My mission on this planet . . .
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| (Thanks to Bare Oaks and NASA for the borrowed graphics, Douglas Adams for the thought) |
Why naturism? Naturism is the natural estate of humankind. All adherents of the three great monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, adhere to the concept that humankind was created by God, naked and unashamed, in the image of the Creator, and God saw that it was good. While there are many other points of contention within and among these three faiths there is no argument about this issue.
Whether one is an adherent of these or some other faith, or none at all, or whether one believes in Creation or not, there is no argument that we are all born naked. We emerge from the womb, each and every one of us, stark naked. Only later do we discover Versace, Brooks Brothers and The Gap. Clothing, I have read, and have been told, "is what separates humankind from animals." I cannot imagine a more shallow or erroneous opinion. What separates humankind from the other animals is our ability to reason and to make moral judgements. Some such reasoning is correct and productive, much else is quite the opposite.
Why clothing? There is no doubt about it, clothing has a lot of uses. Clothing is required for protection from time to time but, somewhere in the course of human history, it became a means of demonstrating status and wealth. Clothing is now a means of dividing society into easily recognizable socio-economic strata.
Along with the acquisition of clothing we imbibed the concepts of modesty, shame and human property. Modesty, as it is widely promulgated, is an unnatural concept and shame is society’s means of enforcing modesty. But really, the enforced concept of modesty is just a reflection of society’s acceptance of ownership of one’s spouse or one’s children. Clothing is just a portable version of the privacy fence or the harem wall. The more extreme a society’s concept of modesty, the more vicious its enforcement of shame and the more suffocating its clothing becomes. Men and women are packaged up like so many kilos of meat within impenetrable wrappings. Modesty of this sort is not modesty at all — it is savage pride and a crass display of the very opposite of any sort of modesty.
Modesty is as modesty does.
Nudism vs Naturism . . . is there a difference? To some people this is a "potayto / potahto" matter. For some people the two terms are synonymous; to others they have very different and real meanings.
Someone, I don't know who it was, and it doesn't matter, once quipped that a nudist is a person who likes to be naked, and a naturist is a nudist who knows why. There is some truth to this quip. Self-identified nudists seem to live in the joy of the momentary state of nudity without ever examining their motives. Persons who self-identify as naturists often seem to be at least as concerned with the reasons for social nudity as they are for the fact of it. Does that mean that a naturist is an intellectual nudist? This question may never be resolved because there are almost as many opinions as there are naturists. And opinions are like buttocks, everyone has at least two of them.
In the United States the two terms are taken as synonymous, while in much of the rest of the world there seems to be a distinctly different view of what each term implies. Swingers and other libertines, hoping to legitimize their lifestyles in the eyes of a wider public, often adopt the label naturist in order to fly under the radar and gain admittance to naturist venues. Within naturism nothing could be so blatant a false-flag endeavour as a swinger proclaiming to be a naturist. The basic philosophy of the two lifestyles is antithetical. That of swingers and other libertines is hypersexualized while that of genuine naturists is based on non-sexualized nudity — there is no true middle ground for the two.
Sexualization . . . Americans are both terrified by public nudity and obsessed by sex. This leads to the sexualization of nudity and lends some creedence to the notion that clothing itself separates us from other animals . . . that without clothing we would instantly revert to our animal nature and be copulating in the streets. Possessed of such a thought, so-called "moralists" argue that nudity is immoral, therefore any exposure of bare flesh is sinful, therefore anyone — particularly any woman — who appears immodestly dressed is a slut.
In recent years within the United States — and the trend is growing there and expanding beyond Usanian borders — this sort of thinking has led to the phenomenon of "slut-shaming." Examples of this sort of "morality policing" within America's school's include alteration of yearbook photos to cover up naughty bare shoulders, the banning of girls from wearing shorts "so that the boys won't be too distracted" and, in one almost unbelievable case, the principal of a school lifting the skirts of female students to ensure they were not wearing thong underwear!
The only morality in play in these situations is immorality. Any school official, male or female, who is so fixated on young girls and their bodies or underwear must be removed from any position of authority, and any contact with children. Such people fit into the category of sexual perverts and are using their positions to access potential victims.
The overt sexualization of nudity leads directly to the commodification of both nudity and sex wherein, so long as someone is making a profit from either, both are deemed to be acceptable. But at the same time the innocent practice of simple social nudity is demonized. By means of such strange alchemy personal nudity is transmuted into a commercial property.
