Last year, I put together a list of my favourite naturist podcasts. (That post is available here if you missed it.) Since then, some more podcasts have either appeared or come to my notice, and it’s time to give them a bit of attention too.
Before I list these podcasts, though, let’s think a bit about why naturist podcasts are so important, both in our current pandemic situation and in the long term. Of course podcasts in general can be a great source of information and food for thought, but nudist podcasts in particular are important for a number of reasons.
First, they humanize nudism. If you’re not an active naturist, but you’re interested in it, it can be really encouraging to learn about the real people with all their different personalities, backgrounds, and motivations are part of the nudist scene.
Second, they normalize nudism. With nudism regarded as a far-out fringe practice, it’s easy for solo nudists or even nudist families to feel like their beliefs are really as strange as society repeatedly tells them. And for new nudists, it can be a real battle to work against those meaningless taboos that we’ve been taught all our lives. Hearing people talk about naturism as though it’s a positive, everyday thing helps to normalize it in our own lives.
Third, they build community. The podcasts help all of us identify the common values that bring us together as naturists, and make us think about the ideas that the podcasts present. It may sound trivial, but it’s an important means of reaffirming what draws us together. And in the current lockdown situation, these disembodied voices from across the ether can be a way of staying in touch with other nudists - and with our naturist selves as well.
With that, let’s talk about some podcasts I’ve been listening to lately.
Blake and Elle are residents of Olive Dell Ranch in California, they are both committed naturists, and they’re at the younger end of the demographic. If you’re looking for the future of the naturist movement in the USA, these guys are it.
They take a very casual approach to their podcast, whether they are interviewing guests or just chatting on their own. The laid-back style is engaging and fun, but it’s also very topical: they are involved in the many nude events at Olive Dell, and even organize some of them. The only drawback I find in listening to them is that California is so far away, but I hope to get to Olive Dell one day!
Find the Our Naked Story podcast here.
The Naked Nerd is another young nudist. He hails from Australia, and although his podcast is nudist themed, he spends plenty of time talking about his various nerdy pursuits, particularly Doctor Who. However, he’s an active naturist and has had his nudist friends and members of Young Nudists of Australia on as well. Each episode is refreshingly brief and focuses, and a lot of fun, especially if you enjoy both nudism and nerdism.
Find the Naked Nerd podcast here.
Scott Cline presents this podcast that is directed at new nudists - or potential nudists who are interested in the idea but haven’t tried it yet. (Hey - sounds like a good idea for a book, too!)
Scott hosts interviews with other naturists, from complete newbies to longtime nude veterans. He also provides a roundup of naturist news, and other interesting tid-bits with each episode. Highly recommended for anyone who is thinking about making those first steps into the nudist life.
Francisco Agosto is a father of a bunch of kids, and they enjoy nude recreation together at local nudist spots. (His spouse is not a nudist.) The podcast includes a lot of perspective and advice about family nudism, and issues that teen and child participants may deal with. He confronts some fairly weighty and daunting issues that are particular to younger nudists, like body development, body image, and being nudists in a clothed world.
It’s a very honest and positive podcast. Even nudists without kids (like me) will find it enjoyable. Francisco’s focus on nudist values and philosophy make the podcast very much worth listening to.
Find the Our Simple Nude Family podcast here.
Did I miss any podcasts this time? What podcasts, blogs, and twitter feeds do you look to for nudist news and views? Tell me in the comments!
In my recent post, I pointed out that nudist communities don’t usually work online. I’ve never run an online nudist community before (although I do moderate one), although I’ve been a member of many of them.
But I do perceive some fundamental problems with nudist communities - not with any particular nudist communities themselves, but with the concept of nudist communities in general. And these problems mean that no nudist community, at least with the typical membership-participation model, can really succeed.
The biggest problem, and this goes back to my previous piece on the subject, is authenticity. It’s like the New Yorker comic from back in the late 90s: on the internet, no one knows whether you’re really a nudist. Authenticity is really difficult to verify. And unfortunately there are many nudists on the internet who are not who they say they are.
I’ve seen this problem first-hand. About three years ago, a new nudist forum started up, run by a husband and wife team. It garnered a great deal of immediate interest, with two hundred users signing up in the first week. The owners asked for volunteers to help moderate, and I raised my hand. I, along with two others, were made moderators.
The site had a fair amount of traffic over the next couple of weeks. Members were actively discussing a wide range of topics on the forums, and were also posting photos of themselves to the member pics gallery.
Then I received a message from the site owner.
He asked me to send him a photo of myself, to prove I was who I said I was. I did so immediately, and then we chatted on Skype.
