Mark Haskell Smith’s book is an investigation into the nude sub-culture within Western society. Are we, naturists, a sub-culture? Yes, we are, but we’re more of a sub-sub-culture really, the sub-culture is that of the social nude, and we all know that there are elements of the social nude that would not be welcome within truly naturist society.
I freely admit that I liked the book. I consider that the author did an admirable job with it. That isn’t to say that there weren’t some rocky stretches along the way, there were. Smith’s use of explicit and crude language in places distracts from the message of the book and, for some readers I am sure, from its legitimacy. If it was meant to provide either emphasis or humour it fails in both categories. Then there were words that appeared so often I found them to be annoying. For instance “hipster” – does anyone really say “hipster” anymore? Maybe it is experiencing a comeback on southern California but really, it gives the book somewhat of a pre-1960 vibe whenever it is all-too-frequently used. The other one that got my knickers in a twist, which is hard to do to a naturist, was “drop trou” as a euphemism for disrobing / undressing / gittin’ nekkid! “Drop trou,” who says that? Or who says it anymore? It is another refugee from the 1960s so it may have some currency in SoCal. Who knows? These are small points indeed, just niggles, but they bothered me.
I was particularly annoyed by the quoted comment by Mark Storey early in the book where he characterizes “freedom” as being a naive, cliché and “dingbat” answer to the question of why a person likes to be naked. Had I been Smith I could not have resisted refuting such a facile and demonstrably erroneous position and make Storey defend his position on the spot. But Smith was on a learning curve at this point, so he didn’t do that. However, cleverly, in much of the rest of the book Smith goes on to do it quite adequately, Storey’s opinion notwithstanding. Story, on the other hand, is a philosopher and wants to blather on about deep meanings like de-alienation.
At times when I thought there was too much discussion of swingers and exhibitionists, but to be perfectly fair the author was not writing exclusively about naturism or nudism, but about the “clothing-optional world” – the sub-culture of the nude. Like his previous book about marijuana, Smith is writing about all aspects of a sub-culture unified by a single reference point, in this case social nudity. The fact that the hypersexualized sub-sub-cultures of swingers and fetishists are poles apart from the non-sexualized world of mainstream naturism is beside the point, those poles are connected by the thin (non-textile I’m sure) thread of social nudity.
Smith takes care to expose the seedy side of Cap d’Agde and although he points out that this is not naturism his graphic and, I consider, unnecessary description of events there cannot help but colour any uninformed reader’s picture of naturism. Balancing this out Smith underlines the hypocrisy of discrimination by (North) American resorts in their “couples only” policies. In fairness, he points out that single men often are considered suspect in Europe as well. While I consider the holy grail of gender balance to be an admirable and desirable goal the reality required to achieve it is blatant discrimination against what may well be the majority element of all naturists, the single (or at least unaccompanied) straight men who, because their wives and girlfriends (if they have both then they are swingers, not naturists) are disinclined to embrace naturism, are treated as pariahs by many clubs and resorts. Single men are often treated like the aliens in one of those dreadful sci-fi flicks from the 1950s and 1960s who are “only here for our women.” This is utter codswallop of course, but it is also one of the guiding principles of many naturist clubs and resorts.
I liked Naked at Lunch, I liked it a lot. I didn’t learn anything from it but I liked the fact that others will. The book gives a brief history of where naturism came from, how it developed and how it has branched out into several sub-sub-cultures. It is much more informative than a review of the past, and much more useful than the directory of clubs and resorts that one usually sees. I particularly liked the fact that Smith gives his readers insight into the authentic thoughts and voices of younger naturists of the present, people like Richard Foley of Naktiv and NEWT, http://www.naktiv.net/index.html/ and Karla and Stuart of Free Range Naturism http://freerangenaturism.com/ These are not the sorts of people whom I joke about as being “clubbed and beached” naturists – the old guard – but the younger and active folks trying to spread the true faith – the naturist evangelists among the clothen and the light to lighten the textiles.
I recommend Naked at Lunch. Buy it. Read it. It will give you something to do after you drop trou and are lying nekkid on your chaise beside the pool with all the other hipsters.
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