Illusion of Consensus

I hope this isn’t TMI, but it’s relevant.

I think people look sexier with clothes on. I mean, it depends on the clothes, of course. But in a good outfit, everyone looks hotter than they do naked. I would prefer to have sex with my partner clothed in most cases, if it wasn’t such a pain.

Of course the social consensus is that peak sexiness is at the level of complete nudity. Which is why the “swimsuit” competition is the sexiest one. And why Baywatch was the sexiest show. They’re ramping up the sexy by reducing the amount of clothing!

I find burlesque boring for this reason too. The enjoyment is from… watching people get more naked? Everyone else loves it sooooo much though, I must be weird.

I had a bunch of narratives about what had caused me to deviate from the norm this way. I read tons of comic books growing up, and anime in my teens/twenties. I came to identify the ideal visual as sleek, clean lines (as drawn by a pen), and solid, uniform colors (as filled in by an inker or computer). Naked humans have all sorts of imperfections in their lines, and subtle shading and texturing in their skin color. But you put some nice clothes on that, and they sculpt the lines into smoothness, and replace variable skin with a single solid color. Etc etc.

I know a bunch of people tho, and many of them are less than vanilla in taste, and I was curious how many other people like me might exist in the fringes of humanity. So I tossed up a quick poll on Facebook.

Do people look sexier with clothes on? Or nekkid?

And a stunning 80% of respondents said they prefer their partners with clothes on!! 80%!! That’s insane! I realize it’s a self-selected sample, and my bubble of friends isn’t representative, etc. But even so… 80%??

I’m pretty damn sure now that the majority of the human race thinks fully-naked people are less sexy than people with a hot outfit on… and yet (almost?) everyone believes that the consensus position of everyone else is that nakedness is peak sexiness. Nothing else really drives home just how bad humans are at making knowledge public.