The owner had discovered that one of the other volunteer moderators, who was a younger and very enthusiastic nudist, had been using photos gathered from the internet in the photo gallery, cropping them to make them look a little different, but undoubtedly not the person’s real photos.
The owner wanted to ensure that other moderators were as they presented themselves, and soon we had a smaller moderation crew. But the owner’s attention for the site waned; it lasted only a few more weeks before it was, sadly, taken down.
This is the first problem for nudist sites. We all want to connect with other people, find the ones who share our interests. We want community.
But nudism is already a community of outsiders, apart from the mainstream. Most nudists are guarded about themselves. And many want the short-term attention and interest that comes from being a younger, attractive, and female naturist, even if none of these are true.
So unless there are very strict, human-moderated processes in place, nudist sites will almost automatically have fake profiles. And those processes will inevitably drive user participation down.
Which only exacerbates the second problem.
When you put a group of nudists together online, the opening conversations usually cover the following:
This takes a while, of course; there’s usually discussion about the pros and cons of naturist venues people have visited, and whether family members know, support, or participate in nudist activities.
And then it dries up.
As it turns out, there isn’t that much to talk about with nudism. Once you’ve gone a little bit below the surface, there is very little left to talk about. If a preference for nudity is your only common interest, your conversation will be over fairly soon.
For a nudist community to thrive solely on nudist content, it needs a large and constantly growing membership - not just in the first two or three weeks, but for multiple years. Those members must be actively interacting with each other, possibly finding a great deal of common ground.
For example, if there were an online nudist book club, where a group reads and discusses a nudist-themed book every month, might be a successful approach. The members would need to be consistent and completely dedicated, and some ground rules for discussion and debate would probably be useful too. But this is the kind of common ground that a group would need to gather around. (Incidentally, does anyone know of this kind of nudist book club? Want to start one? Let me know!)
This is different from an online blog or directory, of course, and I think there are many great reasons to have those (obviously). But a member-driven community needs more than just “we’re all nudists” to make it a long-term success. Dedicated interest to nudism only goes so far. Once you’ve got your clothes off, what else is there to say?
I’ve sounded pretty negative about online naturist communities in these blog posts. It’s not that they aren’t useful, it’s that they are far less useful than almost every other kind of naturist interaction.
There are two reasons people go to these groups:
The first kind of person is, of course, who all naturists are hoping to find online. The second is exactly what we don’t want, but it’s an inevitable part of the online nudist population - and often a significant proportion of the online population.
Now, consider who you’ll find at a naturist venue, whether it’s a small private gathering, an organized event, or a resort or beach. You’ll find a bunch of nude people, who are there to be nude. They might want to look at nude people for problematic reasons, but they have to have some - ahem - skin in the game. If you’re at a nude venue with clothes on, your motives are going to be questioned. It’s far less likely for people to be at a nudist venue solely for sexual stimulation.
There are bars to entry in a real-life nudist place that, typically, only real nudists are able to get over. Online, though, the hurdles are far easier to clear. Photos can be faked, accounts can be impersonated; anyone can be anyone with the shield of online anonymity protecting them.
So while it’s great to be able to find information, people, and ideas online, it’s far preferable to find others in real life. If that isn’t your ultimate goal, then online groups, unfortunately, aren’t really going to help you.
We’re in a difficult place right now.
I started writing this piece before COVID-19 upended our entire society. The option of going to nudist venues and meeting with other nude people is gone, for now. And the last thing I’d do is advise anyone to break their quarantine or violate social distancing guidelines. Our first priority is to stay safe and stop the spread of this disease.
That means no going to nudist venues (they’re closed), no getting together with other nudists (it’s illegal in most places).
Isn’t this a time when online nudist groups are more important than ever?
Maybe.
But the social aspect of social nudism isn’t about casting a wide net on some internet community. It’s not about your profile or your photos.
Nudism is about people relating directly to people.
If you can set up - as many people are doing, naturist or not - a video chat with other naturists you know, then by all means do so. And if the best you can do is to get into nudist discussions online, then you can do that too.
One day, this situation will end, and we’ll all be able to go out and socialize again. When that day comes - soon, we all hope - commit to yourself to take advantage of it.
Especially if you’ve never done it before, plan now to go out where other naturists are, and go nude. With all we’ve endured already, and all we’re likely to endure in the next while, moving from online to real life, nude or not, is the best gift we’ll receive.
I’ll see you in the sun.
Have you found any ways to socialize with other nudists during the COVID-19 crisis? What online naturist communities have you found that help you cope? And what real-world nudist place are you planning to go to as soon as the crisis is over? Let me know in the comments!
