Toronto’s World Naked Bike Ride takes to the streets Saturday, June 13, as it has every June since 2004. This year a second clothing-optional ride sets off across town at the same hour, and its organizer says the two events stand for opposite things.

The original ride departs from Coronation Park, part of an international protest movement against oil dependence and a celebration of body freedom that organizers say reaches more than 80 cities. A competing ride leaves from Allan Gardens, organized for queer, transgender, and feminist participants by the activist Abuzar Chaudhary. In an interview with TorontoToday, Chaudhary described the relationship between the two events bluntly: “This is very much in opposition.”

Chaudhary, a transgender woman, told the outlet she helped organize the Toronto ride in its first year but stopped participating and launched her own version in 2022, after the event stopped feeling safe to her and other members of the LGBTQ+ community. She said she experienced harassment and inappropriate touching at past rides, and argued that a leaderless event cannot remove people who make women and trans riders uncomfortable. Her ride, by contrast, sets explicit conduct rules and prioritizes racialized, queer, and trans participants. She framed her aim in stark terms, saying she wants the original ride replaced. In a separate interview with NOW Toronto, she estimated that at least 20 people from her own circle had stopped riding.

Gene Dare, who has organized the original ride since 2008, denied Chaudhary’s harassment allegation when reached by TorontoToday and defended the event as open to everyone. He said a second ride “just creates confusion,” and that Chaudhary’s version “doesn’t hold the values of the World Naked Bike Ride,” though when pressed he did not name a specific value at odds. Dare said he was aware of one sexual assault during the ride’s history, roughly eight years ago in Kensington Market, which he reported to police, along with two occasions when he asked aroused participants to step aside. “It’s not a sexual ride and we make sure we enforce that,” he told the outlet.

The dispute sits on a fault line familiar across organized nudism: whether a deliberately leaderless, everyone-welcome model can protect vulnerable participants, or whether safety requires named organizers empowered to set rules and remove people. Chaudhary’s ride has run in some form since 2022, often under the QTCASE and Body Pride banners, with the same anti-colonial, body-politics framing and the same Allan Gardens staging. Both rides begin Saturday afternoon. 🪐

More reading:

An Arizona bill that naturist advocates warn could burden lawful nude publishing was transmitted to Governor Katie Hobbs on Friday, setting up a final decision on a measure the American Association for Nude Recreation has spent months working to defeat.

House Bill 2133, titled the Protect Act, cleared its last legislative hurdle this week. The House adopted the conference version Thursday on a 35–20 vote, a day after the Senate signed off 16–12. The bill now awaits Hobbs’s signature or veto. As of press time, she had not acted.

The legislation expands Arizona’s existing law against nonconsensual sexual imagery to cover AI-generated “synthetic depictions,” and it creates new obligations for commercial websites that publish sexual material. Those sites would have to verify that every person depicted consented and was at least 18 when the image was made, retain those records for seven years, and make them available to the attorney general on request. Violations carry civil penalties of up to $10,000 a day, and up to $250,000 plus attorney fees where a minor is involved.

The bill’s sponsor, Representative Nick Kupper, a Republican from Legislative District 25, has framed it as a proactive response to revenge porn and AI-generated sexual abuse material. He has publicly predicted Hobbs will veto it and accused her office of working against the measure.

For naturists, the concern has never been the bill’s intent but its reach. As Planet Nude reported in March, the worry centers on scope and the chilling effect that broadly written internet laws tend to produce. Clubs and publishers that maintain long-term image archives could struggle to document consent years after the fact, and the seven-year recordkeeping requirement is a particular pressure point in communal settings where participation is fluid and records are not always kept.

AANR Executive Director Erich Schuttauf said the bill's scope is a grave concern, pointing to the difficulty of complying years after an image was taken. He offered the example of a photo of nude beach cleanup volunteers standing beside the trash bags they filled on a project seven years earlier, and the near-impossibility of matching signed releases to everyone in that group. Those are the issues for adults, he noted; the bill also provides no mechanism for a parent to consent to a minor child's image. Schuttauf said amendments made later in the legislative process created some protection for older material, which he called evidence of advocates' efforts, though concerns remain.

AANR has been tracking the bill and working with a lobbyist in Arizona. In the organization’s most recent member update, Government Affairs Team chair Tim Mullins wrote that the effort had reached “the final stretch,” adding, “It may advance to the Governor’s office this week, and we are fighting to get the bill vetoed.”

The association continues to press for a veto, working with a broad coalition of First Amendment supporters, but is not at this point calling for members to contact the governor's office. Whether the effort succeeds will be clear within days. 🪐

This story has been updated with comment from AANR. Planet Nude will continue to follow the governor's decision as it develops.

More reading:

The trial over the future of Denny Blaine Park enters its final hours this week. What began on May 27 as a proceeding projected to run through late June has moved at a pace no one anticipated. Closing arguments are expected Thursday afternoon before Judge Samuel Chung. A ruling is possible that same day.

The shift in the courtroom this week is significant. For the first eight days of trial, the floor belonged to the plaintiff and the City. Wednesday that changes. Friends of Denny Blaine begins presenting its affirmative case—the witnesses and evidence that will ask the judge to see the park not as a nuisance to be abated but as a historically recognized public space with a documented role in Seattle’s queer and naturist communities.

Wednesday’s witnesses include Simon Thornton and Colleen Kimseylove, FoDB’s co-founders, who will speak from personal experience about the park’s meaning and its decades of continuous use. Dr. Loren Atherley, Senior Director of Performance Analytics and Research at the Seattle Police Department, will present data on the success of the City’s abatement plan—the first hard numbers from city sources to enter the record.

Thursday, Perkins Coie lead attorney Susan Foster will deliver closing arguments on behalf of FoDB. The core of FoDB’s case, as Perkins Coie attorney Cassandra Carley put it in opening arguments, comes down to this: “This community includes transgender and nonbinary and asexual individuals for whom Denny Blaine Park is one of the safest places that they have. These are neighbors, co-workers, friends, family, citizens of Seattle who deserve respect.”

The plaintiff has asked the court for a permanent injunction prohibiting all nudity at the park, or closing it entirely. FoDB has argued throughout that simple nudity is lawful, historically documented, and constitutionally protected—and that the abatement plan already in place has addressed the conduct the plaintiff actually objects to. One of the plaintiff’s own witnesses, Meghan Harman, conceded under cross-examination that the park should remain open and that nudity is a protected right.

