Nudity – Why are Americans So Obsessed, and Germans So Relaxed?

If you know some Germans, it will probably not take long before you see some of them nude. Germans I know are completely casual about, for instance, going to the shower room or taking a swin in a lake among people completely nude. Actually, they don’t even expect you to think anything special about that. If you do, they will probably understand you, but they will be surprised.

There is absolutely nothing sexual about this. I believe that Germans are among the few peoples – the Austrians, The Dutch, to some degree the Czech and the Croatians as well – who are able to be absolutely truthful, when claiming that they can separate nudity and sexuality. Nudity is, for them, natural – you undress when you are about to get wet – while sexuality for them as for most of us is something cultural, or man-made.

This is so different with Americans. An American is generally totally unable to comprehend that mixed-gender nudity could be anything other than sexual. I do not know if Americans still understand the concept “natural”, but I think that if they do, then they would mostly limit it to something that has to do with animals, trees and flowers. People can walk around in nature, but they can not really be part of it. Everything they do must have an intention in relation to other human beings, and if they show themselves in the nude, then it is fully clear what that intention must be.

Think about yourself. What would you think about your friends if they all of a sudden turned up in the nude? And what do you think that they would think about you?