Before Shame Arrived

My small rebellion in Kiribati is not loud. It is not a manifesto, not a provocation, not some dramatic attempt to shock anyone. It is quieter than that. It is simply the moment when I realise that my body does not always have to be wrapped in meaning, shame, rules, or someone else’s idea of what is proper. Officially, maybe this is not considered natural here. Maybe the culture says one thing, the rules say another, the public face of society keeps its shirt buttoned all the way up. But somewhere, deep in the corner of the soul, I think almost everyone understands the relief of being undressed. The relief of removing not only fabric, but also performance.

Nudity is strange because people make it strange. If it is forbidden, it becomes scandal. If it is sold, it becomes product. If it is overexplained, it becomes ideology. But maybe its most honest form is none of those things. Maybe it is just skin in warm air. A body resting. A person without costume. Not erotic, not available, not asking to be interpreted. Just ordinary. Just mine.

And honestly, maybe I like it exactly this way. I like that it stays small. Private. Almost hidden. Because if we turned it around and made nudity into some huge public statement, suddenly everyone would feel invited to comment. Moralists, strangers, protectors of tradition, bored observers, and also the kind of weird men who always mistake openness for access. That is the part I do not want. I do not want the circus around the body. I do not want every eye to feel entitled. I do not want freedom to become another performance for someone else.

Because for me, this is not an invitation. It is a boundary. And maybe that is the paradox: there can be a lot of privacy in being naked. Not because I am hiding, but because I refuse the idea that my body must belong either to shame or to an audience. It does not have to be covered to be respected. But it also does not become public property just because it is uncovered.

So maybe my rebellion is not that I am naked. Maybe my rebellion is that I refuse to make my nakedness useful to anyone else. I do not need it to be sexy, political, spiritual, brave, aesthetic, scandalous, or pure. I do not need applause for being free. I only need that small inner feeling that, for a moment, I am outside the usual rules and still completely inside myself.

And maybe it is much simpler than all of that. Maybe people love being undressed because the body remembers something society keeps trying to forget: we were not born ashamed. Shame came later.