The internet was responsible for a big boost in nudism. You could search the internet for clubs and resorts, instead of sneaking an ashamed look at the back pages of naturist magazines. You could safely connect with other nudists without revealing your name or face. Nudists have always been relegated to the fringes of society, but on the internet, everyone is on the fringe.
However, it’s remarkable that nudist communities don’t seem to be very successful, as a rule. There is no single nudist community with a large membership that has stuck around for more than a few years.
There are some great blogs and blogger teams who have cultivated a large and active readership, like Naked Wanderings. There are some Facebook groups that boast membership in the tens of thousands. Active nudist associations, like AANR, TNS, and British Naturism, also seem to work as gathering places for naturists. But those aren’t really the kind of organic online communities that I looked for as a new nudist myself.
Online communities for nudists don’t seem to be successful, as a rule. Much as I would love to see them succeed, they tend to go in one of two directions:
Neither of these directions result in healthy, active nudist communities.
A few nudist communities have found at least partial success - though many are only partially successful, and have been at least affected by the problems described above.
A longtime success story - the site is the chief employment for its founder and his spouse - TrueNudists was set up as a Facebook for nudists. It has very active chat rooms, blogs, forums, and detailed profiles - some users have thousands of photos uploaded on the site. (You have to pay for a membership to see more than a few photos.)
TrueNudists may be the best example of problem #2. Of the hundreds of thousands of user profiles (many of them dormant for years), a significant number are transparently fake. Doing a reverse image search on many female profiles, too often, shows that the images are old and stolen from various porn sites. While the site remains large and active, it is a magnet for photo thieves and trollers, and only a small core membership is really part of the site. And though these fake profiles might be reported frequently, they often don’t seem to be taken down, or at least not quickly. I’ve heard other users speculate that the fake profiles keep the user numbers up, attracting yet more new users.
With a focus on outdoor nudist activity, naktiv is a great example of what a nudist online community should be. It’s true to nudist values, does not emphasize photos (although they are allowed on the site), and has a large worldwide user base. However, they seem to suffer from problem #1: there isn’t much happening on the site. When you log on, you see very little new material.
Unfortunately, while I was writing this post, I learned that naktiv went offline for a while because of technical issues. They’re back now, with a smaller set of functions. They’re still worth checking out, but the more limited content on the site may lead to even less user activity.
Based in England, and boasting a mainly British usership, NaturistCommunity is another nudist Facebook community. Users can post photos and video, there is a small and mainly inactive chat room, and users can post in discussions, as well as on a main thread that shows up to all users when they log in. Although there are a few regulars, the site isn't much use for nudists seeking communities, especially outside the UK.
Nudist sites and forums seem to pop up all the time. Almost all of them follow the same pattern: an initial flurry of activity and growth, then a decline and eventual shuttering of the site. And if they allow photos, they invariably suffer from trolls and fake accounts. It's difficult to find any group that lasts more than a few months as an active concern.
There’s one exception to this rule, an online community that has continued to remain active for multiple years, without the same problems about trolls and gawkers, and with over a hundred thousand unique users every month. I know the community intimately, because I’m one of the moderators - and this is not a plug, because I receive no benefit from the community other than personal satisfaction.
The community is the nudism subreddit, located at https://www.reddit.com/r/nudism. I won’t get into reddit and how it works - you can visit the site and see it for yourself. But the popularity of reddit (one of the five most popular sites on the internet) certainly had something to do with the community’s success and longevity.
There are other reasons as well. There are numerous moderators, all active, all interested in preserving the community and its values. Those values are set forth with a set of rules, available to read in the sidebar, that govern the type of content people can post. And there are no image posts of any kind on the site - only discussion, and higher-value nudist content. It’s also on a free platform, so it’s not going to run into costs for hosting or other needs that will make it untenable to continue.
It’s surprising that the number of “good” nudist communities - active groups with lots of nudists and not dominated by trolls - are so rare. Since nudists can’t necessarily be candid with many people about their interest, you would think that the anonymity of the internet would make online communities more popular.
That anonymity might be the very problem, though. You can’t create trust in the community without reassuring the participants that everyone involved is an authentic nudist. The way people most often try to establish that trust is by asking members to submit nude photos of themselves. And then the gawkers arrive.
For sites not driven by photos, that authenticity is typically driven by interacting with other users. Their conduct in discussions builds a personality (or persona) online, and that breeds the authenticity that users are looking for. But even with sites that attract a lot of users initially, those discussions soon falter, and the site is left languishing with very little traffic.
Why is that? I think I know why, but I will discuss that in my next post...
