Clothing optional

The Joys of Living Naked

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About two weeks ago, there was an article in the New York Times called The Joys of Cooking Naked that literally set the naturist community all a Twitter as links flooded social media and messaging feeds. As best as I can tell, confirmed naturists mostly applauded the “positive PR,” while comments from the textile community drew upon the tired canon of nudist puns, “I simply don’t think I could bare to dine naked!” … Ugh.

With permission from IG @amis_natturisttes

I posed the question on my own Twitter feed as to whether a media splash like this actually helps or hurts the naturist cause, as I, personally, was quite disappointed in this particular article. The New York Times has recently published a few very thoughtful pieces in recent months. (See A Once in a Lifetime Dilemma or The Naked Truth About Germans). But in this case, I found myself wondering what the author was driving for: A history of nudism in America? An advert for a nudist resort/retirement community in Florida? Or perhaps just an admonition to would-be nudists to beware of the evils of splattering bacon grease! Isn’t that common sense, whether naked or not?

I had wished, instead, that the reporter might have taken a different tack, broadening the topic a bit to something like… the The Joys of Living Naked. And for that matter, was it really necessary to get on a plane and visit a nudist resort in Florida to find a person who cooks, eats, or lives naked? I know there are several progressive young naturists living in and around New York City who embrace the clothing-optional lifestyle, but not just on vacation or in retirement, but on a typical Sunday morning when the apartment is warm enough to be naked at home, even in December, and clothing is simply an option that isn’t necessary. How about an article on Window Treatments for the Discreet Naturist, or Talking to Your Neighbors about Casual Nudity. I suspect there are any number of city dwellers across the country who could really benefit from those articles.

I don’t wish to downgrade the seemingly growing trend amidst the general public as related to the tolerance of social nudity, and would even go as far as to celebrate that fact that a major U.S. newspaper published a photo of a fully nude woman – from the backside – working in the kitchen. Apparently, we’ve all finally agreed that the nation’s children will not be harmed by the  incidental sighting of unadorned buttocks. (News flash! Everyone has a pair!)

But I think naturism will really turn the corner in America when we can speak freely about one’s neighbor who has a penchant for being be naked at home, just doing normal things on the day-to-day basis, without the urge to make some goofy pun, or quietly wonder if you’re living next to some kind of sexual deviant. Which takes me full circle – Does an article like this help or hurt that cause?

With permission from IG @moreschicarina

One curious element of all this is the evolution and self-perception of naturist places in the United States that are, at least inadvertently, self-deprecating if not outright ridiculing themselves. In this particular article, the author mentions the resort restaurant (where the research for said article had taken place) – the Bare Buns Café, and adjoining bar, the Butt Hutt! While all under the guise of fun and laughter, (“Hey Naturist Dan! Lighten up a little!“) American nudist places simply can’t seem to resist nomenclature, sign-posts, and newsletter headlines that actually perpetuate the idea that “You naked people are all a little crazy!” or at the very least, you’re hopelessly addicted to second tier dad jokes. (I’m a dad. I love dad jokes. But in this case, doesn’t this kind of thing make us naked people all look a bit silly?) I don’t think I fully recognized the subversive impact of all that until visiting naturist places in Europe, especially in France and Croatia, where you would never find that kind of word play.

Truth be told, if the social media (e.g. Twitter and Instagram) confessions of many a closeted naturist have any validity, it seems that The Joys of Living Naked is probably embraced by hundreds of thousands of people who would never think of dining at a place called the Bare Buns Café, but routinely find ways to avoid getting dressed in the morning until the last possible moment before stepping out into the “real world.” That has certainly been my strategy, and I most definitely do not live in a warm place, and we most definitely have neighbors. To that end, I thought I might offer a few tips on how to realize to joys of living naked, whether you’re into cooking or not.

