What Do You Call The Opposite of Nudism?

Everybody thinks they know what a “nudist” is. The fact that no one knows a word for the opposite of nudist reveals one of the society’s greatest unchallenged oppressions.

The most important function of naturism, as I see it, is to challenge every aspect of society’s dysfunctional relationship with the human body. I call the totality of this dysfunction the Body Shame Culture and contrast it with a hypothetical model of a Free Body Culture where humans would be raised without the pervasive anxieties about the body we experience now.

The Body Shame Culture is manifested in a number of ways, but its central component is the simple fact that there is a near universal expectation that you will be clothed at all times. In a Free Body Culture, by contrast, you would be free to be dressed or undressed as you see fit, so long as you are not using your nudity in a sexually provocative manner.

One of the biggest difficulties in talking about naturism is that the movement is challenging social norms that have no widely agreed upon name or definition. Most people would agree that a nudist seems to be rebelling against something. But who can tell you what exactly is the name of the thing they are rebelling against? Nudists are not rebelling against clothing, since they all wear clothing most of the time. They are not rebelling against society, since they tend to be pretty normal members of society in most other respects.

What they are “rebelling” against is an expectation, a social convention. They are rejecting the expectation that one must wear clothing at all times. But what do we call this notion of “one must be wearing clothes at all times”?

The best word for it is “textilism”.

In naturist and nudist communities, or countries which have large numbers of nude beaches, the term “textile” is used as an adjective to describe non-nudist beaches, etc. It is also a noun to describe persons not participating in a social nudity, as in “I chased the volleyball over to the textile side of the beach and all these textiles started screaming at me”. Given the ubiquity of the term within the naturist context and its usefulness in describing a fundamental characteristic of nearly all known human societies, it is surprising that textilism, that is, the stance of rejecting social nudity, is such an obscure term, even within the naturist community.

I define textilism as the philosophical, political, social, and pragmatic stance that clothing should be used to cover the body at all times except when nudity is justified by appropriate medical and hygienic necessity, or certain limited sexual and artistic circumstances.

The word may be new for you, but this is not a new concept. You have lived your whole life surrounded by textilists. You are nude nude for hygienic purposes when you shower. Your nude body, or the most private parts of it, may be exposed at a doctor’s office for a number of reasons. Most people are nude with their sexual partners. And most people approve of nudity for some artistic reasons.

One other justification, nudity for political protest, is in a grey area. Sometimes protesters are nude because they are arguing against textilism, such as in the “top free equality movement”. But more often nudity is not the object sought by nude or semi-nude protesters. That kind of nudity is often supposed to be shocking or perhaps a little sexually titilating, such as in the case of the Femen group or the Slut Walks. The nudity of this kind of protest does not contradict the textilist principle — it exploits it.

Textilism is a philosophical and religious stance in that many people believe that covering the body is in some way morally necessary or dictated by religious requirements. This is obviously true for Catholic nuns and hijab-wearing Muslims, but it is also true more generally. Many religious people will agree that while mere nudity justified by necessity was not necessarily a sin, intentional immodesty was certainly against God’s will. In the religious context nudity is often very much closely associated with sexuality, so prohibitions on nudity are justified by those religions’ strong anti-sex positions.

Textilism is a political stance in that many people believe that governments have a right or obligation to regulate the amount and kind of clothing used to cover the body. Any attempt to formally reduce the legal constraints on nudity will almost certainly be met with political opposition. Any attempt to walk down the street nude will likely result in an encounter with the police.

It is a social stance in that most people, regardless of explicit political or philosophical beliefs on the topic, will agree that it is appropriate or necessary to use social or peer pressure to compel all persons to cover their body with clothing. In other words, nudity is a taboo because it has “always” been a taboo and the taboo is enforced for no other reason than the social indoctrination that it ought to be enforced.

And it is a pragmatic stance in that many people justify the perpetual covering of the body on utilitarian grounds, often citing comfort, warmth, and protection from harm. This is the most reasonable argument against nudity, as every naturist and nudist agrees that there are many circumstances where nudity is simply not practical. But this does not explain why people are so hostile to nudity where there is no pragmatic advantage at all, such as swimming or relaxing at home.

Textilism is in many ways the foundation of Body Shame Culture. Many aspects of Body Shame are a result of misunderstandings about “norms” about the body resulting from ignorance of what most bodies look like. We live in an era when mass media have unprecedented power over our conceptions over what a normal or ideal body looks like. This message is rarely, if ever, countered by personal, real-life encounters with large numbers of average nude persons. Thus, an entirely incorrect idea of “normal bodies” or “ideal bodies” is allowed to take hold of the mind with little connection with the facts.