What online naturist communities do you frequent? What makes those communities worth visiting? Are there any that you deliberately steer clear from? Why? Let me know in the comments!
Below you’ll find the conclusion of my interview with NV (see here if you missed the first part).
Be sure to follow @NaturistVintage on Twitter if you don’t already. And before we get to the rest of the interview, I’d like to express my deepest, most humble thanks to NV for the fascinating history, information, and perspective. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon!
Although vintage nudist magazines usually show real nudists and not models, they did often depict younger, athletic women (mostly) and men. They seemed to be looking to gain interest through titillation. Would you agree? Do you think there’s a place for this today, or does it diminish nudism’s profile and turn it into just another sort of (very mild) pornography?
Without a doubt. An unfortunate dichotomy of the early nudist movement was that while its primary tenet was non-sexual social nudity, it was essentially underwritten by the publishing business. The sale of the “official organ”—the specific publications to which that title was granted would change hands a few times—helped fund the early American Sunbathing Association and enlist new members, but a sizable market for these magazines (and the photography within their covers) was the textile public; quite naturally, men. In those days you couldn’t go pickup the latest Penthouse at the local liquor store. Obscenity laws forbade the sale of nude photography. A legally sold nudist magazine was the closest they could get.
And the magazines certainly knew this.
Of course, nudists would absolutely read and contribute to these magazines too, which in a pre-internet era were the primary way for nudists to connect and communicate with each other. The early ASA was run by a man named Ilsley “Uncle Danny” Boone, and he also owned the publishing company that produced Sunshine & Health Magazine.
Uncle Danny fought some major battles on behalf of nudism and his magazine, which was censored from delivery by the US Postal Service on multiple occasions. He sued the USPS and spent almost 20 years fighting this censorship in the courts, eventually taking the matter to the Supreme Court. With the argument that nudity is not inherently obscene, he ultimately won the right to publish his magazine. Due to this judgement, it became legal to publish nude photos if they were associated with nudism.
This led to a major uptick in competition for Sunshine & Health in the 1960s, and many of the publishers began to push the boundaries into more prurient content to sell more paper. Eventually Sunshine & Health folded under the competition.
In my opinion, these magazines (and books, films, etc.) enhanced the profile of nudism, which experienced its “golden age” in the 1960s. They also did inexorable harm to nudism’s reputation as a wholesome, clean way of living.
There’s not much of a market for magazines in general these days, let alone nudist publications that are pornographic. Of course, a simple search of the hashtag #nudism on Twitter or Instagram will turn up hundreds of exhibitionists and pornographers incorrectly claiming that label. Some true nudist publications do still exist. The Bulletin, which is the AANR member magazine (and has been in existence in some form or another for over 70 years) or N Magazine by The Naturist Society, are truly by nudists, for nudists. There’s nothing in those magazines that you could call pornographic.
My opinion is that nudism and porn are ethical opposites. I’m not anti-porn, but I think that naturism is about body positivity and freedom, while porn is often about abuse and violence. As a nudist, I don’t want my beliefs—beliefs which I am open about with my family and friends—to be conflated with porn in the minds of the textile public. If all one sees about nudism is how it’s portrayed in porn, one could really get the wrong ideas about how you choose to live your life as an ethical nudist. Who wants that?
To counter-balance that image, I think it’s all the more important for people to be exposed to non-sexual nudity (pun intended). Being nude around other people and seeing other people nude, with all their beautiful imperfections, can demystify the body, which so often gets objectified in our culture.
What do you think these vintage magazines tell us about nudism? What lessons do you think we can draw from them today?
Surprisingly, one thing that amazes me about reading magazines from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s is how much of the debate around nudism has not changed in the years since. Some of the issues they dealt with, such as maintaining a gender balance, or managing the understanding of non-nudists, are still in many ways the same.
However, there were also many hardships people in that time dealt with, and it’s important to remember those. In the early days, camps being raided by police and nudists arrested en masse was not uncommon. Nudism was criminalized much more. In many ways, those nudists had to really fight and sacrifice to pave the way for the leisurely poolside nudism we often take for granted today.
There was also a very fascinating optimism that these early nudists felt about their cause that I love. I’ve seen multiple articles that predicted a world in which everyone went nude all the time in public. Looking at this from the year 2020, that concept is downright hilarious. Of course, we don’t live in the same world they lived in then. They witnessed a wonderful growth in nudism during a general period of boom in America. There was a real romanticism in how nudism brought people together in the early part of the 20th century. The leisure-class lifestyle was brought about in part by the automobile and the highway system, both of which were still novel in the 1940s. They didn’t have air travel like we do today. Nudism today, it sadly seems, is in a comparative decline. What was once a legitimate social movement is now basically considered a recreation.
