A mom of four boys has opened up about why she wants her young sons to see her naked.
In a very candid article published on HuffPost, Rita Templeton explained that while she still struggles with her body image, she wants her sons to be exposed to her naked body from a young age.
"They're still relatively young," Templeton explains. "So there are no nudie mags stashed between mattresses, no stealthily-accessed porn sites that someone forgot to erase out of the Internet history, nothing like that.
"But before all that happens. Before they're exposed to boobs that are as round and firm as cantaloupes and pictures of taut, airbrushed, dimple-less butts - I'm exposing them to a different kind of female body. Mine."
Templeton goes on to explain that she has never refrained from changing clothes in front of her boys, or leaving the door open when she is showering.
She fears that if her boys are not exposed to a body that does not fit society's ideals, and are only exposed to "impossibly perfect physiques" in the media, they may have unrealistic expectations about women's bodies.
Templeton also opened up about her insecurity about her own post-baby body. Despite her insecurities, however, she has admitted to pretending she is confident in her skin - stretch marks and all.
She allows her sons to touch her flab and her stretch marks so that they become familiar with common "flaws" and "imperfections", rather than put off by them.
"Instilling a positive body image is not an issue reserved for people with daughters," Templeton says. "For boys, it involves not only making them confident about their own bodies, but also letting them know that real is beautiful when it comes to the opposite sex."
The mom-of-four accepts there will be a time when she decides to cover up in front of her sons.
"But until then, I'll let them run their fingers along my stretch marks, and grin and bear it when they squeal with delighted laughter at the way my butt jiggles when I walk across the room to grab a towel," she says.
She concludes, "Because while they're young, I want to plant the seed so that when they're older, and their wives say, 'I wish my thighs were smaller,' my sons can say, 'They're perfect just the way they are.'"