FoDB has invited press and supporters to attend this week, noting that trial coverage has skewed heavily toward the plaintiff’s opening witnesses. “This is an opportunity for balance, fairness, and representing the full picture,” they wrote in a press release Tuesday morning. If you’re in Seattle and want to attend, court is in session Wednesday and Thursday at King County Courthouse, Courtroom E-955, ninth floor, 516 Third Avenue—9am to noon and 1:30 to 4pm. Follow @friendsofdennyblaine for updates.

Planet Nude will have outcome coverage whenever a ruling is issued. 🪐

More reading:

Read more coverage on Denny Blaine

Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Apple and Google on Monday that they have until September to build software into phones and tablets that detects and blocks nude images on children’s devices, or face a law that forces them to. Adults could still take and view nude content, but only after an age check unlocks it. Speaking at London Tech Week, he called it a national first and said the goal was to make it “impossible for children to take, share or view nude images.”

The Home Office wants the blocking to run across the whole device by default, including the camera and third-party apps, switched off only by proving you are over 18. Child-protection groups welcomed it. The National Crime Agency, which says it fields roughly 1,700 abuse referrals a week, called device-level blocking a way to stop abuse before it starts.

Whether it can even be built is contested. The director of the Age Verification Providers Association said the government is mandating an outcome “for which the technical and legal infrastructure doesn’t yet exist anywhere in the world.” Privacy groups were blunter: Big Brother Watch called the plans outrageous and warned of “the death of anonymity and internet privacy,” and the Open Rights Group said the approach would turn every phone into a surveillance device. The worry is not idle. Apple proposed on-device scanning for abuse material in 2021 and abandoned it after researchers warned it amounted to a back door in every phone.

None of this requires pretending the harms are not real. Grooming, sextortion, and the coercion of children into producing images of themselves are devastating, and a serious policy response is overdue. The question is what this particular remedy does, and to whom.

Read the government’s own language and you will see three different things treated as one. Starmer’s sentences slide from “nude images” to “sexually explicit images” to “pornography” as if they were synonyms. The mechanism is described over and over as nudity detection. Not abuse detection. Not grooming detection. Nudity.

That is the whole story for anyone who believes the unclothed body is not inherently sexual, which is the founding premise of naturism. The remedy does not target abuse. It targets the naked human body as a category and then sells adults the key. The default state Britain is proposing is one where a body, any body, is something a device refuses to show you until you prove you are old enough to be trusted with it.

It helps to be clear about what this software actually looks for. A nudity detector does not understand context. It cannot tell why a photo was taken, who is in it, or whether anyone was harmed. Its one job is to spot exposed skin and flag it. It has no way to tell a teenager’s coerced image from a toddler on a beach, a breastfeeding mother, a medical photo, or a family at a clothing-optional resort. To the software they are the same thing, because the same body is in the frame.

Now put that filter on a naturist family’s phone. It does not see a healthy family living a way of life that is legal across much of the world. It sees an exposed body and it blocks. The naturist community is, almost by definition, the population a body-detecting filter aimed at minors captures most efficiently. We are collateral the policy’s own framing cannot even register, because in its vocabulary there is no such thing as innocent nudity to begin with.

This is not a slippery slope. It is what the tool does on day one. A system that cannot tell a body from a crime will treat every body as a possible crime, and the only remedy it offers is to prove you are an adult before it will show you a human being.

The conflation goes deeper than the software. The government’s logic runs: abuse images contain nudity, so blocking nudity prevents abuse. But the harm in child sexual abuse material is the abuse, not the presence of skin in a photograph. Build the intervention around nudity instead of exploitation and you quietly move the wrongness from the act to the body. You teach a generation, at the level of the device in their hand, that the unclothed human form is the thing to be detected and switched off. For a movement that has spent a century arguing the opposite, that is not a side effect. That is the message.

A policy genuinely aimed at grooming and extortion would go after the predatory contact, the coercion, the distribution networks, the platform features the NCA itself says offenders exploit. Instead Britain has reached for the bluntest available instrument, made the naked body unrenderable by default, and called it child safety. The first thing is not the second thing. A century of naturist argument rests on the difference, and this week the government built that difference into the operating system. 🪐

More reading:

Full Tan Sun Club, the family nudist campground near Sprakers, New York, will not open to the public this year. A recording on the club’s phone line tells callers that Full Tan is closed for the 2026 season for property improvements and expects to reopen in spring 2027, with updates to follow on its website and Facebook page.

The closure follows a stretch that had left the club’s status unclear. Full Tan’s website, fulltansunclub.com, currently displays only a placeholder image thanking visitors for their patience while the site is updated, with no schedule, rates, or contact details. In a thread on the subreddit r/UpstateNYNudists, users had been speculating for weeks about a possible closure or sale, with one noting that the club had gone members-only and encouraging others to call the owner directly. A listing on Yelp, meanwhile, has flagged the business as permanently closed—a designation the club’s own recording contradicts, since it points to a temporary pause rather than a permanent end.

Founded in 1968, Full Tan sits on 80 acres in the Mohawk Valley, west of the Capital District, and has long been one of the region’s few coed naturist clubs. It changed hands in 2019, when its current owner took over from the couples who had run it for decades, and it welcomed members of nearby Juniper Woods after that club dropped its clothing-optional status ahead of the 2021 season.

A season devoted to improvements may address concerns that have surfaced in recent visitor reviews, several of which described the grounds and facilities as dated or in need of upkeep. If the work freshens the pool, cabins, and common areas, the pause could leave Full Tan on stronger footing when it reopens—a welcome outcome in a region that has steadily lost naturist space. Split Rock closed in 2020, Abbott’s Glenn in 2021, leaving naturists in the Capital District with fewer nearby options each season.

For now, the club’s recorded message is the only public statement on its plans, and Planet Nude will share further details as they become available. 🪐

The trial over the future of Denny Blaine Park completed its first week in King County Superior Court, and by most accounts it is moving faster than expected. Friends of Denny Blaine tells Planet Nude the proceedings are running four to five days ahead of schedule—meaning the judge could reach a decision well before the late June timeline originally projected.

The first week belonged to the plaintiff. Denny Blaine Park for All called its witnesses, presented photo and video evidence, and made the case that the City’s abatement plan has failed to curb lewd behavior at the park. Spokesperson Lee Keller set the tone in opening arguments: “This is not about nudity per se. It’s about what happens in that park that’s illegal. There is daily masturbation. There’s people having sex.”

