By Jerry King

Jerry King is an award-winning cartoonist whose gag panels have appeared in Playboy, Disney, Better Homes & Gardens, and countless greeting cards, books, and magazines worldwide. Winner of the National Cartoonists Society’s Magazine Gag Cartoon Award, he lives in Ohio with his family and still finds time to lose at golf—clothed, usually.

Strips One-Shots

Strips One-Shots is Planet Nude Strips’ banner for stand-alone comics. It’s where we publish single pieces that don’t belong to an ongoing series, giving artists the freedom to drop in a one-off gag or idea without needing a regular commitment.

Readers can expect an assortment of different artists to rotate through under this banner every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month (and sometimes intermittently). 🪐

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That’s it for now.

Editor’s note: If you’re an artist and want to submit a one-shot comic strip or panel gag, feel free to message me—we’re always looking for fresh voices to feature.

Last year we ran our first reader survey: 600+ of you answered 75 questions about how you practice naturism, what holds you back, and where you want this movement to go. It became some of the most useful reporting we did all year, and we vowed to make it an annual thing.

This year it’s back, and it’s not just for our readers anymore. Nobody actually knows the state of naturism right now. Formal club membership has been shrinking for years, while the number of people who consider themselves naturists looks larger than ever, and no one is tracking that gap consistently, movement-wide, over time. We’re calling this the Naturism Survey: a core set of questions, asked the same way every year, so the results actually mean something beyond a single snapshot.

That only works with a bigger, more varied sample than our own subscriber list, and that’s where we need help. If you run a club, sit on the board of an organization, or help moderate a beach or event group, please put this in front of your members: drop it in your newsletter, post it to your group’s page or chat, bring it up at your next meeting. If you’re just a reader, forward it to the naturists in your life who aren’t on Planet Nude: a friend from the club, a group chat, a local Facebook page. None of us gets a full picture of this movement alone. A club’s membership, a beach community, a Discord server, a Planet Nude subscriber list: each is one slice. Put them together and we start to see something closer to the whole.

This year also digs into last year’s biggest finding: the gap between people who say they’d defend nude beaches and the few who’ve ever actually contacted an official about one, with new sections on advocacy, visibility and photo-sharing, and how people actually find their way into naturism.

It’s anonymous. No email, no sign-in required. Only aggregate results get published, same as last year. But those aggregate results will be made available to all as valuable data—for free.

Take the Naturism Survey

Takes about 15-20 minutes. The survey closes August 18, 2026. Take it now, and pass it on before then. 🪐

There have long been debates over who should be named the Father of Nudism. Was he from Europe or America? There is controversy over who that individual may have been and what involvement he had with later atrocities or what was considered then deviant behaviors. Would we be proud of our Founding Father in all aspects of his life? Some look back thousands of years to the gymnosophists as a group in 300 BCE in Pakistan or the Greeks for their promotion of athletics and the human form. However, there has been far less attention paid to the Mother of Social Nakedness.

There appears to be some competition in 1900, albeit with her earlier writings on women’s rights and her own behaviors, there appears to be a forerunner, at least from this author’s understanding.

There was the experimental artist community in Switzerland of avant garde, hedonists led by Ida Hoffman, a professional pianist, who set up a vegetarian farm in 1900 where clothing was optional. There was a strong encouragement to be close to nature. This enclave, Monte Verità, or the Mount of Truth, was to become a collection of intellectual artisans. She was a catalyst for moving the 20th century into an age to question social restraints and foster dynamic innovation in the arts. However, this was not the foundation for the average person to engage in the classless act of being socially naked. These were individuals actively pushing the parameters of social engagement and reuniting with nature. Monte Verità was not at all dissimilar to the Carmel Bunch at about the same time in Monterey Bay, California. Artists attempting to reconnect with nature for inspiration to change the world.

While Monte Verità would become synonymous with European life reform, an earlier and more radical experiment in communal freedom had already taken root in America. In 1896, four years before Hofmann established her Swiss enclave, an anarchist community was founded on Joes Bay in Washington and named Home. Lois Waisbrooker moved there in 1900 when there were about 100 residents and twenty-five houses. She was seventy-five years old at the time and moved from San Francisco, California to Home, Washington by herself with some assistance from her son.

Anarchy

Anarchy is a philosophy of living without government and laws specifying individual behaviors. Immanuel Kant, a German idealist put it this way:

Anarchy is law and freedom without force.
Despotism is law and force without freedom.
Barbarism is force without freedom and law.
Republicanism is force with freedom and law.

Thomas Jefferson felt that “a stateless society might lead to greater happiness.” He is quoted as “that government is best which governs least.” In the early days of the 20th century Emma Goldman followed the anarchist philosophy when she was asked to define it and stated “Anarchism is all about thinking for yourself.” She also offered that anarchy is: “The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law.” She visited Home in the early 1900s and claimed Abby and John Russell Coryell, two early nudist pioneers, as her best friends in America, and with whom she went skinny-dipping.

Anarchy took on a more negative tone after Karl Marx and the Communist Revolutions in Asia and during the turbulent 1960s. However, in the early 21st century, anarchy has been identified as what takes place during a natural disaster or emergency. People voluntarily assist others offering food, clothing, physical labor as the need exists. Most religious texts offer guidance for anarchy with simply stating; do good, treat others as you would like them to treat you.

Lois Waisbrooker

Ms. Waisbrooker was born Adeline Eliza Nichols on 21 February 1826 in Catherine, NY. Just as she turned seventeen, and pregnant, she was forced to marry George Fuller on 12 April 1843 in Ohio. She bore a son named Abner Fuller. It was an unpleasant marriage and ended in divorce. She later married Isaac Snell on 9 August 1856 in Ohio. It also ended in divorce.

In 1863, during a spiritualist session, she adopted the name Lois Waisbrooker from a spiritual guide she encountered. She used the name for the balance of her life as a single woman. She was a writer and publisher advancing “assertive womanhood and female sexuality as a positive power.”

She gained notoriety with her 14 December 1873 speech “The Sex Question and the Money Power.” Her point was that the construct of marriage is just legal prostitution. Men with money request a woman and then under the laws of the land and the guidance of the church, the female becomes his property to be done with as he desires. A woman was to wait under her father’s control, until he gave permission to another man to take her hand and body.

Waisbrooker later reported in February 1901 in Vol. 2, No. 1, p 3, of the newspaper she wrote, typeset, produced, and distributed from Home the following:

Do you know?

That in thirty-seven of these United States the married mother has no legal right to her children?

That in sixteen states a wife has no right to her earnings outside the home?

That in eight states a woman has no right to her own property after marriage?

That in seven states there is no law compelling a man to provide for his own family?

Waisbrooker championed for women’s rights decades before the Suffragette movement calling for their right to vote. She was attempting to document the hardships placed on women, especially those single women with children, for whom a man selected and paid for them in some manner, and yet was able to have no responsibility to her or his children.

In 1894, she was arrested in Kansas for publishing a letter about a public person’s affair in the paper “Foundation Principles.” It was felt that printing the salacious story of an extra-marital affair was an affront to the community, no matter how truthful the account even when couched in generalities.

In the 1890s, Waisbrooker moved to San Francisco and changed the name of her publication to “Clothed with the Sun” (CwtS). She reported that the sun is the symbol of direct power or light. Woman has not been allowed to shine by her own light but only by what the moon reflects on to her. This is likely a metaphor for her monthly menstrual cycle, which made men perceive them as weak or lacking in their own power. The image of a woman under the sun and standing on the horns of the moon is taken from the Bible, Revelation 12:1. The first issue of CwtS was produced in San Francisco in February 1900. It had the stated purpose for “The Freedom of Woman.”

