British Naturism member boost

(No, I’m not a British Naturism member.)

During the COVID-19 years that now don’t hover over us so loomingly any more, I was pleasantly surprised to read, via many sources, that naturism was getting more attention and followers. Most probably because people were working from, and staying at home much more, and so they understood that clothing could be optional – or even completely discarded. (We all know what our preferred option is.)

Working from home in the buff

The biggest surprise, in that area, was the boost in member numbers for British Naturism.

This made me wonder if the naturist organisations in other countries had seen a similar rise in interest in this lifestyle / way of saving on laundry.

Nude home work

I searched a lot of places online, and to my surprise I didn’t find any evidence about that. How can this be? Because I can’t believe that naturist organisations around the world would keep it a secret if their membership suddenly boomed. In this age of increasing prudishness (or ‘modesty’ as I heard people call it), an increase in the number of naturists and clothes-free folks is a very welcome fact.

I’m convinced that more people than just the British discovered the advantages of being naked around the house when the weather and the windows-situation allows.

If anyone has any more information or insights around this, I’d really like to know. Not because it makes me rich, but I’m simply quite curious about this.

Stay safe, folks. And stay naked!

How people react…

…when seeing a nude person.

As I wrote in a previous post, I’ve been exploring routes where I can walk naked. At least partially. Getting there requires being dressed, but the more nude walking time I can get, the better.

Over the last week I ran into a few people. Three, to be precise, and it struck me how different they can react. Don’t get me wrong; none of them made a fuss or had negative comments, but still, their reactions were quite different.

One morning, on a Sunday, I walked along the river. A great spot where I can go nude for 2km.

Along the river

On the way back, I met a lady who was walking her dog. She simply kept walking towards me, said ‘good morning’, and walked on. Seriously, that was the best one of the three.

The second meeting was on a Tuesday morning, quite early, in a spot closer to home. (The river is about 1.6 km / 1 mile walking before I get there.) The trail is something like this:

Fog over the path

Yes, it’s a great spot to walk, lots of trees and narrow tracks to follow, it’s never boring. Near the spot where I had to get dressed again, some 400 metres away, there was a lady walking two dogs. One of the dogs came yapping at me, I yapped back at it and it seemed to like that. The lady yelled at that dog (the other was on a leash) and she stepped to the side, turning her back at me while I passed her. I wished her a good morning, she didn’t reply. Again, no big fuss, but such a difference…

The third encounter was also of the dog kind.

Me on a walk. More fog, indeed.

I was getting closer to the last patch of ‘forest’ when a lady with, again, a dog, emerged from the spot where I had to go for the trail back home. She saw me, made a wide circle around me, keeping her dog close. She wished me a good morning as I said that to her, but she kept a large distance.

Perhaps she was scared that the dog would do something? I don’t know.

Three encounters in one week. All not ‘upset’ (okay, perhaps the second lady was a bit). I think that’s good.

All the same

It’s odd that textile people all want to look the same, and how nudists and naturists have mastered that.

What do I mean by that?

As I’ve often gone on about, it’s the fashion industry, which is doing its best to destroy our environment without telling anyone.

A new person has a new idea for a new line of clothing, and once that’s gotten

All the same?

enough attention, everyone runs to the store to get it. To look the same. For this, the garment(s) come in lots of sizes, to make sure that every different body can look the same. I guess the basic idea behind this is that a model shows the item, and once you wear it, you look like the model. Presto, no diet or gym required! It’s like magic!

Magic
Magic

Say this to the clothies and they will laugh at you, probably, because they are all their own person with their own clothes.

Really?

Now let’s look at the non-clothies. That’s us, the ones who like to run around in the nude. It is my conviction that we’ve achieved what the clothies want with all their attempts to look the same.

Naked people nude beach
They’re all the same…
Supermodel

If you look closely, you can see that all the people up there look the same. They’re all nude and happy, ready for a plunge into the water. And are they ‘the same’? No, they’re all different in their similarity. It’s the attitude that makes them (hence us) the same.

We all show the real ‘us’, instead of attempting to impersonate a model that’s being brushed up and photoshopped to be “perfect” (meaning “showing something that’s impossible to attain for anyone, even the model itself).

This was something I thought of suddenly, on the way home from an onsite visit to a customer. I’m glad I have a way to share this with the world. So, world, what are your thoughts about this?

Naked and civilised

Civilised society?
Civilised…

Do you think we live in a civilised society?

A while ago I listened to the podcast of the Dutch naturist foundation NFN, called ‘Blootgewoon‘ (note, link is Dutch), which means something like ‘nudely normal’.

I love that podcast. Too bad you need to know Dutch to understand it.

The statement that triggered this post was:

To be nude among each other, you need to be civilised.

Blootgewoon podcast

How did this sentence pop up? It was in an interview with the former proprietor of one of the most famous restaurant/bars at the Zandvoort nude beach, the Adam and Eve beach pavilion. The man said that, one day, a sales rep was there to talk business. As they were talking, an older man with a body that showed ‘the good life’ and also several signs of a hard life, came to thank the establishment’s owner for a wonderful day.

