The Pursuit of Being Fully Alive
Take Your Clothes Off and Show Us Who You REALLY Are!
The naked truth about “Performative Activism”
If I get caught in the performative activism trap, I hope somebody will call me out!
I had a long chat with a friend this past weekend about our naturist — nudist, if you must — doings. While she’s not sure she’ll ever find the same sense of comfort and ease with social nudity as my wife and I have, she’s come to realize why we enjoy it so much.
There are all the well-worn tropes about the sense of freedom, the sun on your skin, the breeze on your body. All that, along with those who insist that nakedness is the great equalizer, stripping people of their status and positionality amidst their peers. (To that, I say maybe you should attend a board meeting for your local naturist association, but that’s another thread.)
The truth remains, however, that social nudity is counter-culture in pretty much every part of the world. One could make the argument to the contrary in Germany or France, but even then, there are times and places to be naked, and times when you most definitely may not.
There was a time, decades ago, when you couldn’t wear jeans and a t-shirt just anywhere. Men wore jackets and ties to board a train or a plane to a pleasure destination. Women dressed up in fancy hats.
Now I dare you to find people dressed nicely at the fanciest restaurant in your town. Jeans and t-shirts, I bet, are the norm. I’m not saying that in another generation the guy next to you at your local pub will be nude. In fact, quite the contrary — social nudity is just far enough off the mainstream that I suspect it will always be something of a lonely path. Some things evolve, but those values that run the deepest evolve very slowly.
That same conversation with that same friend drifted over to several other topics, including friends or colleagues we have in common, and the life choices various people make about how they do business in the day-to-day world. Eventually, we took a deep dive into “Performative Activism!” In case you’re not familiar with the term, this is probably best defined by people who make some sort of a token gesture to extend empathy and support to a cause — Black Lives Matter, Homelessness, LGBQT+ — but once they’ve posted their statement on social media, or modified their profile photo, or even made an awkward shout-out in a public forum, the activism pretty much comes to a halt.
What’s even more intriguing is to watch a performative activist (Can one use that as a noun?) when they’re not aware you are looking. Do they walk the walk? How do they interact with other humans in their daily lives? Is their value system evident in the transactional parts of their lives?
From my limited perception of qualitative research with a less-than-random control group, I’m going with mostly… NO!
I don’t think it’s possible to be a Performative Naturist. Either you’re naked or you’re not. Though as I commit that to paper, I’m going to contradict myself.
Many, if not most naturists I know and care to hang out with, are not simply seeking the pleasures of the sun on the skin and the breeze on the body, but are searching for something more meaningful that connects them to a sense of self, and in the best case, to the planet on which we exist. “Becoming one with nature” was once a basic tenet of the naturist lifestyle, though at least in the US, that has largely given way to the beer-infused Saturday Cornhole Championship next to the pool. Naked cornhole is fun! I’m not gonna lie. (And I also drink beer.) But that’s not exactly a path to self-realization.
Lacking the requisite degrees in sociology to make a diagnosis, I’m going to put it out there anyway that I believe the collision of excessive social media and the incessant rallies of performative activism is a dangerous cocktail for the demise of civility, at least… or civilization, at worst!
Empty words and shallow gestures draw energy and attention away from the people who are really doing the work. Asking the hard questions. Grappling with the inexactitude — or total absence — of answers. Those are conquests that call on a person to be thoughtful in every interaction with every human, every day. Or in other words, to own your nakedness.
I’d like to think I’m one of those people who strives to be naked every day in every human interaction I engage in. But I know that’s delusional. Life moves too fast. There are too many things that happen that I’m not even conscious of that slip out of my mouth, are evidenced in my body language, or are simply a result of my actions. My intentionality to live a thoughtful, naked life is often overshadowed by an unintended micro-aggression toward an unknown recipient. Mindfulness is infinite. My capacity to be conscientious is most definitely finite.
For those of you who are in the “Woke Averse” camp, standing back and saying “Screw the Snowflakes and the blizzard they came from,” I say — you’d better take your clothes off!
I hang with a lot of humans from Gen X, Y, and Z. Are some of them truly off the rails and suffering the unintended consequences of wrecked families and helicopter soccer moms? Why yes, they most certainly are.
Will ignoring all that make it go away? If we rewrite the middle school textbooks and all go hide in the trenches of the Red States will the Snowflakes simply melt and wash away? I don’t think so. It will simply make the chasm deeper and more profound. Simply stated, approaching deep societal fractures with glib, one-dimensional responses isn’t going to do anything to help the problem either.
From my perspective — and why you should care about that, I’m not sure — people simply want to be seen and heard. And my personal theory is that the more performative they are, the more they are feeling naked, cold, and alone.
That’s pretty sad.
I’ll go to work today where I’ll interact with 100 students or so. I already know that issues related to race, positionality, and empowerment are on today’s docket, either explicitly or implicitly. Either way, that’s real.
Will I say the right thing at the right time? Will my actions speak for my words? Will my intentionality be clear? I bet it will be hit-and-miss.
But I’ll be my best-naked self, regardless, and simply hope people can see and hear me for who I am. And if I get caught in the performative activism trap, I hope somebody will call me out. It’s uncomfortable at the moment, but it’s the only way I can see forward through the hellscape of shallow discourse and meaningless, gratuitous interaction.
Have a good week.
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