, no pretences, no facades. Just me.

When I decided that I had had enough of being in bed today, I thought about it and realised that there is no one within two kilometres of where I am – no one except sheep and cows and horses and cats (and bees too!). So, having discovered that the sun was shining when I pulled the curtains, I thought I would try something different. I walked outside, naked.

It was kind of hard to step over the door frame and out onto the veranda – I felt a bit like I was doing something that I shouldn’t; a taboo action that would see me condemned. But nothing happened – no thunderclaps, no shouts of horror, no sly wolf-whistles even. Just a happy cat winding between my legs, making his tail tickle behind my knee.

I walked out onto the grass, feeling the rustle around my ankles. I sat on the grass, lay on the grass, spread my arms wide and stretched my legs out as far as possible, shutting my eyes against the sun high in the sky. It felt good! It felt warm and comfortable and natural and pleasant. It was really nice, and I revelled in the happiness and pleasure I could get from something as simple as lying in the long grass with a cat and daisies for company.

When I’d had enough, and began to worry about sunburn – I burn very easily – I decided that I would treat myself with a bath. The thought of a luxuriant, warm, all-enveloping bath was delectable …

I filled it quite high, and threw in a citrus bath bomb. With Dave Dobbyn on the stereo, the candles lit, a Listener to read, and Tigger peeping curiously over the side, I gave myself in to the warm, gently lapping water.

After the bath I felt the need for a shower, so hopped next door to the shower room and had a needle-stinging cold long, long shower, soaping my body and washing my hair. Then I went back outside and lay on my towel in the sunshine, drying quickly as I watched the trees whisper with the breeze.

I feel so good, so me, so comfortable with the physical as well as the mental me today. It’s a great sensation.

I recommend you try it sometime

Since that day I’ve been naked indoors and out. Naked in the sunshine and in the pouring rain. Naked in the ocean, the rivers, the lake. Naked on the computer (naked as I type this). I love being naked. Clothes have their place … but give me my skin, and the chance to wander around and just be me in it, any day.

So why not try it?

| Curvaceous Dee
www.curvaceousdee.com