Different Labels for Nudity
In my on-line explorations I have found numerous discussions about what people who like to be naked should be called, or should call themselves. Foremost among these is the discussion of nudist vs naturist which has already been covered above. The great common thread throughout most of these discussions is ignorance . . . ignorance about what, precisely what, it means to be one or the other, or maybe either, or neither as in the case of the swingers. So let us set the old nudist/naturist business aside for the moment and consider a few aspects of the problem.
Do we have to call ourselves something, anything, to set us apart from everybody else? Well, yes, in my opinion I think that we do. The very purpose of language is communication and the goal of effective communication is clarity. Clarity calls for exact vocabulary with shared concepts and definitions in order to get any point across, otherwise we could just squat beside the table, pointing and grunting, until someone finally passes the ketchup. Labels matter. There is nothing wrong and a great deal right about precise language.
Some object to precise language on the spurious grounds that it "puts labels on people." They put forward the grand statement "I don't like labels" and attempt to sieze the moral high ground, often conflating issues of sexuality with the nudity issue. Others don't object to labels so much as they object to old labels . . . "naturist" and "nudist" are oldspeak and insufficiently cool (dare I say insufficiently "hip") for these young folks pretending to be something like naturists. They advance childish terms such nudie / nuddie as being more in line with their generation. Well, maybe they are, so long as we are talking about a generation of two-year-olds.
Still others advance the proposition that being nude and being naked represent two entirely different states of being. I would explain the thought processes in this argument but, so far at least, any that I have read have been either nonsensical or self-contradictory. Some of these label haters even shy away from using the actual word naked, prefering instead the childish expression "nakie," as though they fear punishment for using grown up words.
Most of these arguments seem to be coming from people who have never been naked outside of the shower or their bedroom and still live in fear of being seen by anyone except themselves in a mirror. Many of these people are kids who think that talking about being naked is the new cool. How wrong they are. Talking about it without doing it is just another form of masturbation for them.
One neologism that I have some appreciation for is naktivist, a portmanteau word combining "naked" and "activist" which seems to describe at least two separate but related paired concepts: (1) being naked and being physically active at the time and (2) being an activist on behalf of a naked lifestyle. It is hard for me to argue against either of those concepts. I like both of them. The first explicitly champions fitness and implicitly promotes free-range naturism. The second calls for naturist outreach to the clothen, evangelism among the textiles. What's not to like about that?
So, with all this talk of terminology I should stipulate for the record that when I have no clothes on I can be either naked or nude, sometimes even nekkid if I'm talking to an American, but absolutely never nakie, at least not since I was out of diapers. I aver that I am a naturist, and a free-range naturist to boot, as well as a naktivist, and that I am proud to be all three because there are no contradictions between any two pairs.
But you don't have to be a naturist to be naked! Yes, strange but true, not everyone who enjoys being naked is, or would consider themselves to be, a naturist, a nudist or anything other than just a human being. How did that happen? It isn't so hard to understand.
Different Types and Styles of Nudity
Although this assertion is wide open to other interpretations there are, in my own opinion, four basic different types of nudity based on with whom it is practiced. These types are: private, familial, social and public.By "private nudity" I mean one person alone, or at the very most two people who are comfortable with being naked and do it in secret lest someone find out and subject them to ridicule, ostracism or prosecution. If the nudity is restricted to one individual it cannot, in my humble opinion, ever be considered naturism per se. If it includes two or three people who adopt naturist principles and pursuits it is, in my humble opinion, the lowest level at which naturist principles can be said to be practised.
The term "familial nudity" should be self-explanatory. These are most commonly a couple who have elected to raise their children within a clothing-optional household. Sometimes that is as far as it goes. Often such familial nudity will be part of a naturist lifestyle but, like the private naturists, the family keeps their lifestyle secret from their neighbours and co-workers.
Social nudity is usually, but not always, practised by actual naturists who are members of some sort of naturist group, organized or extemporaneous, landed or non-landed. This sort of person socializes with other club members on a regular basis. This is one half of what I think of as real naturism, the social aspect of the group. But social nudity without the adoption of naturist principles is not naturism — more about principles later.
Public nudity is practised by naturists, and others, who are members of a rather more free-spirited stratum of social nudity. These are people who, convinced of the moral correctness of the the naked human body and protected by a suitably progressive legal code, have no difficulty with owning their convictions and circulating freely within clothed society. Participants in the World Naked Bike Ride events come very close to this form of nudity but aren't quite there yet. For many of them their annual participation in a WNBR event is a lark and an opportunity — as part of a semi-anonymous mass — to stick it to society without the danger of legal repercussions.
