I'm naked and I don't like it

Clothing: a cultural eternity

Humans started wearing clothes sometime around 90,000 years ago. A blink of an eye on an evolutionary timescale, but an eternity on a cultural one. Written history itself only began ~5,500 years ago.

It's older than the bible itself. In the book of Genesis, Eve and Adam eat from the tree and gain knowledge of good and evil. They then immediately realize they're naked and sew fig leaves together as impropmtu clothing.

One interpretation of this story is that it represents humans' development of consciousness. When your prefrontal cortex gets wrinkly enough and you perceive your own being, your first thought is "oh wow I'm naked" and your next instinct is "I better cover that up."

Therefore, getting naked in front of others is something we carefully choose to do.

The tier list

Imagine you had to be naked in front of someone, right now. Rank them by how uncomfortable you'd be.

My personal order (from "no sweat" to "kill me now"):

1. wife
2. total strangers
3. family
4. close friends
5. acquaintances
6. coworkers

Everyone will have their own tier list, but what surprised me about myself is how high total strangers ended up.

Ok, what inspired the list?

Onsens and Jjimjilbangs

Japanese and Korean bathhouses' wet areas are 100% gender-segregated and 100% naked. It's a cultural thing- and more hygenic. No foreign bathing suit materials in the hot water, just bodies.

On my first visit, I went alone. Once I got over the initial shock it felt surprisingly natural. In the bathhouse you're just one body amongst many, and everyone minds their own business. There's probably something about eastern collectivism vs western individualism behind the cultural differences, but I digress.

Contrast that with when I went to a Japanese onsen with a friend. Yes, we figured it out in the end, but there was a lot more intentional eye contact and awkward pauses to work around.

Which got me thinking: why was it so much easier to be naked in front of randos than someone I've known for over a decade?

Coworkers: absolutely not

Coworkers sit on the opposite end of the spectrum. I went to a spa with some a while back. In the locker room I literally went into a shower stall to change in private.

For most people, coworkers are acquaintances where your relationships have career consequences.

The phrase "you don't sh*t where you eat" comes to mind. If it applies to dating, it applies to nudity.

Strangers as lovers

My friend recounted a funny story about two people who hooked up: we'll call them Alice and Bob. Here's how their conversation went after:

Alice: "Hey can we Facetime sometime this week? I wanted to talk about our relationship"

Bob: "Ooh I don't know, that feels like a big step"

Alice: "What do you mean, you've been inside of me"

What strikes me about this bizarre conversation is how they were perfectly fine getting naked together as strangers, but as soon as it came to having a real conversation they went from total strangers to acquaintances real quick. Awkward.

In pop culture, people avoid that awkward transition altogether with the "walk of shame". Easier to part as strangers than confront that jump the morning after.

What's your tier list?

If we got everyone on the planet's tier lists, the details would vary a lot person to person.

But my conclusion is that total strangers would rank quite high across the board and coworkers way at the bottom. Not what I would have thought at first glance!