Strip TV

A Look at Our Consumption of Naked Bodies on Reality Television

Despite today’s ongoing political and social contention over nudity, bodies, and sexuality, complete with frenzied and indiscriminate social media censorship, legal threats to nude spaces and socialization, growing paranoia over exposure to even artistic nudity, and a generational undercurrent of purported prudishness, we have also witnessed in the past decade or so a renaissance of nudity in mainstream reality television. This trend extends far beyond the instances of on-screen skinny-dipping and drunken nude antics captured on Bravo’s various Real Housewives franchises or the instances of sexy hook-ups and dare-induced nude frolics on any number of reality dating and competition shows. Those instances offer an interesting study on their own—in my opinion, serving as a welcome reminder of our own playful humanity while also sating some primal need to see each other naked—but the red meat of this media movement is a suite of reality TV programming centered around nudity as the core gimmick. These series spice up all the classic reality TV tropes—survival challenges, relationship woes, skill competitions, and house-hunting adventures, to name a few—with nudity. Sometimes playfully obscured nudity, sometimes implied nudity, sometimes fully blurred nudity, and sometimes, on rare occasions, full, uncensored nudity.

Discovery’s Naked & Afraid

While there is at least one program that leans into the nudist community–TLC’s short-lived Buying Naked, which focuses on finding homes for nudists in a nudist community in Florida—most of the programming is not about nudism or nudists at all, instead taking everyday people from all walks of life and plopping them into settings where they must be nude for the majority or entirety of the show. A few of the contestants are occasionally nudists, sure, which they will usually admit is what drew them to applying to be on the show in the first place, but most of the contestants and cast members are not. Watching non-nudists face their fear and discomfort with nudity by stepping into these all-nude environments evokes perhaps a sense of terror or schadenfreude for some viewers, but for others I imagine it elicits the same kind of catharsis as watching horror movie characters emerge triumphant after surviving two hours of monster attacks. If they can do it, maybe so could I!

Not all of these naked dating/survival/competition shows are created equal, of course. Some are awful, some are great, but there are two in particular that I want to focus on. Both have captured a large, mainstream audience and the attention of viewers worldwide and have something important to reveal about us as viewers and how we all think about nudity, human nature, and community. The two series I’m referring to are Discovery’s long-running, spin-off laden Naked and Afraid franchise and Channel 4’s controversial yet highly compelling Naked Attraction, both offering an insight into our own psyche and values… and into what we think are our values.

Wild, Wayfaring, and Closely Watched

In much the same way that—to pull a timely reference here—the Olympics entice us with their testament to the impressive limits of human strength, physique, and athletic ability, Discovery’s Naked and Afraid sells us a glimpse into the limits of human endurance, resourcefulness, and survival skills. In both cases, what makes this programming special is the premise that most people cannot perform the tasks and trials unfolding on screen before you, whether that’s pole-vaulting or catching a cayman with your bare hands, so seeing someone reach these levels of physical endurance and athleticism captures our attention.

Naked and Afraid is grounded in the idea that we are all so far removed from nature that being thrust back into it without modern conveniences like tools and protective clothing is almost impossible for modern humans. Watching these hardy men and women put their skills to the ultimate test of survival while nude, shelterless, and defenseless can feel like an achievement for our species and a celebration of everything our bodies are capable of. It’s a reminder of what these bodies were made to be able to do for us, even though the vast majority of us will never want or need to put our bodies to that test. Worth noting here is that, yes, the lack of clothing and tools is a major hurdle for these contestants, but the contestants would be struggling to survive in the wild even if they were thrown a pair of boots and a parka. Nature is brutal even with modern conveniences. There’s something especially empowering for us as viewers when we see the contestants overcoming these natural obstacles to survive in the wild with nothing, when we see them in their basest human form subjected to the raw natural world, reminding us that our bodies and minds are capable of more than what we demand of them. It is a testament to our strength. Like the Olympics, however, it is also a sobering reminder of how few of us are truly capable of these feats, of the great lengths required to hone those skills and build that strength, and of the teams of people needed to support us in that pursuit. For example, I am about as likely to be able to run a marathon right now as I am to be able to survive in the Amazon for a month with nothing but a burlap sack and a machete… which is to say, not very.

There is, in Naked and Afraid, another, subtler message beneath all the extreme survivalism and primal escapism. It is less that we all have a hidden ability to survive in the jungle on our own and more that our true strength as humans is community, collaboration, and passing on knowledge, resources, and successes from person to person, community to community, and generation to generation. That these contestants could not be sent into the wilds without at least a couple of human tools developed over thousands of years of human tool-making and sharing of resources is a testament to this very message. They would not survive without the humans who came before them. That they are sent into the wilds with people of different genders, backgrounds, and beliefs, and must overcome those differences in order to survive also speaks to how unimportant those differences are and how vital it so overcome social barriers to work with one another. You will watch men and women freeze through the night, clinging to some concept of modesty that restricts them from sharing body heat with another person, for example. In these on-screen moments, our own prejudices and barriers as viewers are laid bare as well. Except in a few rare cases where contestants somehow make it out of their challenge as sole survivors, it is ultimately in working together with their partner or team that most contestants on the show are able to complete the challenge at all. We are most successful as a species when we have others to share the labor, the resources, and the fruits. This idea is even covertly reinforced behind the scenes of the show, as we watch its contestants struggle to survive in the wild under the watchful eye of a camera crew, wildlife snipers, and medical professionals, all there to make sure they’re never in any real danger.