What’s in store for the NaturistVintage twitter account? What’s coming up, and what are your long-term goals?
This whole Twitter project is still new. The account has quickly gained over 5,000 followers in just three months. I have a lot of topics I’d like to explore with it.
My primary goal with the Twitter account was to locate an audience for this history. My hope is that it appeals to textiles as well as nudists. There are so many great stories to tell from this history that are relevant to life today. I would love to make converts for nudism, but even more I’d simply like to give people an understanding of the appeal of nudism and the importance of its history, even if they never have a desire to try it for themselves.
Long term, my goal is to make a documentary film. I’ve been a filmmaker for 17 years. It was from a desire to make a film that I first set out to research my family history, and it’s through this research that I’ve come to learn about how important this history is, and how in danger of being lost it is without storytellers to bring it to the world.
My intention with the Twitter account was to find people out there who are interested in this history, and have a direct line of communication to this potential audience. What I didn’t really expect was that I’d actually find a community of people with whom to share in the joy of nudism and its history.
Thank you again, NV!
What did you think? What would you ask NV if you could? Do you think vintage nudist materials remain important to nudists today? Do you have any yourself? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Although the twitter account has been active less than four months, @NaturistVintage is already very popular, with over 5,000 followers. NaturistVintage concentrates on posting scans of nudist magazines and photographs, mostly from the 1960s and earlier.
Certainly the parade of naked women, even if they're usually in grainy black and white images, is the reason for much of the account’s popularity. But the owner of the account, who I’ll call NV here, often does more than just put up photos of pretty nude women.
Instead, NV is interested in documenting the modern history of naturism in North America. Often NV will post a series of photos of a single model, or on a certain theme. Many of the personages who shaped the early views of naturism in the public and in the naturist community are highlighted. And NV is actively researching the context around the images as well, often posting new findings in threads as they come to light.
I reached out to NV to ask about the account’s purpose, and to learn more about the person behind the account. My first questions, and NV’s answers, are below.
Tell me about your interest in nudity. Are you yourself a nudist? If so, how long have you been a nudist, and how did you come to adopt the nudist life?
Yes, I am a nudist, though I’m still getting used to saying that out loud. I’ve only been exploring social nudity for less than one year. I am a cottontail by the standards of some nudists, although I’m proud to say I have lost the tan lines.
I discovered nudism through research, naturally. In fact, this whole Twitter documentary project started first as a search into my own ancestry. My great great grandfather was a prominent American nudist in the 1940s and 50s named Rudolph Johnson. He started a group on his own land in rural Washington state in 1946 called the Cobblestone Suntanners, then went on to co-found the Northwest Sunbathing Association a year later. In 1950 he became president of the American Sunbathing Association (the ASA—now known as AANR), during a very tumultuous time in that association’s history.
I grew up with photo albums and tall tales of “Rudy the Nudie” all my life. When I was about thirteen, I spent a summer living on his land (which at the time was still owned by my grandmother) along with a cousin who was about my age. This cousin and I spent the summer fishing, catching frogs, and skinny dipping in the river that ran through the property. Looking back, it was easily one of the happiest summers of my young life, and since then I have always had a fascination with my great great grandfather, and a curiosity about nudism as a result. Growing up, I proudly told others of Rudolph and his nudist legacy, often to strange looks and mixed commentary.
It wasn’t until I became a father last year, and my own father survived a major heart attack a few months later, that suddenly collecting and preserving this heritage took on a new personal urgency and importance for me. I began seeking out any information on Rudolph that I could find, and subsequently discovered that he frequently contributed to old nudist magazines such as Sunshine & Health and American Nudist Leader. Many of these magazines contained photos of him, and some even had his writing. Reading these old magazines, it wasn’t long before my fascination with Rudolph blossomed into a fascination with the nudist movement of the mid 20th century.
Rabidly consuming this history, I eventually found the Western Nudist Research Library on the grounds of Glen Eden Sun Club, about an hour from where I live. I made the drive down and met the late Richard Hirst, a founder of the WNRL. He gave me a full tour of Glen Eden on his golf cart. Incidentally, it was the day of one of their biggest annual summer events, “Nudestock”. There were families and people of all ages jamming out naked to a live band. With that my interest was sufficiently piqued. I came back just one week later with my wife and son and we stayed two days and nights without putting clothes on once. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Your posts of vintage naturist magazine scans get a lot of attention on twitter. Tell me about the collection of magazines you’re scanning. Do you own these? How long have you been collecting them? How do you go about acquiring them? Do you also find vintage photos online, or are these all scanned?
