Fear of Undressing in Front of Someone

Why the shame is culturally specific

Among ancient civilisations, only Abrahamic societies associated nakedness primarily with sin or with shame regarding sexuality. That is a narrow origin for something now treated as a natural response.

Elsewhere the embarrassment attached to complete nakedness came from its social connotations of low status and deprivation rather than from anything sexual. Societies that lacked the Western concept of bodily shame removed garments in public for practical or ceremonial purposes without difficulty. In some, there was no shame or modesty attached to women's breasts and therefore no garment made to conceal them, while the pubic area was covered in the presence of men because exposing it was a cultural expression of anger and contempt.

Clothing itself has purposes that get forgotten in the argument about modesty. Body coverings have served other purposes entirely:

• camouflage for hunters
• body armour
• costumes for impersonating spirit-beings

Where undressing in company was ordinary

Japan and Finland maintained traditions of communal nudity built on baths and saunas, which provided an alternative to sexualising the naked body, though men and women are now often separated in public and community settings.

Christianity's own practice was once the same. Both men and women were baptised naked, with deaconesses performing the rite for women in order to maintain modesty. Christian theology rarely addresses nudity directly, addressing proper dress and modesty instead. Islamic countries are guided by rules of modesty that forbid nudity, with variations between the five schools of law.

In the United States and other Western countries, for much of the twentieth century, male nudity was the norm in sex-segregated settings including summer camps, swimming pools and communal showers, on the belief that women need more privacy than men. In much of the world the modesty of women is not only a social custom but part of the legal definition of indecent exposure.

Where the fear actually comes from

Two mechanisms are described, and neither is a fear of being unclothed.

The first is context. The strong connection between nudity and sex produces shame when a person is naked in a setting where sexuality is regarded as inappropriate, which makes the changing room rather than the body the source of the problem.

The second is appearance. In Western cultures shame can arise from failing to meet a society's ideals about how a body should look, and historically that has affected women more than men. That is a fear of being assessed rather than of being seen.

The philosopher Krista Thomason argues against treating such feelings as malfunctions, noting that negative emotions including shame exist because they are functional, and that human beings are not perfect.

Who organises the opposite position

While public modesty prevails in recent times, organised groups of nudists and naturists have formed with the stated purpose of regaining a natural connection to the human body and to nature, sometimes in private spaces and sometimes in public.

Naturists commonly describe their own nakedness as a return to the innocence and simplicity of childhood, which locates the shame in something learned rather than something innate. That is the same conclusion the historical record points at from the other direction, and it leaves the phobia word describing a reaction most of human history did not require a name for.