Naked

A few months back, I came across a YouTube short of Slavoj Žižek. I don’t watch reels or shorts as it’s a rabbit hole. Once you’re in, getting out is hard. That reel was a part of his interview and had a story. Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher.

A girl came to Žižek and told him that when his last lover saw her naked, he told her to lose a few extra pounds. Her lover thinks she will be perfect once she loses 3 -4 extra pounds. Žižek told her not to lose that extra pound. He said that imperfection is the cause of desire. This imperfection held him close to her. He might lose interest in her once she loses those extra pounds. It is called the objective cause of desire in psychoanalysis.

That brought two things to my mind. First, we are humans and naturally wired to find negatives anywhere. It is just simple threat protection mechanism. So if the girl secrets the extra pound, his partner’s eyes would then miss that extra pound and would feel as if the extra pound was what made her different from others and kept him hooked to her. Or his eyes might find another weakness in her. If the chain begins, she would now get rid of all the imperfections he would ask her to, and in the end she would be of no interest to him as she is not the same person he once loved. So I believe Žižek was right.

Second, the word Naked, not because a girl was naked, but when I thought about how vulnerable we are when we are naked. How do we protect ourselves then from harsh comparison with beauty? Probably it is for our good. Beauty is close to perfection. We are far from it but desire it some way or other. Then we are ashamed of ourselves. The existence of beauty is a hope and a scope for improvement. To win over the beast of criticism, criticism by us, not by others. It made me ponder over the concept of intimacy.

It blew my mind when I first read that clothes give us a psychological sense of security. We have vulnerabilities hidden behind our clothes that we are not ready to share with everyone. You know that vulnerabilities have cost attached to them. I was reading the story of Adam and Eve. There was a moment when they realized they were naked. Realization of nudity signifies realization of vulnerability. They made aprons to cover themselves up and then hid behind bushes because they were ashamed and scared after finding out they were naked, in other words, vulnerable.

Story stands quite close to the truth, as Adam and Eve are human. Animals get attacked on their neck for most fatal attacks, so our natural threat protection action is to bring forward our arms to save our eyes and neck from the attack. Similarly, in most animals, their genitals are hidden under their big body or are in the back, thus not visible to eyes when two animals face each other. But this is not true for humans. We stand up straight. That makes us easy to be attacked by other animals, and our genitals are visible when we encounter anyone. So we made something that made us feel secure and covered our imperfections.

Clothes might have come into existence for a very different reasons, including to protect us from harsh climate and weather. But now they do provides us sense of protection from judgement from others. We have seen ourselves naked, which means we know our darkest secrets and that is why we are our most sinister critique. People call it inner demon too. Kids play around naked to a certain age, and after the realization of being naked, they don’t want to play around naked. They realize that it’s shameful. Their family might have told them, or they might realized it themselves. But they don’t want to be naked after a certain point. It also a sign that they are now conscious of their appearance.

It might also explain importance of intimacy in a relationship. In most cases, you’d share some of your dark before getting naked in front of your partner. That solely depends on your value structure and how you rank your vulnerabilities. Some might rank intimacy lower than their secrets. Once you see someone naked, I mean you know their vulnerability, and they know yours, both of you have something at stake. It is now the foundation of the relationship. People often make mistakes and trust the wrong person in the heat of the moment because they might rank their vulnerabilities somewhat differently than they do.

It clearly shows why some people lose interest in people after intimacy, in general terms, whose vulnerabilities they know. Desire to know more about the person keeps you hooked to them in such cases. Once you know deepest and darkest side of a person, then there is nothing more to know. Not knowing some things make people stay together, and they spend life together to know other person well. Explains why arrange marriages work in most cases, right? You keep finding new things of each other, then life brings its worst, and you are forced to fight it with your best.

In a relationship, a woman has more at stake because they are more vulnerable in our social structure and are judged based on their past. On the other side, men are valued based on their future which means if they can fullfill the needs of the family. Women have to bear the weight of pregnancy. It would keep them vulnerable for a year since they will be dependent on others at this time. So in return for this security, they need the best man out there. In search of the right man, they want to lose a few pounds, which Žižek might disagree with.

In case you were lazy enough not to watch the reel in link, watch the clip below.