My approach has always been to document and educate (hopefully). I try to share what I learn, and include sources wherever possible. I’ve scanned a good portion of what I share myself. I find some of the content online. I’ve also bought dozens of magazines, books, and films through sites like Abe Books, Ebay, Amazon, or boutique sellers like Alta Glamour or Something Weird (two personal favorites out of Seattle). Nearly all of the content I share has been previously published in some form, and much of the physical material I've acquired gets ultimately donated to a research library.
I would not be able to do my research without the four American nudist libraries. These libraries are doing important work to preserve nudism’s history, which is in some danger of being lost to time otherwise. Since discovering the Western Nudist Research Library, I have become involved as a volunteer and now sit on the board. I have yet to visit the American Nudist Research Library in Florida in person, but they’ve been extremely helpful to my research remotely. They’re also an excellent resource for old nudist magazines; they sell their surplus copies for a reasonable donation.
In addition to these two entities, there’s also the Naturist Education Foundation Research Library in OshKosh, WI, and the AANR-NW Library Archive at Willamettans in Eugene, OR. These four separate libraries are even collaborating, on a voluntary basis, to digitize and share their collections together on the cloud, both for preservation and to make the material available to researchers of the future. It’s an impressive and ambitious effort, and it is very much in need of support.
How do you choose the themes you post? For example, you recently had a series on Diane Webber. How do you decide on your themes, and what are you hoping to achieve with them?
In general, I share what I’m learning. The primary condition is that it must be related to the history of nudism in some way, beyond just nudity or nakedness. I love the shared humanity of the people participating in this weird, social lifestyle together. There’s something both vulnerable and strong about a person who chooses to go as they are without cover. I believe that one of the best things that nudism has to offer society is a stronger sense of body acceptance and self love. I think it can have effective therapeutic results. I try to share bodies of all ages and sizes for that reason, not just pinup models.
Diane Webber is a great example of an exception that proves the rule. She, obviously, was literally a pinup model. She was also easily one of the most famous nudists ever. Plainly, she was an icon and a sex symbol.
What I tried to emphasize by sharing the wide variety of her work in one thread, was how prolific she also was as an artist and human. She was in films and television, featured on the covers of magazines and advertisements, and worked with acclaimed photographers and directors. I’ve seen her called the most photographed person in the world. I personally question the truth of that, but she was easily the most photographed nudist in the world. Everyone knows the hits; not as many people know the b-sides. So my goal was just to connect some of those dots.
Part Two of my discussion with NaturistVintage is now published! Check it out here!
There is an interesting divide in online nudist sites: whether the site includes photos of nude people or not. As nudists, we know that there is nothing wrong, or prurient, or scandalous about nude images. But we live in a world of (mostly) non-nudists, so including nude photos is an important consideration.
Here are the approaches that people tend to take, and a bit of discussion on the impact of each approach.
Some nudists with blogs and websites simply don’t care: they are nudists, the photos are their own, and photos of nude bodies are topical. These sites tend to be personal sites, and the photos of the site owner(s) establish who they are and what they’re about.
This seems to me to be an extremely effective approach. If you’re on a site full of nudist content, catching sight of a nude photo is hardly going to shock or appall you. The photos are typically home photos or selfies, too, so they are not terribly sexualized. This approach seems very much in keeping with nudist values, and effectively communicates the site’s theme and position.
There are many personal sites and blogs that include photos of nude people, often common nudist photos that are easily found with a google search. These photos do effectively communicate the nudist theme, and again, if you are looking at a nudist site, you probably won’t mind seeing nude people.
There are two problems with this, though. One is the fact that the photos are essentially stolen. Some nudist photos are found easily and, because they are used so much, show up in the first page of any google image search. And because they are so divorced from their origin, it is almost impossible to know who the owner is, and whether the people in the photo consented to its release. As a nudist, I think consent is an essential part of creating a positive, equal environment - using these photos seems very non-nudist to me.
The other problem is that these photos are usually from porn sites. They feature uncommonly thin and attractive bodies, posed to display nudity in an enticing way. The photos are being used to sell sex, almost always connecting nudity with sexuality.
Although I don’t denounce other sites for using nudist photos like this, I think that nudists especially should think carefully about what values they are espousing when they use them.
Instagram is well-known for its limits on nudity. Genitalia and female breasts (not male chests, of course!) are forbidden, and while bare buttocks are okay, they need to be displayed in a non-sexual way. Even with these restrictions, there are a number of very popular nudist accounts on instagram.
