Topic: Clothing is sexier than nudity.
My Take: It's a foregone conclusion among nudists that people are sexier when dressed than they are when nude. But I wonder if this is a symptom of the fact that nudists are statistically less attractive than the people you meet in clothed society.
People talk about "leaving something to the imagination." No doubt humans have powerful imaginations, but this doesn't explain the popularity of hardcore pornography. We didn't survive the process of natural selection and evolve from naked apes without having the ability to become aroused by the sight of exposed genitalia.
I have no doubt that clothing has been sexualized, as the human mind has the unique ability to sexualize literally anything. But my view on fashion has always been that clothing is flattered by the body that wears it, and not vice versa. That's why my favorite clothes are the ones that show the most skin.
One thing clothing does accomplish is that it hides flaws. There are certainly people who look better dressed than they do naked. If nothing else, nudists understand that most people's bodies do not resemble the perfect ideal that's marketed to us in advertisements and in our entertainment.
But then, the function of clothes, in conjunction with the human imagination, is to let people imagine that perfect body beneath the fabric, which would only be spoiled by seeing the real body unclothed. It's not the clothes, then, that are attractive. It's still the human body. Just an idealized image of the perfect body that exists in our heads, in contrast to what most people actually look like undressed.
But at the end of the day, the sexiest thing alive is that person with the perfect body, showing it all off. Putting clothes on doesn't improve the view.
