I peeled off my shirt, and he let out a yelp as though he’d been stung by a bee, then skyrocketed out of the room.Īlarmed, I called after him, “What’s wrong?!” He chattered on about something Minecraft-related as I gathered up my towel, my deodorant, and a fresh outfit. I was in the bathroom getting ready to take a shower, still fully dressed, when he walked in as usual. They asked the occasional question about how I got those “funny lines” on my stomach (thanks a lot, kids) but otherwise never expressed anything but indifference to my bare bod.Īlmost exactly a year to the date after the blog post ran - when my oldest son had just turned 10 - I got my answer. “Or whenever they become uncomfortable with it, I guess.”Īt that time, they still didn’t bat an eye when they saw me in various states of undress. “When they learn to knock,” I’d always joke. Throughout the whole harrowing ordeal, I got lots of questions, but one overwhelmingly outnumbered the rest: When was I going to stop letting my sons see me naked?
I was talking about normal, everyday nudity - bathing, changing, trying (and failing) to pee alone - not strutting in front of my boys wearing pasties and a G-string. “It’s not that big a deal!” I howled ineffectively into the whirling rage. I clung to the occasional supportive comment like a life raft, gasping for air in the midst of this epic shitstorm. And I don’t mean one or two people were saying things like that it felt like the entire world was waving a blazing pitchfork at me. “She’s a pedophile, and social services should get those boys out of that house immediately,” blasted others. “This woman is going to turn her sons gay,” some trumpeted indignantly. It was the subject du jour on radio talk shows and podcasts. The post went massively, unexpectedly viral, and the internet (most of whom apparently based their opinions on the provocative title alone) clutched its collective pearls, skewering me not only in nasty comments but in entire articles of rebuttal against my “disgusting” and “depraved” parenting style. Since I’m a writer (and OK, a little bit of an oversharer), I wrote a blog post about it: “ Why I Want My Sons To See Me Naked.” Little did I know that I was about to be on the receiving end of a soul-crushing backlash, the likes of which I’d never seen. That nudity, while a part of sexuality, is not inherently sexual it’s just natural. But more importantly, I wanted to send them the message that our bodies are nothing to be ashamed of and that we should be comfortable in our own skin, not rushing to cover up parts that have been perceived as shameful or sinful. I hoped it would lead to realistic expectations - normal standards that their future wives or girlfriends could live up to. Not the airbrushed, stick-thin, silicone-enhanced variety they’d be exposed to by the media later on. In fact, I reasoned that my boys seeing me naked would - from a very early age - give them a genuine picture of a woman’s body: curves, dimples, wobbly bits, and all. They saw me in the buff plenty of times, and I never worried about it.
And they saw my - well, pretty much everything - in the course of normal daily life: barging into the bathroom while I was on the toilet because it takes little kids a long time to grasp the concept of privacy showering with me to save precious time chattering incessantly as they followed me into the bedroom where I was changing clothes. They regularly saw my boobs as I nursed the baby. I mean, how could I? You’re not left with much of a choice when you’re trying to navigate life with a 7-year-old, a 4-year-old, a 3-year-old, and an infant - as I was after my youngest was born. I have four sons, and I’ve never been shy about being naked in front of them.
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