Suppression and censorship

CwtS, Vol 1, No 2, p 3, mentioned the “American Inquisition.” In Medieval times the Church punished individuals for “heresy”. In the 1900s the catch phrase was “obscene literature.” Marriage sex manuals, birth control information, basic sex education, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) education were all considered topics that just were not discussed in public and even rarely privately. The American Civil Liberties Union was formed in the 1910s to address such concerns.

The lead crusader to suppress vice and unwholesome materials, was Anthony Comstock who was going after anything distributed by the US Postal Service. Bernarr Macfadden published John Russell Coryell’s story “Wild Oats” in his Physical Culture magazine and it was deemed “obscene literature”. It was a fictional story about the tragedy of bringing an STI back to a family and the subsequent health consequences to everyone. The case was argued as the story being health education for the public and went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Macfadden lost, paid a significant fine, and requested and received a Presidential Pardon from William Howard Taft.

Likewise, Albert Arthur Allen, a photographer from Oakland, CA, was repeatedly charged with sending “obscene” images in the 1910s across state lines even by private carriers and won four of the five cases in Federal court by distinguishing that mere nudity was not obscene. In the early 2000s, the literal “catch phrase” is now that a “nude image” will get those who post them on electronic social media censored and censured. Waisbrooker’s “American Inquisition” continues its grudge against openly discussing and portraying the human body.

An incident

In September 1901, CwtS, Vol 2, No 8, p 3, there is an article titled “An Incident”. From the review of most of the available copies of CwtS this article is the only one that has been found that targets clothes free individuals. Other sources have reported that sun-bathing and skinny-dipping occurred regularly in the Home community as people bathed in Joes Bay. Later, court cases appear to be centered on the capacity for Home’s neighbors to “see” naked individuals or groups. However, in Waisbrooker’s writings and publications this is the only account that has been found. In keeping with the underlying anarchist beliefs of the residents of Home, the tone and content appear right on target.

A stranger to Home arrives and goes to the CwtS office in Home. He had walked several miles to learn more about the people and their behaviors in Home. Along the way, he witnessed a man and a woman, not far from the community, sunbathing entirely nude. What should he think about it? He assumed they were residents of Home. When questioned by Waisbrooker about why he thought they might be from Home and not just some people camping in the area. He mentioned the proximity and that he thought the people of Home were into free-love. She then editorializes if being without clothes “as though there was any love in that!”

She then writes about how this man and others like him want to pay to bring women to Home. The sense is that with the freedom to do as one pleases, that sex may be more accessible. This sounds like the accusations made of many nudist clubs throughout the century about what is “actually going on” behind those tall fences: it must be bad, if they are naked they must surely be having orgies. Waisbrooker goes on to write; “Men and women have the right to roll around in the mud if they choose, but is it the better way?” The idea of anarchism was not to delve into debauchery but to seek a better life without dogma and restrictions by doing good for oneself and others. Couples sunning naked or skinny-dipping in Joes Bay had nothing to do with free-love or consensual sexual activities, and whose business is it anyway if the activities are among consenting adults.

In December 1901 CwtS, Waisbrooker wrote that sex between people who were in mutual love was not a sin or a crime. It did not matter if they were married or legally bound by some sanctioning entity. What mattered was that the couple had mutual feelings for each other and consented to the activities. Again, she was charged with sending obscene material via the mail.

Waisbrooker fought to clarify the hypocrisy of the church and government’s positions on how people behave toward each other. She comments that “the teachings of anarchy and love in freedom, is what nine-tenths of Protestant ministers will say ‘That’s what Jesus taught’.” But it was considered against the government’s promotion of the capitalism of marriage and the church’s structural dogma.

Waisbrooker also was concerned about what was happening to women as they age and can no longer bear children to build a husband’s legacy. She even ventured to see a bright future for women. CwtS, Vol 1, No 12, in Jan 1901; “The woman of the future will not be relegated to the ‘chimney’ corner because of her years. She will have less of one man ownership-protection and more LIFE than have most women of today.”

She was also ahead of her times in that her anarchist newspaper article “Discontent: Mother of Progress” she uses the term “comrade” for her peers in 1901. This is decades before the Russian revolution when comrade came into common usage.

Her views on how poverty impacts health and that urban living can be deleterious to one’s well-being were also ahead of their time. Nudist promoters of the 1920s put emphasis on the need to get out to the fresh air and sunshine on the one day a week some people had off from work. In CwtS, Vol. 2, No 1, she writes of the economic value of health and that living in cities can be devoid of sunshine with low-cost rents only available on the shady side of buildings and long hours of indoor work. Likewise, she called for access to proper air.

Waisbrooker also coined a term that was fitting for the role of the church in addressing the practicalities of married life. She wrote in “Sex on the Brain” as a topic that needs to be discussed but “churchianity” is against all sex education and that results in many problems with marriage. Upon reading this Susan Douglass on 19 June 2026 coined her own word—“churchiarchy” as a problem of enforcing dogma and beliefs that have no factual basis.

These comments fit with the publication in CwtS, Vol 1, No 2, p 4, of a letter from a male “I cannot begin to tell you I have suffered in this latter (want of soul companionship) and how I hate the conventional, custom bound tenets of society and the fearful prudery that is maintained!” Waisbrooker was using CwtS to expose these conventional, custom bound tenets. She wanted to break up the strangle hold of religious dogma. She wanted to challenge the government’s laws that inject themselves into personal matters.

A living legacy

It is no surprise that when in 1980 Lee Baxandall, founder of The Naturist Society, and well-known author on socialism and leftist history, set up the magazine to promote social nakedness in public areas that he honored Lois Waisbrooker by naming his magazine Clothed With The Sun. Subsequently he changed the name in 1989 to the now popular N for Nude & Natural.

If there is ever a Nudist Hall of Fame nomination for a founder or a citation for the mother of social nakedness, Lois Waisbrooker should be seriously considered. 🪐

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The Nudist Newbies with Nate and Nikki

Meet The Nudist Newbies! Nate and Nikki are in their first year of discovering social nudism and the freedom of a clothing-free lifestyle. Join them as they learn about nudism and try to share their newfound love with others.

These two quirky nudists are relatable to anyone who is new to nudism, thinking about giving it a shot, or has been practicing it for decades.

This strip is best enjoyed in the nude. New comics every 4th Sunday!

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Nudist Newbies

Creating Illustrations to help get younger people interested in nudism. Send me a message if you have ideas or want to be drawn!

This week on Planet Nude

Two of nudism’s long-running beach fights ended this week, and both ended in the beach’s favor. In Toronto, the federal government blocked an airport expansion that had threatened Hanlan’s Point, and named the beach specifically in a policy statement, an unusually direct move from a government body that typically prefers vague language when nudity enters the conversation.

In Maui, the planning commission approved a scaled-back state park project at Mākena after officials agreed to drop the new asphalt, cut the exterior lighting from six fixtures to one, and abandon any plan resembling the fencing that alarmed Little Beach regulars back in 2021. Neither fight is fully over. Ontario’s transportation minister says the province intends to keep pushing for the airport expansion regardless, and Maui’s commission has given the state until 2029 to produce the carrying capacity study that will shape what comes next.

Not every institutional story this week moved in nudism’s direction. Buffalo’s organizers canceled this year’s World Naked Bike Ride after receiving threats specific enough to name: projectiles, cars, and worse, born out of a social media pile-on that racked up roughly 500,000 engagements in 48 hours. It’s the ride’s first cancellation in eleven years, and the organizers’ own statement draws a useful distinction that gets lost in these controversies again and again, the one between nudity and the sexualized, criminalized version of it that critics keep insisting is the same thing.

