Through much of history until the beginning of the modern era, people were unclothed in public by necessity or convenience either when engaged in effortful activity, including labor and athletics or when bathing or swimming. While estimates vary, for at least 90,000 years anatomically modern humans wore no clothing, the invention of which was part of the transition from being not only anatomically but behaviorally modern.
Adaptations related to hairlessness contributed to the increase in brain size, bipedalism, and the variation in human skin color. The loss of body hair was one of the physical characteristics that marked the biological evolution of modern humans from their hominin ancestors. Norms are codified to varying degrees by laws defining proper dress and indecent exposure. Some societies and groups continue to disapprove of nudity not only in public but also in private, generally based upon religious beliefs. Societies such as in Japan and Finland maintain traditions of communal nudity based upon the use of baths and saunas that provided alternatives to sexualization. While the majority of societies require clothing in most situations, others recognize non-sexual nudity as being appropriate for some recreational, social or celebratory activities, and appreciate nudity in the arts as representing positive values. Although often used interchangeably, "naked" and "nude" are also used in English to distinguish between the various meanings of being unclothed.Ĭontemporary social norms regarding nudity vary widely, reflecting cultural ambiguity towards the body and sexuality, and differing conceptions of what constitutes public versus private spaces. Nakedness and clothing are connected to many cultural categories such as identity, privacy, social status and moral behavior. Partial nudity may be defined as not covering the genitals or other parts of the body deemed sexual, such as the buttocks or female breasts. In any particular society, these meanings are defined in relation to being properly dressed, not in relation to the specific body parts being exposed.
Nudity is culturally complex due to meanings given various states of undress in differing social situations. Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. Sunbathers at Müggelsee lake beach, East Berlin in 1989