I’ve questioned recently how serious social naturists feel about the category of people who appreciate being naked but don’t fall into any defined category of naturism that I’ve experienced in the media.
There are some simple things that I enjoy while being naked and am fortunate enough to live on a lovely northern lake.
Swimming, sunbathing, light outdoor tasks.
Fall is the most magnificent time of the year here at the lake and within reason still offers many opportunities to enjoy naturist activities outdoors.
My question is, how does the core naturist community feel about we lightweights? Would we be considered a valid group or would we just be considered light weights and inconsequential.
I for one am a supporter of the lifestyle even if I don’t choose to live it fully.
I don't know about a "core naturist community." The naturists I know are fairly inclusive folks. Maybe in older, more traditional communities? The places I show up at don't have a lot of the "baked brown all over" set. Lots of pale-skins and plenty of cottontails and nobody cares.
There are a few gatekeepers out there. I dislike gatekeepers. Gatekeeping is more a matter of making the gatekeeper feel superior than it is in establishing an enforceable standard. You may find some of the most opinionated nudist warriors are really not very involved in nudist activities at all. Easy to be a keyboard commando in this age.
There are a lot more lightweights than organization like AANR or the TNS will ever get as members. I'm pretty convinced they are the vast majority of nudies. They are the penumbra of the nudist "movement," if you will.
I honestly don't call myself a nudist in the formal sense. I'm a nudie.
My nude life is more of a hobby than a lifestyle. Naked days here and there, special events, hikes in the wild. Due to the constraints of the world it is much more practical to wear clothes most of the time. Urban area, no outdoor privacy and I'm not going to live my life with my shades drawn or to have to run to grab a robe every time the doorbell rings or I need to step outside.
OTOH there are people who feel a real need to be nude as much as humanly possible and build their lives around it. Some live full time in clubs to do this. More power to them! I am not so intense and I don't consider one approach more virtuous than the other.
If you go to the nude beach here you see a lot of people for whom an occasional weekend at the beach is the only social nudity they engage in. I've been to many pool parties where the people were naked but who would never consider themselves nudists. For them its not a lifestyle, it's not even to the level of a hobby. It's just a fun thing once in a while.
And cast your net even broader and you'll find the "nude accepting." You may be naked and they are clothed but as long as it isn't in an aggressive context, they aren't freaked by it. I'm thinking you'll find many people like that, especially in more liberal areas like San Francisco or Portland.
Not living it fully? You are living it every bit as fully as you want to.
So the start of autumn for you is mid-August? That's incomprehensible for me as I live in the southern U.S.
As for the NY Post, remember that news rag is a mouthpiece for the right-wing agenda. Their agenda is not supportive of naturism. I'm sure they consider naturists to be creepy perverts.
Well, autumn officially starts Sept. 22, but the leaves start changing in mid-August here and the temperatures start to dip. That being said, with extreme weather events and global warming, I'm not sure what to expect here this year. It is hot this weekend, though. True naturism weather.
You will always get negative comments. The Naturist community in America need to be pro-active in watching for those articles, and posting positive comments that vastly outnumber the negatives.
Personally, I think the NY Post is a lost cause. They put up a story like that specifically to draw the nasty comments. It's click bait for the morally constipated.
I agree with this. There is a very limited view in activism. It doesn't have to be a staged event. In fact, it shouldn't be.
If more naturists set up Google alerts for articles involving naturism or nudism and worked to create the conversation instead of reacting to it, the impact would be cumulatively larger and reach far more people.
I've been following Google alerts for a while. On the whole, as far as naturism is concerned, it's terrible. Mostly stuff from the UK, which makes a certain small sense, as naturism is more respected in the UK than in North Amerika. But the alerts report almost nothing of any value from elsewhere.
Yup. I follow google alerts, too, and most of the articles are not worth reading. And even the good ones have little to offer seasoned naturists -- but at least those are raising some awareness.
To receive more helpful updates, you should also include related terms, such as nudism, naked, etc. in your alert criteria. Adjacent terms are used more frequently in North America, particularly in the US, but also globally. For example, world naked bike day vs world naturist bike day.
The results you get could be colored by what Google thinks you're REALLY looking for. Localization is one of those things it takes into account. Google may figure that English speakers don't really care about Croatian nudism.
