The Quick and the Nude

a sonnet

A message from beyond the grave I give, 

a lesson learned by one who dwelt in fear:
Your body is your home. You cannot live
but through it, in it. Breath and blood hold dear!
 
You have but one life, friends: know this is true. 
So chest, and arms, and legs do not constrain.
Before the coffin covers all of you,
expose yourself to sun, sand, wind, and rain. 
 
For when all’s left is portrait laid in bone,
what purpose dress, as only heft and mesh?
What garments be these epitaphs in stone
for triumphs reached and heartbreaks felt in flesh?
I say to those who yet live on this earth:
Wear clothes no more than what you wore at birth. 
 

Legends of Naturism

Naturism is multicultural! 
Here are some pithy profiles of nude heroes and heroines 
from around the world and throughout history. 
LADY GODIVA
11th-Century England
Truth, or dare? The truth: Her husband, sure of a refusal, dared her to ride through town unattired. But it was the daring Lady Godiva herself who threw down her gauntlet, and everything else to be worn except her horse’s finery, to protest her Lord spouse’s excessive taxes on his subjects.
She was the sight to see as she cantered through Coventry, although we’re supposed to believe that none of the townsfolk dared admire her alleged alabaster skin, long red tresses, shapely femininity in motion, or, most importantly, her courage. 
The dare: Her challenge has been met throughout history, and nude public protest of the Lady Godiva kind is one of the most common social nudist phenomena.
Lady Godiva by John Collier. Another excellent illustration with original poem here.

EL DORADO
16th-Century Colombia
The Golden One, Chief of the Chibchas, was one of the first pioneers to combine two nudist favorites: skinnydipping and bodypainting. His attendants would blow gold dust over every inch of his resin-coated skin. After incantations and offerings to the lake, he’d dive from a raft in a ceremony of deep purification and glittering rebirth. 
The invading Spaniards heard about some handfuls of gold dust and quickly asserted the existence of an entire city of gold. There are also those who, upon hearing of naturists enjoying the elements, breathlessly assert a litany of imagined depravities. But in neither case is it about excesses of wealth or sex. It’s about humanity, spirituality, nature, and just plain fun.
Ritual of El Dorado, Narrando y Danzando por Colombia

AKKA MAHADEVI
12th-Century India
Clothes get in the way…in so many ways. Akka Mahadevi wanted none of her garments to obstruct her worship of Lord Shiva. In her society and time period, nudity was acceptable among devout men only. But Akka, after fleeing a forced marriage, decided to abandon clothing altogether and wander southern India sharing her songs and verses, some of which are still conserved. She let her hair grow long enough to cover most of her body, for no purpose other than saving the men she dealt with from their own embarrassment at seeing her. 
This “naked saint” is regarded today as one of the first women philosophers and an original feminist whose unorthodox approaches illuminated the clothes-minded.

Akka Mahadevi, Hinduism Today

KIRIKOU
18th-Century Mali
He spoke his first words from the womb. He could run with incredible speed as soon as he was born. With indefatigable daring and impeccable logic, naked Kirikou the man-child saved his village from drought, from wild animals, and from the cruel machinations of a sorceress. He even liberated the sorceress herself from the root of her own evil, and then, to marry her, he grew into a strapping youth in an instant. 
Yet one of his greatest trials was simply enduring the willful ignorance of his own neighbors, who time and again refused to believe his insights. Were Kirikou’s extraordinary knowledge, bravery, and patience developed more thoroughly by his nudity? Living naturally can only help.

Scene from Kirikou and the Sorceress

A Better Meaning for "Open Carry"

Two men walk into an “open carry” retail store. One is naked. The other, dressed in camo, carries a gun. In less than a minute, a security guard escorts one of the men out of the store- which man?


In 2014 USA, “open carry” is about bearing arms, not baring genitals. But firearms and penises have a complicated relationship. Look at the wealth of jokes along the lines of “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” Swords, too, and staffs, and magic wands and light sabers. A penis can “shoot” and sometimes “shoots blanks.” Like a sword it “penetrates” flesh where it can. If a certain part of your body sometimes sprouts up wildly into the air, seeming to defy gravity, you’re marked by it. It’s an important part of how a man occupies his space in the world. 

Firearms have nothing to do with that. They are a different thing altogether. But it’s easy to get the impression that firearms somehow indicate manliness for a lot of people out there. There’s a whole macho culture around guns, and it erupts into the spotlight whenever another gunman perpetrates a massacre. Almost every time, it’s another gunMAN. You don’t have to be a statistician to see that the factors “possessing a penis” and “owning a gun” tend to correlate alarmingly. 