That endurance shows up differently in this week’s Waypoints feature on Sunny Chinooks Camping Association, a club near Sundre, Alberta that has been chased off rented farmland, flooded off its own acreage, and evicted from a ranch it held for twenty-five years, and kept reconstituting itself anyway. More than seventy years on, members still drive out for summer camping and still gather for a winter swim in a rented Calgary pool. It’s a useful reminder that the institutional wins in Toronto and Maui didn’t happen on their own timeline. They happened because clubs and organizers kept showing up through decades when nobody in government was paying attention at all.

Check out these stories and more from this week on Planet Nude.

This week on Strips

Nova Unbound: Chapter 4

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News of the Nude

Naturists banned from swimming naked after 44 years at Northampton leisure centre.

Northampton Chronicle and Echo | Jul. 23

A monthly closed swim that had run at Mounts Baths since 1982 has been shut down after new leisure operator Everyone Active took over the pool and cited its swimwear policy. The club’s roughly 190 members call it discrimination; the operator says it simply couldn’t secure the staffing agreements the sessions required. British Naturism’s president has called on the company to reconsider. It’s a familiar pattern, a long-running arrangement undone not by a rule change but by new management applying an old rule for the first time.

Spencer Tunick returns to collective nude art with Gran Canaria project backing LGTBIQA+ rights.

Sri Lanka Guardian | Jul. 21

Tunick’s next mass installation, staged in the Canary Islands as part of Culture & Business Pride 2026, arranges hundreds of volunteers into the colors of the Pride flag. What stands out is his read on where the pressure on nude expression actually comes from now. He points less at governments than at social media platforms, whose moderation policies he says force artists to self-censor just to stay visible, a concern specific enough that he co-founded a platform devoted to fighting it.

A citizen reports: “On Nurapolis beach, sex and nudism are taking place in the open air.”

Unione Sarda | Jul. 22

A resident’s complaint to a Sardinian mayor blurs public nudism together with indecent conduct and unauthorized filming, and asks for signage and stricter enforcement. The mayor’s response is notable mostly for what it declines to do: no new signage, no promise of surveillance, and a suggestion that people ought to simply behave respectfully toward each other. It’s a small story, but the conflation at its center, treating nudism and sexual misconduct as one complaint, is the same one Buffalo’s organizers were pushing back on this week.

Discord Dispatch

The Discord settled into a summer rhythm this week. Members checked in from naked hikes, bike rides, and club events, while new faces continued to join the conversation and plan summer meetups.

Join us at discord.gg/8gt7D6ssMd — or click here to learn more.

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1 Naturist Life

Coming home to my body

I grew up believing my body was a problem to be managed. Not hated, exactly. Just something that needed constant supervision, like a dog that might bolt if you left the gate open. Cover it. Control it. Definitely don’t enjoy it. That was the quiet curriculum of my conservative, church-going childhood and it came bundled with a second, unspoken lesson: b…

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4 days ago · Dustin Cox

This is a personal essay tracing how the shame Dustin absorbed growing up in a conservative Christian household, around both body and sexuality, didn’t lift just because he left the church or came out. He draws on writers and a clinical psychologist to show that intellectual deconstruction doesn’t undo somatic shame, then describes how naturism, unlike politics or theology, gave him a space where a body seen “without agenda” is just a body, no audience, no moral inventory. He’s careful not to tie it up too neatly: old shame still surfaces sometimes, but he no longer treats it as true, framing naturism as the place he’s actually practiced living out the belief that he gets to decide what’s shameful, not the systems that used to answer for him.

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1 Naturist Life

1 Naturist Life is a blog and community celebrating the freedom, body positivity, and culture of naturism, offering personal stories, travel tips, and insights into living naturally.

By Dustin Cox

The Orbit is Planet Nude’s weekly digest. Published every Saturday. 🪐

A massive wildfire sweeping through the maritime pine forests of the Gironde department forced the complete emergency evacuation of La Jenny, one of France’s best-known naturist residential villages, during the night of July 22–23, 2026. Thousands of residents and guests were moved out under darkness and ordered not to return.

The blaze ignited in Saumos and drove southward on sea winds toward the Arcachon coast, burning more than 3,400 hectares (about 8,400 acres, roughly ten times the size of Central Park) within its first 24 hours. By July 24 it had consumed an estimated 12,500 hectares and was still spreading, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to mobilize 1,000 military personnel alongside some 700 firefighters and aerial units.

La Jenny, formally the Domaine Résidentiel Naturiste de la Jenny on Route de la Jenny in Le Porge, was among the first properties named in the evacuation order, issued by the prefect of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. At least eight camping areas and holiday centers in the Lège-Le Porge-Cap-Ferret corridor were cleared simultaneously. Local authorities estimated at least 12,000 people were displaced in the initial overnight operation, with more than 44,000 evacuated in total as the fire spread to engulf the Cap-Ferret peninsula itself. Roughly 2,000 of those evacuees escaped by boat when road access was cut. Emergency shelters were set up in Hourtin, Lacanau, and nearby towns, though reports noted that camp beds were in short supply for the volume of naturists arriving from Le Porge.

As of July 25, the municipality of Le Porge is maintaining a total access ban on the coastal and forest sectors, including La Jenny and adjacent camping areas. Authorities are asking the public to check official updates from the Le Porge town hall and La Jenny’s own communications before attempting to travel to the area.

What is La Jenny

The fire struck a place with deep roots in the French naturist world. La Jenny opened in July 1983 in a 120-hectare maritime pine forest 48 kilometers west of Bordeaux, conceived from the start as a freehold residential village, with buyers purchasing plots and wooden chalets on private parcels rather than booking seasonal pitches. By the mid-1980s it had 270 chalets; by the 1990s, some 400. Today it boasts over 750. In 1993 it inaugurated what remains, by its own account, the world’s only naturist golf course, a compact six-hole layout threaded through its dunes and pines. La Jenny is a founding member of the France 4 Naturisme consortium alongside Euronat, Arnaoutchot, and CHM Montalivet, the quartet of flagship Aquitaine naturist domains that have anchored French naturism on the Atlantic coast for four decades.

The forest was always the resort’s defining feature. Every advertisement for 40 years led with the same line: a pine forest of 120 hectares, an immense fine-sand naturist beach, no road to cross. The Landes de Gascogne pine forest surrounding Le Porge is the same landscape now burning.

Broader fire context

The Gironde has seen catastrophic wildfire seasons before, notably in 2022 when more than 20,000 hectares burned near Landiras and La Teste-de-Buch, but observers are calling the 2026 event historically severe. In addition to La Jenny and the surrounding camps, the upmarket Cap-Ferret peninsula was ordered fully evacuated on July 24, a measure affecting tens of thousands of summer visitors. Firefighters from the Paris region were deployed to reinforce local forces battling the fire across dense Landes forest in ongoing extreme dry conditions.

There is no current public assessment of damage to La Jenny itself. The official posture from both the municipality and the resort is clear: do not travel to Le Porge. Anyone with property or a booking at La Jenny should follow the resort’s official communications for updates on when and whether return will be permitted. 🪐

The fight is over, for now.

On July 24, the same day Canada’s federal consultation on Billy Bishop Airport closed, Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon announced the federal government would not support Ontario’s expansion plan. The consultation drew more than 87,000 responses, with public opinion reported as solidly opposed.

MacKinnon was explicit about what the government was protecting. “We will not pursue any plans that infringe on treasured public spaces like Little Norway Park or Hanlan’s Point Beach,” he said.

Hanlan’s Point Beach is named in a federal policy statement. The beach is the world’s oldest legally designated nude beach and the only officially designated clothing-optional beach in eastern Canada. That kind of recognition in a federal policy document is new.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow welcomed the decision and immediately called on the province to return the city’s land, seized earlier this year under Bill 110. Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said the province intends to keep pushing for expansion regardless.

So the threat isn’t permanently dead. Ford hasn’t conceded, and Bill 110 remains on the books. But the federal government has drawn a line, and Hanlan’s Point is on the right side of it.