A GUIDE TO THE JOYS OF LIVING NAKED

  • TALK TO YOUR NEIGHBORS: Obviously, this depends on whether your neighbors reside through the 14th floor window in the adjacent apartment building, or just across the fence. But if you’re making an effort to be discrete, chances are good they might be more chill than you expect. The neighbors on each side of our home know about our naked tendencies, (Especially mine!) but neither seem to have an issue with it, even though the teenage daughter on one side once let herself into our backyard – unannounced – to tell us her family was leaving on vacation, only to find me reading naked on the porch. The moment was a bit awkward, but the residual effect was null.
  • BE AN ADVOCATE: Seasoned naturists find ways to work potential nudity into the conversation to test the waters as to anticipated reactions. Try “Come over any time, but you’d better call first in case I need to put clothes on!”… and see how they react. You might be surprised when they respond with, “Yup. We know that about you.”
  • UNDERSTAND YOUR WINDOWS: My wife is more likely to get naked on “nakation” than she is around the house. (It’s simply not pragmatic to bother with throwing something on to empty the recycling bin.) But I finally got her to do the “window test” a few years ago to demonstrate just what people can and cannot see when looking in from the outside. The tint of the glass, the angle of the sun, and simply the sight-line from the ground to the window often makes it impossible to see whether a person is naked or not, especially during the daytime. And there are a myriad of window treatments that react differently to light. Some let the light in while making it impossible to see in from the outside. Talk to your friends at Home Depot to figure that out.
  • LANDSCAPING AND SIGHT-LINES: A clever rhododendron here, and a leafy lilac there, can help with those windows that provide outside exposure below the neck. And fast-growing plants like privet hedges, forsythia, or Leland Cypress can create a better barrier than any fence in just a year or two.  
  • THE WOOD BURNING STOVE: We have a house with vinyl siding in the northeast US that was never warm in the winter – at least certainly never warm enough for naked. Our wood-burning stove changed all that, making our family room (and adjoining office space) naturist friendly 365 days a year. A real wood burning stove may be more trouble and expense than you want, but there are a lot of second-bests these days, some of which run on pellets, gas, propane, or even electricity for no trouble or mess. But the intense heat source in your living space makes wearing clothes unnecessary at least; maybe even a bother. Almost as good as direct sunlight on your bare skin!
  • PAREO or SAUNA TOWEL: The ubiquitous pareo (or sarong) is the go-to cover up for many a beachgoer, but an absolute necessity for the confirmed naturist. A single piece of cloth that can cover the controversial body parts in a matter of seconds, which is particularly useful for women who, in most places, are required to conceal their breasts. For men, a quick Google search will lead you to the sauna towel with Velcro binding common in European spas, so you can move from awkward to appropriate in a matter of seconds. Pareos work for guys too. All a matter of preference and choice.
  • DISPLAY NUDE ARTWORK: We’ve become increasingly brazen with decor that reveals small hints that we’re less than offended by nudity. Maybe a simple line drawing? A fridge magnet, or a simple wooden sign that admonishes: “Life is Short. Run Naked.” All good conversation starters when inviting friends over for dinner or cocktails. You never know when you’re going to run into another closet naturist.
  • NAKED GOURMET DINING: The author of the NYT article claims “the nudist movement has historically been connected to food.” I thought that was a particularly peculiar statement that attempted to draw a connection between the health obsessive virtues of the nudist pioneers a hundred years back, and the “astonishing” truth that people at today’s nudist resorts still… eat. (But they’re very careful when frying bacon!) I would counter that with a story of two couples we met years ago at Club Orient in St. Maarten. They happened to be from our greater metropolitan area. Though it requires a bit of travel, we get together at least a couple times a year for naturist gourmet nights, sometimes on the patio, sometimes by the fire – season dependent. Here again, if I were a reporter in New York City, I’m guessing a bit of digging would have led me to one of the groups that stage evenings like that on a regular basis. One such group is Just Naked NYC that is leading the way in helping would-be naturists find one another and even planning events like these. My hunch is this trend will continue to grow in cities across the nation.
  • AND WHAT ABOUT THE WNBR? The World Naked Bike Ride events that are popping up all over, well… the world! I’ve not had an opportunity to participate in one of these events yet, but as the numbers are growing steadily all over the planet, it seems that would be an excellent place to meet other people who might be open to the idea of “living naked.” Personally, it’s on my bucket list for 2020. Wanna meet people who embrace social nudity? Go hang out with them for a day.
With permission from IG @naturistsmarumba

To the point… While I’m always delighted to see ANY positive reference to social nudity in the mainstream media, I think the author of The Joys of Cooking Naked overshot the assignment, and in doing so, sort of missed the point altogether. Naturism is not just for retired people living in Florida nudists resort! And in fact, I suspect there are people living naked within blocks of the author’s apartment. But perhaps most presciently, there’s a good bit of evidence that a good number of Millennials are ready to doff their clothes, turn up the heat, live naked in the suburbs, and take the appropriate precautions when cooking bacon.

With permission from IG @simonnaturist

As a recent guest on the Naturist Living Show recently stated, we’ll know we’re making progress on this front when people react to naturism the same way they react to skydiving. “Would never care to do that myself, but I have a quiet admiration for those who find that exhilarating.”

THAT… would be a good article in the New York Times.

The “Right to Bare All”… and other news from Ile du Levant

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If you’re a keen advocate for naturism, and you haven’t yet made a visit to Ile du Levant, you need to move that up on your bucket list. It’s one of a handful of places that has self-identified as the birthplace of naturism. (Germany and Croatia contend for this distinction as well!) At the very least, it seems to be something of a naked renaissance town at the moment, but more about that later.

