I keep being shocked by the ‘dedication’ that people have in pursuing the fake perfect body.
Yes, I’ve posted a gazillion times about that, so if you’re tired of that, stop reading now.
Still reading? Great.
We naturists/nudists know that there is no such thing as the ‘perfect’ body. We see bodies everywhere, without the ‘safety net’ of clothing, as often as we can / want. And what do we see? People. Nice people. Big, thin, black, coloured (see left), white, skinny, you name it and it’s in the mix.
The clothes-free community doesn’t care how you look, as long as you’re kind and not making a nuisance of yourself.
That doesn’t sound very complicated, does it? And most people I know are just like that. Ordinary people who just want to live a nice life. Nothing posh, nothing fancy (okay, occasionally a splurge is nice, I know that too), and having a good time. Fun.
The very things that naturists also like, most of the time, as far as I know.
It’s the body that keeps many people from enjoying our freedom. It is so sad to hear that, even from people who are somehow quite close to the resident evil – I mean the reigning beauty ideal. What is it that makes people so uncertain about themselves?
I think it is as much a small as a big thing. The switch in your head that has to flip. I think many of us have felt when that flip happened. Many of us don’t even know about the switch but for many people it’s there.
I wonder if there is a way to access more switches in this world. To help people get over a lot of insecurities.
Life is too beautiful to be hidden inside a few layers of fabric.
I can only speak from a US perspective. My impression is that in most other countries the ‘ideal body’ is less removed (and therefore less difficult to attain) from the average body than it is in the US. Also greater deviation is allowed before it draws the attention of the average passerby on (for example) a textile beach. Kindly correct me if I’m wrong.
Body dysmorphia/insecurity/uncertainty/lack of acceptance/etc. is framed as being a completely psychological issue. There’s an almost complete lack of acknowledgement that a person insecure about his body might actually have self-evident physical differences (possibly medically dx’d) that exist outside of and independently from the person’s mental state. This makes absolutely no sense to me
Unlike the naturist community, the textile community DOES care very much how you look and is rarely shy about making its opinions known. That a person’s uncertainty about his body might come from the unsolicited opinions of the world at large is also unacknowledged. So if a man has noticeable skeletal abnormalities and is reluctant to take his shirt off in public because people point and stare 100% of the time, he is almost invariably told that he is imagining it.
Yes, I’m aware that what I’ve just discussed is completely illogical, makes no sense at all, and denies reality. Nonetheless, that’s the norm in the US for people insecure about their bodies.
Everybody is different, we don’t have the same noses, ears, feet etc. so what . And being naked we see other differences, again : so what. We appreciate people the way they are, not the way they look. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have preferences. Personally I prefer men and then the average to skinny type. But that does not mean that I can’t be friends with other types of people. The good thing about nudism is that we all know that we are not perfect and thus accept other nudists more easier. As nudists we all have realized that there is nothing to feel ashamed about when naked.
Actually, there’s no such thing as an imperfect body. There are of course bodies that have had injuries,medical issues, functional issues, more years, etc. But that doesn’t mean that those that haven’t had those issues(yet) are somehow more “perfect”. Every thing about our bodies is amazingly complex. We should be grateful for all the multitude of things that work and we’re all equally human inside our bodies.
And many nudist groups and publications I’ve seen do a lot to make real nudists feel bad about their bodies by (almost) exclusively posting photos of young, fit, people, often heavily photoshopped to remove any blemish.
NFN I’m looking at you here too.
The word ‘photoshopped’ triggered a memory. A few years ago I caught a snippet of a documentary (Australian, IIRC) about women’s fashion. One morning the reporter observed a lingerie photo session. Later in the day she walked through the editing department and saw editors photoshopping said lingerie photos. I’ll never forget her response… “You mean, even the underwear models don’t look like underwear models?!”
To your point, I’ve noticed that as well. I think it’d be a better marketing strategy to show people representative of a group’s membership. Otherwise one runs the risk of prospective members thinking, “I can’t join that group; I’m too out of shape.” And photoshopping just seems disingenuous.