{"id":1397,"date":"2014-09-02T14:56:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T12:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/?p=1397"},"modified":"2014-08-09T07:08:16","modified_gmt":"2014-08-09T05:08:16","slug":"no-wrong-way-to-be-naked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/2014\/09\/no-wrong-way-to-be-naked\/","title":{"rendered":"No wrong way to be naked"},"content":{"rendered":"
Quoted ad verbatim from The Ottawa Citizen<\/a>:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Published on:
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\"A
A picture taken on August 19, 2012 shows nude women under a sun shade and sunbathing at lake Grillensee in Naunhof near Leipzig, eastern Germany.<\/p>\n

WALTRAUD GRUBITZSCH \/ GETTY<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n

It\u2019s become a summer tradition for a nudist to encourage me to switch my bathing suit for a birthday suit. The first time was last year at Hanlan\u2019s Point Beach, the stripped-down portion of the Toronto Island. <\/span>Though I had swum naked earlier in the day, a man who is basically the beach\u2019s ambassador of nudity approached me and my friend as we were about to leave. He said we really should have felt comfortable shedding our clothes sooner. It made me very uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

My next solicitation happened last weekend in Ottawa when a friend and I stumbled upon a secluded inlet on Meech Lake known as \u201cLittle Beach.\u201d A man was tanning naked beside a woman in a bathing suit, and another guy who looked north of 60 pulled down his leopard-print Speedo and dove in the water. We looked at each other like \u201cAh, it\u2019s that kind of joint.\u201d As we were packing up to leave Mr. Leopard Print walked over and encouraged us to check out the many Ontario naturist organizations (to a layman, naturist and nudist are interchangeable). We smiled politely and tried to act like we were in a hurry. He didn\u2019t take the hint.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something off-putting about being evangelized by someone who is naked when you\u2019re fully dressed. But if you can look past the proselytizers, nudist communities might be one of the best places to build self-esteem. Body images issues that keep women (and some men) from joining a nudist community actually dissipate in buck-naked environments.<\/p>\n

The idea is counter-intuitive. If you\u2019re insecure about your body, isn\u2019t being naked around others like being a vegan locked in a slaughterhouse? For most of us (and for the record, I\u2019ve never been a nudist group member) these events seem like an ideal breeding ground for insecurity, especially given the fact that almost 100 per cent<\/span><\/a> of women admit to having at least one \u201cI hate my body\u201d moment each day. But while the regular world is obsessed with how nude bodies look, nudists have a different mentality. Rather than aesthetics, they\u2019re are obsessed with how it feels to not wear clothes.<\/p>\n

In Ontario, there are are about 16 clubs or resorts where people who want to be naked can swim together, have barbecues or take vacations. During the colder months, the Ottawa Naturists\/Naturistes de L\u2019Outaouais (ON\/NO) rents out Ottawa-area\u00a0pools for its 200 members.<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019re all a bunch of 13-year-olds, \u201cnudist community\u201d seems synonymous with \u201corgy.\u201d But the motivation to bare all is a lot more wholesome. The man at Meech Lake said he likes swimming nude because he can dry off naturally and doesn\u2019t have to deal with wet bathing suits (and no matter how prudish you are, swimming naked just feels better. Admit it). Still, the fact that nudism doesn\u2019t appeal to women in particular isn\u2019t surprising.<\/p>\n

My Facebook feed is full of stories about women\u2019s bodies being judged \u2013\u00a0from the bikini-clad Edmonton mother<\/span><\/a> who was taunted for showing stretch marks on a beach to the woman who says Instagram removed her butt-selfie<\/span><\/a> because of her weight (to bolster her case, see the untouched tome of Paulina Gretzky cheek-shots). But nudist communities aren\u2019t concerned with traditional beauty standards. There is no wrong kind of naked.<\/p>\n

Being around naturists is actually like the reverse of the nightmare in which you\u2019re standing naked on a stage in front of clothed people. Everybody fits in. All the parts we fetishize become like wallpaper nudists no longer think about. I spoke with a gender transitioned woman who said joining the ON\/NO helped her feel accepted as a female. A British woman joined a nudist community after an operation left her with a huge scar on her torso. She told the Daily Mail<\/span><\/a> she went from not being able to undress in front of her husband to being confidently naked around others. Yet as women, surmounting our own insecurities is only half the battle.<\/p>\n

We also have men to worry about. When cops and politicians imply\u00a0that we\u2019re just a too-short-skirt away from rape, that message makes ditching the skirt seem like a bad idea. But nudist communities have us metaphorically covered. Since more men are drawn to nudism, organizations try to balance the gender ratio of members they admit to make women more comfortable. The majority of parks in Quebec do not accept single men and ON\/NO created a bylaw that puts them on a waiting list if the male-female ratio exceeds 2:1.<\/p>\n

And contrary to popular belief, nudist communities aren\u2019t populated by gawkers and sexual predators. The ON\/NO, for example, has a pretty intensive screening system for new members that involves at least four meetings in a mix of clothed and nude settings to make sure no creeper alarm bells go off. If more women knew how safe these communities are, they could reap the body-image benefits of being au naturel around others.<\/p>\n

Of course nudism isn\u2019t for everyone. I\u2019m not even sure it\u2019s for me. But I know this lifestyle doesn\u2019t deserve the stigma it receives. Sure, having naked men convince you to get naked on a beach doesn\u2019t foster a wholesome image. But for most people who go bare, nudism is an escape from society\u2019s scrutiny of their bodies. It certainly sounds a lot better than cutting carbs to fit into that bikini.<\/p>\n

Angelina Chapin<\/strong> is the blog editor for Huffington Post Canada.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quoted ad verbatim from The Ottawa Citizen: Published on: August 8, 2014Last Updated: August 8, 2014 8:18 PM EDT A picture taken on August 19, 2012 shows nude women under a sun shade and sunbathing at lake Grillensee in Naunhof near Leipzig, eastern Germany. WALTRAUD GRUBITZSCH \/ GETTY It\u2019s become a summer tradition for a … Continue reading “No wrong way to be naked”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[18,3],"class_list":["post-1397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clothes-free","category-nudism-2","tag-body-image","tag-nudism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1398,"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions\/1398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjuzdme.org\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}