Part of the adventure of coming to the naked island in France is catching the ferry from the port of Le Lavandou. Since the boat makes two stops, one at Levant, and the other at neighboring Port Cros, it’s fun to play the “I wonder who will get off the boat on which island” game. This time, the boat was quite full, and nearly every person on board disembarked at the first stop – Ile du Levant!

Mind you, we had been in transit for nearly twenty-four hours having made our way from Newark Liberty Airport, through Brussels, then on to Marseille. After another two hours in the car, and a 40-minute ferry crossing, I was itching to embrace the late day Provençal sunlight, free from the bondage of North American travel-wear!  Thirty meters up the path from the port, a quick bathroom stop, and voila! Naked!!

A few years ago, we brought long-time friends from California along with us to experience this little naturist mecca first hand. They would not call themselves naturists, but have been willing nakation companions over the years. Our friend Tom was particularly intrigued with the history of the island, the prevailing rules regarding nudity, or more acutely, “Why were there so many people walking around the island fully clothed?” Eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit, not a cloud in the sky, and so many a passers-by wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. What’s up with that?

Fair question, I think, particularly on this landmass isolated from the prudish nay-sayers who might suffer the oppression of unwanted nudity. NOBODY comes to Levant without the expectation of seeing naked people. And it seems even more peculiar to me that someone might come here without the expectation of becoming an enthusiastic clothes-free participant. Tom prodded our innkeeper about the politics of it all, unpacking the complicated history of this naturist hamlet island with nearly a hundred years of controversy in defining how naked is naked. (See: Another Round of Crazy on Ile du Levant)

Now, several years later, we’re back for a weekend of naturist serenity and solitude, and I, for one, plan to get my money’s worth! While anecdotal at best, it seems this is not an uncommon perspective amidst visitors from North America, as evidenced by the only other couple at breakfast who were as naked as we were. Perhaps some people come here simply for the pleasure of lying au naturel on the beach or striving for no tan lines by the pool. Or maybe the French people think nudity to be such a non-issue, with so many places “in the neighborhood” to get naked on the day-to-day, that they lack some of the zeal of the prudish American who has waited all year (or years!) for the privilege to bare all.

We have experienced this again and again during our European travels, going to great lengths to find places where nudity is not only allowed, but required– as is the case on the coastal path just beyond the port of Ile du Levant. (Explicit signage near the port tells you where you can’t be naked, where you can be naked, and where you must be naked!) But on this morning trek, we found the demographics to be about 50-50, some fully nude, some donning beach cover-ups, and others dressed as if prepared to take on the Appalachian Trail in early October. Really!?

There is a sub-plot to all of this, pertaining especially to residential naturist places, which Ile du Levant most certainly is. (We’ve experienced this at La Jenny as well.) With increasing frequency, it seems that families have purchased homes in these naturist communities two or three generations back. The home stays in the family, but the naturism gene didn’t carry forward. 

“Hey! We have this lovely home near a beautiful beach in France!”

“Isn’t that one of those places with loads of naked people?”

“Oh yeah… you’ll encounter some of the crazy nudists, but don’t worry about it! You don’t have to get naked with them!”

As with the evolution of any neighborhood, I suppose such unintended outcomes are inevitable, but if it’s a total naturist experience you’re seeking, there’s a compelling case to be made for camping establishments that cater to young family tent-campers – the most transient of communities where the main attraction is the right to bare all. If you didn’t want to get naked, you simply wouldn’t go there.

Which takes us back all the way to our very first experience with Ile du Levant sometime back around 2006, when we came out on the ferry for a day trip for our first exploration of this historic naturist landmark. My wife and I still reminisce about her reticence to get naked that day, despite the hype about a naturist island and her confirmed affinity for naked travel.

“Are you sure we can be naked here? Why aren’t those people naked? Really, I can be topless in the village?”

We laugh about it now, but for the novice naturist, this can be quite a conundrum! As my friend Tom learned from our innkeeper that day, the modus operandus at most naturist places is simply that… “You have the right to bare all,” but there are few places that even attempt to impose any sort of regulations for mandatory nudity. “As you wish” seems to be the presumptive rule of the land.

So last night we frequented one of our favorite bistros on the island where the wait-staff were attired in their typical apparel; sandals and full-length aprons with ample butt cleavage on full display below the apron tie. While they actually advertise that nudity while dining is permitted, if not actively encouraged, I found myself – again – in the midst of that proverbial third grade dream when you realize that you’re the only one in the room with no pants on. (Except, in this case, for the waiters, of course!) It’s a small island, and by now, we’d seen at least half the people in the restaurant earlier in the day, fully nude by the pool or along the sea. But here at dinner, most everyone was fully adorned, some of the women rather provocatively so in sheer fabric that would never make muster for the church covered-dish dinner or a PTA meeting. As I made my way to the restroom, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was the singular freak-show for the evening, dressed in a button-down shirt, but nothing below. Perhaps I was, but alas, we are here in the land of as you wish, and if anyone batted an eye, they were most discrete about it. 