These limits also inform how some site owners display themselves. A good example is Naked Wanderings. This couple has been travelling the world for years, visiting nudist resorts and venues and blogging about their experiences. They post photos of themselves often, but they always strategically cover themselves in instagram-friendly ways. This way, they can prove that they are authentically interested nudists, but avoid having their photos stolen and misused.
As nudists, we are not ashamed of our bodies or scared that others will see them. However, once an image is on the internet, it is out of your control forever. If there is no “real” nudity in view, the photo is far less valuable to those who would misuse it. I can absolutely understand why people take this approach on their sites.
Some nudist sites avoid using photos of nude people at all. Sometimes they use images of classic art, or images that match the subject matter but don’t include people. This keeps the site very “safe for work”, and also makes clear that the site is about reading nudist ideas, rather than looking at nude people.
I like and respect this choice, but ultimately it might be to the detriment of the site. Images are key to capturing people’s attention. Encountering a wall of text can be a turn-off for first time visitors. And some nudists might wonder why a nudist would be so ashamed of displaying nude content. (There is just no way to please everyone, in the end!)
I do understand the reason nudist communities often encourage members to post photos: authenticity. If you post a real, unique photo of yourself nude, you’re making a statement: I am comfortable being nude, and I am comfortable being seen by other nudists. With the internet awash with photos of naked people, it seems like a small thing to ask, especially of a legitimate nudist.
Unfortunately, even in legitimate online communities, photos attract a lot of attention - the wrong kind of attention. Users flock to the site, and try every possible way to download users’ photos. (Sites usually try to block this kind of activity, but I suspect they are rarely completely successful.)
On WriteNude, I gave a lot of thought to what I would include on the site. Here were the principles I landed on.
Self-contradictory, maybe. Ill-considered, I hope not. But this is where I’ve landed, at least until I figure out a change is needed.
What do you think? How do you react to photos on nudism-themed sites? What do you use on your own site, or what approach would you take if you were creating a nudist site? Tell me in the comments!
Wow, you look amazing nude.
Your boyfriend better look out!
You’re a really beautiful young woman.
You’re just the kind of young person we love to see become a nudist!
All of these are compliments. They’re all positive, all saying something nice about the person they’re directed at.
And they’re the wrong thing to say.
Time and again, nudists express frustration with trying to convince others that social nudity is something they should try. The demographics that are the most coveted, too, are women and young people. More women are needed to help balance the gender ratio, which tips very far to the male side. And young people - wherever you set the bar, but it’s usually somewhere under middle age - are the future of the naturist movement, and essential to the health of any movement or club.
Compliments like these are absolutely guaranteed to drive women and young people away, or at least make their experience more negative than it should be.
But they’re nice things to say, right? Why would they cause problems?
The first issue with these compliments is that they are a message to the recipient about where others’ attention is directed. The intended message may be positive, welcoming, and encouraging. The more subtle message, though, is exactly the opposite.
Because the underlying message is “I’m judging your body in a sexual way.”
First, let’s get the objections out of the way. You’re a good person, you aren’t judging anyone, there’s nothing sexual in saying any of that.
All of these protests focus on the person making the remark, and their intent. That’s irrelevant to the person receiving it.
What you’re doing to the person you’re talking to is making them immediately aware that everything people say about nudists - nothing sexual, no body shaming, no judgement - is false. Because someone is definitely judging their body.
Not saying anything bad? Doesn’t matter. You’ve made a judgement. That tells the object of your judgement that they’re being measured. Maybe everyone is measuring them. Maybe others will make a different judgement.
There’s another layer to it as well. When you judge someone on their appearance - even subtly - you’re sending a message that is exactly in line with how non-nudist society views bodies, especially those of certain ages, and body types. The message is, “We’re evaluating sexual partners,” and the entire pretense of nudity being safe and open and equal comes crashing down.
And again, I understand that this is not the intent of the person making the compliment - certainly not consciously. It could be that there is an unconscious bias at play, and by definition we are usually not aware of unconscious biases! It’s definitely important for all of us to consider whether what we say and do are driven by prejudices that we possess (because of our upbringing, the people and society around us, and so on).
But whatever the motivation of the compliment, it still plays into the dynamics of clothed society in exactly the ways that nudism seeks to be different from it. The subtext of the things you say aren’t entirely within our control, and for any nudist - especially someone new to the venue, or new to nudism in general - the subtext may be speaking much more loudly than you realize.
There’s more to this, though. This is about power, and balance.
One of the most appealing aspects of naturism is how it puts us on the same plane. The societal trappings are gone. We are forced to put our flaws and deficiencies on display. We assert that what others see, and what we see of others, doesn’t matter. And most of all, we have established a shared trust by all of us adopting that vulnerability together.