Does living clothesfree reduce or eliminate that correlation? Not necessarily: nude men of the Amazon or the Pacific islands still use weapons for hunting food, but also for maiming or murdering other people. How about wearing an outfit that draws attention to the penis – does that eliminate the correlation? Again, not necessarily: codpiece-wearing European dandies of centuries past didn’t suddenly give up their swords or their muskets just because they had their masculine organ on display. So, having visual acknowledgement as the possessor of a penis does not effectively trump the desire to carry a weapon. 

But in today’s mechanized, filmed, overly mediated day-to-day life, a social nudity sense of “open carry” could in fact go a long way toward remedying violence in society. Social nudity “open carry” is simply what social nudism is: openly exposing the entire body among others doing the same. After all, it’s tough to be sneaky about weapons when you’re naked. Carrying a firearm, whether open or concealed, is not natural, but “open carry” of a penis is entirely natural. A firearm can be used to defend life, but almost always at the expense of taking someone else’s life. The main reproductive function of the penis is the opposite: it is to give life – to produce pleasure while engendering a new life. That’s a beautiful thing. 

“Let’s go shopping but not for clothes”

We need much more social nudist “open carry” in our everyday life. Through social nudity we recognize ourselves and gauge the range of humanity. Social nudity, non-pixelated, is what we need for TV, films, and videogames, too – along with a lot less violence. Even though simulated or narrated violence might help build suspense in a movie storyline, or help create a TV commercial-break cliffhanger, it’s not the only way to do so. Through violence we teach ourselves to degrade and abuse. Through violence we merely terminate, with exaggerated force, the complex interactions and dialogues of life instead of engaging fully and intricately with  them. Guns symbolize this fatal violence and are used to bring it about. Very much in contrast to guns, penises–as another part of our mortal bodies–symbolize our humanity, and are used to bring it forth.  

We DO need stronger laws regulating gun ownership and use. We DO NOT need stronger laws regulating which parts of our bodies have to be covered where and when. Let’s admit that social nudity, for all its humane benefits, is not a panacea. But living our vulnerabilities daily, with our all-too-human limitations in view, reinforces just how fragile, how precious, how worthy of extended analysis, and how much to be celebrated, our lives are. 


Dump Your Duds at the Door

The nude welcome is a simple and yet profound welcome.

Can there be anything as sincere as being welcomed to a friend’s home and being invited to remove your clothes? Your hosts are already nude, they prepare you something to drink, perhaps introductions are made if needed, and all during this time, you are unburdening yourself of layers of cloth or fiber. It is a relief, a comfort, a true well-coming.

After all, why stop with the shoes? Many folks take their shoes off just inside the door when they arrive home, for reasons of cleanliness. But clothes, too, have been exposed to public transportation, school desks, theater seats, waiting room furniture, spills and smells and microbes. Why not take them off too?

If it’s a warm summer day, an ideal welcome would be to remove your clothes and rinse off at the outdoor shower that these ideal hosts have on their beautiful deck. If not, OK, an indoor shower. Maybe if it’s a cold day, your hosts invite you to draw a quick bath while they fetch you a towel and prepare your coffee, tea, or hot chocolate.

The point is that even if it is only you yourself that you are welcoming to your own home, drop your garb as soon as you can. As soon as you unload your groceries, or take out the trash or walk the dog or whatever it is that you still must do clothed because of our paranoid society that would rather see guns than penises, then take off your clothes and feel your stress reduce, your blood pressure drop, your spirits rise.

But then what do you do if you’re relaxing at home in the nude and you hear a knock at the door? Well, if you can, extend the pleasure of a nude welcome to your guest. He or she may be surprised or alarmed at first, only to later realize what a terrific boon you’ve given. But, what if it’s someone that you just couldn’t or shouldn’t receive in the nude? And – how can you tell which kind of visitor is at the door?

Here’s the answer! As I was preparing this post, I saw a series of tweets from MattNaturist, who has devised a clever solution:

 
I wrote Matt to ask about his interesting approach to the nude welcome, and he explained to me that he set up two independent, wireless ringing devices. He has tweeted a few results: a solicitor used the upper bell, so he dressed. A neighbor used the lower bell, but he wasn’t naked when he answered and didn’t feel that he needed to take the time to undress at the moment. MattNaturist also told me that he copied the idea from yet another naturist Twitter user, which means that the idea is spreading…

If you can’t or don’t want to set up two bells, you can always try yelling through the door, “I’m nude – are you OK with that?” On the other hand, maybe that’s too polite –  maybe you’re the kind of person who opens the door stark naked no matter who is there, come what may, welcome who may be welcomed. The nude welcome will not work for everybody or for all occasions, it’s true. But as one of life’s finer pleasures, it should definitely be extended to, and experienced by, more people – whether they are already nude-friendly, or just one Dump-Your-Duds-at-the-Door-experience away from being lifelong naturists.

