Most of us, at one point or another, wonder whether our bodies are “normal”. Often the only naked bodies we see are our own, our partners’ and those in movies or porn. Public nudity is generally illegal. Without access to non-commercialised naked bodies, we often end up comparing ourselves to bodies that really aren’t typical. Doctors can be a great resource for ensuring nothing harmful is going on with your body, but they don’t tend to comment on aesthetics.
If you’ve been to a nude beach, sauna or FKK (Free Body Culture) area, you know that there are a lot of variations to bodies. We’re all quite wonderfully unique. A visual display of many different bodies is a great way to lower the cortisol and recognise just how inadequate the Hollywood representation of nude bodies really is. But not everyone has access to spaces like this, or if you do, you might not feel comfortable trying it out for yourself.
Enter Normal Nudes, a subreddit for nudes. This is a space that isn’t porn, features any bodies who decide to share their photo online, and isn’t held behind a pay wall. Let’s talk about it.
The myth of normal
As Gabor Maté appropriately pointed out in his book, The Myth of Normal, the idea that there is a singular normal way of being is false, yet persistent. I frequently hear people comparing all sorts of human looks and behaviours as normal versus whatever they’re trying to convince me is strange. Typically, there’s an implicit understanding that through comparison, they’re trying to position themselves within the normal group (though, not always!).
We like it when people are exceptional, but most of us don’t dare to put ourselves in that category. We’re just concerned with not falling below standards and becoming exceptionally bad. So, we try to make sure we’re well within normal ranges for everything.
But who gets to say what normal is or isn’t? We do, I guess. Collective humanity. And from that line of thinking, the collective is creating a collaborative library of bodies on the internet. Hoorah!
A widespread collaborative archive of “normal nudes”
Normal Nudes has been going on since 2012. Every week, 251,000 visitors are scrolling through the page, basking in the glory of the human body in all its various shapes and forms. Every week, 12,000 more photos are posted.
It started small, but once lockdown hit, and everyone was flocking to OnlyFans and whatever else they could find online to a) satisfy their need for connection or b) make money from their bedrooms, it skyrocketed.
The rules are pretty straightforward. No advertising, no body shaming, no erections, no AI. You can’t just keep posting on repeat, nor can you PM or harass anyone on the page.
Scrolling through, most posts are from the neck down, which isn’t really how humans evolved to interact with other humans. As a result, I now see faces in bodies. Thanks, brain, I really didn’t need to think of nipples as eyes, belly buttons as noses and genitals as mouths, but here we are.
We live in a hypersexualised world
“Sex sells” has been the motto of the advertising industry, stretching back at least as far as the 1870s. It really stepped up in popularity in the 90s and has continued on to the present day. Sex has been used to sell everything from soaps to beer to clothes. It is such a ubiquitous strategy that we hardly even notice anymore when it’s used. It has become normal.
And yet, despite all this sexual energy bombarding our senses, society tightly controls sexuality. Public displays of affection are generally discouraged. Most contexts in which we spend our time are not conducive to, or welcoming of, sexual behaviour. Add to that the sexual recession we seem to be having. We’re watching sex but not having it.
Women, gay people and certain ethnicities have historically been hypersexualised against their will, often in ways that undermine their other qualities, skills and experience. A lot of these people get triggered by the sexual gaze, while others have learned to control it for some level of self-protection. Oftentimes, they have not been given the freedom to be themselves enough to learn their authentic, sexy expressions. Many eventually reclaim their power through sexualising themselves to suit their own gaze, rather than the gaze that culture propagates.
Normal nudes is a space for the desexualisation of bodies
Ok, I’m all for voluntarily sexualising oneself — I think that’s absolutely wonderful and something everyone should explore at some point, if not regularly. Sexual power is a wonderful thing when used appropriately. I highly recommend dedicating real time and energy into loving on yourself and finding your sexy feelings. If you haven’t already read Pleasure Activism, I recommend that, too, to get you started.
The normal nudes subreddit requests that posts not be sexual in nature. That’s part of the container they’ve created, and I take no issue with intentionally creating boundaries around the space you nurture. The world we live in treats sexuality very weirdly. In commercial contexts, bodies are hyper sexualised in very particular ways. It’s nice to have a space for nude bodies where sexuality isn’t activated.
That being said, the posts vary in tone. Some posters are sexualising themselves, in that they are utilising that sexual energy and projecting that to the camera. You don’t have to be engaged in a sexual act to use sexual energy.
Sexual energy is not about showing skin
When you only ever see naked bodies in the context of sex, it is easy to mistake nakedness for sexiness. However, this is not the case. Exuding sexual energy is about creating an internal shift; an inner radiance. It is an embodied mode of being.
Learning to recognise the difference between simply existing without clothes and activating sexual energy is an important skill. It is foundational to a feminist understanding of body autonomy. You can do whatever you like with your body. Decorate it, hide it, or leave it bare — whatever you want to do with your body is your business and not an invitation for anything.
Activating your sexual energy isn’t consent, either. Sometimes that sexual activation is just about enjoying feeling sexy without interacting with anyone else. But regardless of how you want to use your sexual energy, it is powerful and completely separate from how much or how little clothing you have covering your body.
More like a nude beach than a sex party
In the way that r/normalnudes requests that posts not be sexual, it does feel more like going to a nude beach than a sex party. Nude beaches still expect you to behave as you would on any beach. If it r/normalnudes were like a sex party, the angles would be different. The poses would be different. More suggestive or explicit.
Instead, we see some people exuding sexual energy, but most people just existing. A nude beach usually has a mix of people with a mix of motives. Sure, there are always a few who are looking to pick someone up, but there are usually more people just wanting to feel free. Or maybe enjoying their partner, or having a friendship-oriented day, or simply enjoying the great outdoors.
If you want to contribute to a library of nude bodies simply existing, this is the place for you. Archives of bodies have largely been kept within medical or pornographic contexts, which skews the data significantly. This at least has a chance to accurately represent humanity. Only through representative sampling can we really understand human physiology.
How many sex categories do humans “normally” have?
The Reddit page doesn’t require declaring one’s sex, and yet most opt to do so. Why? Most now are probably just following the norms of what they’re seeing others do. But is this revealing to us how strongly we cling to a binary sex identity?
I am quite convinced that biological sex is not a binary. Scientifically, experts agree that there are more variations than can easily be classified into two broad categories. Intersex people are as common as redheads, and there are over 30 different ways to be intersex. The more you try to define what makes someone male or female, the more these categories break down.
Looking through r/normalnudes, you begin to see people in a gradient. Or multiple gradients. There are women whose clits are bigger than some men’s dicks. There are men whose breasts are bigger than some women’s breasts. Curves and angles exist across gender. The border lines are blurred. Removing gender markers from the equation might reveal a smoother continuum of bodies than “normal” culture would have us believe.
R/normalnudes supports body positivity, in theory
Not everyone who comments has been fully indoctrinated into the world of body positivity. Body shaming is against the rules, but not everyone has the same ideas of what constitutes body shaming.
If your body has always been a size and shape that you felt good about, you might not realise how cutting some remarks can be. Particularly if you have internalised an idea of what kind of body “everyone wants” to have. Compliments may not land as well as one hopes. Some posters have reported feeling a whole lot worse about their already flimsy self worth after having posted.
But even with the comments that miss the mark, overall, the comments seem pretty encouraging. Some commenters clearly understand body autonomy and unhelpful beauty standards, and speak from that place of understanding and support. Some others blurt out compliments and affirmations. Occasionally, you’ll get advice, both helpful and misguided. Ultimately, it’s the internet; a lot can happen out there.
The trouble with body insecurity and posting nudes
There are some posts where the poster declares themselves to be suffering from some form of body insecurity. Usually these posts also have comments aimed at building up self-confidence. But not everyone has the training or experience to respond in ways that are helpful.
Additionally, when someone is deeply insecure about themselves, it doesn’t matter how many compliments they receive. Their suffering mind will convince them that people are lying or secretly laughing at them. They might imagine comments in a cruel tone of voice. This is the nature of depression.
When someone is that deeply insecure about their body, they might decide to post, thinking that it will help make them feel better, and it might not. External validation is not nearly as powerful as validating oneself.
Changing the way we look at bodies
I thought that I would get more accurate with guessing age, weight and height the more posts I saw, but I actually found the opposite happening. I found that as I scrolled, these descriptors became practically meaningless.
What I think might be more meaningful would be to describe bodies by where they fall on various characteristic scales. I want to organise nudes by most curvy to most angular. Level of hair. Nipple size. Areola size. Lightest to darkest. Overlapping, voluminous folds to clean, tight lines between the legs. Gradients, not discrete categories.
I’d like to see a greater variety of sex differences. They already have some nice variety on r/normalnudes: dicks of many sizes and shapes; waifs with hairy arms and cute little bushes; bodies that are slim, muscular, fuller and relaxed. I’d like to see more people whose gender I can’t figure out. Hairier bodies. Disabled bodies. Ripped bodies. Soft bodies. Angular and fluid. Those are all there, I’m sure. But I think in this case, more is more.
You are normal
We exist as a multiplicity. The same parts, arranged differently.
Ultimately, there are over 8 billion humans in the world, and only so many characteristics to the human body. Every variation probably exists at least once. A normal body is one that is alive and breathing. No matter your body: you are normal, you are beautiful, and you are loved.