The most dramatic moment came on Day Two, when Judge Chung reviewed videos recorded from Stuart Sloan’s property showing sex acts in the park. Sloan’s house manager Carrie Christensen testified that the city’s response has done little to curb indecent exposure, saying she knows of only three arrests out of what she described as hundreds of instances of sexual conduct. Christensen also said she is not opposed to public nudity, which is legal in Seattle, but that at Denny Blaine nudity “invites a darker element.”

FoDB pushed back. Nicole Baich, an FoDB member whose own image appeared as an evidentiary exhibit in court—she was photographed standing naked at a gap in the park’s new fencing, which she described as an act of protest against the city’s changes—told KUOW that what the court was seeing was atypical. “It’s unfair that an entire historic community and culture is collectively being punished for some bad apples,” she said. She also noted that publicity from the lawsuit has drawn more visitors to what was once a little-known space, and that “no other park is surveilled like Denny Blaine.”

A notable concession emerged from the plaintiff’s own witnesses. Meghan Harman, testifying on behalf of Denny Blaine Park for All, agreed with FoDB on the core principles at stake: that the park should stay open, that nudity is a protected right and should be allowed, and that lewd behavior should be separately enforced and prosecuted.

Perkins Coie attorney Cassandra Carley, arguing on behalf of FoDB, framed the stakes plainly in opening arguments: “This community includes transgender and nonbinary and asexual individuals for whom Denny Blaine Park is one of the safest places that they have. These are neighbors, co-workers, friends, family, citizens of Seattle who deserve respect.”

The City presented its case beginning Thursday. With one remaining plaintiff witness still abroad, the plaintiff is expected to resume briefly Monday before the City wraps up. Friends of Denny Blaine is projected to call its first witness as early as Wednesday June 11.

That’s when the trial shifts in character. FoDB’s witnesses include Washington State Architectural Historian Michael Houser, who will testify about the park’s placement on the Heritage Register; Dr. Kevin Delucio, whose expert testimony will address the documented psychological benefits of body-positive spaces for transgender and non-binary people; and Dr. Neil Malamuth, a UCLA psychologist whose testimony will address decades of naturism research and the absence of any causal link between public nudity and sexual misconduct. The week two witnesses are the heart of FoDB’s affirmative case—and the testimony most likely to matter to Planet Nude readers.

Planet Nude will have continuing coverage. 🪐

Editor’s note: The Stranger published a detailed week-one recap on June 5 including testimony from Stuart Sloan and his wife Molly Nordstrom. Recommended reading: Property Owners Around Denny Blaine Took the Stand This Week.

Read more coverage on Denny Blaine

A notice on the website of Emerald Lake Resort, the nudist club in Porter, Texas that has billed itself for years as “Houston’s only nude beach,” now asks guests to stay clothed in its common areas.

The statement, posted under the name “Resort Management” and addressed to “Members and Residents,” describes a revised dress code that took effect immediately and remains in place “until further notice.” Guests are asked to keep covered in common areas, with a light wrap, shawl, thin robe, or towel offering “basic coverage of private areas.” Management frames the change as part of a broader set of “improvements” to the facilities, references unspecified “fee adjustments,” and calls the measures temporary, language the notice itself softens further by calling them steps “for now” and part of “this transition.”

The notice does not explain what the improvements are, how long the transition is expected to last, or what prompted it. Reached by phone and email over several days, resort staff said they could not answer questions about the policy, and the resort’s owners did not make themselves available for an interview.

The property dates to the 1980s, but its life as a nudist resort began in 2001, on a spring-fed lake about a half hour north of downtown Houston. It is affiliated with the American Association for Nude Recreation and The Naturist Society, and nudity has been required, weather permitting, with newcomers allowed to stay wrapped only until they grow comfortable. The new notice inverts that arrangement, at least in the common areas, and at least for now.

For most of the past two decades, Emerald Lake has been a fixture of nudist life around Houston, a wooded community of members and RVers built around the lake. In recent years it has leaned more social and event-driven, drawing weekend crowds to a place that bills itself as the only one of its kind in the region. A move away from nude recreation, even a partial one, would mark a real change for a club that has defined itself by it.

What the notice leaves unanswered is whether this is a renovation-period accommodation or the beginning of a more permanent move away from the resort’s nudist identity. The careful, provisional language cuts both ways. A club making temporary changes during construction would write something like this. So would a club managing a longer transition it is not yet ready to announce.

There is reason to watch closely. Development has been pressing in on Emerald Lake for years. As far back as 2019, residents told ABC13 Houston they worried about new construction near the wooded property, as the Grand Parkway extension advanced and an adjacent lot was cleared. Across the country, established clubs from California to Georgia’s Serendipity Park have faced similar pressure from rising land values and encroaching neighbors.

For now, the only confirmed change is the one posted on the resort’s own homepage: at a club that has spent more than two decades asking guests to take everything off, management is asking them to keep something on.

Planet Nude will update this story as more becomes clear. 🪐

Have you been to Emerald Lake, or do you know what’s happening out there? I’d like to hear from you. Send me a note at evan@planetnude.co.

More to explore:

TORONTO — As Pride Month gets underway, part of Hanlan’s Point Beach—the historic clothing-optional shore where Canada’s queer liberation movement held its first gathering in 1971—remains closed to visitors due to severe shoreline erosion and high lake levels.

The City of Toronto blocked off a large southern section in recent weeks as rough conditions made the area unsafe. Advocates say the closure is the latest sign of a decade of neglect.

“Hanlan’s Point as a beach has been decimated,” Travis Myers, co-founder of Friends of Hanlan’s, told CityNews. “There used to be about 15 to 20 meters of shoreline. That’s completely gone.”

The site of the 1971 Gay Day Picnic—now recognized as Canada’s first Pride event—has itself been lost to the lake. “That historic place in our civil rights movement, the site of the first Pride, is underwater and has been,” Myers said.

The closure comes three years after Toronto City Council unanimously passed a motion recognizing Hanlan’s as a historically queer space, expanding its clothing-optional zone to the full two-kilometer beach, and directing the city to invest in ecological restoration. Critics say the symbolic wins haven’t translated into the basic upkeep the beach needs to survive.

The timing compounds concerns for organizers of Lez Beach, an annual June event for lesbian, queer, trans, and non-binary visitors. Co-organizer Cris Nippard said routing everyone to the one open section puts the most marginalized visitors at risk. “Having everyone kind of mixed into this one very small part of the beach is harming the people who are the most marginalized,” she said.