Planet Nude covered the expansion threat two weeks ago, when the consultation was still open. The 87,000 responses suggest a lot of people were paying attention. 🪐

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Nova Unbound

Nova Unbound is a science-fiction comic by about a stranded astronaut navigating life on a strange planet beneath three suns. What begins as survival slowly becomes a journey of transformation, as Nova sheds the bonds of her old world and discovers unexpected freedom in an unfamiliar one.

New episodes monthly, only on Strips!

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Alfie | A Life Doodler

Celebrating positive sensuality and the beauty of the human body through elegant sketches.

Nudie Shack

Nudie Shack is a cartoon series by humorist Jerry King, set in a delightfully unhinged nudist resort where the only thing looser than the dress code is the punchline. Known for his prolific work with Playboy and other major publications, King brings his decades of cartooning chops to the naturist world, populating it with oddballs, eccentrics, and sun-loving weirdos who always find new ways to bare it all—sometimes literally, sometimes emotionally, and usually for a laugh.

Nudie Shack appears on the 4th Friday of every month at Planet Nude.

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The Maui Planning Commission approved the state’s Special Management Area permit for the Mākena State Park Improvements project on July 14, voting 6-1. The June 23 hearing ran more than seven hours, drew roughly 50 testifiers, and ended without a vote. Commissioners continued it three weeks and sent the state away with eight questions.

The state came back having given ground. Acting State Parks Administrator Alan Carpenter opened the July meeting by dropping the new asphalt. “The biggest compromise we’re going to offer is we see no need to add any asphalt at all to this park,” he said. Only the ADA stalls will be paved. Exterior lighting was cut from six fixtures to one, on a timer that shuts off at 8 p.m., after testimony about hawksbill turtles nesting at Oneloa. What remains is two comfort stations, two outdoor showers, and water service to a park that has never had any.

None of the elements that alarmed Little Beach regulars were in the permit. No perimeter fence, no single point of entry, no reservation system, no hotel shuttles. In June, Carpenter named the beach directly in his opening remarks to the commission. “We have no intention of impeding access through fences in any way,” he said. “The gate and fence that was installed during COVID to deal with overuse of Puʻu Olaʻi, also known as Little Beach, that’s been removed, and it’s not part of any plan to ever put it back.”

That is the clearest statement anyone at State Parks has made on the record about the gate that closed Little Beach in 2021. It carries no legal force, but it is in the hearing record.

Bill Watts of Friends of Little Beach told commissioners the state was describing only part of the project. “The DLNR has told you and the media this project is just about restrooms and parking improvements,” he said. “That is one-eighth of the truth.” He read from what he identified as DLNR’s own Mākena plan, describing a single point of entry, a booth to control access, and hotel shuttles, all contingent on parking or entry fees. He cited 2023 written testimony he attributed to the DLNR chair describing an exterior fence, a park-wide limit of 246 cars, and a reservation system. Planet Nude has not independently reviewed those documents.

The condition the commission attached matters more than the project it approved. Commissioners required a quantitative carrying capacity study covering environmental, ecological, cultural, social, and physical components, due by July 31, 2029. State Parks proposed the study itself as a condition on July 14, a notable reversal: in 2023, testifying against a bill that would have required exactly such a study at Mākena, then-DLNR chair Dawn Chang wrote that the department "respectfully does not believe the study is necessary." Vice Chair Andrea Kealoha, who has published one of the few quantitative carrying capacity studies done in Hawaiʻi, had pressed the point at the June hearing.

The study's importance is less about the document than what tends to follow it. Hawaiʻi's managed-access parks, Hāʻena and Waiʻānapanapa among them, now run on reservations, timed entry, and paid shuttles. By DLNR's own account, none of those three parks was preceded by a carrying capacity study; the reservation systems came without them. What a study adds is a formal basis for setting a capacity number, and a capacity number is the pivot on which managed entry turns.

Better facilities draw more people. More people produce a crowding finding. A crowding finding justifies managed entry. Each step is defensible on its own terms, and none of them requires anyone to take a position on nudity.

Little Beach has never been formally designated clothing-optional, and nudity remains illegal throughout Hawaiʻi’s state parks. Local coverage describes Puʻu Ōlaʻi as a longtime hotspot for nude sunbathers. What has protected it for five decades is friction: a rocky scramble, informal parking, and enough spontaneity that no one has had to decide anything. Managed entry removes that friction.

Nudity came up once in the proceeding, on June 23. A representative of the American Association for Nude Recreation, whose western region voted in late May to fund opposition to access restrictions at Little Beach, testified that the beach “has been known as a beach for nude recreation for over 30 years” and that DLNR “has accepted its operation for a long time and has done no harm to the community.” That changed in 2020, he said, when the department increased its footprint and began “without any warning enforcing an administrative rule around no nudity.” A larger DLNR presence would mean more citations and people “not feeling very welcome at the beach practicing things they’ve been doing for over 30 years.” AANR “is not opposed to doing great things for the park,” he added.

Two others mentioned it. Tiare Lawrence, supporting the project, said keeping Mākena “wild” should not mean “allowing invasive species to take over, human waste and toilet paper to accumulate in the bushes, or illegal activities like nudity to continue unchecked.” Albert Perez of Maui Tomorrow called nudity “irrelevant to this discussion.”

No commissioner asked a question about any of it. On July 14, across four and a half hours of staff presentations, deliberation, and the vote, the words “Little Beach” and “nudity” do not appear in the record.

Construction is expected to begin in roughly a year. The study lands in 2029. 🪐

Editor's note: This article was updated on July 24, 2026. An earlier version stated that Hawaiʻi's managed-access parks adopted reservation systems following carrying capacity studies. Written testimony from then-DLNR chair Dawn Chang shows State Parks has never performed such a study for the three parks that currently have advanced reservations; that passage has been corrected. The description of the July 14 study condition has also been revised to note that State Parks proposed it.

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MoonGroove turned six years old this July, and celebrated by moving to a bigger home, packing in a full slate of music, art, yoga, and sports, and surviving two separate rounds of extreme weather in the process. Wildfire smoke blanketed the site for the first couple of days, and a round of severe thunderstorms tore through on Saturday. Neither one stopped the festival from delivering one of the best weekends I have had at a naturist event in years.

My wife Kim, our son Eli, and I flew into Pittsburgh direct from Las Vegas on Wednesday night and spent that first night at a La Quinta near the airport. Thursday morning we Ubered out to Butler to pick up a rental RV, then made our way onto the grounds of White Thorn Lodge that afternoon. This was the festival’s first year at White Thorn, a longtime nudist club in Darlington that has hosted the naked volleyball Superbowl for more than five decades. MoonGroove had outgrown its old home at Penn Sylvan in Mohnton and needed the extra acreage.

The festival itself ran four stages across four days, with more than 50 performers between them. Big Something headlined Friday night, SunSquabi closed out Saturday with direct support from Sneezy, and a rotating lineup of jam bands, funk acts, and DJs filled the hours around them. Beyond the music, there were yoga sessions morning and afternoon, volleyball and pickleball tournaments, bocce and cornhole, guided hikes and trail runs, a full slate of wellness workshops, a dedicated Women’s Moon Lounge, and a kids program called Club Nebula for the younger groovers on site. It is a lot to pull off in one weekend, and even with the weather working against it, the festival mostly delivered on all of it.

At check-in, the first familiar face we ran into was Eli Porr, one of the festival’s five founders and its executive director. I have known Eli for a couple of years now, and he has been on my podcast, New Nudist Podcast, at least three times, but this was the first time we had ever met in person. In addition to being a prolific promoter of exciting nudist projects and a really wonderful human, he is also the reason my son, also named Eli, fielded the same joke all weekend. Sharing a name with the festival’s own organizer never got old for the people who met him.

