July open forum
Is social media becoming a liability to naturism and social nudism?
Happy Canada Day to our Canadian readers! And Happy 4th of July to our American readers!
There were several good naturism/nudism-related pieces on media sites in June, some of which I’ve highlighted in the next section of this post. But there was also a disappointing trend in the google alerts emails I received for articles on naturism and social nudism: links to several porn sites, some promising teen pictures, showed up in my google feeds because they are using the #nudism and #naturism hash tags and even including them in their headlines. (No, I did not click on any of them.)
Considering the conservative tide sweeping over the planet these days, linking porn of any sort to naturism/nudism can only hurt the movement, in my view.
The first article highlighted below also reveals another worrying trend that is already setting back naturism and social nudism:
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“The rise of the cult of the perfect body on TikTok or Instagram is increasing the pressure to not want to undress.”
That is a comment from one Alfred Sigloch, president of the German Association for Free Body Culture (DFK), an umbrella group for naturism organizations in what has always been considered “one of the most liberal countries for public nudity in the world,” The Guardian reported on June 7.
Sigloch was lamenting the slump in membership and what he sees as a decline in interest in naturism as a whole. His organization has cancelled celebrations for the group’s anniversary in August because of a lack of interest, and he is sounding the alarm over the future of naturism in Germany, the Guardian reports.
He attributes the decline to a generation gap between older and younger naturists — and perhaps more important, digital technology. He told German media that some nude bathers are afraid of having naked pictures of them — taken surreptitiously by snoops on smartphones and drone cameras — pop up on social media, adding: “The rise of the cult of the perfect body on TikTok or Instagram is increasing the pressure to not want to undress.”
Bottom line: Social media, once seen as a great way to spread the word about the benefits of naturism, is becoming a liability to the community as the world swings to the prudish right and parental rights groups urge politicians to shield their kids from anything remotely associated with public nudity, especially on popular sites that have a lot of teen subscribers.
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Four more good reads for you from June:
Nude beach etiquette: Lose your clothes, not your manners: This article on the CNN site offers tips, dos and don’ts “on beach and resort etiquette from naturism experts with decades of unclothed experience.” It’s worth sharing with newbies. (And, yes, they remind everyone to have a towel to sit on!)
Inside Nudefest - the biggest naturist festival in the UK, where a cracking time is guaranteed: British Naturism spokesperson Andrew Welch gives the Daily Mail “an exclusive” look at the fest with lots of photos. Writes Welch: “So, what is Nudefest and what can you expect? It's quite a revelation to newcomers to social nudity that it's just like any other outdoor summer event. There's nothing that happens that you don't see in thousands of places around the country, or even the world, for that matter. If it's warm enough, people dispense with their clothes — which is different, I grant you — but breeds the most unbelievably relaxed, happy, body-positive atmosphere.” It’s a good read.
How San Diego Gave Rise to the Country’s First Legal Nude Beach: If you live in the San Diego area in California (or if you are familiar with the area), you might enjoy this piece by Angela d’Avignon on Black Beach.
As A Teenager In Europe, I Used To Go To Nudist Beaches All The Time. 30 Years And 2 Children Later, Would The Experience Be The Same? In which you will learn that “naked dressing” is a thing for women making a statement about topless freedom, which also seems to be suffering in the prudish wave. You’ll learn about sheer fashion before writer Chiari Barzini gets back to a nudist beach. One quote really stood out for me in her comparison of breast freedom in her youth during the 1990s to today: “One way or another, the female body is very much the site of political battles as much as it is of style and fashion tastes.” Not so much about naturism, but still a good read on the British Vogue site.
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As always, the monthly open forums are for members to talk about anything related to naturism and social nudism. Pick up on one of the points above, or introduce your own topic.
A warm welcome to all new members, and a reminder to everyone who wishes to comment and reads posts in their emails that you need to click on the “Leave a comment” tab below or go to the website and post there. (Don’t reply to the email.)
Happy July to everyone. May we all get some great naturism weather!
Social media has been incredibly destructive to human values in general. Aside from the terrible effects on young people's social development, it encourages us to form up into political bubbles where we mutually reinforce our prejudices and never have to concede the humanity of those we disagree with or compromise for the greater good.
The political pendulum swings. Over the last few decades, each time it swung, it returned to a point to the left of where it started. Political change can happen quickly while social change takes place at a glacial pace. That creates a disconnect. Disconnects create conflict.
There is a large population that doesn't want ANY social change. They want it the way it was back in "the good old days." I think the social conservatives realized they were about to lose the whole show to the progressives and an otherwise nonparticipating segment of the population suddenly participated with a vengeance. That makes this particular swing of the pendulum especially nasty.
All those MAGA voters were always out there. They had just not participated. They hadn't had a winning voice that tried to speak to them since Ronald Reagan. But even he was a compromise and their hearts remained truly right wing populist. They voted for Wallace. They voted for Perot. Trump pulled them back to the GOP.
The more rapid the pace of change the more violent the return swing. Permanent change is glacial. I think neither progressives nor the MAGA conservatives realize this.
People will eventually get disgusted with the political right and the pendulum will swing left. It never returns to the same spot because the world is changed by forces other than politics. We can't return to the 50s or the 60s or the 80s or even the 2010s because that world is gone. The terrain over which the pendulum swings has itself moved. We'll swing back somewhere different & unpredictable..
Those of us who can remember the start of the internet can remember how any search produced a list of porn sites. The porn sites were the first off the line and the quickest to understand search engines, especially in those early, unsophisticated days. To be catalogued by the search engines you added the keywords which would define your site - so the porn sites simply added every word they could think of in their keyword lists.
Thus if you looked for cars, groceries, flower pots or new TVs, somewhere on the search results would be porn sites. So I’d have been surprised if your naturism feed hadn’t delivered the porn sites, Jillian. Sad to say 😢