Councillor Ausma Malik, who co-sponsored the 2023 motion, called the erosion “an urgent issue” and said she moved a motion at Council last week directing the city to restore access by June 1. As of press time, the status of that reopening had not been confirmed.

A feasibility study on long-term shoreline protection is due by year’s end, with new funding to be requested in future budgets. The city notes it placed 50,000 tons of sand on the southern end of the beach between 2021 and 2023 — advocates say that work hasn’t kept pace with the rate of erosion.

“It’s a pretty easy request to put sand on a beach,” Nippard said. “Pretty much every other coastal city in the world does that easily.” 🪐

More reading:

Editor's note: After this piece was published, @safety.bsky.app announced it is rolling back the account-level moderation changes described here, writing that the changes "missed the mark." The accuracy concerns documented in this piece remain unresolved.

Buried in Bluesky’s May 28 release notes for version 1.122 was a line that’s been generating significant conversation on the platform: the app now supports “expanded moderation labeling at the account level.” For creators who post naturist content or any content that involves non-sexual nudity, the implications go well beyond a UI tweak.

Until now, the primary concern was post-level misclassification: Bluesky’s AI flagging an individual photo as adult content when it wasn’t. That’s been a documented, persistent problem for the naturist community since the platform’s early days. The new expansion means that pattern can now propagate upward, from a post to an entire account.

The scale of the problem is documented in the platform’s own transparency report, published in January. In 2025, the platform applied 16.49 million labels to content, a 200% increase year-over-year. The overwhelming majority, 95.34%, were applied automatically, with no human review. The “adult” label alone was applied 10.79 million times, “suggestive” 3.42 million times, and “nudity” 389,440 times. Bluesky’s own report acknowledges the accuracy problem plainly: with roughly half a million media posts uploaded every day, even a 1% error rate produces thousands of wrongly-labeled posts daily.

This publication deals with these failures regularly. Legitimate news stories, artistic illustration, and stock photography have all been flagged here. Bluesky gives creators the option to self-label content as non-sexual nudity, which is supposed to route it away from the adult content classifier. In practice, the automated system overrides that self-label anyway. Appeals, the supposed human backstop for automation errors, rarely resolve anything. What Bluesky markets as user control is, for a publication covering naturism as a serious beat, closer to security theater. (We’d note that anecdote is ours, not Bluesky’s data.)

None of this is without precedent. The history of how naturist and body-freedom communities ended up on Bluesky is itself a story about automated moderation failures. Tumblr was an early dispersal event. In November 2018, after being suspended from Apple’s App Store over child exploitation material that had slipped through its filters, Tumblr responded by banning all NSFW content, enforced by machine-learning classification. The algorithm proved immediately and spectacularly unreliable, flagging vomiting unicorns, raw chicken, and boot cleaners as adult content within a day of launch. The communities that had built homes there over a decade were erased anyway. Tumblr lost 30% of its monthly traffic within three months and was sold shortly after for less than $3 million, a fraction of the $1.1 billion Yahoo had paid for it. Many of those displaced communities found their way to Twitter, which under its original ownership maintained relatively permissive policies on nudity, though naturists had been present across platforms long before that. When Elon Musk’s takeover made Twitter inhospitable, Bluesky drew a significant wave of arrivals: decentralized, nudity-permitted-with-tagging, and philosophically committed to user control. Naturists built starter packs, established community, and made it work. Meanwhile, Tumblr never solved the underlying problem. As recently as March 2026, its automated system mass-banned dozens of accounts in a single afternoon, with reports suggesting trans women were disproportionately targeted. The platforms change. The pattern doesn’t.

What makes the v1.122 expansion harder to square is that Bluesky’s stated 2026 roadmap explicitly lists improving the accuracy of its automated adult labels as a priority. They’ve acknowledged the system misfires. They’ve committed to fixing it. And then shipped an update that expands its reach.

To be fair, Bluesky’s stated philosophy has always been to label rather than remove, to give users control over what they see rather than make unilateral deletion decisions. That’s a more defensible approach than outright censorship and meaningfully different from how platforms like Instagram or Facebook handle nudity. The transparency report notes that in 96.57% of cases, labels are applied to specific content rather than accounts. The v1.122 update shifts that ratio, if only at the margins.

But for naturist creators, the margins are where the problem lives. An AI system that can’t reliably distinguish a nude body from a sexualized one is now empowered to mark not just a post but a person. The appeals process exists, Bluesky does allow users to contest labels, but at 10.79 million automated adult labels in a single year, volume makes individual appeals functionally inadequate as a systemic remedy.

Bluesky has positioned itself as a principled alternative to the anything-goes chaos of X and the sanitized paternalism of Meta’s properties. That positioning depends on the premise that its moderation is accurate enough to justify its reach. The data from its own report suggests it isn’t there yet. Expanding account-level labeling before fixing that accuracy problem is the wrong order of operations. 🪐

More reading:

Good news from Brazil’s interior. The Cachoeira do Segredo, a privately operated ecotourism attraction on the edge of the Chapada dos Veadeiros UNESCO World Heritage landscape in Goiás, has announced it will open a dedicated naturist area this June. No court order required. No city council vote. A business simply decided naturists are welcome.

“The proposal is to offer a welcoming, respectful, and inclusive environment, valuing different cultures, lifestyles, and experiences, so that all audiences can feel represented within the attraction,” the site’s management told G1.

The space will be one of the attraction’s seven natural pools, set in a more secluded section of the trail and marked with signage reading “Piscina do Nudismo.” The rules are familiar to anyone who has spent time in naturist spaces: nudity only in the designated pool, no photography, no minors. The rest of the trail and its other six pools remain open to all visitors unchanged.

Before you plan a visit, a few things to know. This is a private operator’s decision, not a federal or municipal authorization. The Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park itself has no naturist designation; the Cachoeira do Segredo is a separate private attraction about 230 kilometers from Brasília. Nudism in the region is also not entirely new. Local tour guide Karime Abdala, who has worked in the Chapada dos Veadeiros for six years, told G1 that she has taken tourists to practice nudism at the nearby Cachoeira dos Macaquinhos, about 50 kilometers from Alto Paraíso de Goiás. “In the beginning some feel shy, but then they start getting more comfortable,” she said.