Textilism is spread socially, starting with parents. Very young children are usually allowed to remain naked for extended periods of time, but as they get older, their parents begin to insist that clothing must be worn. The fact that this happens routinely in nearly every family in the world, and that nearly every person experienced this textilist indoctrination makes it all the more bewildering that there is no better known word for it. We talk about the best age to wean a child, or the best age to start potty training. But when we talk about the best age for textilist indoctrination, we never call it by a proper name. If its discussed at all, the topic is usually raised as a question like, “How old is too old for my child to run around naked?” (The answer, of course, is that you are never too old to run around naked.)

Textilism usually manifests itself (in non-toddlers) without conscious thought, yet it is an impulse acted upon daily. In your own mind you likely interpret the compulsion to dress as a desire (“I want to get dressed before I go out”), yet you know that it is also a requirement (“I must get dressed or I will go to jail”). That requirement is an unstated assumption every single time you get dressed. That requirement’s name is textilism.

Some of you may be reading and thinking, “Well of course, we can’t all very well go running around naked all the time, can we?” This is a textilist question, a very narrow-minded and unimaginative question, and misses the point. Textilism is the assumption that being clothed is always the default and that nudity must be justified. But in nature, animals, including humans, are naked by default. Instead of asking “why would we want to run around naked all the time”, which is a textilist question, you should be asking “Under what circumstances is it advantageous to use clothing?”

A non-textilist stance would be one in which clothing is understood properly as a tool or a form of decoration. In the pragmatic, or “clothing as tool”, paradigm, clothing would be used only when it served a practical function, just as one only used a hammer when one needed to put a nail into wood. You would still wear clothing much of the time, because clothing is indisputably useful for many reasons.

In the decorative, or “clothing as decoration”, paradigm, clothing and other bodily decorations are only affixed when the wearing chooses to decorate the body. If you love fashion, a non-textilist culture would still allow you to dress as much as you want in any way you wish. But you would have a choice. Decoration would be for fun — it would not be forced upon everyone by a threat of ostracism or violence.

In a non-textilist culture, it is clothing that must be justified, not nudity. This still doesn’t mean that you would be nude all the time. It means that nudity would be recognized as the proper “default” status of the body, which would be adorned only by mindful, intentional choice according to one’s circumstances. The decision to not wear clothing would be morally neutral and without stigma or any negative or automatic sexual connotation.

Nudity in a non-textilist culture would be both habitual and social, unlike today, where nudity is limited and private. It would be habitual in the sense that many people would remove unused clothing and remain nude for extended periods of time on a regular basis — for example, while sleeping or spending any lengthy period of rest in the home. This kind of nudity would be unremarkable, as whole generations of people would grow up knowing no shame about the body.

Social nudity means that nudity would not be limited to the interior of a home or certain rooms in the home, but would be common at social gatherings at which clothing serves no function or is counterproductive, such as while swimming, sunbathing, or using a sauna. Again, in a non-textilist culture, there would be no shyness about this kind of nudity, because whole generations would be raised this way.

In a truly non-textilist society, a small minority of people in warmer climates may choose to live nearly all of their lives in the nude. I believe that this should be entirely lawful and accepted (and I believe that it will always be a small minority), but I recognize that we are a long way from that, and likely private property owners (including businesses) will retain a right to ban nudity.

This non-textilist attitude is what I usually mean when I use the word “nudism”. Where textilists are obsessed with covering the body, nudists recognize that the human body evolved without clothing and that the shame associated with nudity is taught through a process of intentional indoctrination. Nudists may be naked a lot, or they may simply be not constrained by a textilist mentality while choosing to remain clothed most of the time.

In my typical usage “nudism” simply means the rejection of textilism and the intentional adoption of the practice of habitual and social nudity. Nudism is a concept with minimal philosophical or political content and may refer to practioners of social nudity who are otherwise quite opposed to my concept of naturism.

I use “naturism” when talking about a broader philosophy of opposition to all aspects of body shame and the use of nudist ideas to challenge all of society’s dysfunctional relationship with the body. My version of naturism, which I call Reform Naturism, opposes textilism and gymnophobia, but also is very much concerned with the many other ways in which our modern society discourages healthy respect for human bodies and their appearance, emotions, desires, and well-being.

As a naturist, I believe the most important thing for both the naturist movement and nudist lifestyle is to begin promoting the use of words like textilism and gymnophobia to highlight these unacknowledged blind spots of irrational oppression. My hope in writing about it is that readers who are interested in body positivity and oppression, whether naturist, nudist, or other, will use these terms in their critiques and analyses of the world around them and challenge them in their everyday lives.