The first person I ever saw who adopted completely the public nudity lifestyle was a German fellow I met on a tram in Frankfurt-am-Main. It was raining out and I was taking the tram across town — it stopped to take on passengers and he climbed aboard, naked except for shoes and a fanny pack. He folded his umbrella, paid his fare and greeting other passengers he knew, spread a small towel on the vacant seat beside me and sat down. He was carrying a small suitcase with his work clothes in it so that they wouldn't get wet. No one else on the tram batted an eye. We fell into easy conversation and he got off at a stop before my own. No problems . . . would that we could all live in such a situation.
With the unfortunate rarity of the excellent situation I encountered in Frankfurt that rainy Monday, in general terms each of the four styles of nudity can be sub-categorized into four distinct styles. These styles are: at-home, beached, clubbed and free-range.
"At-home naturists" are exactly what the term states, people who enjoy nudity on a private basis within their own home and garden. They are not "naturists" per se unless they engage in social contact with other like-minded people within the same sort of private setting, avoiding more public exposure by not going nude in more public venues such as naturist clubs or beaches that are either naturist or clothing-optional. But to stay within the parameters of being "naturist" they do not stray into the realm of "swinging" where social nudity becomes hypersexualized.
An interesting variant form of the "at-home naturist" is the "away naturist," a person who enjoys social nudity but cannot entertain the notion of engaging in it within one's own community. "Away naturists" tend towards nudity while on vacation in some distant spot where they hope never to meet their neighbours or colleagues from home. Most usually such "away" places are beach resorts so "away naturists" also fall into the next category of naturists.
"Beached naturists" are a rather traditional sort of naturist, the sun-worshipper who goes to the beach to soak up the rays and get an all-over tan. The true "beached naturist" arrives at the beach clothed like any textile beachgoer and only removes their clothing once they are seated on their towel or chaise. Should they be moved to try a dip in the water often they don their swimsuit before getting up and seldom if ever move about the beach while naked. Many "beached naturists" admit that they dislike being looked at, even glanced at, while naked and they often object to other beachgoers going walkabout naked. When I think about "beached naturists" I think about "beached whales," rather out of their element and their comfort zone.
The "clubbed naturist" is one who is quite social while being naked within the confines of an established naturist club or resort. Statistically, clubbed naturists are older and have the level of disposable income necessary to pay club fees. "Clubbed naturists" are very often concerned with their declining numbers and are heard decrying the lack of younger members. Many, though by no means all, naturist clubs are self-defeating in this matter. They claim to want younger members but they then make such younger visitors feel like intruders in a retirement home for naked old folks. In order to attract younger naturists clubs must be attractive to younger naturists. Older club members must be welcoming and they must be accepting of changing fashions such as body jewelry and tattoos because they are badges of the young -- at least for the moment.
Another type of naturist, my personal favourite, is the "free-range naturist" who is, somewhat like the free-range hen -- but not chicken -- free to roam about in the natural environment within being fenced inside of a naturist club. "Free-range naturism" is the polar opposite of the beached or clubbed sort of naturism.
The typical "free-range naturist" is the sort of (usually unaffiliated) naturist who heads off into the wild to enjoy freedom of a different sort. This is the sort of naturist one might encounter by chance on little-used hiking trails, isolated beaches, distant forest glades or at a World Naked Bike Ride event in the middle of a bustling city. Whenever I have met such people they have always impressed me as bring more genuine in their naturist beliefs. Certainly they are less fearful about being seen that those to confine themselves to the naturist clubs and resorts. This is not to say that beached and clubbed naturists are not real naturists. They are. But different people have different tolerance levels for risk and exposure and, frankly, as one grows older, different tolerance levels for exertion and discomfort encountered either in the wild or on the seat of a bicycle in, for instance, downtown London.
Different Reasons for Nudity
Everyone seems to have their own favourite reason. I believe that the all-time leader in this regard is freedom. After freedom, in no particular order, come lack of pretense, body acceptance, the natural condition of mankind and equality of station. Let's have a quick look at each of these in turn.Freedom . . . many, perhaps most, naturists are by choice a secretive lot. Fearful of disapproval by wider society they may not reveal their entire indentity. As part of this they are prepared to take on a far more egalitarian persona as they bask in the freedom of naturist life.
Naturist freedom is often severely circumscribed, first by laws which proclaim innocent public nudity to be a criminal act, second by the circumstances in which social nudity is most commonly practiced. In this second case the freedom is most usually limited by the high hedges of private gardens and the board fences of naturist resorts. These barriers are raised both to avoid giving offense to rabid moralists and to exclude the eyes and cameras of the perverts within wider society. Having considered this matter often I have concluded that these two seemingly different groups -- the moralists and the perverts -- are either exactly the same sort of people, or that there is significant overlap between the two groups. They are all perverts of some variety.
