During the summer of 2022, I had the pleasure of spending several nights at the Bolita rainforest hostel in Costa Rica. Located in the remote Southwest Osa peninsula, the hostel is entirely off-grid. Getting there proved to be quite difficult, involving a long hike through the rainforest with a river we had to cross. We were there during the rainy season, which meant that it was pretty much impossible to cross the river after around noon or so, as their would be a consistent downpour for the next several hours and the river would flood.

Besides its location, the thing that makes Bolita unique is that it is a naturist, or nudist-friendly eco lodge. I was aware of this fact and was comfortable with the idea before I arrived, yet I still felt a little surprised when I was greeted by two volunteers completely in the nude.

As one of the workers began showing us around, my initial astonishment began to wear off. I thought of a piece of advice often given for public speaking, “just picture them naked,” and it began to make a lot more sense. Nakedness is a position of vulnerability. It feels like an admission of trust, akin to open palms, smiling with your teeth bared, eye contact, or other kinds of body language that makes one seem approachable.

It didn’t take long for me to totally forget about the presence or absence of clothing. I began to wonder why, in such a supposedly progressive society, Westerners are still so sensitive to nudity. The first, and most obvious place to look is our Puritanical and religious roots. Early European colonists brought with them strong moral and religious convictions surrounding modesty and abstinence, and enforced a strict set of norms. This attitude was reflected in both the laws and art of the time and continued through the 19th century. During the 20th century, attitudes toward nudity began to loosen alongside various feminist movements, culminating in 1960s countercultural and sexual revolution, where nudity was associated with freedom and self-expression.

Despite the fact that we have become more tolerant toward nudity, there is still a problem: nudity is almost always sexualized. Depictions of nudity in modern media are almost never incidental or without circumstance.