Adam and Eve beach pavilion

After the man had left, the sales rep said: ‘Well, you really need a good stomach for that.’

It was at that point, the interviewer made the comment about being nude and civilised.

He is right.

Making a comment about someone’s appearance is rude. Uncivilised. And guess what, that is probably the reason so many people dress up, pimp their outside, make their flabs and flaws ‘disappear’ under layers of pretty and expensive. That way, no one has “a reason” to make a comment about their appearance.

Image of 5 nude people
Image via ClothesFree.com

At a nude beach, there is no covering up of said flabs and flaws. People are real there. With marks and scars and hanging bellies and uneven bits. The works. You name it and you can probably find it at a decent nude beach / resort / etc. If you find a pin-up model person there, it’s something for the diary.

And no one makes comments or rude remarks there. Because when everyone has some kind of flaw, no one has a flaw. No one stands out then, and that is where the civilised bit comes into play.

Drop your clothes and we are all equal. We treat each other with respect.

We’re nude. And civilised.

Nude on Earth.

Nude in Space

Some of you may remember this book.

Nude in Space. A story that tells about a world that’s heating up and becoming unbearable to live in, unless you go naked or when you live in a sealed, cooled dome that adds to the heating of that same world.

A few days ago I read that soon the world’s population will hit or pass 8 billion people.

8,000,000,000 humans. Imagine that.

Many, many people with clothes on.
Not 8 billion, but lots of folks.

When is this going to stop? How is this earth going to be able to handle so many people, with needs for housing, food, water and other basic life necessities?

It’s a crazy place that we’re in and it’s about to get worse. And almost all of these people are wearing clothes. While the planet warms up. Which means more people want air conditioners. Which means more need for energy and more heat exhaust. I guess I don’t need to paint the entire picture.

I hadn’t thought that the world from “Nude in Space” would come closer this quickly, but at the rate we’re continuing to breed, that’s going to happen. Many places of the planet are already becoming uninhabitable due to the heat. Because of that, more people will crowd onto the places that are still fine, pushing more heat out, and so creating even more hot spots that, I guess, will just accelerate the speed of bad things to come.

Nude is not rude

Why don’t people come to their senses and accept that going nude is at least some help to face the problem? Sure, it won’t solve everything, but no clothes means less need for air conditioners, and less production and waste of clothes.

Humanity is at a crossroad, and it has been there for a while, slowly moving towards the point of no sustainable return.

I see this happen. And many do so with me. There has to be a way to make ‘the world’ see that nude people aren’t as harmful as all those air conditioners and (heat) pollution producing factories.

If someone knows, or has an idea, I’d love to know.

Be well. Be nude. Be happy.

And be vigilant.

Nude is addictive

I hate to break this news to you, but it is. At least for me.

nude, having coffee

Over the last few weeks we had a lot of warm and hot days. 25C to 28C, add about 55 for Fahrenheit, and you’ll be close enough.

That kind of weather warms up my apartment rapidly, and it makes me lose my clothes at the same rate. Working from home, only meeting people via video-conferencing, makes that easy. Just have a shirt handy for those video-calls.

Until there is the need to go on-site to a customer. Then the big world insists on clothes again. And then I find how addictive being nude is. Clothes feel like an insult after a few days of none of them. That only gets worse when that number of days goes up.

After such an on-site visit, I don’t know how fast I should get out of that cloth prison again. It’s amazing how extra hot my body feels when the heat from the outside world comes in and has no way to escape.

Nude in Space

Why can’t we all be ‘au naturel’ when the weather’s right for it? When I see how climate is changing (climate change deniers, please stop reading here), the world that I’ve depicted in “Nude in Space” seems to get ever closer. The idea of villages where everyone lives nude is great, but the other side of the medal (and you know that if you read the book) is that life is being made impossible on Earth. And the tragedy is that ‘life’ is doing that to itself.

Let’s hope things don’t get that far (the impossible part). Just the naturist / nude people villages. I can’t wait for those to pop up. The more the better!

Meanwhile I’ll avoid clothes as much as I did over the last weeks, as long as the weather is beneficial to that!

Kids Kamp 2022 – Naturally science

There is a great initiative going to get kids to camp. And not just any camp, but a nudist camp.

Kids Kamp 2022, Cedar Trails Nudist Retreat
New Nudist Podcast logo

I heard about this initiative while listening to the New Nudist Podcast.

(You can listen to that episode here.)

First off, and don’t hold this against me, I have nothing with “children”. I never wanted them of my own and I have succeeded in that very well. That being said, I know the value of children, and what they can mean for ‘us’, being humanity.

The podcast is one long interview with Rick Sloan, the person who started Kids Kamp over a decade ago. Don’t be alarmed, it’s a very interesting and informative interview. The things that are talked about all touched me.

  • Nudism / naturism.
  • The health aspect of our lifestyle.
  • The mentioning of a therapist who suggested a family to visit a nudist resort!
  • The opportunity for children to learn and experience something first hand.

