Why Do I Still Cross My Legs as a Naturist Woman?

by Corin (apparently still negotiating with my own nervous system)

Something I Keep Noticing About Myself

Let’s talk about naturist women and body comfort. I’ve been noticing this about myself for a while now and I keep circling back to it because it’s both mildly annoying and kind of silly.

I’m a naturist. I’m comfortable being nude. I sit naked with other people… I share photos… I talk about bodies… and I do not burst into flames when someone takes their clothes off near me. All very solid naturist credentials.

And yet… I still subconsciously cross my legs or keep my knees closed when nude. Like my body has its own separate opinion about this whole freedom thing and did not bother to consult me.

It’s not because I’m cold or because I’m shy. It’s not because I suddenly forgot I’m naked or became scandalized by my own existence.

For me… it’s just reflex. A tiny, polite little leg-cross that happens before my brain even gets a vote. And every time I notice it, I have this internal moment of, “Really? We’re still doing this?”

What makes it extra strange is that I don’t have any reaction when other women are fully open and visible. None. I don’t care. I don’t interpret it as anything. It’s just a human body being a human body. End of story. So apparently my brain is totally fine with vulvas in general. It just has very specific opinions about my own.

Which feels rude, honestly. Like my own body is running a separate focus group without me.

When “Neutral” Isn’t Actually Neutral

Part of why I think this keeps standing out to me is because naturist spaces are supposed to be neutral about bodies, and in theory I agree with that completely. In practice… not so much. Especially online, where there is this very narrow, very fragile idea of what “acceptable naturist nudity” looks like and women’s bodies seem to get audited much more carefully than men’s.

We once got a message that I wasn’t a real naturist because I had tan lines… which is still one of my favorite ridiculous internet moments. Imagine looking at another human and thinking, “Ah yes, I see the problem. Your skin is the wrong shade in places. Philosophically speaking.”

So yes, I am very aware that if my vulva were more visible in photos, that would not be read as neutral either. It would not be read as “oh, that’s just a body.” It would be read as a statement, an intention, a performance, or an invitation to a debate I did not sign up for. Not because I did anything differently, but because our culture does not know how to look at female bodies without adding a whole lot of extra meaning on top.

I’m also very aware that if I suddenly started posting images where my vulva was fully visible like the next coming of Jesus, there would be a whole lot of applause and encouragement from certain corners of the internet. Likes, hearts, comments, “you’re so brave,” “you’re so confident,” “thank you for sharing,” all of that. But I genuinely don’t know what portion of that applause would be about respect and what portion would be about people quietly enjoying the view in a way they would absolutely never admit out loud.

And that ambiguity alone is enough to make me hesitate, because I’m not particularly interested in accidentally becoming someone else’s unspoken fantasy while I’m just trying to exist in my own body.

Which means that even in spaces that are supposed to be about freedom, I still find myself doing a little bit of mental and physical image management. Not because I want to. It’s because after all these years in this body, I’m pretty fluent in how the world works.

I Do This With Taking Photos Too (Of Course I Do)

I also notice all of this very clearly when we’re taking photos. I’m suddenly hyper-aware of my angles, my posture, what’s visible and what isn’t, and I absolutely do the thing where I look at Kevin and go, “Nope. That one’s not getting posted.” Sometimes because the angle is weird, sometimes because I look like I’m mid-blink or mid-thought or mid-existential crisis, and sometimes very specifically because my vulva is more visible than I’m comfortable with and I don’t want to turn myself into a conversation I didn’t agree to have.

This is usually when my internal committee convenes. One part of me is saying, “It’s fine. It’s just a body.” Another part is saying, “Yes, but is it internet-fine or just real-life fine?” And a third part is quietly reaching for the veto stamp.

Sometimes Kevin takes a perfectly lovely photo and, from the outside, it probably looks completely normal and unremarkable. And it is. He’s not doing anything wrong, and he isn’t seeing anything wrong. But what he sees as neutral and fine doesn’t always feel neutral inside my body, and I don’t think that’s something you can really see unless you’re the one inhabiting it. So I’ll get that little internal “ehhh…” before my brain has fully decided what it thinks, which is apparently my nervous system’s way of saying, “Just flagging this as a nope nope!”

What’s funny is that every once in a while I’ll see a photo where I am more exposed, but it falls into what feels like an artistic realm instead of a naturist one, and I’m suddenly much more comfortable with it. If it feels like an image about light, shape, mood, or composition rather than about my body in naturism, my brain relaxes. It’s the same body, the same amount of skin, but a completely different internal response.

Apparently my comfort level is not about how naked I am, but about whether my nakedness feels like a subject or a prop, which is a very specific distinction I did not know my psyche was capable of making.

So yes, I have learned that I am not just a person with a body, I am also apparently the editor-in-chief of my own internal nudity magazine, complete with veto power and a very inconsistent submission policy.

Yes. My brain is wired weird.

What My Body Learned Without Asking Me

So this is where I think the leg-crossing actually comes from. Not shame. Not discomfort with nudity. But experience. My body learned very early on that most of me is socially neutral and one specific part of me is socially… complicated. Charged. Interpreted. Watched. So it quietly learned to manage that on my behalf.

That part of me isn’t just a body part in our culture. It’s where we concentrate all sorts of meaning that has nothing to do with skin or nerves and everything to do with being framed as power, desire, danger, morality, and control. It’s the site of sexuality, purity or impurity, and moral judgment. It’s “what men want”, “what must be protected”, “what must be hidden”, and “what defines a woman”, and also what people online feel entitled to comment on.

