Do Real Naked Bodies Help Develop a Healthy Sexuality?

Photo: Betina Garcia for The New York Times

Is it important to show kids what a real naked body looks like?

This morning’s read led me to an article about a Danish TV show that aims to help kids develop a positive, healthy attitude towards the human body. The show counters the “daily bombardment of young people with images of perfect - unrealistic - bodies,” by enabling kids to look at naked people of all shapes, sizes, genders, abilities and skin colors, and encouraging them to ask questions about how the volunteers feel about their bodies. The censored videos are on YouTube, and although they are in Danish, I got the gist of them. Could you ever imagine this happening in the US?

Then it got me thinking. How do kids in the US know what real human bodies look like? Some families are comfortable being naked around one another, perhaps they frequent community hot tubs or showers, or visit naked beaches. The rest? It's probably the Internet.

Day in and day out, TV, movies, and social media send clear messages about what kinds of bodies are acceptable and which aren’t. Actors, models, rock stars and influencers repeat the same ‘ideal’ over and over - skinny, white bodies with perfectly tamed hair, and straight, white teeth. When kids are repeatedly bombarded with these images, they can feel bad and insecure about their own perfectly normal, unique bodies.

And what if they happen to stumble upon porn (the average age in the US is 11). Or even actively seek it for pleasure, instruction, or insights (albeit erroneous ones) on relationships? What information are they receiving about what their private parts should look like? Viewing actors with genitals shaped through the use of medication, plastic surgery, and hair removal can bring on feelings of shame and embarrassment around the size, shape and color of their own perfectly normal, unique body parts.

Whether or not you think your kids are internalizing messages about what their bodies should look like - with or without clothes on; whether you agree or disagree about the utility of purposely exposing kids to non-eroticized naked bodies in real life, we can likely find some common ground.

We can seize opportunities in daily life, to remind our kids about the amazing wonder and variety of the human body, how it's their responsibility to take care of it though eating healthily most of the time, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and keeping it relatively clean. We can also remind them that they are in charge of their own body - how nobody, ever has the right to touch their body without their consent. Now those are some body positive message we can all promote.

YouTube, censored clips of the Danish TV show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist...

(A Danish Children’s TV Show Has This Message: ‘Normal Bodies Look Like This’, Thomas Erdrinnk and Martin Selsoe Sorensen, NYT, 09/18/20), https://www.nytimes.com/.../denmark-children-nudity-sex...