Camera crew and contestants on Naked and Afraid XL

It is inspiring to be reminded of all the things our bodies are capable of doing on their own, yes, but it’s also quite humbling to be reminded how much more they can achieve with the help and collaboration of others. To me, that dichotomy is the lesson behind Naked & Afraid. The nudity of it all serves to both reinforce our natural human strength and expose our natural human vulnerability. That the whole program is successful because its gimmick is nudity is, to me, less important than that it also reinforces nudity as a natural—if not the most natural—human state, and reminds us how much of our modern lives is superficial.

Lust, Looky-Loos, and Combatting Loneliness

While Naked and Afraid goes to great lengths to place the human body in a natural environment so rugged we barely recognize it, so wild our softened bodies look nearly out of place, Channel 4’s Naked Attraction takes the opposite approach. Unlike other naked dating shows like VH1’s Dating Naked and MTV’s Undressed, where contestants are nude (or semi-nude) and have the chance to break through the awkwardness with conversation and real human connection to determine whether they’re compatible, Naked Attraction displays an array human bodies in sterile, zoo-like enclosures, juxtaposing the fleshy, organic forms with sharp angles and aggressive, unnatural lighting. It fully removes the body from anything resembling a natural environment and strips contestants of the touch and conversation that would be present in a typical dating show or, you know, in real life.

The concept seems to be that modern humans are so very far removed from the natural instincts that draw us to one another and that we have largely hidden from one another all of the parts that would have once been readily visible and might have played a larger role in mate selection in our distant past. That is to say, what maybe was once the first thing we looked at when choosing a mate is now a few more steps down the relationship path. Naked Attraction plays with that idea and says, “OK, let’s see what happens if we only look at each other’s bodies!” Contestants are asked to whittle down a slate of six potential suitors by judging the bodies piece by piece, starting with their legs and genitals, moving up to their torso and, eventually, on to their head. With each step of the process, contestants are surprised to find that someone with unattractive legs actually had a beautiful face, or vice versa, and it’s all part of the fun. Who knew!? By way of the occasional animated educational segment, Naked Attraction also takes the time to dive into the biological, social, and sexual science behind why we might find certain physical and behavioral traits to be more attractive than others when choosing a partner, reinforcing that there is some essential, instinctual urge within us that guides us to certain mates over others. It also alludes to the idea that clothing might actually be hindering our ability to read those signs and, consequently, to find meaningful relationships. That’s an interesting premise, especially in a cultural setting where loneliness is an epidemic and we’re all finding it more difficult than ever to find a partner who meets all of our needs and criteria.

Naked Attraction

I am not sure that Naked Attraction does a great job of proving that we should trust our primal instincts when it comes to mate selection and combatting loneliness, however. What it does succeed at is demonstrating how judging one another solely on the way our bodies look is sort of cruel and superficial. Eventually, after paring down the pool of candidates based on their knees, nipples, and smile, the main contestant does get to learn a bit about the remaining naked people in the boxes and does get to hear their voice before making a final selection, at which point they are allowed to get dressed and go on a proper date to see if they really are compatible. While I have not watched every episode of this show, I know that its match-making success rate is abysmal. In almost every case, the coupled pair finds they don’t actually have much in common romantically or socially once they’re clothed and dropped back out in the real world. Perhaps by accident and perhaps by design, the show demonstrates how superficial our first impressions can be, that the human body is no indicator of personality, and that we have to actually connect with one another if we hope to break down those boundaries. Sexual attraction, romantic compatibility, and personal connection, it turns out, are as distinct as sex, love, and nudity.

Apart from what the show reveals about nudity, I would go so far as to argue that Naked Attraction also reveals a lot about the role that clothing plays in modern human interaction. In the absence of the ability to hold a real conversation to get to know someone—or perhaps leading up to it—clothing provides a shortcut to understanding someone’s interests, way of life, and social status, for better or for worse. Naked Attraction removes all of those opportunities to gather at-a-glance intel on potential suitors, forcing contestants to rely on some supposed primal instinct, but ultimately it accidentally admits that clothing is probably a better indicator of a romantic connection and social compatibility than staring at a silent line-up of penises and vulvas. Still, like Naked and Afraid, Naked Attraction invites audiences to look at bodies and nudity differently. It grants viewers permission to privately judge others’ bodies—which its producers must know is what keeps people coming back—but it also offers viewers the opportunity to recognize that their own body is pretty normal after all, and that what really matters is what’s on the inside.

The Boob Tube Eucharist

Both of these popular series, like the dozen or so other naked dating and competition shows, offer nudity as a consumable more than anything. With that premise comes an inevitable public outcry over its depravity and the supposed harm that seeing naked bodies can cause, but it also comes with a built-in public fascination over actually seeing other naked bodies, something many people these days rarely encounter. If the premise of both Naked and Afraid and Naked Attraction is that early humans would have faced their environment and their relationships with less or no clothing in the way, then it’s fair to say that those same early humans were also just seeing more nudity, that they did not have to wonder what other bodies looked like.

However you feel about the body being used to sell a product or an advertising spot, it says something about us as viewers that we are drawn—either in fascination or in ire—to naked bodies served to us to consume at our leisure from the comfort of our homes. It seems to reveal how important it is to us to know… to know what we all look like, to know whether we look like everyone else, if everyone else looks like us. It seems to reveal our interest in connecting with some piece of our humanity we’ve said goodbye to along the way. It seems to comfort us to know that we could be nude and it wouldn’t kill us, that all the social and cultural stigma around nudity might all be made-up and survivable. It seems to remind us that our bodies are capable of more than we give them credit for, more than we regularly use them for. Those are comforting thoughts, I think, even for those who find the idea of nudity inherently uncomfortable.

Consuming the body, even in these small and seemingly trivial ways, serves some purpose for us: It reminds us of us, of who we are individually and collectively, and connects us with those around us. Is it a gimmick? Sure. But it stands in for something we deeply need: Nudity, apparently.