News Flash: Hillary Swank is normal

Here's another entry in the category of "nude news of the absurd." Not that someone nude is absurd, but that the world is hyperventilating about someone else's perfectly normal nudity.

On the TODAY show, Hillary Swank revealed to Meredith Vieira that she sleeps in the nude. This, apparently, is enough to make some people break out in a cold sweat, despite the fact that most surveys show about 31% of men and 14% of women sleep in the nude nationwide. Yes, that's a minority, but with about 100 million adult women in this country, that's 14 million naked women every night, of which Ms. Swank is just one.

The other thing that has people tearing their hair out is Hillary's nonchalant admission that her boyfriend's 6-year-old son occassionally sees her naked. Of course, the news reports make this out to be something salacious, with Hillary "flashing her flesh" in front of a child, which is an absolutely absurd characterization of intrafamilial nudity. The LA Times says breathlessly, "Oh, we can see a tell-all book about being forced to see his daddy's girlfriend nude every morning in about 30 years."

This has revived the whole tired debate about whether it's acceptable for children to see their parents unclothed. Do a Google search on this and you're likely to find dozens of self-proclaimed experts writing advice columns saying santimoniously that it's not a good idea, making vague references to Freudian psychology, saying that children will be sexually stressed by seeing parents of the other sex in the nude, blah blah blah. It's difficult to find any actual research on this issue.

But guess what: what research has been done shows that it is a non-issue. Children are comfortable in whatever environment is normal for them. Children in nudist families, or simply those that are nonchalant about nudity, grow up -- guess what -- feeling nonchalant about nudity. Those that grow up in homes that are uptight about nudity grow up -- guess what -- feeling uptight about nudity. Which do you think is more healthy?