The subtlety of non-nudists.
Do you know it? When you’re in a clothing optional area and the non-nudists are all doing their subtle best to look at you while trying to hide their curiosity?
It happened to me over the last few weeks when I was on vacation.
Canary Islands.
The Canary Islands are Spanish territory and as such every beach is officially clothing optional unless signposted differently. I went out several times for a nice walk along the beach close to the hotel, down to the two RIU hotels that are located over 2km away from Corralejo and back.
Over that stretch I saw lots of nude people. Perfectly fine, as I was ‘dressed’ in the same manner. How else? Also though, lots of non-nude people were there. It was almost painful to see all their attempts to sneak looks at the naked people walking by, lying in the sand or swimming in the ocean. Painful and pathetic. Heck, no one there carries their eyes in their pocket. For me it’s okay to look as long as you don’t stare. I look at them too (although not for long, why would I?).
Honesty
I’ve mentioned this before. Nudists and naturists are far more honest about their life than non-nudists. Nudists know what people look like. There are two genders and each one is basically laid out the same for everyone who’s a member of that gender. Some parts are bigger, smaller, rounder or longer. Who cares? We’re all human.
All different.
Also underneath all the clothing that some prefer to wear, even when it’s far too bloody hot for that. Everyone knows what a man or a woman ‘has’ beneath these fabric bits. And for some reason the non-nudists insist on remaining ‘ignorant’ and sometimes pretend to be shocked when they notice a person who’s not afraid of all that.
After several walks over that beach it was almost getting to me, so I decided to go blind regarding them.
Sick.
On one occasion I saw something that almost made my eyes fall out.
A little boy was playing in the sea, dressed in shorts and a far too wide t-shirt. He kept coming out of the water and was running over the beach. In a strong wind.
I really wondered how long it would take before that child would get sick in the wind, wearing those wet clothes.
Maybe I know nothing about this but I wouldn’t want my children (if I had any) to run around that way…
Reminds me of the time, when I was eight years old, that now was the time to stop running around the beach naked, and to wear a swimsuit. I was horrified. The swimsuit was loose and when wet clung to my body – it was horrible. As you say, any wind makes a wet swimsuit even more unpleasant and quite likely to chill the body. But at least it was only ‘Speedo’ style – nothing like as bad as the grotesquely long ‘shorts’ that mothers dress their little boys in nowadays. For several years I was forced to wear that awful swimsuit until, at last, my father took me to a nude beach and all of a sudden I was free again. Turned out that he hated wearing a swimsuit too, but had been forced to ‘conform’ by my prudish mother, who had deep suspicions about beaches where people swam naked. But after that liberating experience we were two against one and always went to beaches where we could go bare and happy.
Paul, i do not think there is any subtlety in textiles: they just would love to dare getting naked but they don’t… Now, I 100% agree with you about nudists who do not care about how others look but are just naked for the freedom and the well being you feel. I learned over the years to actually do not care at all about those textiles people looking at us nudists, except when it’s blatant staring, where I start looking at them with the same insisting look. It’s generally when they start looking elsewhere as they cannot stand being stared at. As for the boys, I would not “judge a book by its cover”: the skin of youngsters is more fragile than adults and, I cover my kids too at a nudist beach to protect their body, sunscreen is not enough particularly when they are playing in water. With that, keep the naturist spirit up!
Well put, Paul. One of the beaches I go to is at the far end and the non-naturists have to walk quite a distance, which us naturist are willing to do as not to “offend” anyone, just to “catch a peek of those nudies.” And, of course, they try to pretend they’re not looking. What a circus it is at times.
One of the few advantages of getting older is that the observational antics of textiles no longer bother me. If they want to look, let them – I no longer care.