But it was a beautiful evening, on a naturist island, and I simply couldn’t resist the all too infrequent… right to bare all!

As to the renaissance – it seems there are more 20-30 somethings on the island than we’ve seen in recent years, and at least during the day, more naked people than we’ve encountered on previous visits. They say young naturism is on an upswing in France. Maybe the young naked people we reclaim the naturist vision on this remarkable big rock off the Cote d’Azur!

Nudity and Friendship: Does it matter?

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It’s the first day of the new year. 2019! My feelings about 2018 are decidedly mixed – not just because of my tendency to worry about how things are going in Washington DC, but to be blunt, it was a tumultuous year with a lot of unanticipated change. Some good. Some challenging. Almost all of it someplace between disorienting and disquieting.

Photo credit: http://clothesfree.com

Last evening, on New Year’s Eve, we had friends over who have grown accustomed to going naked in the hot tub with us. They would never call themselves naturists, and in fact, the “she” of the couple wasn’t too crazy about sitting in the hot tub in the rain and so she abstained. Meanwhile, another friend stopped by – the one who has been the subject of a few of my previous blog posts, including the recent guide to exploring German spas – and she was naked and in the tub in a flash. I think she would tell you social nudity has provided her with a new sense of identity and self-expression – part counter-culture, part self discovery, as she is facing a lot of difficult questions in her life right now. She’s a natural born naturist!

In the meantime, while our non-naturist couple friends are inclined to quickly wrap in a towel the minute they step out of the spa, our younger companion never seems quite sure just how naked to be once making her way inside the house. Is this a wear your towel zone? Cover your mid-riff area? Funny – we seasoned naturists like to tout the simplicity of it all, but in fact, knowing when to be naked and just how naked to be can be little confusing, especially when you’re not at a naked place like a naturist beach or resort.

Interesting also, when I put my wife into this mix. She loves our nakations! She has no aversion to getting naked at home except for one – It’s not practical! “I need to take out the recycling. Or the kitchen is chilly. Or it simply hadn’t occurred to me to get naked right now.” Not a statement, per se, just an extra chore that adds one more step to the mix. “Pull on a shirt to go get something out of my car? Meh… I’ll just keep my clothes on.”

We have some friends from work who, quite by accident, we came to know of their affinity for Montalivet, a popular naturist destination in France. They’ve been going for years while we’ve been visiting a similar resort just an hour down the road. He is French and was raised with naturist vacations, and they have taken their children on nakation nearly every summer. We had them over for a naturist evening on the porch a few months ago on the coattails of summer, but as it turns out, they confessed they had never been naked at a friend’s home before, especially here in the US where they’re sure their neighbors would call the police were they ever to set foot in their backyard wearing anything less than modest swimsuit.

Then we have these friends we used to go to St. Martin with – every year for quite a stretch. One of the couples has a particularly naturist friendly backyard that is something like a private naturist resort on a warm summer day. In the winter, we’ve had a fair number of naked holiday dinners as well. But as is wont to happen, the complexities in each of our lives have made that more difficult in recent years. All said, it takes a good bit of planning to facilitate an evening of social nudity. It’s not just like, “Hey friend! Come on over and we’ll all take our clothes off!” At least in our circles, it almost never happens that way.

Photo credit: http://clothesfree.com/

Other than rambling along in a reminiscent sort of way as one often does at the demarcation of a new year – and I am the meandering naturist for God’s sake – I’m really not sure what point I’m driving for here, except that I found myself strangely intrigued with a blog post I reposted on my other blog a few days ago called I Socialize Naked. The young, female author made a rather compelling case for calling out social nudity for what it really is. “I would like to not be wearing clothes right now, and I would also like to be with my friends. No protest to mount. No fitness agenda. No underlying implication of inner healing or truth. I just like being naked, and it’s more fun to be naked with other people around.”

Her words really resonated with me, particularly in my shared affinity for the simple act of nudity itself, immediately complicated by the fact that unless you have made an intentional effort to go someplace where getting naked together is the primary objective, then in fact, the nuances of when and how to get naked can be quite confusing, if not overwhelming! “Do you mind that I’m not wearing pants right now?” I might say to my fully clothed, or even towel draped friend. Even as you say it, you sort of wonder if you should be phoning the authorities to turn yourself in.

And finally, to further complicate things, I think there is a train of thought that seems to empower the most ardent naturists to believe those who get naked together are destined for more intimate and meaningful relationships. (Speaking of the platonic flavor here.) They would say our nakedness itself is a statement of vulnerability and freedom from the constructs of religiosity, narrow-mindedness, and decidedly in the face ideological norms that have made it clear that hands, faces, elbows, and knees represent normalcy, while the exposure of a breast or a penis represents abhorrent behavior. The most altruistic will make a case for full self realization that is beyond the consciousness of the average work-a-day mortal.

