88% of French Women Prefer to Keep Clothes On

According to a poll conducted in April 2009 by IFOP (PDF) for the French personal hygeine brand Tena, 88% of French women consider themselves to be "pudique", which translates as "chaste or prudish".

Over half (52%) of those surveyed said they didn't like their body. And public nudity? Only 48% said that topless women on the beach don't bother them.

Having said that, 95% of the same sample group of 1000 adult women of all ages have no problem being naked in front of their sexual partner, but 67% don't like getting undressed in changing rooms at the gym or spa, and 63% would rather not be seen naked by their friends.

Nudity on billboards bothers 37% of the women. When asked to define "naked", 44% said that the woman had to be totally without any clothes on to be considered nude, and 33% said that a woman wearing makeup, but no clothes, is not totally naked.

Full of paradoxes, 45% of the French women said they would feel better if there were less female nudity in public, but 49% of them consider nudity to be "natural" and 41% feel that naked women are beautiful.

Laetitia Casta is seen as the perfect embodiment of the (nude) feminine form by 45% of the women, while Kate Moss was preferred by 6% of them.

Surprisingly, the women who were most disturbed by public nudity were in the 18-24 age bracket, while those who were least disturbed were in the 50-64 age bracket (who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s).

My favorite stat: 36% of the women felt that in order to make feminine nudity (particularly in advertising) more "fair", that there should be more male nudity instead of less female nudity.