Those compliments destroy all of that.
It’s not just the fact that you’ve taken away that shared trust by overtly evaluating someone else. You’ve also tipped the balance of power away from the person you’re complimenting, and towards yourself. You’ve put yourself in the position of a judge, and them in the position of the judged. You have given yourself - or at least stated your belief that you have - authority over that other person.
The relative positions of you and the other person can also be exacerbated if you have some perceived real-world authority as well. For better or worse, society gives a more prominent voice to men than to women, and to older people than to younger people.
So if you, as a middle-aged-or-older, tell a woman in her early twenties that she’s good-looking, it’s making your assumption of power over her apparent and overt.
If you were her, nude in a non-sexual environment for the first time, hearing this compliment - what would you think?
I’m pretty sure I’d think that everything I’d heard about nudism was nonsense. And I wouldn’t be back.
But that’s not -
I was only trying to -
But men aren’t always -
No.
Stop with it.
If the only thing you can think of to say to someone else is to compliment their appearance, learn not to speak at all.
The first thing you can do when encountering a stranger who you’d like to compliment in a nudist venue is ask whether you need to speak with them at all. What is your reason for talking to them, and why are you the person who needs to talk? If you can’t think of any good reason to talk to a stranger, a simple smile, “Hello,” and maybe “Nice day today, isn’t it?” is enough. After that, unless the stranger says something more substantial in return, you can move on without another word.
If a stranger is clearly needing directions - for example, walking around with garbage in his hand, in search of a receptacle - be helpful and guide them towards what they’re more likely looking for. After that, unless the stranger says something more substantial in return, you can move on without another word.
If a stranger is nearby and hesitating - for example, if they seem a little nervous about approaching a group of nudists and selecting a deck chair near them - it’s perfectly fine to say, “These chairs over here aren’t occupied. Feel free to take any of them.” After that, unless the stranger says something more substantial in return, you can move on without another word.
See the pattern? The interaction is limited to the benefit of the other person. And unless they choose to engage with you further, the next step - where you would tell them how good-looking they are, or how well-defined their muscles are, or anything like that - is one you need not take.
I know that I’m going to alienate some readers with this piece. Some will feel a little bit insulted, because they don’t feel like they need a primer in basic human interaction. Others will feel like I’m being prejudiced against them, just because they’re men, or because they want to be nice to other people, or because because because.
Well, sorry about that.
But I really want to help stop this dynamic of people being (supposedly) complimentary, and other people (actually) being made uncomfortable, and pushed away from nudism.
I’d prefer that we concentrate on what, for me, is a key value that naturists share: that social nudity brings us closer together. And in that context, we should avoid doing anything that pushes us - any of us - apart.
What do you think? What can you do to make nudism more comfortable for new nudists? When you first began as a nudist, was there anything that others did that made it more comfortable and approachable? Tell me in the comments!
Most people who are new to nudism are keenly aware that they haven’t yet had many of the nudist experiences that others talk about and enjoy. They wonder, what makes someone a nudist? What do I have to do before I can call myself that?
It would be easier, maybe, if there was a checklist - if you’ve done six of the following ten things, you might already be a nudist! But that’s not the way it works.
As a new nudist, you might never have been nude in public, in front of others. Or you might have been to a nude beach, completely anonymously, or you might have been to a resort, but just once or twice, and on your own.
Even more commonly for new and curious nudists, you might never have been out of your house nude. Maybe you just hang out in your own bedroom nude, with the door locked and a robe close to hand if someone knocks. Or perhaps you lurk around nude late at night, when no one else is around.
You might have been outside nude. Perhaps you know a secret, secluded bit of nature where you can be confident no one will find you naked. Or maybe you quietly slip out the back door at night, stash your clothes near the step, and go for a little nude walk.
But maybe you have been out there. You’ve skinny-dipped with some friends (and want to do it some more). You’ve visited a local nude beach once or twice. You might have even gone to a local nudist club or event (though you aren’t a member yet).
So what do you have to do to become a real, live nudist? How do you unlock that one, all-important achievement?
It’s easy.
It isn’t whether you like being nude all the time. It isn’t whether you like being nude with others. There are no barriers get over, no nudity high score you have to beat, no qualifications, no checklist to complete.
If you like being nude, you’re a nudist.
Are you really a nudist?
Yes. You are if you want to be.
Now go be nude!
Do you consider yourself a “real” nudist? What made you get to this point? If you don’t consider yourself to be a nudist, but want to be, what’s holding you back? Let me know in the comments!