Introducing the Family, part two

In three years on this blog, the most popular post that I’ve written is Introducing the Family from October 2011. Evidently a lot of people would like some tips on how to get the whole family to embrace naturism. In fact, when my whole family and I went to the naturist park two weekends ago, we were asked that same question more than once by complete strangers – how did we do it? We stood out, a bit unfortunately, because even though the park does have quite a few family memberships, there did not seem to be any other families at the park that day.
The naturist park Oaklake Trails is about an hour drive from our home. Ahead of the trip, I invited a friend who lives in our city, with whom I’d carpooled to the park before, and so all five of us went out (my wife, my two daughters, our friend, and me). It took awhile to get out the door. We left MUCH LATER in the day than I would have hoped, because, ggrrr, yes I’m impatient when it’s a matter of getting to the park. But, even to go to a park WHERE NO CLOTHES WILL BE WORN there is a fair amount of planning involved (food, gas, cash, towels, sunscreen, etc.)
But so we finally got to the park. It was overcast but warm and no rain, and lots of folks were in the pool. My partner let her clothes go quicker than I had expected. She asked for something to drink, I purchased some beer, and we had a great couple of hours in the pool. Then it was time to eat, so we laid out the picnic assortment we had brought, and invited another park guest from the pool to join us–one of the folks who saw us as a family and asked, how do you do it? As we were eating our late lunch, the sun came out, and then we all six went to visit our friends who live at the park.

It’s always great to see these friends of ours, a married couple whom I credit highly with helping my family understand what naturism is. And their home, which has a huge deck facing west with a wonderful view, is just a magnificent location. So there we were catching up and making introductions over drinks and snacks, and then their neighbors came over, and then another park visitor, and in the end there were 11 of us–of all different age groups, 6 males and 5 females, most of us wearing nothing and the others wearing very little–chatting and watching the sunset (and then the starry sky), in and out of the hot tub and the hammock (my daughters), and just a general happy buzz, and the neighbors brought some sweet homemade desserts to add to the mix… and it was just heaven. “Paradise,” in fact, my partner said, and typed it onto the caption of the photo she took (see below). Also in attendance were two dogs, two deer that wandered through, and some dozen hummingbirds at the feeders on the deck. And as the sun was setting our great friend and host stood to make a toast to friendship, and my partner and I later talked about how the heck we could make a plan to buy property out there…and as we left, our host said it had been one of the best nights on the deck they had had in years.

Well, it certainly was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had, and I’m still living the afterglow, but here’s the most interesting part, the reason I’ve written this as a continuation of the Introducing the Family post: the initiative for the visit came from my family. This is an immense victory because I did not say anything: I did not directly proselytize, agitate, cajole, advocate, or act in any way to bring this about. What happened is that my younger daughter randomly said to me in the car one day not too long ago, When are we going to the naturist park? I wanted to shout for joy and yet I somehow avoided a traffic accident, feigned indifference, and asked her if she liked going. Yes, the pool, the house (our friends’ home)… We should go, she said. Then the next day I was coming out of the shower and my wife said, You’ve got tan lines, and I said Yeah that sucks, and nothing more. After a few moments, she said, I’d go to the naturist park if we can swim. And I said, funny thing, our daughter asked me about going yesterday… So the end result is that I am very pleased that this happened so organically. Years of patiently modeling naturism, as patiently as possible for yours truly, without insisting, have paid off. It’s true that all my family had been out to the park with me before, and had been on our friends’ wondrous deck before. So that was certainly an incentive – they knew what a gorgeous place it is–both the park in general and the deck specifically. But in the past I always had to do all the suggesting and convincing. This time none of that was needed, because the idea came straight from them.
So I am really quite proud of my partner, and my kiddos- a 19-year-old and a 10-year-old, after all, comfortable with their bodies (and unfortunately there weren’t any other kids around, closest in age were our male friend who carpooled out with us–age 30–and the other young man who joined us at the pool, age 28). Everyone was respectful, although the 28-year-old I think got a tiny bit too “happy” with the wine. But I don’t condemn the wine; it is very helpful for relaxing and overcoming inhibitions, and certainly appropriate for such a gathering whether nude or not.
And so this was the dream I lived, we lived, that Saturday. I drove us back home late, me wanting to stay of course… and now, and now… it’s “back to reality”: could we actually sell our house, get a smaller place, and buy one of the park lots …?
My sincere thanks, again, to our friends and hosts, who were among the founders of Oaklake Trails 22 years ago: such an uncommon initiative, unprecedented in this area.
I WAS SO HAPPY. And still am pretty damn happy.

