This might strike you as odd, certainly if you don’t know a thing about hippies.
Hippies rose in the 1960. Flower power, free love, and yes, nudity, were some of the things that hippies promoted. They were against war (I like that) and most of them promoted a relaxed, kind, loving lifestyle.
A famous hippie song
During those times, especially in the beginning, hippies shocked most of the good people with their open way of life and their appreciation of the human body. I think it’s the nudity that was the biggest hangup for people.
A couple with matching flower body paint walks together during the Isle of Wight Festival in the UK in 1970.
As the picture above and certainly the following one show, nudity was a normal thing among hippies. They had no issues with it. That is what made me think how we could do with another hippie-wave.
Mother and child swimming in a lake. It was no problem for them.
Hippies weren’t just located in a single place, they were everywhere. San Francisco was a famous town, but also London, Amsterdam, and every other large city had their share of them, and everywhere the good people were surprised with their alternative way of life. Like we do these days.
I guess several of the readers of this blog have some experience with this one. How do you take a decent selfie when you’re out and about?
Many times, at least in my situation, I’m out on a walk alone. Taking a good picture of a nice spot with myself in it often becomes a problem because: a) what fun is it to haul a tripod around all the time, and b) images using a selfie-stick always make it clear you’re using such a device.
So now I look at you, reader of this blog.
Clearly a selfie-stick user…
How do you make your pictures? Sometimes I see great shots that clearly aren’t done with a selfie-stick. Do you carry tripods around? Do you use other means to set up your camera/phone for a good shot?
Or do you use more advanced methods? For instance I could imagine that the use of a drone could be an option, but that would come down to a very expensive selfie stick, or isn’t that the case anymore?
I’m really curious about this and I am looking forward to your responses!
Do you call yourself a nudist? A naturist? I hope you’re happy with your choice.
More and more I see how these ‘labels’ are abused by the porn-happy community, and that makes me think.
Is it still a good thing to call myself a naturist when that name, or title, or what have you, is being dragged through the mud so often?
The pros.
Sticking with nudist or naturist name/label is probably the strongest statement that we’re not giving in to what the porn-happy community tries to make of our lifestyle. The problem here, of course, is that we’re up against a giant ‘opposition’, even when that mostly lives online. Since more and more of our lives take place online, that’s something we can see as a battleground.
The cons.
With porn sites abusing the naturist and nudist label, it’s increasingly difficult to convince the textile world that these sites are wrong and we are right. Most certainly considering the rise of the prudes that we can witness. It’s as if the opposite of the sixties is surfacing.
Because of these things, I sometimes wonder if it’s worth sticking to one of those two labels. Perhaps “clothes-free” is a better option. After all, one would think that “clothes-free” would be a neutral enough way of describing who we are and how we would like to be.
Alas, that won’t hold water for long either, I realised, after some more thinking. Nudist was the best word long ago. Then it became naturist, be it mostly in Europe. Why change again? Whatever name we think up, there will be some crowd that finds a way to drag it through their personal kind of mud.
That is what made me decide that nudist and naturist are perfect. Let’s take pride in the history of those words, of the people who paved the way for us to be naturists and nudists.
As usual, I welcome your thoughts on this subject…
Isn’t that disgusting? And we all pay the price for this because it’s sensation and sensation sells. People like you and I aren’t interesting enough, apart from the fact that we like to walk around naked. The uninteresting bit about is that we don’t ‘go wild’. We don’t have sex in the street, we keep to ourselves. Heck, in general, we have the name to clean up after ourselves better than our dressed human counterparts.
A good thing in this article above is the ‘naturist’. (Note the quotes!) Obviously the source wherever this article originated knows the difference, which is something to be grateful for. (I can’t tell where the article came from, there are too many links with the same title to check.)
This kind of faketurist is hard to battle. On the few social media where we can still have some influence, we can stand up and point them out, but the hidden kind, like this individual up here, operates in darkness and then suddenly throws a bomb in our midst.
They have nothing to do with real naturism or nudism. I wish there was a way to eradicate all that ignorance once and for all…
Yes. I had ‘an experience’ again. With an unexperienced person.
On my Dutch author blog I wrote about naturism, because I released a Dutch crime story that also deals with naturism. An acquaintance writer/poet from near here let me know she’d read the article and though it was “very courageous” to tell the world I’m a naturist.
Ding ding ding!
That is what happened in my head. An alarm bell. Courageous? What’s so courageous about telling the truth?
I asked her that same question and I got a very deflecting answer: “I really like wearing my clothes, and on the beach I always wear a bathing suit.“
This of course made me ask what benefit the bathing suit had since it doesn’t make you a better bather nor does it keep you warm or dry in the water. “So people don’t see my body.“
Aha. So you are ashamed of your body. There was not a clear response on that one, so the answer is ‘yes’…
Which is a shame, as we all know. There is nothing to be ashamed of, but the media are good at creating this impossible image, and keep changing it.
I asked her once more about her aversion to being naked, quoting her words that she liked wearing her clothes and asking if she had ever tried to be naked for a while. The NO!!! which followed that made it clear to me that she’s not yet ready to give this any thought.
The sad thing of course is that many people think this way, that warped way that’s been glued between their ears. They love their clothes. They won’t change. They will buy a bigger air conditioning unit when it gets hot, instead of doing the sensible thing.
So, to all the readers and followers of this naked-skin-oriented blog: be just as courageous and talk about your naturism. No need to overdo it, or to bring it up at any occasion, but if the opportunity is there and you feel confident, go for it.