Planet Nude sponsored MoonGroove last year too, but 2026 was the first year we could actually make it out. We set up a vendor table for the weekend, and I spent a good chunk of my time there rather than out at the stages.

Wildfire smoke from Canada had settled over a wide stretch of the country that week, and Pennsylvania sat right in its path. The haze hung over the site through Thursday and Friday, thick enough to notice and thick enough to change the color of the light.

Those first couple of days were where the festival really delivered for me, though it had little to do with the weather or even the music and events. I met Tom Francine of SkinnyDipDay.org in person for the first time, and we ended up talking for a long stretch in a hot tub late one night. I met Justin and Nikki from Nude Lease on Life, Max and Luke from NAC/NEF, and Sandy and Charlie from AANR East. I had known every one of these people for years online, through Zoom calls, Discord threads, WhatsApp messages, and the occasional collaboration, but had never actually met any of them face to face. It is a strange feature of the modern naturist world that a community this active and this connected can still be scattered across the country and the world, coming together in person only at a handful of gatherings each year. I had the same experience at the INF-FNI Congress in Zipolite back in 2024, and it happened again and again at MoonGroove.

Friday and Saturday, I sat on a pair of nudist Q&A panels that had been built into the festival schedule, alongside representatives from NAC/NEF, AANR, and several other clubs and sponsor organizations in the space. A number of people came up to me afterward, or at other points over the weekend, to say they read Planet Nude or listen to Naked Age or New Nudist Podcast. It is only ever at events like this that people recognize my voice before they recognize my face, and it still catches me off guard every time. The day it happens to me at a grocery store, I do not know what I will do with myself.

Saturday brought the storms. A cold front pushed through with severe thunderstorms that afternoon, and for a few hours the forecast had all of it: damaging wind, hail, even a tornado watch for parts of the state. Rain came down hard enough to pause the festival outright. Watching the sky go that dark and that loud in the middle of a crowd is not entirely comfortable, but it did not feel unwelcome either. It gave the day a kind of danger that made the evening feel more earned once it arrived.

The skies cleared that evening, and the day’s delayed schedule pushed the main stage well into the night. I had spent most of the weekend at our vendor booth and had not caught much live music up to that point, so after the rain let up I went back to our RV in Cosmic Flats, the semi-quiet camping area, and fell asleep for a few hours. I woke up close to midnight to a clear sky and the bass thumping down the hill from the main stage. I walked up and caught SunSquabi headlining, the first time all weekend I saw the fire dancers working the crowd alongside a full light show. After two days of smoke and one dramatic storm, it felt like the release the whole weekend had been building toward, and it turned out to be the peak of the festival. Things wound down from there.

Sunday had a slower, more social pace, and it gave me time to appreciate the people holding the whole thing together. Eli Porr was everywhere all weekend, checking in with people individually, handling smoke and storms and every logistical headache with a level head, and still answering a text about the vendor wifi password in the middle of it all. Nicky, who runs the festival’s Club Nebula kids programming, kept a genuinely watchful eye on the younger crowd the entire time. Jim Dickey and Claude Richards of NAC/NEF showed up as they always do, two of the most dependable advocates and friends our community has. Jim in particular seemed to know everyone, everywhere, and at 72 he was still bouncing around the volleyball court and working the crowd with the energy of someone a third his age.

None of it runs without the crew behind it, and MoonGroove has a big one. A small group of founders started this thing a few years back, and dozens of volunteers have since taken over everything from sound and electrical to site operations, green room and VIP, art installations, and security. Every one of them was still smiling and helpful when I crossed paths with them, even after a weekend of smoke, storms, and very little sleep. That is not a small thing to pull off.

Having Kim and (little) Eli there changed the trip for me. I do a lot of this traveling alone, for work and for the movement both, so doing this one as a family felt like a small kind of catharsis. Eli made fast friends with the other kids there, spent most of his waking hours in the pool playing keepy-uppy with a beach ball, and became something of a mascot for the weekend between the name joke and a small kid running around with an all-over tan. He came home with more high fives, ice pops, and free scoops of ice cream than I could keep track of.

Our own weekend was one small piece of something much bigger. Here are the final stats for this year: MoonGroove pulled 1,246 people through the gate over the weekend, drawing from 29 states and as far away as Canada, Australia, the Bahamas, and France. That included roughly 707 ticketed guests, 93 volunteers, 130 musicians, 32 vendors, and 15 sponsors, all held together by a founding and staff team of about 30 people. Amazing!

We packed up Monday, drove back through Butler, spent one more night at the same La Quinta outside Pittsburgh Airport, then caught an early flight home Tuesday morning. Tired and sunburned in places people don’t usually worry about. But already looking forward to next year. 🪐

If you’ve scrolled past mentions of the Planet Nude Sticker Club and thought “okay, but what is it, really?”—this one’s for you.

The short answer: every month, you get a curated maildrop of weird, beautiful, thoughtful stuff. Stickers, postcards, mini comics, magnets, art prints. Things that celebrate the body, freedom, and the delightful intersection of those two things. All made in collaboration with artists and designers who actually care about what they’re making.

Join the club

If you haven’t joined yet, here’s what you’ve missed: Postcards and stickers from Zaftig Pink. A zine from Brett Marcella. Mini comics. Puzzles. Valentine!-themed valentines with rose petals. Sticker collaborations with Eliot DeVedia. Magnets. Greeting cards. Things you haven’t even heard about yet. Iron-ons. Books. Weird surprises. The point is: there’s a lot, and if you miss a month, you actually miss it.

Each month is different. We’re not printing the same stickers over and over. We’re hunting for artists, negotiating small-batch prints with offbeat printers, and genuinely trying to send you things that make you think, laugh, or just feel seen. Beyond the main drop, members also get occasional issues of the Skinny—a one-page member-only newsletter that ships inside your maildrop with behind-the-scenes notes and community updates. It comes infrequently, which means it actually feels special when it shows up.

And here’s the thing: no two months are ever the same, and we never repeat a drop. If you miss a month, you miss it. That’s intentional. It creates real scarcity, but it also means your collection actually means something. Each drop is a snapshot of that moment, that artist, that weird idea we were chasing that month.

(If you do miss a month or want duplicates of a postcard to share, you can actually buy back issues through our Ko-fi shop. But only if you’re a member.)

Over time, you’re building a sticker collection. Every drop includes stickers—sometimes it’s the whole drop, sometimes they’re part of it—but they add up. We made a Sticker Book for that: a gorgeous A5 spiral-bound keepsake designed to hold and organize the stickers you receive. Members get it at special pricing.

On membership and capacity:

We’re currently at 69 members, with room for about 31 more through December. We’ve built this thing to scale up to 100, and that’s where we’re capping it through year-end.

Why? Because hand-curating drops is time-consuming. Sourcing artists, coordinating with designers, negotiating print quantities, packing and mailing 100+ packages a month—that’s a lot of labor. We could scale bigger, but it would stop being good. The whole reason this works is because each drop is chosen carefully, not churned out.

Plus, this isn’t a random subscription service. It’s a patronage thing. You’re supporting Planet Nude—keeping this weird publication and community alive—and you get beautiful mail as a thank-you. When you think of it that way, scarcity actually makes sense. We’re not trying to maximize subscribers; we’re trying to build a real thing with people who actually care about what we’re doing.

So if you’ve been curious: now’s the time. We’ve got 31 spots available through December. You’ll get this month’s drop plus four more after that. You’ll also join our member Discord—dedicated Sticker-Club only channels like #mail-room where people share and photograph what they receive, plus a #member-chat for conversation, and occasional club happy hours. It’s not huge, but it’s real people connecting over the weird and wonderful stuff we send.

