Nadine Higgins

Swimsuits are optional in my spa pool

Opinions are like backsides, they say – everyone has one, but that doesn’t mean you should always air them in public.

This week, everyone with a backside was airing an opinion in public about whether too many backsides were being bared in public.

The nudity debate reared its hairy nether-regions again thanks to a Facebook post claiming it has become more common for people to bare it all on Waiheke Island’s beaches, and other people’s morality, or eyeballs, are offended.

The common argument against nudists on public beaches is a pearl-clutching ‘‘think of the children’’.

Yet we all come into the world that way, and I can’t think of any age group that’s happier to run around in the buff. In fact, most of the kids I know squirm like jellyfish when you try to wrangle them into clothes, and then if you turn your back for a second, they whip them off again.

Somewhere along the line, in our journey from childhood to adulthood, we learn our bodies are something to hide; that some bits are naughty, dirty, or rude.

So, we button ourselves back up into Victorian ideology and declare that anyone who dares flash the flesh is a slut, a creep, or a weirdo. Then, once we’re done making the human body illicit, we wonder why parts of it become fetishised and the most natural act of breastfeeding a baby in public still gets some people’s (modestly clothed) tits in a tangle.

At my house, I’m trying to implement a policy of no towel, no spa among our friends who come to visit – whether they wear togs in the spa is totally up to them, I just don’t want to do any more washing than I have to.

Don’t get me wrong, Louis Theroux need not come knocking, I’m not running a private swingers’ club, it’s just that nobody cares – they’re just bodies, everyone’s got one and we’re all friends here.

You won’t, however, see me down at Mission Bay prancing about without a stitch to cover my backside because there’s a difference between a nudist and an exhibitionist and there’s a difference between letting it all hang out and putting it all on display.

I think of it like religious evangelism: I’m happy for you to live by any moral code you choose/give your rude bits a public outing, but don’t make aggressive attempts to convert me/do the helicopter with your dangly bits and we’ll all get along just fine.

It’s not illegal to be naked in public, but depending on where you do it, how you do it and who you do it in front of, it could be considered ‘offensive behaviour’, ‘disorderly behaviour’, or at the extreme end, ‘obscene/ indecent exposure’ under the Summary Offences Act.

So, you have the freedom to air your bottom in public, but like an unpopular opinion, if you shove it in someone’s face, make peace with the fact your backside may prompt a backlash.

Somewhere along the line, in our journey from childhood to adulthood, we learn our bodies are something to hide; that some bits are naughty, dirty, or rude.