The freedom of the hedged or fenced compound is no freedom at all, or at most it is the same sort of freedom as that of the prison exercise yard. Naturists confined to approved beaches or private clubs are what a young friend of mine refers to as "beached and clubbed" naturists. What this term evokes for me is the image of a dead whale, not a free-living human being with guaranteed rights within a democratic society. Quite to the contrary the confined naturist is a prisoner of public prudery and false morality imposed by a sick society which rejects its own basic humanity.
Lack of pretense . . . We all wear masks . . . within clothen society we wear full-body masks that are much more our public identity than is the body inside the clothing. We use our clothing, either intentionally or inadvertently, to advertise our professions, occupations, political or social views, etcetera. That information is imparted, often misunderstood, by the casual observers we pass in the street. The state of nudity removes all that. In order to impart our personal information or our viewpoints we have to actually speak to other people. We have to engage in social interaction. Some of us may still pretend certain things about ourselves but, in my opinion, that is harder to do when one is naked. Also, I believe, there is less inclination to do so. Our nudity indicates a degree of openness and acceptance that our clothing often denies.
Body acceptance . . . that is something to strive for. Many of us have body issues. We think that we are too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short or that various parts of our bodies are not what we might like them to be. These are serious issues which, in some people, particularly the young, often result in eating disorders or worse. The advertising industry bombards us with idealized, airbrushed, photoshopped images that usually reek of sex and money in order to sell their products to the gullible populace. It is small wonder that many of us have body issues. We see the idealized images and wonder how we could ever compete with such perfection. These are the sorts of situations that push normal people into a great enough degree of unhappiness that they will undergo plastic surgery in order to achieve the unachievable. Naturists seem to be more inclined to accept reality. We are what we are. That isn't to say that it makes us complacent about fitness. Most naturists I have met are quite active and try to maintain a healthy lifestyle. But I've yet to meet a real naturist who thought that she needed to get breast implants to make her into a real woman.
The natural condition of humankind . . . this is an aspect of naturist thought that returns us to something stated above, the fact that we are all born naked. Most of us were happy little nudists as children, totally without shame about our bodies. Then we were taught pride, shame and consumerism. It was all downhill from that point onward. But let's not flog that horse any further. If you've forgotten what I wrote above you can find it in the second through the fifth paragraphs. Take notes, there will be a pop quiz at the end of this blogpost.
Equality of station . . . it is often stated that being nude removes the visual cues of social and economic status and renders everyone equal. In his entertaining and thoughtful blog the Naturist Philosopher has taken issue with this notion and has proclaimed it to be "bullshit." He states his reasons for this gloomy opinion and, although he is correct in some of his assumptions, he is misled by his conclusion. Yes, once the visual cues of social rank and economic status are removed there remain other cues which are independent of wardrobe alone. However, many (though by no means all) naturists are at some pains to conceal or diminish such cues so the aspect of equality, while not real, seems to be apparent. Is this enough? I consider that it is.
But there is another type of inequality within naturism that must be addressed. The beached and clubbed type of naturist is more likely to belong to one of the incorporated naturist clubs, either landed or non-landed, which hold fast to strict rules about so-called gender balance and exclude single men on the basis of the status of their personal relationships rather than their adherence to naturist principles and the norms of good behaviour. Beached and clubbed naturists of this sort only want to socialize with other naturists of their own sort. They clothe their prejudice and fears in the fabric of gender balance but they exhibit their visceral fear of single males as though such men were aliens. It brings to mind all of those bad science fiction movies from the 1950s and 1960s wherein the aliens invade but are "only here for our women." Codswallop! Let's give that one a rest, shall we. These exclusionary clubs are the same ones constantly beating the drums of freedom, equality and acceptance, all the while erecting barriers against all three concepts. The clubs' hypocrisy does not go unnoticed by the younger generation which views most such establishments as exclusionary, expensive, restrictive, judgemental and altogether old-fashioned. While such older naturists are constantly worried about the future of naturism and bleating about attracting young naturists they refuse to change anything other than their price point, and then only for special weekends. They would do well to understand that some very basic changes must be made within their walls, both to their philosophy and to their business model. They need to accept that change is evolutionary and inevitable, then take steps to welcome new people and implement new ideas.
Thank you for taking the time to read this rambling collection of thoughts. I hope that at least some of them have been informative and/or thought-provoking. I had to do something thoughtful now that the season has turned and a distinct chill has been put on local opportunities for outdoor naturism.
Oh, and I was just kidding about the pop quiz.
But there is homework . . . Think about what you've just read and why you either agree or disagree with it. Talk to a friend about naturist ideals. Evangelize amongst the textiles, debate with the clothen.
