It appears to be a potentially scintillating, titillating topic of conversation.
Especially with a member of the opposite sex (or whoever rocks your boat) and a relatively dishy one, at that.
But even more so if it's not carried out face-to-face, where even if you become a red-faced stuttering fool, no one knows.
I found myself in such an on-screen conversation one day, with a person of interest from a part-time job back in China.
We were simply extolling the joys of not having flat-mates, until it was revealed that he liked to walk around his apartment in the buff.
Then came the question, 'Don't you?'
Did I take two years of sewing classes because I enjoy lounging around unclothed? I think not.
I didn't phrase my answer quite in that conversation-killing way, but it was still somehow doomed. I tried, I really did. I talked about a friend who also liked lounge with not a stitch of clothing on around the flat she shared with her partner. I talked about nude colonies. I talked about how nudity must be difficult in winter, peeping neighbours, all to no avail -- it's not even funny how bland the conversation was.
Disappointingly, pretty much all conversations with this person of interest turned out to be bland, inadvertently proving that looks aren't everything after all.
But in all fairness, nudity isn't all it's cracked up to be. Having lived and travelled in East Asia, I've seen, and been seen by more naked people than I can remember or count. And they come in all ages, shapes and sizes.
It's mundane. You take off your clothes, take a shower, put them back on. You take off your clothes, get into the sauna, get a massage, put them back on. You take off your clothes, shower, jump into the hot pool, jump into the cold pool, rinse, put them back on.
The naked people chat as they shower. Naked children swim and splash in the hot spring water. In the sauna, there's nothing much to see beyond the condensation in the air; and vision is limited during a massage.
Except at a certain spa chain in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi.
I'd been recommended the well-known local spa centre by a middle-aged cleaning lady at the youth hostel. It turned out to be one of those bath house kind of places people go to to lounge around in identical t-shirt-and-shorts ensembles. Like those you see in Korean dramas sometimes.
That was the general impression, until I found myself in a robe inside a red room. It contained a double bed, covered with red silk sheets and pillows, facing a mirror wall. There was also a large television and other furniture. Only one word to call this -- parlour.
Then the masseuse arrived clad in a brocade cheongsam micro-mini dress.
I began to suspect the massages are a service used predominantly by men. It was, in any case, the oddest massage I've ever encountered.
Besides the usual kneading, she folded and stretched my limbs into yoga-like poses. And thanks to the floor-to-ceiling mirror, I am able to report that some of these look like really bizarre sex acts.
So I can now safely say that I'll be sticking to the conventional spas involving soothing new age music, aromatic oils and a massage bed that limits the vision, thankyouverymuch.