The Chapada dos Veadeiros draws ecotourists from across Brazil and internationally, and a naturist option at one of its most visited waterfalls puts nudism in a landscape most people associate with adventure and connection with nature, not controversy. After months of watching naturists in Santa Catarina fight for their right to exist on a shoreline they have used for decades, it is good to be reminded that the story of naturism in Brazil is not only about what is being taken away. The new area opens in June. 🪐

More reading:

Editor’s note: Quotes translated from Portuguese using automated translation tools.

The world’s longest-running naturist magazine is under new ownership and ending its print run—simultaneously.

As of May 7, ownership of H&E Naturist transferred from Hawk Editorial Ltd, long helmed by Sam Hawcroft, to EJS Communications Ltd, a company owned by editor Paul Rouse and his wife and business partner Kate Rouse. Rouse, who has been involved with H&E for 19 years and has served as editor for the past four, continues in that role and assumes the publisher title as well.

The ownership change comes with two significant announcements. Beginning with the June issue, available online June 1, H&E will be a digital-only publication, ending its print edition after a continuous run that is unmatched in the history of nudist publishing. Beginning with that same issue, the magazine announced it will also no longer carry adult services classifieds or personals. “We do not feel that this content has anything to do with genuine naturism,” Rouse wrote in a statement accompanying the announcement.

The economics of the print decision are straightforward. Subscriptions declined significantly after COVID, distribution costs rose, and a specialist title on a relatively small print run couldn’t sustain it. H&E has offered a digital edition alongside print for some time, so the readership was already there. The digital edition will continue through Pocketmags, with archive access dating back to 2007.

The move also reflects where naturist media broadly has been heading—though H&E is going further than most. British Naturism’s quarterly BN Magazine—the closest peer H&E has in its home market—offers members both print and digital editions, with a digital archive going back to 2004. Across the Atlantic, AANR’s The Bulletin and The Naturist Society Foundation’s N Magazine have both added digital editions while maintaining print. Podcasts, blogs, and digital-only publications like Planet Nude have built substantial audiences and a larger nudist media ecosystem entirely outside the print world. H&E is now making the commitment those organizational titles haven’t: dropping print altogether.

H&E is also the oldest among its print contemporaries. The magazine’s official founding claim is 1900, though publishing historians have placed the actual date closer to 1902, when a British health publication called Vim first appeared. It became Health & Vim, then Health & Efficiency in 1918, covering diet, exercise, and herbalism before nudism was anywhere in the picture. Whatever the correct founding date, no other nudist magazine still publishing comes close to this run. By the 1920s, as British sun clubs began to form, the magazine was already championing the nudist cause, running reader letters, articles, and photographs. By the postwar era it had absorbed several competing naturist publications and earned a reputation as the nudist bible.

That the magazine is still here, still publishing, and now navigating a digital transition under committed new ownership is itself a remarkable fact. Rouse, for his part, seems clear on what he's inherited. “H&E has always been about more than nudity,” he wrote. “At its best, it represents freedom, confidence, nature, travel, culture, friendship and the simple pleasure of being comfortable in your own skin.” 🪐

Trial opens this morning in King County Superior Court, beginning what is expected to be a weeks-long proceeding over the future of Seattle’s historic nude beach. The case is scheduled to run through approximately June 26, Monday through Thursday, with daily sessions from 9am to noon and 1:30 to 4pm.

If you’re local and want to attend, proceedings are open to the public at King County Courthouse, Courtroom E-955, ninth floor, 516 Third Avenue, Seattle. Arrive by 8:30am to allow time for security screening. There is no public livestream.

Planet Nude will be following the trial as closely as we can from afar and will publish updates as significant developments unfold. For background on the case and what’s at stake, see our previous coverage below. 🪐

Catch up:

More on Denny Blaine Park

Just days before trial begins in the lawsuit that could end nude use at Denny Blaine Park, Friends of Denny Blaine is asking Seattle’s City Council to do something the state of Washington has already done: formally recognize the beach as a site of LGBTQ+ historic significance. The proposed resolution, transmitted to the Council through the Mayor’s Office in February, calls for collaborative efforts to document and interpret the park’s queer history, and encourages the installation of a Pride flag or interpretive signage within the park. It would add city-level recognition to the Washington State historic designation the park already holds. The Council has not scheduled a vote.

The resolution is less about a flag or a plaque than about something FoDB has been building methodically since the beginning: an official, documented, legally legible record of the park’s identity as both a nude beach and a queer cultural space. That record now runs through the Washington Heritage Register, a 23-page trial brief filed by one of the region’s largest law firms, and thousands of petition signatures and personal testimonies. The Council resolution, if passed, would be another layer in that foundation.

For most of their history, nude beaches have been defended on familiar grounds: that nudity harms no one, that personal freedom deserves protection, that the state has no business regulating the unclothed body. These arguments have their place, and FoDB makes versions of them. The trial brief argues that nude expression is constitutionally protected, that the park’s clothing-optional character is historically documented, and that the social benefits of body-positive space are real and measurable. Those are nudity arguments, straightforwardly made.

What’s different here is that they don’t stand alone. They’re made through and alongside a parallel claim: that Denny Blaine’s nude culture and its queer identity are not separate things that happen to coexist at the same beach, but a single, braided inheritance—one that has shaped the same community, in the same place, for the same decades. The Heritage Register listing, the trial brief’s testimony about psychological safety for trans and non-binary users, the Council resolution’s call to formally document that history—all of it is building toward the same argument. You cannot protect one without protecting the other, and you cannot erase one without erasing the other.

That fusion is what makes this approach harder to incrementally erode than older, more abstract liberty arguments. A beach defended on grounds of personal freedom can be regulated into irrelevance one restriction at a time. A beach defended as a historically documented cultural space—where the nudity is part of the history, not incidental to it—becomes something else: a site whose character is officially recognized, publicly recorded, and legally meaningful. Each restriction becomes an act of erasure rather than merely a management decision.

That distinction will look familiar to anyone who followed the fight for Hanlan’s Point in Toronto. In 2023, when city planners proposed building a concert and festival venue adjacent to one of Canada’s only official clothing-optional beaches—a beach that had also hosted Canada’s first Pride gathering in 1971—a queer-led coalition called Hands Off Hanlan’s responded by doing something similar to what FoDB has done at Denny Blaine: they documented the beach’s history before anyone asked them to. They produced a 72-page report establishing Hanlan’s as the oldest surviving queer space in Canada, its ecological significance, and its probable status as the world’s first legally designated nude beach—a designation dating to 1894, recovered from city archives by gay naturist activists in the late 1990s. Toronto City Council passed a motion recognizing Hanlan’s as a historically queer space. The concert venue was killed. The clothing-optional zone was expanded to encompass the entire beach. Last year, Canada Post put it on a stamp.