I actually spent a good bit of time musing over these ideas in a previous post called The Demographics of Nakedness, where I essentially put my opinion out there that the only thing naked people truly have in common is… well… nudity. I don’t happen to belong to the camp that posits that nudity is the great equalizer, nor do I believe that naked people are categorically more or less genuine or vulnerable than the clothed. It occurs to me that some people simply think it feels good to be naked – and sometimes it’s fun to hang out with other people. Nice when those two elements coincide in some manner that feels organic – or at least, less than contrived. My wife and I are vowing to make 2019 less frenetic than the last year or two, which is a tall order given the demands of family, workplace, and society. To me, that automatically implies that there will be more more naked time in 2019, as the shedding of my worldly cloaks immediately represents a step-back from my everyday existence in the chaotic and noisy existence of my professional circles. For my wife, that would mean slowing the pace of our collective lifestyle so that it’s actually worth the time to get naked and stay naked when there are a bazillion other things to do around the house – most of which are much more pragmatic with clothing. We’ll see how that goes.

Photo credit: http://clothesfree.co

In the meantime, I’ll be eager to see who responds to this post. If it finds its way into the retweeting blogosphere, or even spawns an engaging discussion on reddit. I suspect there are others, like me, who find a certain (and apparently, somewhat bizarre) pleasure in the simplicity of wearing no clothing, and feel all the more validated when they find there are others who not only enjoy doing the same, but find it strangely validating to conduct normal social interactions – watching a movie, chatting over a bottle of wine, playing cards – with no clothes on. Are we freaks, us naked people? Maybe. But no doubt, whether we’re more genuine and vulnerable or not, it’s most definitely more fun to be freakish with others than by one’s self.

On a side note, since I mentioned reddit, and I will likely repost this chronicle to those forums as well, I will call myself out for the use of images in this post which I have pulled from a collection of naturist sources over the years. Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve been less than proactive about capturing social gatherings with naked friends in my digital image archive, and while most of my travel blogs feature, almost exclusively, photos of me and my wife, I come up in short supply of graphics for my posts of a more philosophical nature. This is quite upsetting to my reddit colleague, as the use of any image without permission and confirmed attribution is a breach of social contract at best, flat out stealing at least. With that, I will close with the disclaimer that if you find any image in this, or any of my other posts, lacking appropriate attribution or used in an otherwise exploitative manner, I trust you will let me know, and I will remove that image at once.

Ultimate social nudity – The Big Nude Boat

Here again… I keep thinking that embracing nakedness is supposed to represent a step toward simplicity and clarity of mind. Neither of those ideals are easily defined on this first day of 2019. Maybe I’ll just take my clothes off, pour a glass of wine and give that some thought. If you were here, I’d invite you to shed your clothes and join me.

The Naked Truth about Naturist Brazil

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So, it’s September. Our summer travels are over and it’s back to the grind; a time that is always a period of reflection for me as I comb through photos of our travels while I start dreaming about the next adventure for the drawing board.

This time, I came across the photos from our trip to Brazil a couple years ago, realizing that I never actually blogged on our experiences there. Well, that is, at least not in the present or past tense. I did write a post about our perils of trying to to get there in the first place called “Getting Naked in Brazil = Complicated!” At the time, we were living in France, and we simply couldn’t find a way to maneuver the complicated task of getting an American tourist visa to Brazil while residing in France.

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Praia do Pinho

What I had NOT expected in response to that post was an admonishing email from a reader who warned me about the covert operations of the naturist movement in Brazil, and offered disquieting news about a particular place in Brazil where he cited a sort of pyramid scheme gone awry that ended in huge monetary losses and even allegations of murder!

Murder!? What the hell??? We already knew you had to be careful about pick-pockets in Rio, but is one really in danger of getting murdered while naked in Brazil?

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Cabins at Colina do Sol

Finally, at the end of 2015 (and into the beginning of 2016) we made it to Brazil, book-ending our trip with requisite visits to Rio de Janeiro and Iguazu Falls, with stops along the way at the naturist beach (resort?) Praia do Pinho, and finally, the infamous Colina do Sol – yes indeed, the very place the dude had warned me not to visit. “And for God’s sake, don’t try to buy a house there unless you wanna get dead!”

Spoiler alert. We stayed a week at the place. We didn’t buy a house. And nobody got murdered!

While we were there, we stayed in the “Hotel” Ocara – something of a foreshadowing of our entire experience at Colina do Sol, which might best be described as an amazing idea that never quite came to fruition. It seems that one naturist entrepreneur named Celso Rossi had acquired a large plot of land in the beautiful green hills above Porto Allegre, then proceeded to lay out the plans for an expansive naturist village with summer homes sheltered in a tropical forest, a man-made lake, a full service restaurant and even a hotel. We spent quite a lot of time with Celso during our visit, who we found to be warm and resoundingly enthusiastic about all things naturism, but spoke candidly about the evolution of this naked utopia in Brazil.

