A NEW REALITY. . .“Gone are our unvarnished points of physical comparison" | The Atlantic

Americans aren’t getting naked in locker rooms as much anymore, Jacob Beckert wrote in 2025—part of a reversal in cultural norms that could profoundly change how we view the naked body. https://theatln.tc/qDnrQANw 

“For more than a century, the cultural norm in the United States was that nudity was acceptable—at least within same-sex environments,” Beckert continues. 

But many of the everyday spots where Americans once encountered unclothed bodies—locker rooms, school showers, public pools, bathhouses—have “either vanished or shifted away from collective nudity.”

This kind of casual nudity has in part declined because the mainstream assumption that “same-sex facilities were inherently asexual—and therefore appropriate settings for nudity—no longer holds,” Beckert writes. 

• Meanwhile, broader conversations about consent, sexual assault, and vulnerability, as well as the ubiquity of phone cameras, “have raised questions about the discomfort or even legal liabilities that such spaces can create.”

Although these changes can be positive, Beckert continues, they also introduce a new reality: 

“Today, the only naked bodies that many Americans will likely ever see are their own, a partner’s, or those on a screen,” Beckert argues. 

“Gone are our unvarnished points of physical comparison—the ordinary, unposed figures of other people.” 

This loss may seem trivial, he continues, “but it also may change how people see themselves.”