That’s a lot to put on one small area of skin. It’s not that this part of the body is actually more important. It’s that the world treats it like it is.

So my nervous system learned all this and filed it under “sensitive terrain”. That this is where reactions happen. Where attention gathers. Where meaning piles up. This is where jokes point, warnings point, rules point, shame points, and desire points. And you absorb that long before you ever think about it.

For many women… myself included… that learning doesn’t just come from culture in the abstract. It also comes from real moments where we learned that attention isn’t always neutral and that being fully seen can sometimes carry real risk.

And now, years later, even when I am consciously arguing with it, my nervous system is still out here doing its risk assessment like it’s being paid by the hour. Because the risk is real.

Thanks, nervous system. Very helpful. Truly.

So I cross my legs. Not because I’m rejecting naturism. Not because I’m hiding. But because I grew up in a culture that taught me one part of my body was a bigger deal than the rest, and apparently my muscles still remember that even when my brain is trying to move on.

I Know I’m Not the Only One Doing This

I also know I’m not alone in this, because I see it in other women all the time. I see it in how we sit, how we shift, how we angle ourselves on chairs and towels and benches without really thinking about it. It’s subtle and easy to miss unless you’re looking for it, but once you notice it, you can’t unsee it. There’s a shared body language there that doesn’t come from shame so much as from habit and awareness, from growing up in the same world and learning the same quiet rules.

Online, it looks different. A lot of the images that circulate of “female naturism” aren’t actually posted by women at all, and that alone changes the entire tone of what’s visible. And even when they are posted by women, many are posted for reasons that have nothing to do with everyday lived naturism. Many are posted for sexual expression, for attention, for income, or sometimes for branding. And sometimes for all of the above.

None of that is wrong, but it does mean that what we see online is heavily filtered by intent. When you’re not the one inhabiting the body in that moment, you’re not managing the social weight of it. You’re curating an image. So the online version of female nudity ends up being much more extreme, much more performative, and much less reflective of what most women actually do with their own bodies in real spaces.

And then there are the women who just… don’t care. At all. The ones at the beach or the club who sit however they want, legs open, bodies relaxed, zero apparent interest in how they’re being read by anyone. And honestly… “You go girl!” Truly. You go you magnificent, unbothered human. I salute you from my politely crossed-leg position.

There’s something kind of beautiful about watching someone be that comfortable in their own skin, like they’ve made a private peace with their body that the rest of us are still negotiating. I notice them with admiration and a mix of with curiosity and a tiny bit of awe. I find myself thinking, “Huh. I wonder what that feels like.” And then, almost immediately, “Do I actually want that? Or do I just think I’m supposed to want that?”

Because maybe freedom doesn’t look the same in every body. Maybe my version of comfort isn’t supposed to look like hers, and that’s okay too. Maybe the goal isn’t to become the woman who doesn’t give a shit, but to become the woman who gives exactly the amount of shit that actually feels right to her.

And I’m still figuring out what that amount of not giving a shit looks like for me.

This Obviously Isn’t About Legs

The more I’ve thought about this, the more I realize this whole thing isn’t actually about legs, or posture, or even vulvas. It’s about noticing myself inside a culture, and then noticing other women inside that same culture, and realizing that none of us are broken. We’re just all negotiating the same invisible forces in slightly different ways.

Some of us negotiate them by crossing our legs. Some of us negotiate them by not crossing them and very deliberately not caring. Some of us negotiate them by posting photos. Some of us negotiate them by not posting at all. None of those choices are moral. None of them are failures. They’re just different strategies for living inside a world that still hasn’t fully figured out how to be neutral about women’s bodies.

And maybe that’s the part that feels comforting rather than frustrating to me. That I’m not a weird outlier with a personal hangup. I’m just one woman in a long line of women all doing our own small, quiet negotiations with the same old social gravity.

Once I see it that way, it stops feeling like a problem I need to solve and starts feeling like something I’m simply becoming more conscious of. And that feels like a much kinder place to stand.

Yes, I Am Probably Writing This to Fix Myself a Little

I am probably not thinking or writing this purely as a neutral observer of my own weirdness. I am absolutely writing this in part because I would like to be more comfortable. I would like my body to catch up with my values. I would like to stop negotiating with my own knees about whether or not they can relax.

But I’m also not mad at myself about it.

If anything, I find it oddly endearing that my body is still trying to protect me from a world that doesn’t quite exist in the same way anymore after discovering naturism. It’s like finding an old emotional smoke detector that goes off every time you make toast. Annoying? Yes. Malicious? No. Just a bit outdated.

So maybe this isn’t something to “fix” so much as something to gently retrain. To notice. To laugh at. To slowly teach a new normal.

A Slightly Messy, Still-In-Progress Kind of Freedom

So yes, I still cross my legs sometimes and I still choose to keep control over how I am interpreted. I’m still a naturist. I’m still comfortable nude… mostly. I said this to Kevin yesterday. I find I am actually more comfortable with my body nude than in clothing. Bras make rolls. Pants make love handles. A form fitting shirt then highlights all of it. But when I’m nude… I am just me.

I’m just a human woman whose body learned certain things before she had language for them, and now those lessons are taking a little longer to unlearn.

That doesn’t feel like a failure to me.

It feels like being mid-update.

And honestly, I’m okay with that.

If you wish to read more, check out our article “Baring More Than Skin: The Power of Vulnerability in Naturism“.

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