Modesty, Body Image & Why I'm Joining NYC Bodypainting Day

Guest Blog by: Nicolette Barischoff

When I first came out as a naturist to my family (made up of Burning Man hippies and ultra-conservative Christians equally), reactions ranged from "Yeah, I kinda figured," all the way to "Didn't you do this a few years past?"

I have pretty much always been naked. It's tough to pin down when or how that happened. My parents were both pretty conventional non-denominational Christians, and the need for modesty was stressed at me early and frequently. It simply didn't actually require. I recall innumerable lectures on the sanctity of a girl's modesty, the mysterious and unexpected weight of responsibility which was a Woman's Body. "You've a woman's body, now, you can't merely go around without believing!" I remember quiet, careful, urgent asides reminding me how vital was my job in ensuring guys were not frightened / filled with unshakable lust / given incorrect ideas about me. I lost count of how many times I mortified my siblings by coming out of the bathroom bare ass naked when they had friends over. I was not trying to embarrass them, I just never quite deciphered what there was to be embarrassed about.

Quite simply, my brain fires in arbitrary directions to make my muscles do all sorts of bullshit that I didn't ask them to. I do not walk; I use a wheelchair to get around, or if I'm at home, my hands and knees. I've always wanted more help than most folks. That often meant help getting dressed or using a specially inaccessible restroom. When my parents were not around, that meant help from close-strangers. This modesty, this easily smashed virtue that I was supposed to safeguard more carefully than a girl guards anything else, had to be shed in an instant if the situation demanded it.

How, then, was I supposed to button myself back into my modesty after I'd only had a stranger pull my underwear up for me? How was I supposed to know when to care about who was pulling up my underwear, and when to not? It did not take long for me to realize that nobody had any really good answers. If strangers chosen by chance and necessity could gaze upon my naked body without turning to stone, just who exactly was I protecting? The children? Myself? No, I still didn't give a shit. Men? Not even gonna dignify that one.

I figure what I'm saying is, despite the efforts of my exasperated kin, I never learned modesty. It never felt important. I 've to lay on the floor to pull my pants up. Am I to lay on the cold linoleum of the bathroom with the warm comfort of the living room's eighties carpet just a couple feet away? Fuck that. I'm used to people who shouldn't see me nude seeing me nude. They all lived, and so did I.

However, I never took that dip and called myself a naturist.

My first ever encounter with deliberate public nudity wouldn't come until I was twenty-one, on one of those huge European School tours, faced with my first French strand. The setting was a revelation. I'd known that European shores were generally topfree, but I wasn't anticipating the sheer naturalness of it. Bodies of all shapes and sizes, nude to the waist with neither snarky opinion nor creepy leer. Children and their mothers.

And their mothers' moms. Grownup sisters. Locals and clear tourists. And teen boys weaving through them all, completely unfazed, as if they have seen this every day. Because they've. I looked over to my newish boyfriend (who'd later get promoted to complete partner) with a question within my eyes. His response to that question was that it was not up to him. It was my body, and therefore up to me. Up to me. Off the top went, as quickly as I could dispose of it.

It's odd to realize our society does not let our breasts to feel ocean air. Something as easy as a sea breeze crawling across my skin was at once invigorating and exhilarating. And then that feeling, that sweetness of liberation and excitement and daring, passed. Surprisingly fast. And then I was only a person, one among hundreds, existing as I was most comfortable.

Nicolette Barischoff Getting Naked and Painted for BodyPainting Day

I have been naked in public a lot since then, among other folks and, sometimes, all by myself, the nude voice of reason among a bemused and clothed bunch. I have been to Burning Man, to Faerieworlds, to Seattle's World Naked Bike Ride. The amazing women of the Outside Coed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society were kind enough to compose an article about me. But to date, I Have never participated in an art project on the scale of Bodypainting Day. On Saturday, I am going to strip to the skin at the center of Manhattan with a hundred other beautiful people, all professionally painted, in full view of a city that may not understand me, and I 'll feel more comfy than I ever do wearing clothes.

It is difficult to have a positive body image when you are disabled. Folks approach disability with this type of spectrum of assumptions, and ideas about what you should do or be or how you should behave. And this never includes having a body. That old idea of modesty comes extra difficult when folks are not used to thinking about what you might look like naked. That is why I'm doing this, why Bodypainting Day is so very important to me. It is the ultimate expression of body-positivity. It's art and acceptance and independence. It is an exploration of our relationship to the body, and a direct challenge to the childish notion that most of us "just shouldn't be seen nude."

I truly hope you may join me.

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About the Writer: Nicolette Barischoff is a Locus and World Fantasy Award-adjacent science fiction and fantasy writer. She enjoys being naked, and if that does not irritate you, she likes you too.

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