Naturist Memes and Photo Captions

Savvy naturists on social media have been making naturist memes and captioned photos for some time now. There’s much that’s already been said about the way contemporary social media affect our attention span, bringing fully to life the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. I agree with the sentiment of Bare Platypus’ recent post – the appreciation for articles, blog posts, and longer written pieces, while also embracing the efficiency of memes and photo captions in helping spread positive messages about naturism.

In fact these newer meme-type images can be located on a spectrum of graphic production and consumption that extends back to the popularity of naturist or nude beach postcards in the early to mid-twentieth century, a topic that Naturist Society scholar Mark Story has been exploring in a series of illustrated articles in recent issues of N magazine. Like the earlier postcards, these new memes and captioned photos illustrate a quick message about social nudity and/or nudity in nature. Also like the postcards, sometimes the messages and images are meant more to titillate or scandalize, but many – perhaps the majority – promote naturism with body-positive messages.

The best memes communicate something more than the tried-and-true message “KEEP CALM AND STAY NAKED.” There are many examples of words-only memes that work very effectively and have the advantage of being acceptable on Facebook or Instagram. An example of a successful meme that does include images is a series from @Wpg_Nudist – sets of four photos of people doing ordinary activities while naked, always captioned with the same slogan, Do It Naked!

I’m going to focus here on the efforts of selected Twitter users who have honed their skills to produce new, good-quality captioned photos almost daily. But first, my own attempt to caption a photo of myself. The patch of blue sky above me turned out to have something of a heart shape – that was unplanned, but a nice touch:

A very skilled and sensitive photo captioner is TweettoTouch. Here is a sampling of his recent captions – I appreciate these three images in particular for their focus on movement, on the nude body in motion, and on the sensations of absolutely primal and essential liberation we feel when running or swimming free through the natural environment.

Bjor is also a tweeter of excellent captioned photos, associated with clothesfreelife. For framing the images he captions, he has developed a trademark color that is a mix he made from the skin tones of photos of eight of his friends of varying ethnicities. He also includes in his images his signature list of the words for nudism / naturism in several languages. Usually the captioned photos are produced in both English and German, and sometimes other languages as well. Bjor is assembling a 2016 naturist calendar. He also posts weekly captioned photos reminding men to check for testicular cancer. For his naturist captions, Bjor will often incorporate famous quotations. Here is a sampling of his efforts:

A prominent naturist voice who has been captioning exclusively her own photos is hountouni heart, also affiliated with clothesfreelife. She has bravely chosen to document her journey into body acceptance through naturism and nude yoga, not only in her photos but also in her sincere and very well-written texts and blog posts. Here are some of her beautiful captioned photos: 

Another creative captioner -or captioner team- is making contributions through the nwNATURISM Twitter feed:

These four captioners listed above work from The Netherlands, Germany, United States and United Kingdom, respectively, showing just how international of a phenomenon these naturist images are. A few more to check out include Nude Soul, Sacred Nudity, and many others, I’m sure – leave your URL in the comments if you’d like to link for more memes or captioned photos.

I don’t follow Tumblr as much, but I would like to give a final mention to Made In The Nude, whose Tumblr blog I discovered when they linked to mine. The blogger(s) usually lead off a post with a captioned photo, and then follow with a straightforward, helpful text on naturism. Solid work!