Dukes and earls can’t afford a fitting shirt but nudity is still bad

Have you seen this kind of romance novel? Don’t worry, I’m not judging anyone on their literary or reading preferences.

My “thing” with this type of cover is, that this erotic/sensual nudity is okay while real, non-erotic nudity is entirely off the scale and still considered unacceptable. I doubt I’m the only person with such sentiment.

The world is mad. All over the place, porn and erotic stuff is condemned but at the same time stuff like this, which is nothing but an invitation to something close to it, is fine. Even now, during lock-down times, the porn industry is doing well. Perhaps even better than before.

Those double standards are not good, and we know it. I keep thinking about this, trying to find ways to make nudity more commonplace, but as the world progresses, this seems to be harder and harder.

I know why, of course. People are struggling to make ends meet in many places. They work long hours (which has a reason – if a government makes people work just long enough, they’re too tired to think at the end of the day, which makes the people ‘safe’. They don’t want to ‘think’ anymore, just slump on the couch and watch TV while eating their microwave dinner).

But even on the couch you can be naked, right? It’s my preferred way to be if I can’t go for a nude walk.

Why is it that all the media promote hidden, ‘naughty’ nudity over the real and genuine thing? Probably because there’s money in naughty (see porn industry). People who wear no clothes spend no money on clothes. It’s all the same thing, all over again.

Sometimes it’s disheartening to see what we’re up against.

The crazy stuff that is parts of America

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:

High-Tech Recherche

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.

These Sunday Nudist posts. The normal people.

You’ve probably seen them. After all, they’re up every Sunday. I try to post nudist images of normal nudist/naturist people. Not the glamour stuff that’s been photoshopped to death and beyond, not the pretty people that will never represent mainstream naturists. (They probably wouldn’t want to be found naked among us anyway, so nothing’s lost there.)

An image says a thousand words, as the saying goes, and I use that. Each Sunday. I got a few e-mails from people who ask why I don’t post the pretty naked people. The exciting ones. Well, if you read this: here’s your answer. The exciting naked people are online in too many places already. They’re called porn sites. You can Google that.

For the real naturists I’ll keep posting the Sunday Noon Nudists. Be happy. Be naked. Be proud of your body; it shows who you are instead of who you pretend to be when you dress up.