Getting naked for a good cause

No, I'm not stripping down! But I see a lot of it going on: supposedly empowering commercials featuring non-standard sizes of women in their underwear, for example. Activists stripping down in public and trusting strangers to hug or write on them. Daring to go bare.

I get the symbolism: stripping down to one's common, um, denominator is being metaphorically naked and real to the public.

But, really? Why is the standard for body confidence half-naked? Why is it appearance-based at all? Why, indeed, is it about others? For many, just standing in one's skin of a normal day is an act of boldness, alone in their room., fully dressed. It doesn't need to be in public, or shivering in the gaze of strangers.

This brings to mind an era when we were told we were "uptight" if we didn't want to embrace "free love."

I don't know that stripping down to one's skin is necessarily casting off one's self-consciousness. For some it is, and that is be applauded, but it shouldn't be the new standard of being real. I'm real in my clothes. I can be confident in my underwear without displaying my underthings. Confidence in one's body image need not be proved through how many layers we are ready to strip off. In fact, body confidence isn't about how we LOOK, anyway. It is not necessarily lack of self-confidence that keeps our drawers on, it is also social propriety and comfort and privacy.