The fights are not identical, and the legal contexts differ—Canadian and Washington State law are not the same, and Hanlan’s was never subject to a nuisance lawsuit of the kind Denny Blaine now faces. But both have proceeded through similar logic: that the nudity and the queer identity of the space are not separate things to be defended separately, but a single cultural inheritance worth protecting as such. And in both cases, that argument was built from the ground up by the communities who use the space—not handed down from established naturist organizations, but assembled through research, testimony, legal strategy, and the kind of sustained public documentation that turns informal use into official history.

Denny Blaine’s outcome is not yet written. Hanlan’s took years of organizing before it became a stamp. What FoDB has built—in the Heritage Register, in the courtroom, and now before the City Council—is the same kind of record: one that makes the beach’s character legible to institutions that might otherwise look away. Whether that record holds is what May 27 will begin to answer.

The Council has not scheduled a vote on the resolution. Trial begins May 27. 🪐

More:

More on Denny Blaine

The water at Denny Blaine still looks calm. The chain-link fencing and green privacy tarps do not. What was once an informal nude beach known mostly to Seattle locals has become one of the most closely watched public nudity disputes in the United States—and on May 27, it goes to trial.

When neighbors first began pressuring Seattle to do something about Denny Blaine Park, the argument was simple: the beach had become disorderly, and nearby property owners deserved relief. Three years later, that argument is about to be tested in court—and the defense that has assembled against it is unlike anything the American nudist movement has seen in a long time.

Friends of Denny Blaine filed its trial brief on May 13, two weeks before the case goes before King County Superior Court Judge Samuel S. Chung. The document, prepared by the group’s pro-bono legal team at Perkins Coie, runs 23 pages. It is methodical where it needs to be and sharp where it can be. What it is not is defensive. The filing does not ask the court to tolerate nudity at Denny Blaine. It argues that nudity there is lawful, historically documented, constitutionally protected, and—for a significant portion of the people who rely on it—central to their sense of safety and belonging in public space.

That is a different scale of argument than this beach has been given before. And it arrives at a different moment.

The story of Denny Blaine has moved in stages that Planet Nude readers have followed closely. In 2023, the fight was about preserving what existed. In 2024, it became about documenting that what existed had a real cultural history—one serious enough to earn placement on the Washington Heritage Register. In 2025, the legal and enforcement pressure intensified: nudity itself was declared a public nuisance by a judge, police briefly escalated enforcement before walking it back, and a fence divided the beach into zones. Now, in 2026, the defense is arguing something that goes further still—that nude public culture may itself carry constitutional protection, and that stripping it from this beach would erase documented history.

The brief’s constitutional core rests on a February 2026 Washington Supreme Court ruling, Matter of Recall of Lauser, which reaffirmed that both state and federal constitutions protect nude expression. The case involved a transgender city councilmember who stood topless at a Transgender Day of Visibility rally with “MY BODY IS NOT A SIN” written across her chest—and won. FoDB will argue at trial that at least some of the nudity at Denny Blaine is similarly expressive—artistic, political, communal—and that a blanket ban would therefore constitute an unconstitutional prior restraint. The section header the attorneys chose for this portion of the brief is blunt: “Nude is not lewd.”

Washington law supports the distinction. Under RCW 9A.88.010, indecent exposure requires a lascivious or sexual element. Simple nudity does not meet that standard. Plaintiff Denny Blaine Park for All has itself conceded in its complaint that nudity which does not constitute indecent exposure is not a crime. FoDB’s filing holds that concession up and asks the court to follow it to its logical conclusion.

The brief also previews expert testimony that will be significant to anyone who follows naturism research. Dr. Neil Malamuth, a UCLA professor of psychology whose work focuses on sexual aggression and media effects, is expected to testify that the scientific literature—including decades of naturism studies—does not support any causal link between public nudity and sexual misconduct, and in fact associates naturist exposure with neutral or positive outcomes. A second expert, SPD criminologist Dr. Loren Atherley, will argue that the spike in incident reporting reflects what he characterizes as moral panic bias on the part of the plaintiffs, not an actual increase in underlying behavior.

That behavioral portrait of the plaintiffs is where the brief gets most pointed. According to the filing, Stuart Sloan directed a private security service to photograph all nude parkgoers, had trees removed or trimmed to improve sightlines into the park, and installed cameras that now extend over park property. The infrastructure, the brief suggests, increasingly resembles controlled territory. Other witnesses named in the filing are described as monitoring camera feeds remotely in the evenings, then reporting harm to their mental health from conduct they have actively sought out. As the filing puts it: “Plaintiff’s members have installed cameras to see what they otherwise could not, simply to capture more of the very conduct they claim alarms them.”

The property value argument fares no better. The brief details neighbors who petitioned for downward tax valuations on park-adjacent homes while simultaneously claiming the park had damaged their property values—then sold those same properties at substantial profit. One home changed hands for more than double its purchase price. The buyer, the filing notes, had previously co-signed a petition complaining about the park.

All of this sits inside a larger philosophical argument that the brief makes clearly, if not always explicitly. The plaintiffs’ theory of public space is that it should minimize discomfort for adjacent property owners. FoDB’s theory is that public space belongs to the public—including people whose bodies, identities, or forms of expression might make others uncomfortable. Denny Blaine, the filing argues, has been exactly that kind of space for decades: a place where transgender and non-binary people, queer communities, and nudists have been able to exist comfortably in their own bodies, in public, without apology.

There is an irony worth sitting with as this case heads into court. A beach long valued precisely because it existed outside rigid social structures is now being defended through the machinery of institutions—court rooms, historians, constitutional lawyers, expert witnesses, and legal precedent. Whether that machinery will work to protect either public or private interests is the ultimate question. 🪐

The trial is expected to stretch over multiple weeks and begins May 27. The full trial brief, filed May 13 in King County Superior Court, is available below. Planet Nude will have continuing coverage as the trial proceeds.

Fdb Trial Brief

433KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

More reading:

More on Denny Blaine

The International Naturist Federation (INF-FNI) and France’s Fédération Française de Naturisme (FFN) are hosting a two-day academic seminar in Paris on June 13 and 14—the first in what’s intended to become an annual international event.

The 1st International Summer Naturist University will focus on The Heritage of Naturism: Historical Foundations and Future Directions, bringing together researchers and presenters working on naturist history and philosophy. The event takes place at ESPACE MVG, in conjunction with Michael von Graffenried’s Nu au Paradis photo exhibition.