OK, so I added additional terms like "nudist", "nudism", "naturist" to the list. Google Alerts is still bonkers. One result was headlined "I work as a prostitute", and localization doesn't seem to have much to do with it, since the result was from Ghana. (The subject of the article does claim to be a "nudist".)
Then there was a nice article about Mountain Air Ranch (Colorado) - but it was dated July 2018. Interestingly, it had a picture with full-frontal male nudity - but it was from an "independent", non-mainstream source.
Do others using Google Alerts get those same results? Hard to believe that Google's using state-of-the-art AI in this "service". This is the same Google that has AI able to play a decent game of Go and calculate how proteins fold?
I am loving this time of year. But I also love the spring, autumn, and winter. 😂
Something that has been on my mind a bit lately is that for all the talk of attracting new people into the naturist community, there is little real effort or willingness to change in ways that this might entail. For example, there is discussion about how to bring in more single women, but most of the time the discussions are framed around convincing "them" that being nude isn't *insert current identified issue*.
Being in areas that have those conversations going are an interesting exercise for me. Most times, people have good intentions but are unable to hear how they sound. Women aren't a "them," we aren't a homogenous group. Many barriers for women are the result of years of cultural conditioning, and framing it that women need to be talked out of a belief makes it sound like women are unable to form opinions that are independent. It reduces a perspective to being less-capable and less-developed, just because it is not in alignment with the group.
In tandem, there are very few conversations about what might actually happen if there is change. Discussions about women-only areas are quickly muted with assertions of this not being in harmony with the group's philosophy...but when did philosophy become stone instead of water? I even see that in some of the comments here, wondering if one's nudity is valid. Of course it is! How can growth ever come if there isn't welcoming of diversity?
What I love most about being a naturist are the people I have met. They are the ones who are living the lifestyle all year, and also the ones who fully support a new person moving at their own pace. They embrace the naturalness of both their bodies in nature and also the range of choice, being respectful of themselves and others. Diving deeply into dogma really turns me off, and I think can be monitored more effectively while still championing support and values.
Since there's discussion of naked hiking here - and if it hasn't been mentioned before - there is a good book of stories/anecdotes collected by Richard Foley, a noted expert and naked hiking organizer (in Europe). Reviewed here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4894147280
I’ve questioned recently how serious social naturists feel about the category of people who appreciate being naked but don’t fall into any defined category of naturism that I’ve experienced in the media.
There are some simple things that I enjoy while being naked and am fortunate enough to live on a lovely northern lake.
Swimming, sunbathing, light outdoor tasks.
Fall is the most magnificent time of the year here at the lake and within reason still offers many opportunities to enjoy naturist activities outdoors.
My question is, how does the core naturist community feel about we lightweights? Would we be considered a valid group or would we just be considered light weights and inconsequential.
I for one am a supporter of the lifestyle even if I don’t choose to live it fully.
I don't know about a "core naturist community." The naturists I know are fairly inclusive folks. Maybe in older, more traditional communities? The places I show up at don't have a lot of the "baked brown all over" set. Lots of pale-skins and plenty of cottontails and nobody cares.
There are a few gatekeepers out there. I dislike gatekeepers. Gatekeeping is more a matter of making the gatekeeper feel superior than it is in establishing an enforceable standard. You may find some of the most opinionated nudist warriors are really not very involved in nudist activities at all. Easy to be a keyboard commando in this age.
There are a lot more lightweights than organization like AANR or the TNS will ever get as members. I'm pretty convinced they are the vast majority of nudies. They are the penumbra of the nudist "movement," if you will.
I honestly don't call myself a nudist in the formal sense. I'm a nudie.
My nude life is more of a hobby than a lifestyle. Naked days here and there, special events, hikes in the wild. Due to the constraints of the world it is much more practical to wear clothes most of the time. Urban area, no outdoor privacy and I'm not going to live my life with my shades drawn or to have to run to grab a robe every time the doorbell rings or I need to step outside.
OTOH there are people who feel a real need to be nude as much as humanly possible and build their lives around it. Some live full time in clubs to do this. More power to them! I am not so intense and I don't consider one approach more virtuous than the other.
If you go to the nude beach here you see a lot of people for whom an occasional weekend at the beach is the only social nudity they engage in. I've been to many pool parties where the people were naked but who would never consider themselves nudists. For them its not a lifestyle, it's not even to the level of a hobby. It's just a fun thing once in a while.