Hello, what’s not to like in this line-up? (Yes, of course, there are always things that someone won’t like, but really…)

At the moment of writing, the donations reach $6,785 dollars:

If you listen to the podcast, you will hear that this kind of camp does cost a lot of money. Something that I think is awesome: naturists can sponsor children to have this week of camp. Children from parents who can’t afford this. Doing something like this is paying it forward. It’s putting kids in a safe and healthy environment, smack in the middle of naturists, and they learn some great things too!

What’s not to like? AANR Mid-West is helping out. AANR is helping out. Children who were sponsored to enjoy this week are helping out by volunteering. If you have 1, 5 or 10 dollars to spare, help Rick and Susan with this cause, please.

If you want to make a donation, or visit the GoFundme-page yourself to check it out, you can go here.

Yes. I donated.

Thank you.

Paul

In naturism size doesn’t matter

This might sound weird but I think it’s true.

A man can be big and strong and impressive, but in the nude that doesn’t matter. The only thing that seems to matter (for those who don’t understand naturism) are the bits of a person that can be seen that are usually hidden.

Indeed, these bits are genitals and female breasts. Naturists know that people come in all shapes and sizes. Being naked, there’s hardly a way around that unless you’re visually handicapped, and even then a person is probably aware of that. (If you have other experiences, please share, I’m genuinely curious.)

These are the ‘problem parts’ for the non-understanding ones. For the people who lived in the repressed environment of clothialism, so to speak.

For me this is another indication that the whole clothing-obsessed world is wrong. The clothialists get further and further away from nature and all things natural, including their own bodies. I have heard stories about people who are so ‘body conscious’ that they don’t even dare to be nude in their own home, when they’re alone and no one can see them.

Isn’t that sad?

People who shower in their underwear. How awful to even consider that.

And for exactly those same repressed people, the size of a penis, a behind or some breasts matters. As if that defines a person. Certifiably bonkers, I tell you. That is now how naturists define people. Because, in naturism, size doesn’t matter. I know big people and tiny people, and they’re beautiful people. I know “beautiful” people who are downright ugly on the inside.

Size doesn’t matter.

People are people.

Do you agree?

Pajamas. Why?

Why??

I ve been trying to find out why people wear night-clothes. Pajamas. Nightgowns. Nightshirts.

Seriously. Why?

I did some research and found that the “pajama” was copied from the clothing of Indian Maharajas and Rajas. They didn’t wear them to bed. Instead their pajamas were “recorded as the “uniform” of both the Indian gentry and peasants, also transcended sex, being worn by both men and women.” (According to an article on Dolce & Gabana.)

Pajamas were brought over to Europe by the English, who seemed to think it looked neat. The word pajama comes from the Hindi “pae jama” or “pai jama,” meaning leg clothing, and its usage dates back to the Ottoman Empire. (Source.)

Before the pajama, there were ‘nightshirts’ or nightgowns. According to Wikipedia, these were in fashion since around 1530. Before that time, it was apparently commonplace to sleep naked.

Now, with the lack of heating and a handful of cold winters I can imagine that people do their best to stay warm, but then fashion hits (even back then) and these things get turned into wannahaves and even fashion statements.

In our time, with most people not suffering from cold in winter (unless they want to), there is no reason for those floppy bits of fabric around your body. As we all know, sleeping in the nude is much healthier.

Woman sleeping naked
Sleeping naked

Whoever started using pajamas (which were day clothes!) in bed is still a puzzle to me, and I think to anyone who’s investigating that. It probably had its use back then, but today… it’s so unnecessary.

Stay naked, everyone. Also in bed.

My belief is nudity

With the Easter weekend behind us, I suddenly wonder why so many people still have problems believing that the nude life can be a good life. Yes, ‘naturally’ there will always people who think they’re right and we’re wrong, but isn’t it odd how strong and lopsided ‘belief’ can be?

Christians are told to believe that 2000 and some years ago, a man got up in his grave and came back to the world. Sure, if that’s what you want to believe, go right ahead.

For some reason it takes an even larger leap of faith / believing that people like to be naked. That is a step or bridge or belief too far for most people in this world. It strikes me time and again that this ancient resurrection story is accepted as gospel (pun intended), and that we, the living proof of the joy of the nude life, have this constant battle against disbelief.

A few days ago I was at our local nude beach, and while I was there – with about 6 or 7 other nude people, I was “hit” by the calm and serenity of the place.

View from the local nude beach

If I desperately had to pick a church, this would be it. No hassle, no “have to”, just a bunch of kind people that are there to relax. They don’t need a belief or faith to know this is a good thing.

The good life. Nude.

Even better: no one has any interest in what you believe or think. As long as you behave according to the rules of the nude beach and you don’t make a mess, you’re golden.

I have yet to find a group of people that’s so diverse, yet so tight-knit in their conviction that the nude way is the good way.

Of course, there is the odd incident that someone creates a problem, but that’s not hard to deal with. The majority is peaceful and accepting of everyone from the start, and only when you’ve shown you can’t behave, you will be asked to leave. I’ve seen it happen only twice, so far.

Give me the belief that nude is good. Others can take their own beliefs and be happy with them.