From Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, to nude solstice swims, let's embrace bodies at all ages and stages

Anyways, I had the good fortune of covering the Winter Solstice Nude Charity Swim recently. It's a joyous event, celebrating renewal and remembering those we love. If I'm honest it's one of the few assignments I would get out of bed before dawn for. Such is its place in my heart.

And then Steve wrote a story about why he thought nakedness was best kept indoors, and not just indoors, but confined to one room, the bedroom. He'd probably want the lights off too. At least he agreed it was wrong to keep your socks on.

Each to their own, I thought. Public nudity is not for everyone. I should know. I went through a phase a while back where I would drop my kit at the drop of a hat. I tried Kambah Pool, posing as a life drawing model, I even toured the National Gallery of Australia in the nuddy for the Hyper Real exhibition. I know it sounds weird, but I find myself saying it on occasion, "Google Karen Hardy naked" and see what pops up. Maybe something might.

This phase was all about falling in love with my body again. I was 50, newly single, not feeling great about myself. Stripped bare, in a way, I wrote, to finally find the skin I was comfortable in.

You'll be pleased, or perhaps disappointed, ha, to know I've kept my gear on for quite some time now. Occasionally I'll wander out naked in the middle of the night to get a glass of water from the kitchen but that's about it. Very tame. Steve would possibly approve.

But I didn't approve of the turn his article took as he started to discuss the inelegance of the human body.

"It tends to sag and slip with age. Can there be anything more ridiculous than the male body once the lard takes over? All those bits and bumps."

Oh, Steve, how I disagree. I love a body with all those bits and bumps. A body that's scarred by life's activities, one that's not quite as firm as it used to be, one that tells a story.

I'm not imagining my partner is Leonardo DiCaprio. My partner is who he is. Another regular middle-aged person with all the bits and bumps, just like me. (Given, dear reader, the non-existent partner is the actual bit I'm imagining, so this whole argument is probably redundant.)

Is this theoretical partner of mine imagining I am Nicole Kidman? I hope not. If he were imagining me to be someone else, I'd like to suggest someone such as Nigella Lawson or Jennifer Connelly who I loved in Top Gun: Maverick. But his connection should be with me otherwise there is no connection at all.

While the imagination can be a wonderful thing when it comes to sex, as Steve suggests, I'd rather us be imagining what we might like to do with each other than being distracted by some celebrity fantasy.

Discussions like this, about middle-aged sex and bodies, make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. But they're ones we should have.

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I had the pleasure of attending a screening of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande for the recent Capital Film Festival. In it, 62-year-old retired religion teacher Nancy hires a 28-year-old sex worker, Leo, to "help her expand her horizons", explains Emma Thompson, 63, who played Nancy in this most wonderful film.

Thompson wrote a piece for Vogue in June about her experience in making the film, how director Sophie Hyde and her co-star Daryl McCormack prepared for the shoot.

"We three stood about, entirely bare, and talked about our bodies and what we liked and didn't like about them. I had a much longer list of dislikes than either of them. But in the end, it just reminded me of how levelling and also elevating being nude with people can be. It's easier to be honest when there's literally nothing to hide, and it's unavoidably humbling. And after that, there's nothing much to fear."

In the final scene Thompson stands completely naked in front of a full length mirror. She says early in the film she's never liked her body. But by the end, certain horizons have been expanded and she's come to a different conclusion. Not only is she more accepting of her body, but also of her middle-aged self.

She also says earlier in the film that she hired Leo because she wanted a "young body", she had only ever slept, in the missionary position, with her husband. I'll allow that, bless her.

But the idea doesn't appeal to me at all. Steve spoke negatively about being "ageing human beings with loves and lusts - and sags and bulges". I couldn't think of anything more attractive.