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The lake at Colina do Sol

The story is long and tangly, but resonated deeply with me as I have a brother who got buried in the complexities of running his own business until he ended up in a negative cash flow situation, using tomorrow’s projected revenue to pay yesterday’s bills – always a landslide in the making. Add to that mix the Socratic (I use the word with trepidation) negotiations of the home owner’s association as various people bought into the dream of their own personal naturist vacation hamlets, and a particularly fervent group of Americans who were going to make Colina do Sol their go to place when it’s cold up here and the middle of summer down there. Even by Celso’s account, the sand started slipping from beneath his toes on his own beach, and the untimely death of one of the homeowners led to speculation and allegations about fiduciary scheming and criminal wrong-doing!

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Celso, our host

At the time of our visit, (2016) we stayed in the three story hotel where the top two floors remained unfinished. The lakeside restaurant that had once been the center of social activity had recently closed, and hours on the beach near the lake were decidedly quiet for a summer weekend day, though there were obviously people living in the cabins on the sprawling roads that provided a terrific circuit for morning naturist walks. We were the only guests at the hotel during our stay, and perhaps the first Americans to visit since the whole property management debacle of some years before, so Celso spent many evenings with us, guitar in hand, retelling the dream of his naturist nirvana and his unrelenting passion to see the project move forward, despite the hurdles of the past. At this writing, I think he still lives on the property with his wife, but is no longer involved in the naturist center (restaurant and hotel) that is rumored to be under new management and poised for a renaissance.

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The pool – heated by the warm air of Brazil

Would we go back? Despite the unpredictable weather, (It rains a LOT in that part of Brazil!) I liked the place quite a lot (more so than my wife) and could imagine a very pleasant stay in one of the little cabins when there’s nine inches of snow on the ground at home. Seeing video footage of the place when it was at its zenith – ten years ago, perhaps – I found myself longing for the vitality of the naturist centers in Europe, thinking this might be a viable winter alternative on this side of the Atlantic. That was not the case during our visit, but as is the case with most naturist places, timing is everything. It’s most definitely worth keeping an eye on the place, though indeed, I’m not likely to buy a home there!

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On patrol at Praia do Pinho

Our other naturist stay in Brazil, with its unremarkably modest accommodations, was at Praia do Pinho, about a 90 minute flight south of Rio. Here again, weather had a significant influence on our impressions of the place where rainy periods significantly outnumbered the sunny ones, and our small room became claustrophobic when sun-worship on the beach simply wasn’t viable. The beach itself turns up on many “most beautiful nude beaches in the world” lists, and I think that designation is well deserved. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that summer in the south of Brazil does not come with the arid climate of summer in the South of France. Interestingly, there were a lot of nice places to stay near Praia do Pinho that would have greatly influenced our overall read on the place, though it’s always difficult to weigh the value of the luxury walking naked from your room to the beach. I suppose it just depends on what you think a nakation actually is.

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A walk to the beach

As a footnote to our Brazilian experience, with all the fuss about that scantily clad girl from Ipanema, we saw exactly zero naked people or topless women on the mainstream beaches in Brazil. To be sure, the bikini bottoms looked (uncomfortably!) skimpy, though you see that just about anywhere these days. But suffice it to say, there was nothing on the beaches of Ipanema or Copacabana that would not meet the stringent Facebook rules for public decency – which the seasoned naturist knows to be ridiculously conservative. Like most South American countries, Brazil has its own fair share of prudery that belies the implicit notion that social nudity is really a thing there.

A beautiful county worth exploration? Absolutely.

A naturist destination for the sake of nakation? Sadly… not quite.

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Contemplating the story of Colina do Sol

 

 

GALLERY: Nakations on Mallorca

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We’re currently enjoying our third “nakation” on Mallorca, each time finding a new little cove or a quiet trail for a naturist walk. We never tire of the turquoise sea and the brilliant blue skies, nor the amazing service and conviviality at Skinny Dippers Naturist Retreat. Thought it was time to post a gallery of some of our greatest hits from the past three years.

You may wish to see our other three posts about “nakationing” on Mallorca:

Nude Beach Combing in Mallorca

Mallorca Hospitality – Grant and Jordi Style

The North Side of Naked Mallorca

Social Nudity and Social Media: Two great tastes…

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So I’m a blogger.

As far as I can tell, there are two reasons to blog, both legitimate, but depending on who you are and where you are in life, maybe not of equal weight. 1) You blog to get your thoughts out into print. A sort of catharsis. An exercise to see if you can formulate your thoughts into a coherent sentence. If not, maybe your thoughts were actually… nothing. (Brian, Family Guy, c.2012).

