[thedevil]

Anyone have a plausible hypothesis on what's driving the trend?

The Economist is claiming "Today, nudists complain, it is more difficult to separate nakedness from sex." which seems plausible enough, but what would drive the change?

[hn_throwaway_99]

On a related note, I've noticed that millennial age men rarely go naked in locker room gyms. And I'm not just talking about not walking around the place naked, but specifically going through all the extra effort to do the "towel caterpillar shuffle" to avoid being naked for the 5 seconds it takes to change into gym shorts. It strikes me as bizarre.

But I understand it and agree with other posters, with the rise of the internet and pornography there is such a strong connection between nakedness and sex that didn't really exist thirty years ago.

[nerdponx]

Prudishness, imported from America. Here, nudity == sexuality.

[coldtea]

Amen. In the days the catholic church ruled hard, yes, but since the 60s or so, we didn't have a problem with sexuality in western Europe.

Men with speedos or women with breasts out on the beach? Nobody cares, and not because we thought this is just some "connecting with nature" that has nothing to do with sexuality, but because we didn't have a problem with sexuality.

Or, e.g. some politician having an extra marital affair? Who cares. Mitterand had an illegitimate child and nobody batted an eye.

Sure, there are some prudish nuts calling for moral outrage (usually on the right or related to the church), but they held no big power in these here parts.

[pjc50]

"Western Europe" is a rather large place and this doesn't apply universally.

[coldtea]

Nothing applies universally except the laws of physics and tautologies.

But some things apply more than others in aggregate (statistically).

So, well, exclude Ireland and the UK for one.

But you can keep nordic countries, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, and others...

[badwolf]

+1 to this, but I'd also add Facebook/Instagram/etc... banning you if you show a nipple.

Go to the beach, and want to post about it, better put a top on, or get banned (if you're female)

[WillPostForFood]

I’d go with the importation of Islamic values. American media isn’t that prude, and not much else cultural is imported from the US.

[dang]

Religious flamewar isn't welcome here. If you keep posting like this we're going to end up banning you—having already warned you more than once.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[nerdponx]

They appeal to sexuality specifically because it is edgy and shocking to a large percentage of the population. American media is quite prude on the whole.

Don't forget that many of the early settlerd in the USA were literally Puritans. Hard-right moralizing Christianity has always felt at home here.

Also, as stated in many other places in this thread, it's ridiculous to ascribe to change to Islam.

[WillPostForFood]

Do you think islamic values are more or less prude than American values?

[nerdponx]

That's a non-sequitur. You're comparing a religion with a continent or a nation-state, depending on what you mean by American. If you mean Christian values, then no, they seem about the same. But I'm not a theologian and my opinion is uninformed and irrelevant.

Either way, it's clearly not because of Islamic values.

[aecay]

My guess (for men, at least), is the still only partial eradication of homophobia from society. Before the 1970s or so, it was not threatening to be naked around other men because homosexual advances could be violently punished with relatively little fear of consequences. (This is at least my understanding, I was not alive at the time.) In present day European culture (including North America, Australia, etc.) expression of homophobia is not generally acceptable, but enough straight people are privately homophobic that they are not willing to participate in semi-public nudity. The exceptions to the generalization that group male nudity is not acceptable are either subcultures where overt homophobia is still practiced (fraternity initiations, some sports teams), or unusually "woke" spaces/groups.

In principle, we eventually may reach a stage where homosexuality is so destigmatized that straight men are not bothered by the possibility of being checked out while naked, and that might make public nudity once again acceptable in all-male spaces. I don't think it is particularly likely to happen soon given that there are other simmering cultural disagreements about how bodies relate to sexuality (e.g. how genital anatomy and gender identity interact) -- I think that consensus and stability around those questions are a precondition for the acceptability of same-sex group nudity.

The considerations for fully public (and by necessary implication all-gender) group nudity are broader, but I think an element of the above analysis is in the mix there too.

[grimoald]

Does there have to be a special reason? Being naked or not is something which people do mostly because other people do it (like many other things). It's an inherently unstable system, so to speak, so it's only natural that there are fluctuations.

[sidstling]

The fact that you’re only a click away from being on the internet has something to do with it, but the political pendulum is swinging to the right and no right-winger has ever burned her bra.

I’m not trying to say that everyone has turned alt-right, or anything of the sort, but the general trend in society is increasingly conservative. With that comes more prudishness, but more importantly, higher expectations to be as expected of you and to do well. We’re far less tolerant of individual quirkyness today than we were 15 years ago, because you’re expected to be perfect, so you wouldn’t want to flaunt your flaws at the beach.