“The success and growth of naturism has resulted in a watering down of the fundamental ideas behind naturism to the point that for many people, it’s become a mere leisure activity,” said INF-FNI president Stéphane Deschênes. “The International Naturist Federation and its 40 national federations are committed to restoring the values of the movement that motivated the pioneers over a century ago.”

Attendance is available in person or remotely via webinar—remote participants will join via Microsoft Teams, which supports real-time caption translation. In-person space is extremely limited and priority goes to those involved in studying naturism. Sessions will be conducted in English or French.

Pre-registration is required at fienta.com/international-summer-naturist-university. The conference is less than five weeks away. 🪐

A Minneapolis suburb has passed a local ordinance banning female topfreedom in public—a direct response to a Minnesota Supreme Court decision that naturists and topfreedom advocates celebrated as a modest but meaningful legal victory.

On May 4, the Blaine City Council voted to update its nudity ordinance to explicitly include female breasts, defining nudity as the exposure of “the female breast below a point immediately above the top of the areola.” The move came after Ward 2 Council Member Leslie Larson raised concerns about the city’s public beach.

The ordinance is a workaround. In April 2025, the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously reversed the indecent exposure conviction of Eloisa Rubi Plancarte, a Rochester woman cited for walking through a gas station parking lot with her breasts exposed. Writing for the court, Justice Karl Procaccini concluded that “lewd” exposure requires conduct of a sexual nature—and that bare breasts alone don’t meet that threshold. Planet Nude covered the ruling at the time.

A concurring opinion by Justice Sarah Hennesy went further, arguing that female breasts aren’t “private parts” under the law at all. “Interpreting ‘private parts’ to include female—and not male—breasts,” she wrote, “would lead to the continued stigmatization of female breasts as inherently sexual.”

The court left the equal protection question unresolved. Blaine's response illustrates why that matters. The ruling narrowed how the state can prosecute topfreedom—but it never established that women have a constitutional right to be topfree. Without that finding, local governments retain room to write their own, stricter definitions of nudity. Blaine isn't defying the Supreme Court; it's legislating into the gap the court declined to close. Until someone challenges a local ordinance on equal protection grounds and forces that question back up the appellate ladder, suburbs like Blaine can keep doing exactly this. 🪐

More

Brighton’s World Naked Bike Ride won’t happen on June 13 as planned. The organizers announced on May 8 that they’re postponing the event after a far-right march and counter-protest were both announced for the same day.

“As organisers, we feel we will be unable to guarantee the safety of riders, which is our main concern,” the WNBR Brighton committee wrote on Facebook. “This was not a decision we took lightly but amongst the committee members we felt we had no choice.”

The clashing event is a march being organized by so-called “Patriots” groups calling for “mass deportations”—a demonstration that anti-fascist organizers have characterized as a direct call for the ethnic cleansing of Brighton’s diverse communities. A Carnival Against Fascism has been announced in response, along with a separate counter-protest organized by Brighton and Hove Stand Up to Racism, beginning at Brighton Station at 11am on June 13. The naked bike ride would have assembled at noon.

The timing stings. This would have been their 20th ride. “We are particularly sad as this will be our 20th ride and we’re looking forward to making it the best yet,” the committee wrote. “This can still be the case with your support.” Organizers say they hope to reschedule for late summer or early autumn.

The Brighton ride is one of dozens of independently organized naked bike rides held each Summer in cities around the world, each combining protest against car culture and fossil fuel dependency with a celebration of body freedom and cyclist vulnerability.

It’s a harder call than London had to make this season. WNBR London proceeded last month despite pressure of its own—re-routing their planned routes amid an active petition seeking to ban the event. Brighton’s organizers faced a different situation: A full stand-down. 🪐

More

A group called Bluegrass State Naturists has been posting online about what it calls the “Doe Run Lake Nude Recreation Area,” pointing to a trail near the top of the dam at Doe Run Lake Park in Kenton County, Kentucky. Local officials have responded with a clear rejection, warning that anyone found nude in the park faces arrest. The story has since spread across regional news and Facebook, often reported as though a nudist park has simply materialized, which is not quite what's happening.1

The group is now planning to show up. A public event for Memorial Day weekend, May 23-26, has been posted on Facebook, co-hosted by Bluegrass State Naturists and a related account called Friends of Doe Run Lake Nude Area. The event listing includes a disclaimer: “The area has been set aside and nudists hidden from view in wooded areas as state law requires in Kentucky.” In an email to Planet Nude, a spokesperson for Bluegrass State Naturists described the effort as a response to Kentucky's near-total absence of legal naturist spaces. Memorial Day weekend will be the first real test of whether this effort moves from online declaration to physical presence—and how the county responds.

There’s not a lot of public information about the Bluegrass State Naturists. They are notably distinct from Bluegrass Naturists, a separate Kentucky naturist organization with no apparent connection to the Doe Run effort. The group appears to have roots in an encounter at the park itself. A review posted to TripAdvisor for Doe Run Lake Park, apparently by someone involved with Bluegrass State Naturists, describes visiting Doe Run in July 2025 and finding a nude couple already sunbathing at a creek area at the end of old Bullock Pen Road. “We realized this was being used as a nudist area because there isn't one in Kentucky,” the review reads, describing a decision to “recreate our organization” and formally designate the spot. The area in question sits at the far end of a trail, more than a mile from the main road, in a park that spans more than 180 acres surrounding a roughly 30-acre lake. In other words: informal nude use was already happening. The group is attempting to formalize it.

Whether that formalization has any legal standing is a different question. Bluegrass State Naturists has argued that a Kentucky statute from 1942 permits public nudity for naturists and their organizations. That language also appears on the Wikipedia entry for “List of social nudity places in North America,” where Doe Run Lake is listed along with the group’s Instagram handle—and appears to be the basis of the “internationally listed” claim the group has repeated across its posts. Other Wikipedia editors have since added a note that the group has not received permission from Kenton County and that the park is not an official or legal naturist recreation area.2

The actual statute, KRS Chapter 232, tells a more complicated story. It permits nudist societies to operate in Kentucky provided they obtain a county-issued license, maintain a member register available to the sheriff, and locate their activities on private property effectively screened from public view. It is a regulatory framework for private clubs, not an authorization for public nudity. Even navigating that framework is a practical near-impossibility. According to the Naturist Action Committee, licenses require approval from the local county judge/executive, and there are no known cases of such approval ever being granted in Kentucky.