Or 2) You actually have this delusional perception that maybe your thoughts, once committed to cyberspace, might actually sway the masses, or maybe even a few people on the fence, to consider for a moment the absurdity of the textile industry and how the entire human race has somehow decided that certain anatomical parts are dangerous, while others are simply… functional. A penis may get the credit for perpetuating the human species, but when I imagine life without elbows or opposable thumbs, I get pretty sad!

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To be sure, the airing of one’s thoughts in a public forum is cathartic, especially when it’s something you believe in, like naturism, for example! While some people can get a bit evangelical about this whole thing, I would be pretty happy if the “whole thing” wasn’t actually a thing. This blog is my third attempt to normalize the ideals of social nudity, so that people might even say, “That’s not for me, but there are things way more offensive than that to sit up and worry about!”

In the meantime, I had an awkward bout a couple months ago where I inadvertently linked my naturist Instagram account to my professional Facebook page. The implications of such a blunder are many and potentially severe, as one who works in an education-related field in an era where nude = lewd = sexual predator. I’ve pretty much come to grips with the “I go to nude beaches – I hope that doesn’t offend you” thing, but I’m not too keen on taking down my colleagues and institution on the basis of ill- conceived notions as to what social nudity is about, and why a rational person might find one’s proclivity for nakedness to be less abrasive than, say… anything coming out of the news channels in Washington D.C. these days.

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But more to the point… even the most humble of bloggers would like to think that when the tree fell in the forest, somebody said, “Did you hear that?” We should check that out!”

Today, I spent a good bit of time combing through the Instagram policies regarding nudity. Genitalia – check! Female nipples – check! But I have to say, the phrase “close-ups of fully-nude buttocks” is something of a gray area! Exactly how close is “close-up?” And for that matter, how is a buttock more offensive than a female nipple. (Note that male nipples are not problematic, though I would submit that in some cases, one might have difficulty identifying an isolated male nipple from the female counterpart, let alone a supple male “moob” from that of a lesser endowed female.) I get it. The corporate dudes at the Facebook/Instagram corporate offices have been charged with shutting down anything that is even remotely titillating (an intentionally poor choice of words) and they are simply doing their job. But really? A buttock? A nipple?

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I have made this point several times through my years of blogging on this site, but I also realize that people who read blogs may or may not be serial readers, so I will offer this perspective yet again. HAVEN’T WE BETTER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT IN 2018 THAN THE RANDOM APPEARANCE OF A NIPPLE OR PUBIC HAIR?

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And then there’s Twitter and Tumblr, where I have a presence as well, where I typically seek out posters who are earnestly interested in normalizing social nudity, but quite by accident, stumble into threads of the most explicit sexual activity known to man or beast. I’m pretty open minded on such media, and rarely find such things particularly offensive, EXCEPT… when it falls under the nomenclature of nudism or naturism. Sex is good, and people should have some! Watch other people having sex on film should you so desire. But PLEASE… do not confuse the God-fearing public with images of intercourse and bestiality under the hashtag of nudism or naturism. Think about it! Everyone leaves disappointed, when some horny dude couldn’t find what he was looking for on a lonely Saturday night, while a would-be naturist couple resigns themselves to the fact that nudity does, in fact, equal sex. So once again, they wrap their selves in nylon and Lycra and find their way to the beach.

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In the meantime, like many of my naturist peers, I’ve been thrown off Facebook for the untoward display of buttocks, and I’ve gone through the painstaking process of isolating my Instagram account so that my colleague in the office next door doesn’t come asking for advice about the best naturist beach in New Jersey. Honestly, if that were the full extent of it all, I would welcome the inquiry and provide the information, but social media has essentially turned social nudity into a sex crime! A bizarre dichotomy, really. With the internet, people have greater access to naturist possibilities than they could have ever imagined a generation ago. But with that comes smartphones, Snapchat, and facial recognition software that pretty much negates any hope for anonymity even under the best of circumstances.

And so there it is. Social Media and Social Nudity… Two great tastes that don’t go so well together. I can find a remote naturist resort in a quiet corner or Europe, but I’d better make sure I have the location detector disabled on my smartphone when we arrive. And so it goes for naked people in 2018.

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Vignettes of a Blossoming Naturist

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Hello faithful blog followers.

Just on the back side of a pretty intense push at work, so I’ve fallen off the blogosphere for a few weeks. I hope to catch up in the coming days, leading out with this post from a guest blogger. Our twenty-something friend has taken quite a liking to the naturist thing, and I think her words are fresh, inspiring, and quite instructive to the novice naturist. An excellent testimony to the fact that naturism is not a generational thing, but just a “you gotta get it right” sort of thing.