Join the Sticker Club

Your support keeps us alive and weird. 🐌

Nudie Cutie Comics

’s Nudie Cutie Comics takes a look at life in a completely absurd world and asks, “Why not be nude for all of this?”

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By Zaftig Pink

The club is named for a wind. The chinook is the warm "snow-eater" that rolls down off the Rockies and can lift a January afternoon in southern Alberta forty degrees in an hour, melting the drifts and baring the ground. It is the right emblem for a club that has been buried and thawed out again more times than most survive: chased off rented farmland, flooded off its first owned acres, and in 1990 evicted from the ranch it had held for a quarter-century—and back on its feet each time. Seventy-plus years on, the members still drive out past Sundre in summer and still swim, in the dead of an Alberta winter, in a rented Calgary pool. Here's the place, and the wind it was named for.

The Place

The current grounds are a roughly 7-hectare parcel (18.5 acres as purchased in 1992), mostly wooded, about 12 km (7½ miles) north of Sundre in the Rocky Mountain foothills—roughly an hour and a half, or some 145 km (90 miles), northwest of Calgary. The defining feature is the James River, which the property fronts for about a quarter-mile and which supplies the club's informal river "nude beach." The plant is deliberately modest and camping-oriented: a clubhouse of about 110 square meters (1,200 square feet), a wash house with hot-water showers, RV sites with water and 30-amp power, a central sanitary dump, a hot-tub gazebo, an outdoor shower, a rental cottage, and a community garden of roughly 280 square meters. The season runs summer camping plus a winter that never fully closes—the club has kept up monthly nude swims at a rented Calgary pool since the late 1960s.

The Story

Sunny Chinooks begins with a name and a wind. By the club’s own account in Going Natural (Fall 1989), “a group of nine people decided it was time to make the club official and chose the name of Sunny Chinooks Association” in June 1952, affiliated with the American Sunbathing Association, and obtained a charter. The earliest primary trace matches that to the month: a Sunny Trails “Group Roll Call” for June 1952 records the decision in the club’s own voice—”We have decided to call our club the Sunny Chinooks and apply for registration under that name.” The early organizers were Bob and Jean Stratychuk of Calgary, Jean serving as first recorded secretary. The name honours the chinook wind; later AANR-era accounts credit Ray and Mildred Connett—the founders of California’s Glen Eden and themselves products of the BC scene—with suggesting it, though the 1952 source shows the club naming itself.

For its first years the club had no land and moved constantly: a 1952 site on “Mr. Cox’s farm on the Banff highway,” then a lease at Priddis and a purchase at High River, each lost in turn. The strain nearly finished it. Its own 1962 history records a 1958 collapse during which “we changed the name to San Helios in hopes that recent trouble would be forgotten.” The revival came in 1959, when Rod Flack—a member since 1956—was elected president, dropped the San Helios name, and restored the original.

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Buster Bunne has one goal: to create the next ice cream sensation! In Unsexy Nude Tales From Pretty Beach! The Day the Pool Became Ice Cream!, we follow this ambitious ice cream man on the nude beach as his attempts at coming up with a stellar new flavor turns into calamity when a poorly timed polar vortex sweeps into the nude beach, driving everyone indoors.

For this ambitious comic, Tito Adler established a number of rules for himself, as well as a long list of nudist tropes to avoid, and he shares these at the beginning of the book. I’m not going to list them all here, but some notable tropes include proselytizing the benefits of social nudism, prudish villains, textile allergies, and the age-old Doris Wishman plot device of romance between a nudist and a newcomer. He set up a strict, twelve week schedule to work within, and most daring of all, set to work without any real plotting or structure, making the whole story up as he went along and following the golden improv rule of “yes and.”

The results are absolutely delightful.

Bunne’s great adversary here is Dijon Mustardsen, the local hot dog vendor planning to set up at the indoor rec center where the nude beach residents have retreated. At the same time, surf instructor Sunny has her own conflict thanks to the winter storm, one which leads to her butting heads with the local lifeguard Kai. Seeing as how this is an all-new comic, I don’t want to go too much into detail about the plot or the antics that these characters wind up getting into, but with the way it’s structured like a daily newspaper strip, along with Adler’s clean and energetic art, it makes for a fun, quick read. The improv nature of the storytelling also leads it to some unexpected and very funny places that I just don’t want to spoil!

It’s Adler’s art that brings me so much joy more than any other element. The character designs here are wonderfully cartoony, reminding me of shows I grew up watching in the mid-to-late nineties, all drawn with a wonderful (presumably digital?) brushlike line quality that gives it so much life. Like a daily newspaper strip, the comic is predominantly in black and white, with the first strips and some later ones in full color, along with some fun little illustrations thrown in as little segues. They’re like an extra treat! This one in particular is a personal favorite:

I keep coming back to those nudist tropes and the decision to avoid them altogether, and how that leads to this being such a fun and refreshing read that’s unlike most other nudist media. It’s something I’ve been taking into account when making Asada & Mischa strips, and I’ve joked about it being the least nudist strip on Planet Nude, but the Day the Pool Became Ice Cream! takes this to a whole different level. The nudity here is never once commented on, and none of the jokes have anything to do with it. It’s a story that didn’t need to be set at a nude beach, it simply is. I can’t help but applaud that! It also makes me wonder how it will appeal to those dyed in the wool nudists who crave those tropes, but, you know, not everything is made for everybody.

Unsexy Nude Tales From Pretty Beach! The Day the Pool Became Ice Cream! is available on Amazon’s ComiXology for a mere $3.99 and it is worth every penny of that low price. Check it out for yourself and let us know what you think! I hope to see more from this setting and of these characters in the future. 🪐

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Check out Unsexy Nudie Tales From Pretty Beach! The Day the Pool Became Ice Cream! on Kindle for just $3.99.

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The World Naked Bike Ride Buffalo, scheduled for August 1, has been canceled after organizers received threats of violence and death directed at riders and organizers.

“With the outpouring of overwhelming disapproval from concerned community members, and the threats of violence and death towards organizers and riders, it is unrealistic to ensure the safety of our wonderful supporters,” organizers wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on July 20.

The threats were specific. Enough people said they would seek riders out to throw projectiles, hit them with cars, and use other deadly weapons that calling off the ride was the safer course, the statement said.

The opposition came entirely from social media, an organizer told Planet Nude in an email. A few prominent Facebook accounts posted about the ride and went viral locally. Once the group began promoting the August event, it drew roughly 500,000 post engagements in 48 hours and more than a thousand comments, shares, and subposts, most of them negative, according to the organizer. Recurring themes included accusations of pedophilia, frustrations over race relations in Buffalo, and direct threats of violence.

In their Instagram statement, organizers said the ride’s message had been lost in the oversexualization of nudity and in false claims about participants, and drew a line between the nudity and the conduct the ride actually polices. “Nudity is not inherently sexual,” they wrote. “Nudity in the context of protesting is federally protected under freedom of speech.” The ride bars sexual behavior, harassment, and conduct that makes others uncomfortable, they said, and anyone who violates those rules is removed and banned.

Organizers also addressed claims tying the ride to predatory behavior, calling them false and harmful. “This event is not about children, and children do not participate in the ride,” they wrote. The organizer who wrote to Planet Nude returned to that point. “What is frustrating to me is that something so harmless as simply being scantily clad on a bike can be weaponized and used to vilify an entire group of people just trying to bring attention to an issue that affects everyone on the planet. To me, I think it takes away from actual victims of that heinous crime and cheapens the word to mean something less than it actually is.”

It’s the first time organizers have called off the Buffalo ride over safety concerns. They described the canceled event as the ride’s 11th year. The first ride was held in 2015, with Buffalo Rising billing the following summer’s as the second annual. Last year’s, on August 2, was the tenth.

