What's wrong with your doctor seeing you buck naked?

Sometimes the legendary American prudery catches up with you in unusual ways.

One of them is your typical visit to your physician for a full check-up. The usual drill is that you wait for a while in the waiting room, flipping the pages of Happy Medical News for Senior Citizens, until a nurse calls you into the inner sanctum, where you first follow her (unless the nurse is a man, which would be a rarity in a doctor's office) into a little room where you get weighed (that's when you realize that it's time to hit the Weight Watchers diet!) and your temparature is taken (it's done routinely, even if you're not sick.) The nurse then takes you to the examination room, where she takes your blood pressure (good for me, I do have the blood pressure of a frisky puppy!), after which she reviews health issues that you may have, and, then, invites you to undress and to don the obligatory "doctor's office gown," a flimsy piece of cloth or, worse yet, paper material (note the adorable pattern on the one the woman on the picture is wearing.)

Why do you get to wear this ridiculous garment for the entire duration of your examination by your M.D.? Well, because, my dear faithful readers, God forbid, Dr. Feelgood cannot - in any way, shape or form - see you in your full, glorious nakedness.

Which, you will admit with me, is preposterous.

How, indeed, can a physician properly assess the health status of a patient without getting a good, solid look at his/her entirely naked body? Having been born and raised in France, I spent a good amount of time buck naked in front of miscellaneous general practitioners and specialists, and never for a minute did I ever feel self-conscious, embarrassed or, worse yet, violated because I was fully naked in front of a person who was not one of my parents or someone with whom I was intimate (undressing - or, rather, getting undressed - for intimacy was way more psychologically complicated, believe you me, than undressing for a physical exam.)*

In the opening sequence of the French film Ensemble, c'est tout Camille, the female protagonist (played by Audrey Tautou) exits the trailer that serves as the examining facility for la Médecine du Travail. As any French employee, she has to submit to a yearly government ordered and administered physical. Two of her female workmates are waiting for their turn on a bench, across from the trailer. One of them asks Camille (about the Médecine du Travail doctor):

- Y t'a examinée toute nue? (Did he examine you completely naked?)

To which Camille replies:

- Ben, évidemment! (Well, of course!)

The other woman adds, however:

- T'as gardé ton slip et ton soutif, au moins... (You kept your panties and your bra on, at least...)

To which Camille does not respond.

This dialogue reflects the common French practice of being examined fully naked by a doctor. It also alludes to the fact that not everyone is fine with this practice - and that some women would rather keep their undergarments on, especially if the doctor is from La Médecine du Travail and, as such, a complete unknown (I do remember that, for the yearly physical that we always had in school - which always included a lung x-ray, TB was still a worry in France when I was still a child - we used to keep our underwear on, of course. I never had to submit to a Médecine du Travail physical, but I think that the person being examined gets to his his/her underwear on.)

Even when I go for my physical therapy sessions, the therapist leaves the cubicle in which she gives me my ultrasound treatment, and draws its curtain before I change into the "gown" (I leave my bra on, and keep the back open so that she can access my knotted muscle with the ultrasound wand.) She is a woman, for God's sake, and I would not mind being in my bra while she is giving me this treatment, but that is not what is required by American conventions in this sociocultural context.

What I find amazing here, is that Americans of all ilk, who don't know each other from Adam, constantly run into each other buck naked in fitness centers and swimming pools locker rooms, where they prance in the nude as if it were nothing at all (which is something that makes me squirmish to no end!). Does American prudery stop in the locker room? Please, someone, explain this to me!

Frankly, I'd rather be naked in front of my doctor than in front of total strangers in a locker room. Of course, I am well aware that locker rooms are separate for men and women, but I feel as self-conscious being undressed in front of women as I would in front of men (never mind that I'd be too busy staring at the most glaring part of their anatomy, were I to be thrown into a co-ed locker room...).

I am not one of the naturist persuasion (I have a secret admiration for those who are), but there are elements of the relationship of Americans with their bodies that I do not quite get. Not being able to be seen completely naked by their doctor is certainly one.

And, to get back to those pesky doctor's office gowns, they are are not really ecologically friendly, since they are usually made of paper and are thrown into the garbage after having been used. I do hope that they get to be recycled, but I am not sure.
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* If you google something like "should you be naked at the doctor's," you will find, among others, a forum that turns a bit raunchy on Harmony Central (it can never be good when men begin to discuss female doctors "feeling their balls"); a much tamer Yahoo forum on the topic. There was even a really sad piece of pornographic writing about a woman who is being seen by a head doctor and his interns, gets undressed by a couple of said interns, and then gang-banged by them all, including the head doctor as the finale. I find it pathetic that I even bothered to read the whole thing. It was trashy and, again, very sad.