With more Americans working from home, the need for a spiffy new business suit has fallen the way of job benefits and co-workers you can complain to each day about your spouse, your kids and your neighbors.
There is one big benefit to working from your kitchen table or living room couch: You can wear whatever you want … or nothing at all.
That’s what inspired Dallas business consultant Lisa Kanarek to create a holiday in 2010 where home-bound workers can drop trou and celebrate.
Last year, after Chase’s Calendar of Events listed Working Naked Day, a number of stay-at-homes took to social networking sites to announce their nudity, and at least one woman posted a nude photo of herself from her home office.
The holiday is “dedicated to those who are working from home ‘naked’ — stripped of the resources that millions take for granted in the traditional corporate workplace,” according to Chase’s Calendar of Events.
“Let’s have fun,” Kanarek told AOL News. “We work at home, and there isn’t anyone there with us, so we can work naked, literally and figuratively.”
Though she uses the word “naked” as a metaphor, she believes that there’s a stigma attached to remote workers, and that the embarrassment and shame they occasionally feel is very real.
“When I first started my business and first started working from home,” Kanarek said, “I was ashamed of it. I never told anyone that’s what I did.”
Over time, though, she came to realize it was a case of the grass being greener on the other side.
“If you’re working from home, it’s OK,” she said. “Don’t be embarrassed. There are so many people who’d rather be working from home.”
Tina Marie Hilton, a 47-year-old remote office assistant who has been working out of her home for the past three years, has never been embarrassed to say where she works. She attributes the weak economy, which has spurred a groundswell in people working from home.
“I’ve never had anyone look down at me at a network event because I work out of my home,” the Hickory, N.C., resident said in an interview with AOL News. “Over the last three years, remote working has really blossomed, so I haven’t run into any type of issues like that.”
While Hilton concedes that working from home can be lonely and intimidating, she plans to forgo the who nudity thing.
“I don’t think I’d go that far,” she said. “But I might take my slippers off.”
Others, however, plan to free themselves of clothes just as they freed themselves of the office.
“At first, I thought no, but now I think, ‘Why the hell not?’” said Laura Milligan, 26, a home-based education marketer from Houston. “I might do it out of solidarity, for all the other home workers out there.”
She added, however, that she’ll have a robe ready, in case the UPS guy comes by.
“The big fluffy kind,” she stressed. “Not the slinky kind.”
Though working naked is something of a novelty for most people, it’s just another day at the office for the folks at the American Association for Nude Recreation, the largest nudism advocacy group in the United States.
“I always work naked. Always,” said Carolyn Hawkins, public relations coordinator for the Kissimmee, Fla., organization. “It’s very stress free. If you’re not wearing clothes while you work, your mind’s more free.”
As for ways to enjoy working in the nude, Hawkins offered advice to the uninitiated.
“Do it in the appropriate setting,” she said. “I wouldn’t work in the nude in a downtown office building, but I highly recommend it. Also, do housework in the nude.”
Hawkins added that after a hard day of working in the nude, she likes to get into the Florida sun for a game of tennis.
Naked, of course.
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Thanks for the comment.
Deltasac/NakedGary