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Vignettes of a Blossoming Naturist

I found myself a naturist incidentally after I stripped off my clothes at 2 am and hopped into a hot tub under the heavy cloak of a sleepy happy that was made possible by a couple of glasses of wine. The next morning I remembered what happened only by virtue of the fact that I woke up completely naked and had to walk around and pick up my various articles of clothing that were strewn about the deck.

My next encounter with naturism lacked all forms of alcohol, without which I quickly realized that although I had been training all of my life to be polite and understand proper social etiquette, I was destined to become a rather clumsy nudist. As my naturist friends, who also happen to be a couple, casually seemed to emerge naked from various parts of the house, I felt as though every action of mine was destined to be awkward and incorrect. All social norms flew out the window, so to speak. For example, changing into your swimming outfit is most typically done in a bathroom-but as I found myself walking there (completely sober) to change out of my civilian clothes, and into…nothing…it seemed quite silly to be modest about that portion of the evening. I resolved, giving myself a silent pep talk, “Okay…so I’ll just take off my clothes here: in the middle of their living room.” With that settled, I undressed, only to wonder where nudists typically would leave their clothes strewn about. In the meantime, I’m simultaneously calculating when I shaved my legs last, if I should emerge from the house with a funny story as a distraction, and how I could possibly acquire more alcohol for the endeavor. In an effort to think all of this through, I suspect I looked a bit like some type of bug, stuck on its back, with its legs strewn about in the air, flailing in an attempt to join his fellow friends on their way to the promised land.

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I think my most poignant conversation took place with the same Naturist couple, who must have sensed my awkwardness from a mile away and asked me, “Where do people look when they are speaking to you?” After I responded with, “My eyes,” and they nodded and smiled, everything seemed to fall into place.

A recommendation for new naturists: Don’t get too comfortable before learning proper nudist etiquette. It’s a real thing. For example: chairs and other surfaces meant for sitting are not available to you unless you bring along a towel and lay it down before sitting down. It makes so much sense. I mean-who wants your remaining butt sweat on their own butt (or their chair)?

Yikes. Following this advice could mean avoiding a conversation like this one: “Hey, new naturist. You’re looking less and less like a flailing beetle every day, but we don’t want your butt sweat on our chair…so I’m going to politely hand you this towel, and if you could stand up and lay it down while we all silently judge you for your lack of naturist etiquette, that would really be great.”

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As soon as you’re feeling confident in your nudity and how one “blends in” and “plays it cool” as a naturist, it’s probably time to convince four of your friends to try out a naturist resort in Corsica. As far as I understand, the best ways to piss off people in a naturist resort are to be loud, take pictures of naked people, and to in fact, not be naked, especially at the pool (the only place in naturist resorts that really seem to require nudity). I’m guessing that you can already hypothesize that our chill day trip ended with friend #1 getting yelled at by a lifeguard to take off her swimsuit or get lost, girl #2 getting reprimanded by a different lifeguard for taking the perfect instagram photo of the naked people lounging at the pool that overlooked the ocean, and the rest of us getting shushed by virtually everyone because of our utter lack of self-awareness to realize that us trying to “get our shit together” was not something that EVERYONE at the entire resort needed to hear about. Point taken. Friends need to prep friends for naturist experiences with a laundry list of “do’s and do-nots.”

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I suspect by now, I’ve painted a rather dismal picture for blossoming naturists everywhere: there are bound to be awkward moments, you have to learn a new set of social standards, you have to remember where you put your clothes after you’ve discarded them, not to mention that some people simply think that social nudity, especially in certain company, is SUPER weird. Yet at this moment, here I am, lying on a beach filled with naked families and friends, all of various generations, just simply thinking, “does life get any more serene or better than this?” In this context, everyone is beautiful, and just about the only thing I can tell by looking at any one person, is that they too, feel super free and relaxed and simply happy to just “be.” There are no contextual clues from their clothing if they are well-off or struggling to make ends meet, and therefore, no indication of their jobs, careers or aspirations. It’s as though everyone’s simply a being, just like you or me, which simply could not be any more beautiful. Women with mastectomies, teenagers embracing their changing bodies, and children playing together in the water, oblivious of the social norms and pressures set by society that they will eventually (sooner rather than later) encounter.

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Whether I’m sappy about the whole thing (i.e. humanity is beautiful…see last paragraph) or practical, (Why cover your sandy, salt-covered body with a t-shirt after swimming if you don’t have to? Do you reallyyy want sand in your swimsuit bottoms? Really??! Isn’t that sweaty t-shirt of yours just making you so uncomfortable?! Wouldn’t you rather feel the warmth from this fireplace everywhere, not just on your hands and toes?) I find myself coming to the same conclusion: Life is better experienced without boundaries set by those in modern-day society. I mean, if you’re going to be like the cavemen/women/people with your Paleo diet, why not look like them too, and take off your shirt?

I’m definitely no expert, but as my other budding naturist friend captured so eloquently, “Is there really anything better than your nips blowing in the wind?”

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