And cast your net even broader and you'll find the "nude accepting." You may be naked and they are clothed but as long as it isn't in an aggressive context, they aren't freaked by it. I'm thinking you'll find many people like that, especially in more liberal areas like San Francisco or Portland.
Not living it fully? You are living it every bit as fully as you want to.
So the start of autumn for you is mid-August? That's incomprehensible for me as I live in the southern U.S.
As for the NY Post, remember that news rag is a mouthpiece for the right-wing agenda. Their agenda is not supportive of naturism. I'm sure they consider naturists to be creepy perverts.
Well, autumn officially starts Sept. 22, but the leaves start changing in mid-August here and the temperatures start to dip. That being said, with extreme weather events and global warming, I'm not sure what to expect here this year. It is hot this weekend, though. True naturism weather.
You will always get negative comments. The Naturist community in America need to be pro-active in watching for those articles, and posting positive comments that vastly outnumber the negatives.
Personally, I think the NY Post is a lost cause. They put up a story like that specifically to draw the nasty comments. It's click bait for the morally constipated.
I agree with this. There is a very limited view in activism. It doesn't have to be a staged event. In fact, it shouldn't be.
If more naturists set up Google alerts for articles involving naturism or nudism and worked to create the conversation instead of reacting to it, the impact would be cumulatively larger and reach far more people.
I've been following Google alerts for a while. On the whole, as far as naturism is concerned, it's terrible. Mostly stuff from the UK, which makes a certain small sense, as naturism is more respected in the UK than in North Amerika. But the alerts report almost nothing of any value from elsewhere.
Yup. I follow google alerts, too, and most of the articles are not worth reading. And even the good ones have little to offer seasoned naturists -- but at least those are raising some awareness.
Hi Charles,
To receive more helpful updates, you should also include related terms, such as nudism, naked, etc. in your alert criteria. Adjacent terms are used more frequently in North America, particularly in the US, but also globally. For example, world naked bike day vs world naturist bike day.
I always thought the Google automatically looked for synonyms and included them in search results.
The results you get could be colored by what Google thinks you're REALLY looking for. Localization is one of those things it takes into account. Google may figure that English speakers don't really care about Croatian nudism.
OK, so I added additional terms like "nudist", "nudism", "naturist" to the list. Google Alerts is still bonkers. One result was headlined "I work as a prostitute", and localization doesn't seem to have much to do with it, since the result was from Ghana. (The subject of the article does claim to be a "nudist".)
Then there was a nice article about Mountain Air Ranch (Colorado) - but it was dated July 2018. Interestingly, it had a picture with full-frontal male nudity - but it was from an "independent", non-mainstream source.
Do others using Google Alerts get those same results? Hard to believe that Google's using state-of-the-art AI in this "service". This is the same Google that has AI able to play a decent game of Go and calculate how proteins fold?
Just... wow.
I am loving this time of year. But I also love the spring, autumn, and winter. 😂
Something that has been on my mind a bit lately is that for all the talk of attracting new people into the naturist community, there is little real effort or willingness to change in ways that this might entail. For example, there is discussion about how to bring in more single women, but most of the time the discussions are framed around convincing "them" that being nude isn't *insert current identified issue*.
Being in areas that have those conversations going are an interesting exercise for me. Most times, people have good intentions but are unable to hear how they sound. Women aren't a "them," we aren't a homogenous group. Many barriers for women are the result of years of cultural conditioning, and framing it that women need to be talked out of a belief makes it sound like women are unable to form opinions that are independent. It reduces a perspective to being less-capable and less-developed, just because it is not in alignment with the group.
In tandem, there are very few conversations about what might actually happen if there is change. Discussions about women-only areas are quickly muted with assertions of this not being in harmony with the group's philosophy...but when did philosophy become stone instead of water? I even see that in some of the comments here, wondering if one's nudity is valid. Of course it is! How can growth ever come if there isn't welcoming of diversity?
What I love most about being a naturist are the people I have met. They are the ones who are living the lifestyle all year, and also the ones who fully support a new person moving at their own pace. They embrace the naturalness of both their bodies in nature and also the range of choice, being respectful of themselves and others. Diving deeply into dogma really turns me off, and I think can be monitored more effectively while still championing support and values.
MM
Since there's discussion of naked hiking here - and if it hasn't been mentioned before - there is a good book of stories/anecdotes collected by Richard Foley, a noted expert and naked hiking organizer (in Europe). Reviewed here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4894147280