Last week, a man whose naked body was inadvertently exposed to the world on Google Street View was awarded £9,000 in compensation after judges ruled his privacy was invaded.
As he was relaxing au naturel in his garden, the passing car papped him over the fence – and his backside was subsequently uploaded online for billions of people to see.
Despite the final ruling in his favour, the man was initially told off for ‘walking around in inappropriate conditions.’
But now, a new study exploring the UK’s attitude to nudity reveals that three quarters (73%) of the country are firmly on his side, sharing the belief that your birthday suit is perfectly acceptable garden attire.
According to YouGov’s research, 39% of the British public claim they’re open to being publicly naked in some form or another, while almost a quarter (23%) believe clothing is completely optional in the countryside.
These findings may come as a shock, as Brits are famously more prudish than our European counterparts when it comes to nudity – whereas many of us shy away from stripping down in the changing rooms, the Netherlands has more than 80 nudist beaches, while baring all is actually mandatory in a number of public saunas throughout Belgium and Germany.
Is public nudity legal in the UK?
What’s the score on UK rules, though? British Naturism notes that according to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, it’s perfectly legal to sunbathe starkers in your own garden, as long as you’re not deliberately doing it to cause ‘alarm and distress.’
One of the organisation’s leading mantras is that ‘being naked is good for you,’ citing numerous benefits to a clothes-free existence, including improved mental, emotional and physical health, as well as improving body image issues.
‘Being naked in the company of others helps people’s perception of what constitutes a healthy body – it’s okay to have wobbly bits and be different from most “celebrity” bodies,’ its website reads.
We took it upon ourselves to ask Metro readers: is it ever okay to get nude in your own back garden?
Referring to her enclosed garden setup, Becky Irving joked: ‘You’d have to go up onto your roof and look in to see, so if the neighbours go to all that hassle and get the fright of their life seeing me in the nip, that’s their own fault.’
Jorge Florez claimed ‘nudity is harmless,’ and that ‘everybody should be able to be naked wherever they want to,’ a sentiment echoed by Chris T Wilkinson who wrote: ‘We are not born with clothes on.’ Which, we guess, is technically true.’
‘My garden, my rules, it’s as simple as that,’ James Hyde commented, adding: ‘If I want to prance around naked in my garden I will.’ Fair enough.
Charlotte Simon argued if people go snooping over fences and ‘get offended,’ then ‘that’s their problem,’ but Roni Smith said that while she would sit in the back garden with just her bra on, she ‘wouldn’t go all out.’
Not everyone felt the same though, including Cameron Betty who quipped: ‘It’s all well and good till you’re in the community garden of a block of 100 flats.’
‘I don’t like looking at my own body, so I certainly don’t want to see anyone else’s,’ Elizabeth Trudgill added, while Jan Delaney Syme said they didn’t want to see their ‘revolting old neighbour’s bits’.
‘Some parents don’t want their children introduced to their neighbour’s genitals,’ they wrote. ‘If I lived next to an exhibitionist, they’d be getting a cold, sharp blast from the hosepipe.’
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