Two Cuts, One Body

I filmed the same thirty seconds twice this week. Same tripod, same patch of late-afternoon light on the floorboards, same hum from the fridge that I only notice when the flat goes quiet. The only difference is that in one version I'm wearing shorts.

You've probably already guessed which one gets called the "NSFW version."

The minute before I press record

There's a ritual to this, and I don't think people who don't make this kind of work realise how unglamorous it is. I move the chair. I check the framing by walking to the camera and back, which means I now own a recording of my own knees approaching the lens that I'll delete later. I stand in the light to see whether it's warm enough or just flat. I get cold. I'm always a little cold.

Then I press record, and for the first ten seconds I'm stiff. Shoulders too high. Hands with nowhere to go. That part never makes it in.

What does make it — the good take — is the moment I stop performing. When I forget the lens is there, or when I get bored of being watched by a machine on a stand. That's the second I'm actually filming for, and it doesn't care whether I'm dressed.

What the clothed cut can't say

I understand why the safe version exists. Platforms have rules. Some are thoughtful, some are arbitrary, and it isn't my job to argue with every one of them. So I make two cuts and post the one that will survive.

But I want to be honest about what gets lost in the swap. In the shorts, the video reads as a man standing in a room. Nice light. Slightly awkward. In the nude version it reads as something else: a person who has decided not to hide, in a room where nobody is watching except a camera and, later, you.

The body isn't the point. The decision is.

"NSFW" is a word about other people

Here's what I've come to think about that label. It doesn't describe my body. It describes the conditions under which someone else might be looking — at work, on a train, with a colleague glancing over. NSFW is a warning to the viewer. It's not a verdict on the person in the frame.

Which is to say: the nude version isn't the "adult" one, and the clothed version isn't the "real" one. They're the same thirty seconds. One of them just trusts you to be somewhere you're allowed to see it.

The parts I notice when I watch it back

I've watched this clip more times than is reasonable, because you have to check the focus, the sound, whether the light shifts as the sun drops. And I notice different things each time.

I notice my posture is better when I'm not dressed. Fewer adjustments. Less checking on myself. I notice the small shape my shoulders make when I exhale, which is not something I thought about at twenty-five. I notice that I look like a person, not an image.

That sounds like a small thing. For anyone who spent years avoiding mirrors, it isn't.

A note on who this is for

I made this in my own home, with my own consent, and I've thought carefully about who might find it. That thinking matters to me. Nudity gets complicated the second it's shared, and I'd rather be careful than clever.

So: this is for the curious. For people who've wondered what it feels like to be seen without the costume. For anyone quietly working out how they feel about their own body, looking for somewhere that isn't trying to sell them a fix.

If you're here to gawk, I can't stop you. But you should know you've wandered into a fairly gentle room.

What I want the nude version to do

Not shock. I'm not interested in that, and honestly, it's a losing game.

I want it to normalise. To make twenty seconds of a nude man standing in afternoon light feel like something you've seen before, something with no emergency in it. That's how a body stops being a threat. That's also how it stops being a product. It just becomes a person in a room.

The shorts version is fine. It's the one I'd send to a friend who doesn't know this side of me, the one I'd leave playing if the neighbour knocked.

But the other one is the honest one. That's the whole project, really — not getting naked for the camera, but not flinching once I have.

If you're new to this

Start small and private. Close the curtains. Sit without the towel for ten minutes. Notice how much of your discomfort is really about other people's imagined eyes, and how little of it is about your own skin.

That's usually where it starts. Not with a camera. Just a room and a decision.

Thank you for being here. If any of this resonated — or if you have a version of your own you've never shown anyone — I'd like to hear it.