We’re all people, all born naked, and we’re all naked beneath the textile layers that society forces upon us.
Let’s enjoy the sensible way of life as much and often as we can, and if any of you have a great way to bring up naturism in a friendly circle, do share it with us. Together we stand!
This week I tried to publish my first Dutch naturist fiction book.
A naturist book which is a crime story. As usual I chose a platform called Draft2Digital to get the book ‘out there’. That, combined with Amazon, gives me a good reach for books. Except this one.
Imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from Draft2Digital telling me that most online bookstores do not accept pornographic content on the cover of a book. Let me show you the cover:
I assume you are shocked over the pornographic content displayed here. If so, accept my apologies. If not, I’m glad to meet a human being with a sensible mind.
To make sure I was indeed offending some policy, I went to wikipedia to have a look at their (Wikipedia’s) definition of pornography: “Pornography (often abbreviated porn) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal.”
If a man’s back and naked behind is sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal then I wonder what kind of people decide this image is exactly that.
Considering the fact that Draft2Digital is an American company, I should not be surprised about this rejection. Still, being stubborn, I decided to try my luck at Amazon because there is a Dutch Amazon-website for books. And lo and behold… American company Amazon sent me this: Congratulations, your book “High-Tech Recherche” is now live and available* for purchase in the Kindle Store!
I decided to publish the e-book through a Dutch e-book distributor. This means it will a) be a bit more expensive b) not get to Apple iTunes or B&N but that’s something I’m not going to be bothered about.
I know, this is not my typical kind of post but I had to vent this somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. If you want to know more about the book, please let me know. The plan is to get an English version out too, and I would like to point the Dutch visitors to my Dutch author website where I will announce the book shortly.
Yes. I hear you. Faketurists? What the hell are you talking (writing) about here? Let me tell you.
Time and again I come across posts on Twitter and other places where genuine naturists/nudists mention being followed by ‘other naturists’, who after some quick inspection prove to be swingers, sex- and porn-lovers and the like. I am sure we all know the kind by now.
These folks always have pictures on their timeline/profile, and they are not as naturist and calm as the one here.
Fake naturists. Hence faketurists.
They’re a pain in the eye and the mind for real naturists, and with reason.
It’s difficult to get rid of them in their entirety since going after them and ‘exterminating’ them is a) time consuming, b) costly and c) illegal. So we end up blocking them, reporting them, the works. I’m sure most people reading this post recognise the problems.
The crap thing is that, yes, sometimes it’s hard work to check each account that is following you, me, anyone. Still: keep doing it. No one is doing it for you, and if you want to keep your presence as clean as possible, it’s a necessary evil. The ones with explicit names or profile images are easy to catch. Some require inquiry. Alas.
An idea I suddenly had was to get some kind of swap-space going where naturists can swap their block lists, at least the one from Twitter. On Twitter you can export your blocked-list by clicking your profile image and select Settings and privacy from the menu:
From there select Blocked Accounts on the left, click advanced options and export your list:
Save the list and that’s most of the work. On the swap space everyone can then download your list and import it to their own blocked accounts (which, as you see, is also a choice in the advanced options, and that will save everyone a lot of work going after each suspicious account.
A drawback is that you might block an account that someone finds offensive, gross of insulting while you might like that account very much. It’s a personal trade-off.
I wonder what you think of this idea, and if you have specific ‘controls’ in place to keep your online, naturist presence ‘clean’.
We probably all know it by now. The Parisian nude restaurant is closing.
Yes. That is a sad thing. Why did they not make it?
Apparently the restaurant is well liked by all who dined there. Unfortunately there weren’t enough of those people, which put the restaurant in a dire, financial spot. The food, as I read in many places, was very good, and the atmosphere in the restaurant was described as very pleasant.
The owners, Mike and Stephane Saada, stated:
“Thank you for having participated in this adventure by coming to dine at O’Naturel. We will only remember the good times, meeting beautiful people and customers who were delighted to share exceptional moments.”
Let’s hope there will be another occasion for a nude restaurant in France. I think that’s important, since France is one of the countries where naturism is huge and growing.
I’m glad to see that the Bunyadi restaurant in London is still open, and that in Bristol, the Greenbank pub has hosted several Naked Dining events.
Let’s hope more restaurants will start seeing the possibilities for nude dining. The way O’Naturel was set up, catering to nude guests only, is perhaps a bit too optimistic. Opening for nude guests a few times per week might have been an economically better idea in that light.
On the other hand, the world of naturism and nudism is facing fierce opposition and that pressure is growing. Establishments like O’Naturel are important because they fight back. It is important to remember that prudishness and the feelings of shame, which are spreading over a world that has made steps into the other direction, can be pushed back. We do need a backbone and some guts for that push. Let’s push!
This post up here, it’s from 2017, made me think about the witch hunt on nudity by the various social media once more. Although… social? Apparently social nudity is not their kind of social.
Why do people still get so worked up about this? Of course, we all know these platforms (Facebook, Google+ and lately Tumblr as well) are wrong in banning anything nude but they are calling their shots.
Faceborg bans artists who post anything resembling nudity yet they have no problem with beheading videos. Tumblr had to be sold to a place that didn’t want naked bits and pieces.
It’s a pathetic sign of the times, and I am convinced that everyone in the naked-life circuit is aware of all that.
I think it’s smarter to focus on the places where nudity is no problem, like Ello.co, Twitter and MeWe.
I’ve also located Ghost (link opens new tab) which might suit your needs.
This page mentions a few more options that might be interesting to you. Have a go, have a look and do report back what you found out!