A Nipple For Your Thoughts

The function of women’s nipples in lactation makes sense. But why do men have nipples? 


It’s a great question. And there are many who have given their two cents: science, religion, ancient myth…

But I prefer a different question: 

Why do we all (almost all) have nipples?

To show that the sexes exist on a continuum, not as a male/female flip of the coin. At different points along life’s journey, males may have swollen breasts or they may have flat chests, females may have flat chests or they may have swollen breasts. And anywhere in between. 

I remember that when I was fourteen, I went through an excruciating summer in which one of my nipples had puffed out but the other remained flat. This can happen to anyone, female or male, especially during adolescence. I’m male, so I was expected to uncover my chest for swimming at camp. The body shame that most of us learn to feel, left me desperate to spend as much time as possible submerged or lying on my abdomen. 

There is a big but welcome challenge here for naturism and for those of us who consider ourselves naturists or nude-positive: to more effectively broadcast naturism’s corollary to body acceptance. Nipples, breasts, chests – just like any other body part, they come in different sizes and shapes and colors and are not even always symmetrical. Just like any other body part of either sex, they can and will be eroticized by some people. But any kind of law, regulation, or censorship guideline that attempts to prohibit some nipples and not others in the perverted name of decency, or prohibit some particular parts of breasts defined with bizarre specificity, is inhumane, psychologically damaging, prurient, and ultimately, ridiculous. 

Not just our twin nipples like two coins, but the entire wealth of our bodies should be able to be freely displayed in more, not fewer, contexts, whether in cyberspace or in real space and time. But freedom cannot be forced, or it’s not freedom. Mandating top-free in public may sound ridiculous, and it is, but it is no more ridiculous than mandating that women, and not men, always cover their chests or their nipples in public. 

Free the Nipple! That’s my two cents. 



Naturist Family Values

Naturist families face any number of questions about how to deal with making known their naturist values. Do you tell the neighbors? Co-workers? What about close friends and family?

What about if your family is already well-known, celebrity-status? Maybe you want to keep the paparazzi at bay as much as possible. Probably all celebrities do, most of the time. I don’t normally care to read or write about celebrities as celebrities, but what strikes me as a particularly compelling family example of naturist values is the Willis clan of Hollywood fame. 
Paterfamilias Bruce Willis has never been shy about acting nude in his films, perhaps most famously in the 1994 movie Color of Night. His first wife Demi Moore made history with the 1991 Vanity Fair cover photo of her nude pregnant self, followed up by a body-painted cover photo for the same magazine one year later. Predictably, mainstream media reactions to the nudity both in the film and on the magazine covers were little more than juvenile attempts at provoking scandal. 
Two decades later, has anything changed? Well, the family’s next generation is in the news for nudity now. In fact, in Demi Moore’s Vanity Fair cover photo, she was pregnant with daughter Scout, who has now, in the past month or so, become a vocal supporter of women’s right to go nude or top-free, and associated herself with the #FreetheNipple movement. In response to banishment from Instagram for her photo in a sheer top, Ms. Willis went for a top-free stroll through New York City, where doing so is perfectly legal though not always recognized as such. Then she wrote an eloquent, forthright, and just terrific essay about it, in which she addresses her own particular circumstances about how to deal with making her values known. An excerpt:

I understand that people don’t want to take me seriously. Or would rather just write me off as an attention-seeking, over-privileged, ignorant, white girl. I am white and I was born to a high profile and financially privileged family. I didn’t choose my public life, but it did give me this platform. A platform that helps make body politics newsworthy. 

[…]

I am not trying to argue for mandatory toplessness, or even bralessness. What I am arguing for is a woman’s right to choose how she represents her body — and to make that choice based on personal desire and not a fear of how people will react to her or how society will judge her. No woman should be made to feel ashamed of her body. 

Scout’s older sister Rumer has supported her publicly. It’s easy to imagine that mom and dad, separated though they may be, are very proud of their daughters. I don’t know if any of the four of them are on the record using the word “naturist,” but the word itself is not necessary here. What is important are the very visible, high-profile examples that they all have made toward showing the world how to be comfortable with your body and assertive of your right to do so. 

Epitaph for an Undershirt

Here is hung
an old undershirt. 
I knew it well, or it knew me well. 
It was not a bulletproof vest
nor a shirt of chainmail, 
yet in its way it was designed to protect me;
it swaddled my heart,
it absorbed my sweat. 