[belorn]

The political aspects is explored in the article and a lot of finger pointing is at the left and not the right. Single-gender bathing places and normalization of more covering bathing clothes is pushed by the progressive left in the name of tolerance.

As can be expected the right is pushing the opposite direction, which is a bit ironic coming from a conservative side. I find it a quite interesting question if the political right are simply doing this because the left are pro-immigration and pro-multiculturalism, or if the conservative politics simply want to keep the exact same level of nudity as in the past. Not more or less.

[sidstling]

Well I’m Danish, and I can assure you that the only political push on this area is coming from the far left and feminists and it’s mainly focused on the fact that people are more body centric because they feel the need to be perfect.

It’s not uncommon for young Danes to spend most of their free time either doing homework or working out.

This is largely because we’ve collectively spent the past 17 years in what’s called “the competitive state”. Here we’ve been told we needed to work hard to survive the global competition. This has brought necessary reforms to our welfare state, but one side effect has been that young people getting stressed because they never feel like they are good enough.

You’ll see similar stories around much of northern Europe.

Sometimes you’ll see anti-immigration parties comment on how immigrants have affected personal freedom for women, like the article states, but then those same parties are pushing agendas to make public nudity illegal. So I wouldn’t say they were forerunners on the issue.

This may be different in other countries of course.

[pjc50]

The near-total availability of porn from whichever age teenagers want to look for it may have some effect.

[jabl]

Shouldn't that have the opposite effect? No need to go to a nudist beach if all you want to do is stare at naked people.

[AltruisticGap]

This is the answer but nobody wants to hear it. Porn is now opium for the masses.

This is not a moral or religious questions. It is simply biological.

Besides the dopamine issues, I think Ian Mc Gilchrist 's work on the 'divided brain' , gives a lot of supporting evidence that materials such as porn are by their nature the domain of the left brain hemisphere. That is ME making connections here. Pronography is created by this attention to the world that sees things in parts ("boobs", "ass") -- which is what left hemisphere does. The right hemusphere sees things in broad / inclusive attention (eg. a man or a woman; not a collection of arms, legs, etc).

And then look at the explosion of anxiety and social awkwardness, difficulty to hold eye contact, depression etc. Then look at how aggressive and abusive people become online, as well as the lack of restraint that people now show in chatrooms particularly on Twitch. People will just flat out call a young woman streaming a "whore", or "bitch"; etc.

You can argue these are unhappy people / mentally ill etc. I think the bigger picture is clear from McGilchrist's model of the brain. I think we see it happening everywhere in society. The loss of attention, the extremely reactive social interactions online, the almost religious belief we have in simple words like gender pronouns, ... to me those are all signs of a culture which is losing balance.. and more and more heavily shifting into the left hemisphere's attention (ie. see the world in collection of parts and pieces instead of as wholes). Also you have seemingly more innocent things like extremely geek conventions, explosion of fetishes online..

While we're there. Fetishes. Does anyone seriosuly believe these exist "naturally"? Fetishes are created by the mind. And what do they all have in common? We're seeing the left brain hemisphere at work again. They are always about objects. Things. Parts. Like feet, boobs, ass, and what have you (those are the mildest ones!).

Anyway I could go on and on.

I think the left/right brain hemisphere model, corresponding mainly to two modes of attention, is very very consistent, both with meditation, practices such as yoga, the rise of mental illness especially in the western world, the rise of geek culture, the rise of isolation, etc.

The big question of course is the chicken and egg situation. Which is the cause? Does porn dissociate people? Or do dissociated people come up with porn? As we see with the body, it's both. But I think we're in a spiral here, unless we care for our sanity.

The thing is, it's a complex situation. If porn disappeared off the internet we wouldn't see immediate or obvious changes. Though I would bet we would see some meaningful improvements to how men and women relate. I think the signs are out there.

[ripsawridge]

I don't know why this is downvoted, even if someone disagrees with the opinions, there is a rich vein of ideas to explore. I think we are talking about objectification, in which everything becomes subject to a mental algebra necessarily devoid of empathy. The whole modality of sitting down at a computer and consuming information creates a bias to objectify what you see.

Anyway, on the original topic, as an American living in Germany, I really appreciate how relaxed people are here regarding nudity. I agree with a point other posters have made: the drumbeat of the fears and predilections of the dominant culture finally overwhelm the native one. Germans are pretty stubborn though, and carve out better lives in the diminishing yet still robust delta between their own ideas and imported ones.

[AltruisticGap]

Hey, thanks for the appreciation.

Indeed, Ian Mc Gilchrist mentions how empathy is the realm of the right brain hemisphere.

There is a good animated summary of his work:

RSA ANIMATE: The Divided Brain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI