I’ve never sent a naked selfie. There’s no shame in a little shame

Yes, I see you looking at me in the change room at the pool, your mammaries doing the cha-cha as you dry what would be your short-and-curlies if you hadn’t lasered them off. I’m so pleased you’re immune to shame while displaying your naked flesh, a relief map of the life your body’s traversed. My five-year-old daughter loudly identifies your “BOOBIES” while I scuttle away behind the closed door of the shower to change awkwardly in a puddle of foot fungus. Each to their own.

A change room is one thing, but being semi-naked has become de rigeur on the red carpet, in music video clips (think Katy Perry’s recent “feminist” trainwreck Woman’s World, which features a slow-motion close-up of her jiggling jugs), and even off-duty if you’re Bianca Censori doing her best impression of a smallgoods section at a deli. As a support worker, I took someone to see Miley Cyrus on her Bangerz tour in 2014, half-naked and writhing around on stage, humping giant soft toys, which felt less like an artistic choice and more of a gyrating expression of not being hugged as a child.

Nudists celebrate the joy of being “free” from the oppressive restraints of clothing, calling themselves “naturists” – closer to nature – like only eating organic grapes … or exposing them. And Europeans, don’t get me started. You get your kit off when someone thinks the word “spa”. Then there are the eccentric hipsters, gathering around burning men for some nude yoga and diving into Tasmanian water that’s colder than a witch’s tit for Dark Mofo.

Then we have the naked selfie, the modern-day “come hither” replacing historical forms of flirtation like exposing your ankle, fluttering your eyelashes, or being traded for six sheep. The nude selfie is the crowning glory of sexual liberation, as well as a beastly thing that’s enabled blackmail and destroyed lives. And yet, it’s still emblematic of our sexual “empowerment”.

At some point, feminism announced that nudity was liberating and a way of reclaiming ownership of our bodies from oppressive forces such as clothing or the patriarchy, but it’s gradually become an oppressive stance itself. The celebrity trend of near-nudity trickles down to young women who fail to see the distinction between “dressing how I want” and “objectifying myself”, and heaven forbid if you comment on her appearance in an age of #MeToo.

Credit: Getty Images

This has led to women joyfully jumping on the OnlyFans bandwagon, describing it as “empowering” because, as the mental gymnastics goes, women have taken the “power” (read: money) that’s always been in the hands of males (read: patriarchy) by commodifying their own bodies. As Ariel Levy wrote in her iconic 2005 book Female Chauvinist Pigs on the rise of raunch culture, “If Male Chauvinist Pigs were men who regarded women as pieces of meat, we would outdo them and be Female Chauvinist Pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.”

Being self-conscious in change rooms is worlds away from flaunting bits of your bits on the red carpet, but I feel like the sentiment is the same. The word “prude” originates from the French (of course it does) but you might be surprised to learn that it comes from prudfemme and prud’homme, meaning “wise and good woman” and “wise and good man”.

That we use “prude” as a derogatory term should show us the implicit pressure we put on others to embrace nudity and sexuality as the hallmark of liberation and freedom from shame, but if I’m going to teach my daughter anything, it’s that there’s no shame in a little shame.

Actually, let’s not call it shame; let’s call it “not getting your boobies out in public for the sake of liberation because perhaps the only thing you’ll liberate is the male trouser snake”. Sure, it takes a bit longer to say, but it might stop her from doing an EmRata at her year 10 formal.

Cherie Gilmour is a freelance writer.