The ride typically covers 10 to 13 miles through the city, with the route unannounced in advance. Participants arrive clothed at a check-in point, then are directed to a departure location where they hear the ride’s mission and safety rules before undressing. Nudity is optional. The 2025 event description had already signaled awareness of hostility: organizers refused to disclose the check-in location until days before the ride, saying they wanted to limit “crowding of the creepy variety.”

Organizers did not report any of the threats to Buffalo police, and said they would not. “We have never and will never collaborate with local police as that goes against the ethos of protesting,” the organizer wrote. They said the Buffalo Police Department has grown less tolerant of the ride in recent years, and that participants have had insults hurled at them, been threatened with violence, and been detained. “I do not trust them to keep us safe.”

In place of the ride, organizers said they will collect donations for local organizations serving what they called the most vulnerable members of the community. They said they have distributed more than $3,000 to East Side organizations over the past three years.

Rides in other cities have been called off this year for unrelated reasons. Cape Town’s ended after 18 years when the city demanded a fully clothed event, and Brighton postponed its 20th edition after two opposing political demonstrations were scheduled for the same day. Los Angeles moved its 2025 ride from June to September, citing safety concerns following ICE raids and protests downtown. The rides are organized independently city by city, sharing a name and a set of themes rather than a common organization.

Violence against riders is not unprecedented. Riders have been attacked during rides in Coventry, Colchester, and Chelmsford, in England. The man who punched a rider off his bicycle in Colchester last August, and who told the court he considered the cyclists perverts, received a suspended sentence in December.

Whether the ride returns is undecided. The organizing team has not determined whether to continue, the organizer said, and if it does, it will need to find a way to promote the event without social media. 🪐

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I recently saw this picture from Tintin in Tibet, where he and his little friend were staring out into the immense Himalaya mountain range.

It brought me back to the time that we used to spend in the mountains, and what a profound effect it had on us. How it kind of detached us from the rest of reality. Away from the fast-moving world. Away from the day-to-day problems or worries. The intimidating vastness of the environment triggers you to put things in a much larger perspective.

Shedding my clothes gives me that same feeling of shedding the worries and problems of my normal day-to-day life. These worries and problems are as unnecessary as the clothes are on those moments that I cherish.

Back to basics, mentally. No more expressing yourself through what you are wearing. You can only express yourself through who you are. No pretending. The naked truth.

We are almost a year later than when we discovered nudism together. We’ve lived through a long winter, which feels like we got detached from ourselves again, from the real person that we discovered underneath the layers of clothes. As winter approached, we were forced to hide behind those clothes again, and it alienated us again from who we really are.

It felt like stress building up slowly but surely. After a couple of months I already started to struggle to remember or relive all of the emotions that we discovered last year, the happiness and joy that entered our lives and our relationship. And slowly we drifted back into the sadness of the ordinary clothed life, where superficiality rules over wellness, authenticity, and peace of mind.

I thought, feared, that I had lost the feeling, that it had been just a temporary thing. The joy and excitement of something new wearing off.

Until that day in April, when the sun came out again, and temperatures rose to very comfortable levels. We got out the sunbeds and took off our clothes again. It completely revived me, it lifted my spirits again as it did last summer. The freedom of running around naked in and outside of the house just makes one human again. Back to the essence of being.

All of a sudden I hear the voice of the woman next door very close to me, behind the not-so-covering hedge plants between our gardens. While she is explaining something to another woman next to her, I decide not to shock anyone and move discretely inside the house to get my bathrobe. Even though I wouldn’t really mind if she saw me, I hate to think that I imposed my nudity upon her, against her will.

That is not shame, but empathy and being considerate to others. Even though I really don’t know her point of view on this.

What could be her reaction, her perspective, as a non-nudist (I think) person?

Anger? Surprise? Embarrassment?

She could be angry. Because I imposed my nudity on her and her visitor.

A naked body doesn’t always induce a negative reaction in people; that depends on their upbringing, their experiences, their background. And the context of the nudity. If I were to confront her with any sexual activity of mine, that would be offensive in so many ways. Just like I was confronted once with a nudist man who started masturbating in plain view. There is nudity and there is sex.

Or when swinger couples invade nudist and naturist spaces. They impose their sexuality upon people who do not associate nudity with sex (except in their own privacy). Personally, they trigger my anger, as they feel like predators to me.

As opposed to anger, she could also just be surprised, or embarrassed. I can imagine one not having a real problem with nudity, but not knowing how to react when confronted with it unexpectedly.

Or she could just be surprised, without any further negative feeling or emotion.

I experienced this recently with the dermatologist, when I had her examine a dark spot on my areola, under my nipple. She reassured me that it was nothing harmful, and that she could freeze it if I wanted to get rid of it. She said that it couldn’t be exposed to the sun after this, “but that shouldn’t be a problem, right?” I contradicted this, and I was amused by her surprise about it. “Ok, then we’ll do this after summer.” I expected a different reaction there. Like, considering my lack of tan lines, a sermon about using sun lotion (I have never used that in my entire life, nor have my parents, grandparents, or in-laws, and there is no trace of any skin cancer in any of them). Or, when I mentioned that I had a wound there last summer, while working outside. (”How on earth do you wound your nipple?”) I did not expect a “meh” reaction. But she’s a doctor, I bet she’s heard wilder stories than this.

And then there’s the reaction of my friend, whom I called last summer to talk about my desire for nude recreation. She responded enthusiastically, saying that she has been doing that for ages and that she would love to have a friend join her.

Among nudists, there can only be one sort of reaction, because we share the same perspective about it.

Last Friday we went back to the nude beach, for the first time this year. Other nude visitors make eye contact, some say hello, some just smile and nod. One woman moved her things right next to us because there were children playing with jellyfish (yes, really) near her previous spot, and the screaming and yelling got to her. So you just engage in some friendly conversation with a naked woman, as if it really is the most normal thing in the world.

And those children — they didn’t have a care in the world. Their perspective was about jellyfish, and nothing else existed or mattered. How I miss and envy that innocence.

Some passers-by who weren’t naked were the most amusing ones, as they obviously didn’t know how to not look at all these naked people nearby. They are the ones who are embarrassed, and have no reason to complain, as they were invading our territory. Some of them might even have envied us for the freedom that we enjoyed, for the pride we somehow exhibited in it. As if they don’t have that same freedom of choice. Because it is a choice to not dare to show and enjoy your body.

And then there was this other, clothed woman near the waterline. I was looking at the washed-up seashells on the ground, while I was nearing the textile part of the beach. My wife was doing the same thing, some ten meters behind me. When I looked up, I saw this elegant woman approaching in her white linen trousers and her long blonde hair. She had this wide smile on her face as she greeted me and crossed my path. She wasn’t shocked, she wasn’t baffled, she wasn’t surprised or overwhelmed, nor embarrassed. She just encountered another human being and was just being the nice person that she seemed to be.

I really felt sad not to have engaged in a conversation with her; that would have really been a wonderful experience. She didn’t seem to care about me being naked — we were just two human beings enjoying the seaside.

And that is the ultimate in perspectives to me. That is my perfect world. There is no right or wrong, there’s just us, people, human beings, enjoying our lives and respecting each other. No looking down upon, no talking down, understanding instead of judging. 🪐

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Naturism is natural, as the term itself describes. Shed your clothes and really start connecting with people

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Valentine!

Valentine (or just Val) moved to a new town in search of a fully nude lifestyle. Now that she’s here, she’s making new friends, having new experiences, and relaxing in her new cozy life!

New episodes out the third Sunday of each month, exclusively on Strips!