Here is folded 
a tattered undershirt. 
I come not to praise it
but to recycle it –
a work rag it shall become,
that it may continue a textile utility
until the soiled and stained saturation,
the bitter dirty end. 

Here lies
a torn and faded undershirt,
washed to threadbare, 
shrunk to almost sleeveless.
I shed it, freed from it, and
I miss it not, nor covet another,
for in the end, clothes are only trappings,
and what I want is liberation. 

The shirt off my back,
all garments rent, ripped, or ragged,
the raiment I don today
is naught but the rain-bringing breeze 
and the sun-baked soil. 
Let the elements swathe me:
I give gladly of my nudity 
back to nature. 

Why Get Mad About Naturism?

Don’t get mad, get naked. On NPR.

Lately there have been some elevated agitations regarding online petitions and organizational leadership in the naturism community. Let’s recognize that there are motives for concern. For example, it may well be that the idea of naturism, at least in the US, would be better served by a more unified front than the current splintered array. But still, the US is a large, very diverse nation, and we need all the help we can get to move forward with naturism, social nudity, body acceptance, and general tolerance for nudity.  
But let’s not get mad about it, let’s just work together and get things done. 
photo credit clothesfree.com

I think the only people who should be angry about naturism are those people who find out about it, try it, love it, and then are mad they didn’t know about it or try it sooner. If that has happened to you, then turn any anger, or regret for lost opportunities, into action. Help spread the word about naturism in a casual, maybe even dispassionate, way. Help get the word to, say, NPR, which might be the only media outlet that could actually do some serious investigative journalism for a large public, without making silly jokes. Just as importantly, NPR is a mostly radio/print media outlet, so there would be no need for pixelization or black bars. Imagine, as warmer weather finally banishes the polar vortex, a week of daily feature interviews with naturist leaders speaking knowledgeably, and being taken seriously, on NPR. These would be naturist leaders from a variety of respected organizations talking about mental, physical and emotional health benefits, about tourism and sustainability, about body acceptance. 

Maybe I’m dreaming. But why should France or Spain be the only countries that seem to be able to promote naturism matter-of-factly with any success? Let’s not get mad, let’s be mature and positive and matter-of-fact. And successful.  

Naturist Trolls?

Disney’s über-popular Frozen debuted months ago, but I didn’t see it until this weekend, and there are a couple of quick pro-naturist points I would like to make about the film.

The story is set loosely in Scandinavia, maybe Norway. In the scene in which younger sister Anna meets ice-cutter Kristoff, a storekeeper is haggling over the price of some goods, and he throws in for free the use of the sauna. He says his family is in the sauna, and then we see, near the counter, a typical sauna door with square window, and the faces of five or six family members pressed up against it from inside the sauna, yelling a muffled greeting. This is a very brief reference – no more than a hint, really -but a positive message nonetheless about family nudity, and about sauna culture open to guests as well as family. 
sauna family, purenudism.com

There is another scene worth mentioning, and this one has raised the hackles of nudophobes online. Kristoff, we learn, has been raised by trolls. The animators had a lot of fun with the rolling-stone trolls, rendered with a look somewhat reminiscent of those funky 70s troll dolls with wild hair. We’ve learned that Kristoff is an earthy kind of guy who takes bites from the same carrot as his reindeer and sweats profusely from his manual labor. So when the troll family greets him, we hear a female troll tell him to take off his clothes. There are several voices at once, and it’s not very easy to hear exactly what is said, but it sounds like she might say, take off your clothes so I can wash them. The troll may be his adopted mother; it’s unclear. Kristoff replies loudly that he won’t be taking off his clothes; presumably this is because he is with a guest, Anna.  But it’s just as likely that he says this because they don’t have much time: Anna’s heart has been frozen and they need the grandpa troll’s advice. 

The trolls, it turns out, are the “love experts” that Kristoff has mentioned earlier in the film, and they try to match him with Anna. It’s evident to the audience that the two are a good match, but Anna and Kristoff resist it, even as the trolls sing about Kristoff’s, and then Anna’s, flaws. The song acknowledges that we all have flaws, physical and otherwise, but what’s important is what’s inside. The song’s message is not right on the mark regarding body acceptance, but it’s not far off the mark either. 

Some of the trolls in Disney’s Frozen


The forest trolls are shown wearing mossy frocks and mineral amulets or flower necklaces. With their stony skin and weedy hair, they couldn’t be more “natural.” And their suggestion that their adopted son remove his textiles upon his homecoming out in the woods, is another positive naturist message in a film now seen by millions.