A sex writer’s guide to skinny dipping

“Each time feels like a tiny rebellion.”

Laura Roscioli is a sex writer based in Melbourne. Her fortnightly column on Fashion Journal is here to make sex (and the conversations around it) more accessible and open-minded. She believes that the best learnings come from lived experience, and she’s here to share hers — and other people’s — with you. You can follow Laura on Instagram at @lauraroscioli.

There’s a rush of adrenaline as you shed your layers in the elements. The wind grazes your skin, creating goosebumps even on a warm summer’s night. You feel nervous from its touch, somewhat aroused. Your nipples respond by hardening.

As you crouch down to peel off your bottom layers, you’re suddenly aware that someone could appear from behind the cove at any moment. But the feeling is too liberating for you to stop.

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Sometimes you know that people can see you, from the restaurant overlooking the beach, or from a voyeur’s bedroom window, but you realise that perhaps you’re doing it for them, too. You enjoy the performance. ‘Yes, I am free’, you think. ‘I dare you to watch my liberation’.

And then, when you’re fully naked in front of a body of water, you have this carnal instinct to race into it. Run, jump, splash – hit the surface hard, with intended impact. You want to physically feel your freedom. 

You dive in headfirst, your body follows, and as you come up for air, you feel the water lapping at the crevices of your body like a blanket. It wraps itself around you, moulding itself to your shape, lifting you up with ease.

And it’s there, bathing beneath the moonlight, that you feel like everything will be okay. You are naked, happy, alive. You might have someone beside you, who you’ve been wanting to kiss for a while but have been too shy to be forthcoming with, or someone you feel safe to be wild around, or someone you’ve known for a lifetime. You’ll feel bound together by this moment. 

You might wrap your legs around their body and rest your head on their shoulder, and be still in the water, letting it move you, bob you up and down while you’re entwined together. It will feel easy, effortless even, to exist in the skin that you’re in.  

As you can tell, I’m an advocate for skinny dipping.

The first time someone asked me if I wanted to take my clothes off at the edge of the ocean was also my first time feeling what it was like to be in love.

I’ve never been very physically adventurous but for some reason that night, I wanted nothing more than to be naked in the water with him. The moon was shining brightly in a way that made me wonder if I believed in God, and the water was dark and still. It looked inviting, like it had been waiting for us.

I hadn’t been naked with anyone outside of a bedroom before, but the darkness made me feel brave. I lifted my dress over my head and felt a surge of courage – for the first time, I wasn’t worried about what someone else would think of my naked body. We were only being witnessed by the ocean. He’d asked me to go skinny dipping once our friends had gone to bed. I felt warm inside from the glasses of whiskey I’d sipped like a real grown-up: with ice in a fancy crystal tumbler. 

We held hands and ran into the water together, squealing like the montage scene of an arthouse romcom. It felt like an initiation, not just into the romantic story arc but into a part of womanhood I’d only read about in books or reposted on Tumblr.

I remember feeling the salt water on my skin, warm and tender just like my soon-to-be boyfriend’s hands as they moved, instinctively and gently, around my body in the dark. We kissed for what felt like hours, our passion growing and retracting with the waves. 

We weren’t performing for anyone; not ourselves, each other, our friends or any onlookers. I wanted this moment to be seared into my memory, to remind me that natural movement is the most sensual of all.

I’ve been skinny dipping many times since then: in hotel pools at midnight under the fluorescent glow of empty lobbies; in oceans with strangers of all ages; in backyard pools belonging to friends, lovers, and people whose names I no longer remember. Each time feels like a tiny rebellion, poignant in my evolution as a sexually liberated woman, as someone who yearns to be free but struggles to let go. 

Skinny dipping was always something I thought a ‘cool girl’ would do. One who wasn’t ashamed of her hip dips or her larger-than-average boobs. One who felt sexually confident in front of boys, sure they’d not run away at the sight of her naked body. I never imagined that girl being me.

As I got older, I started to learn a secret: liberation isn’t about being fearless, it’s about choosing freedom despite the fear. I realised that the world benefits from women staying small, clothed and self-conscious. That shame was never ours to begin with; it was merely something we inherited. And that shedding our clothes can, quite literally, become a shedding of that shame.

I don’t believe that we should hide our bodies. I don’t think we should shun our natural ‘imperfections’. I don’t resonate with keeping sexual desires at bay as a way to retain value. I believe in liberation. Honesty. Real bodies, real noises, real movements and real pleasure. Skinny dipping has a way of revealing (and resolving) it all.

So, if you ever find yourself at the edge of a pool or a river, or an ocean, and the night is warm, and the moon is watching, and something in you whispers ‘go on, do it’… I hope you listen.

For more on skinny dipping, try this.