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Beach access had a strange week, the kind where a win and three separate threats arrive close enough together that they start to look like the same story told from different angles. A Seattle judge handed naturists a real, if narrow, victory: Denny Blaine Park stays open, and nudity stays legal there. The court drew a sharp line between nudity and lewd conduct, refusing to let bad behavior by a few become grounds for closing the beach to everyone. It is the kind of ruling advocates have been chasing for years, precise language that separates the body from the offense.

Everywhere else, the ground felt less stable. In San Mateo County, sixty years of tolerance at San Gregorio ended not through a court fight but through a change of ownership, as the ranch behind the beach becomes a state park and clothing becomes mandatory. No lawsuit, no dramatic villain, just a nonprofit land trust doing exactly what land trusts do, and a nude beach with civil-rights-era roots disappearing into a bureaucratic footnote.

In Toronto, Hanlan’s Point faces a more openly political threat, an airport expansion bill that lets the province seize land across the entire island chain without the usual expropriation safeguards. And at Bates Beach in Santa Barbara County, deputies interrupted this year’s Skinny Dip Day gathering, a reminder that even beaches with a long informal understanding can have that understanding revoked without warning.

What connects these stories is not that nudism is under siege in any coordinated sense. It is that the legal and cultural tolerance naturists depend on rarely comes from durable protection. It comes from precedent, private ownership, and municipal habit, all of which can shift without warning, especially if there are not steward groups there to fight for the privileges naturists often take for granted. Denny Blaine shows what it looks like when that tolerance gets codified—but that could have been a very different story if not for the tenacity of the “Friends of” group that sued their way into the lawsuit that sought to keep them out. San Gregorio, with no friends group, is lost without much of a murmur. Hanlan’s Point and Bates Beach both have steward groups, and those groups now have their work cut out for them.

Check out these stories and more from this week on Planet Nude.

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Naturists skinny dip at Blind Creek for International Skinny Dip Day.

TCPalm | Jul. 11

Five hundred seventy one people turned out at Blind Creek in St. Lucie County, Florida for this year’s Skinny Dip Day, hosted by Treasure Coast Naturists. It’s a useful counterpoint to the enforcement stories elsewhere this week, a reminder that the same event drawing sheriff’s deputies in Santa Barbara County drew a five-figure crowd and friendly local coverage in Florida.

Lake Geneva nudists fight for their lake section.

World Radio Switzerland | Jul. 13

A small, thirty-year-old naturist community on an unofficial stretch of Lake Geneva shoreline says it’s facing mounting complaints, police visits, and fines as high as CHF 300. The group maintains the site is about a relationship with nature, not sexual behavior, but says growing publicity and inconsiderate visitors are putting the arrangement at risk. It’s a familiar shape: an informal tolerance, sustained for decades by a small group’s stewardship, coming under pressure once more people find out about it.

Discord Dispatch

The Discord settled into a summer rhythm this week. Members checked in from naked hikes, bike rides, and club events, while new faces continued to join the conversation and plan summer meetups.

Join us at discord.gg/8gt7D6ssMd — or click here to learn more.

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1 Naturist Life

My naked summer at home: gardening, grilling, and getting the chores done

There’s a specific kind of joy in stepping out your back door on a warm morning with absolutely nothing on and realizing your only obstacle is a garden hose. That was my week. Not a special occasion, not a themed event, just an ordinary stretch of summer where I decided the gardening work, the dinner and the laundry could all happen exactly as I was bor…

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11 days ago · 1 like · Dustin Cox

This piece follows an ordinary week spent doing everyday chores nude at home, gardening, grilling, and cleaning, to make the case that domestic nudity, not beach trips or resort weekends, is where naturism actually lives for most practitioners. Weeding becomes meditative without a fabric barrier (with a nod to World Naked Gardening Day), grilling calls for some practical caution around heat and flame, and folding laundry or doing dishes nude turns out to be mundane by design, which is kind of the point. He ties it back to research linking casual social and personal nudity to better body image and lower anxiety, framing the unglamorous repetition of ordinary tasks as what actually shifts how you relate to your own body over time.

1 Naturist Life

1 Naturist Life is a blog and community celebrating the freedom, body positivity, and culture of naturism, offering personal stories, travel tips, and insights into living naturally.

By Dustin Cox

The Orbit is Planet Nude’s weekly digest. Published every Saturday. 🪐

San Gregorio Ranch, the 238-acre San Mateo County property that has served as one of California’s oldest and best-known nude beaches since the 1960s, will open to the public on July 29 as an extension of San Gregorio State Beach, and clothing will be required.

State Parks confirmed this week that the Peninsula Open Space Trust, which purchased the property for $10 million in April, plans to donate it to California State Parks later this year. The ranch opens July 29 under a new agreement between POST, State Parks, and Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks, which will handle day-to-day operations. A State Parks spokesperson told Coastside News that “regulations for state beaches are intended to provide safe and inclusive recreation opportunities for all visitors and do not include clothing-optional recreation.” KQED confirmed that Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks executive director Bonny Hawley said the parks system will “educate the public about the rule change.”

That language is unequivocal. What San Gregorio has been for sixty years, it will no longer be. Rangers retain enforcement discretion, and what actually happens on the sand remains to be seen. But the structural condition that made the tradition possible (private land, tolerant owners, no state oversight) is gone.

To understand what that means, it helps to know what San Gregorio actually was, not just as a nude beach, but as a place in the history of American body freedom. The beach’s clothing-optional use dates to at least the mid-1960s, when San Francisco activist Jeff Poland began practicing nude sunbathing there as an act of civil disobedience, defying California’s indecent exposure laws. The beach gained wider notoriety when Darrell Tarver, a 28-year-old Air Force veteran and student at San Francisco State College, formed the Committee for Free Beaches and circularized campuses across San Francisco and Berkeley. According to a Time magazine account from the era, more than 500 nudists were making their way to San Gregorio each Sunday. Poland was later arrested at the beach. His case reached the California Supreme Court, which ruled in 1972 that nudity alone is not illegal unless accompanied by lewdness, a decision that quietly undergirded the legal tolerance naturists enjoyed there for the next half-century. The beach became one of the most consistently attended nude beaches in the state and developed particular significance for Bay Area LGBTQ+ residents, especially in the 1970s and ’80s, when other public spaces felt less welcoming. As Jesse Monteagudo wrote in Out South Florida, “San Gregorio Beach is America’s oldest nude beach… It is also the gayest, especially the northern end.”

What made San Gregorio work was its precarious arrangement: the beach itself was always public, but access ran through private land, and the landowners tolerated nude use. That arrangement held for decades, through multiple ownership transitions, through the decline of most of California’s naturist clubs, through the formalization of almost every other comparable space. It survived by flying under the radar, which is precisely the quality that state park status eliminates.

Planet Nude has covered this story since April 2025, when POST first announced the acquisition agreement. When we asked POST directly about clothing-optional use, Senior Manager of Media & Communications Marti Tedesco told us the organization is “committed to a future where public parking and access to this property and its beach remain available,” notably sidestepping nude use entirely. That careful language now looks like what it probably was: a preview of this outcome. “I’m not happy about it,” longtime naturist activist Bob Morton, from the American Association for Nude Recreation’s Government Affairs Team, told the Los Angeles Times. “The state park system has decided that all their parks are going to be clothed because God intended you to wear swimming trunks at the beach? It seems counterintuitive. You go there to be one with nature.”

The Press Democrat and others have framed this week’s news as a conservation win: more public access, more coastline protected from development, a milestone in Newsom’s park expansion goals. All of that is true. The price of that conservation, for naturists, is the end of a sixty-year tradition that helped define California’s role in the American body freedom movement.

A public planning process for the property’s long-term management is still ahead. State Parks is required to conduct community outreach before establishing formal policies, and those comment periods are where organized voices can have real impact. No formal advocacy group exists to represent nude beachgoers at San Gregorio. That gap has never cost more than it costs right now. 🪐

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