Jezebel 
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New York, 7:55 AM
Thu Nov 26
64 posts in the last 24 hours
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I had to Google Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by the way, sounds like a lovely little book.
07/16/09
The hard part for me in dealing with naked kids is not teaching them when it is and isn't ok. They are observant creatures and notice what everyone else is wearing. They pick up on gender norms pretty easily, I'm sure they'll figure this out too.
The hard part for me anyway, is teaching them that their little bodies are perfect and awesome in the real world. They are shown so much shame, from all the kids shows and movies showing embarrassment at exposure, to the awkward glances from friends' parents when they are playing in our yard and the kids strip. I want to foster comfort and joy in their bodies and am fighting the world we live in every step of the way.
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I think I'm going off on a tangent here... I guess what I'm saying is, nudity has only as much power as we decide to give it. Why should we do that? It's a human body. We've all got one. Sure, some of us have slightly different parts than others, and all our specific parts are unique in their own ways, but at the end of the day, they're just bodies. That's all they are. Useful tools, each with its own particular uniqueness and beauty to it.
And as to the danger of pedophiles: I can't get behind that part of the argument any more than I can get behind the argument that dressing a certain way makes a woman more likely to get raped. Pedophiles and rapists are sick, twisted fucks who will find any excuse to take what they want from others. They don't look at their prey as human; they look at them as a means to an end. Whether that means is dressed to the nines, wearing burlap, or wearing nothing at all is really pretty irrelevant to the entire enterprise of dehumanization.
07/16/09
My partner has the strangest habit of flinging off all of his clothes, save underpants, whenever he's at his family home or at our shared apartment. I also heard that he used to bathe with his mother and father when he was littler, but this is not at all uncommon in his home country. I've taken after him and I'll bum around in just a pair of underpants when I'm in my apartment; I actually do my exercise routine this way too. Very freeing!
If you have experienced a Texan summer, you may understand the motivation here.
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Or maybe they never will, but since our indecency laws forbid this, it creates a challenge. I wonder if it more difficult to explain to a little girl that she needs to cover her chest after years of bathing topless or if as a parent, you should place her in a one piece suit or two piece that covers her chest in order to avoid having that discussion until she is at an age that can better understand without feeling ashamed of her body.
I have heard that children that live in nudist colonies understand having to adorn clothes in front of others and perhaps the teaching style that those parents use would be the best way to approach the subject with a child who is not ashamed of her body at the age that our government requires it. That also being said, do any of our legal minded Jezzies know when indecent exposure laws kick in for children? I imagine a 16 year old could get in trouble but how about 10 or 12?
07/16/09
I went around topless until I was about 13. Then I started checking out boys at the beach and got self-conscious (mostly because the boys got so embarrassed if I talked to them without a top on). Around 18 I went back to topless (sporadically).
07/16/09
I wish that we would quit sexualizing nudity so much. I can only imagine how much I would have enjoyed summers and swimming more if I were allowed to be topless. Breasts don't want to be caged, man.
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A story that gets told is how when my dad was in the hospital to get something removed, my sister stripped of her clothes and started to run around naked.
Geez, I remember being relatively old (probably around 8) and just walking around the house with only underwear on.
That being said, except for the hospital incident, my parents did a good job of making us aware of when clothing was the appropriate choice.
07/16/09
My daughter was a free wheeling nudie as a toddler and preschooler. It was not uncommon to see her naked in the front or back yard picking blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, playing in the sprinkler or kiddie pool, or just peeing on the lawn.
Around the house she also sometimes liked to roam nekkid. Most toddlers and pre-schoolers do not like to roam around with poop on their fannies, I'm really unclear how this came up as an issue.
Today my daughter is an appropriately modest and fashion conscience 10 year old. She didn't need us to rigidly impose modesty, the tendency to be more modest as we get older is a part of our culture that is picked up quite readily by many (but possibly not all) children.
07/16/09
This is a wonderful sentence that I think it's true in most things related to child-rearing. As for the nudity, I agree that it says more about the person and his/her personal issues about it. In my family, it wasn't a big deal, although there was always an emphasis on appropriateness, but I know people who seem to be very much against it and find it in extremely poor taste, always arguing about the possible consequences for the kid. And I have a friend who until his teens, used to walk around naked in his house, as his four older sisters did, and he seems perfectly fine, and doesn't have any hang-ups about nudity or the human body in general. Of course, upon finding out that particular aspect of his upbringing, a lot of people's perception about him change instantly, so yeah, it's more about our own projections and issues.