The group interprets the law differently. In their email to Planet Nude, they argued that county officials are “misinterpreting the law from 1942 that permits public nudity for exercise, health or religious purposes and recreational purposes,” and that the surrounding woods naturally satisfy the privacy requirement.

The group has also framed its position in constitutional terms, writing in one post that the county's response “is unconstitutional and affects your constitutional rights of freedom of expression” and encouraging followers to use the space. That argument faces a significant hurdle. Courts in the United States have generally treated public nudity as conduct rather than protected speech, meaning the First Amendment protections that might apply to nude protest or artistic performance don’t automatically extend to recreational nudity. A protest is one thing; arguing that casual nude swimming constitutes expressive activity isn’t impossible, but it would require a specific legal theory and, almost certainly, a very good lawyer—and it won’t necessarily protect you from arrest.

Kenton County has been explicit. In a written statement quoted by NKyTribune, a Kenton County spokesperson said: “Doe Run Lake is a County-owned park, and there is zero tolerance of nudity of any kind. […] Anyone observed or reported engaging in nudity at the park will be subject to law enforcement response and arrest.”

Bluegrass State Naturists says it is moving forward anyway. “We knew that approaching Kenton County would have been a waste of time and they would have denied us,” they told Planet Nude. “Our social media will eventually force them to put up signs saying you may encounter nude sunbathers past this point.”

There is some precedent for the idea that an individual or group can successfully designate a public space for nude recreation. Shirley and Richard Mason did exactly that when they persuaded Miami-Dade County to legalize a clothing-optional section of Haulover Beach in 1991, creating what became one of the most visited nude beaches in the world. But the Masons spent years working with local and state government, building relationships with elected officials and business leaders, and operating through South Florida Free Beaches, an established organization with legal and institutional backing.

The conditions at Doe Run are almost the inverse: a recently-emerged group, a hostile county government, an explicit legal prohibition, and a strategy built around public declaration before coalition-building. By generating significant media attention before establishing any presence on the ground, Bluegrass State Naturists may have made their goal harder to achieve. The county is now on record, on alert, and unlikely to look the other way.

What has actually happened on the ground is less ambiguous than the media cycle has suggested. The group said multiple people have visited and used the area nude since it went public, with no contact from law enforcement, which they attribute to the remote nature of the location. Local reporting has not documented any confirmed incidents or arrests, which appears consistent with that account. The group also says the area has a longer history than the recent attention suggests. “The area has been used by nudists since before it was even a county owned park,” they wrote. “People would park and hike to the lake and swim and sunbathe nude. One guy even went on to say he was naked at the spot when he was younger and others were too and no one cared.”

The community reaction offers some context. Kenton County sits in northern Kentucky's deeply conservative political belt, a region that has trended sharply Republican in recent election cycles. The response online has reflected that. Comments on local news posts have ranged from bemused to hostile, with recurring themes of family safety, public decency, and calls for law enforcement. An Erlanger city councilwoman publicly dismissed the group's posts as a joke circulating on social media. Whether or not nudity is occurring there now, the social environment surrounding the effort is not a forgiving one.

Kentucky has no established naturist clubs or recognized nude spaces with any public visibility, leaving almost no lawful pathway for social nudism outside of private property. The group at Doe Run seems to be responding to exactly that absence—and the area they have chosen is not the center of a busy public park but a secluded creek trail, at the end of a mile-and-a-half walk, that was apparently already attracting nude visitors before anyone made a formal claim about it. That doesn't give them legal standing they don't have. But it suggests this is less a case of naturists picking a fight with county government and more a case of people trying to make legitimate something that was already happening.

As for what success looks like: “Formal recognition,” they wrote, “but informal tolerance would be much more acceptable.”

Memorial Day weekend will be the first real test. The group has a public gathering planned, and whatever happens there may say more about the future of this effort than anything posted online. 🪐

Every two years, AANR members elect the volunteers who run the largest nudist organization in North America. This year’s ballot includes candidates for secretary/treasurer, vice president, and regional trustee seats—most of them uncontested. Then there’s the presidential race. Two candidates, and all the attention that comes with it.

The AANR presidency is an unpaid volunteer position—no salary, no staff of your own, considerable responsibility. The president chairs the Board of Trustees and is the most visible face of the organization, but holds no voting power except to break a tie. It carries real weight, and the person in that chair sets a tone that ripples through everything the organization does.

Planet Nude sent identical written questions to both candidates. Their answers are published in full, in separate posts, unedited.

A disclosure: I currently serve as AANR’s PR Committee chair, which puts me in the unusual position of covering an election I have a seat near. I’ve worked alongside both candidates and have genuine respect for each. I’ve tried to let that inform the fairness of the questions rather than the softness of them—and they aren’t soft questions. I don’t think AANR is well served by soft ones, and this isn’t a PR exercise. Editorial independence is the whole point of doing this here.

The following interview is with Joe Rives, president of the AANR Florida Region and a full-time resident of Cypress Cove. He’s challenging incumbent Linda Weber, bringing a background in large-scale nonprofit administration—managed budgets, membership growth, fundraising—and a candidate platform centered on club support, member retention, and government affairs. He was named AANR Man of the Year in 2025.

Voting opened May 1 and closes June 20.

Both candidates answered the same questions. The Linda Weber interview is here →

How did you become a nudist or naturist, and what made you want to lead the organization that represents it?

My father was a home nudist and naturism has always defined me. As a full-time resident of Cypress Cove, I see the importance of AANR and the benefits of naturism every day.

AANR defines my passion to promote and provide nude recreation. I have an intense, authentic, and deep enthusiasm for naturism. And cherish the opportunity to work hard with our members, clubs, regions, and committees to support a strong, highly valued, and resilient AANR.

AANR defines my purpose to protect and preserve nude recreation. Hence, the priorities of:

• Expanding opportunities for members to enjoy nude recreation at existing and new clubs, participating businesses, and clothing-optional beaches; and

• Strengthening support provided to our members, clubs, and Government Affairs Teams in promoting and protecting naturism.

My words are backed by actions in non-profit and membership based associations. I am:

• Accomplished: Managed a $230M annual budget, achieved record enrollment growth, and generated $75.4M in fundraising.

• Respected: Named the AANR Man of the Year (2025), University Hall of Fame Member (2016), and Illinois/Iowa Quad Cities Man of the Year (2015).

• Trusted: Served on 21 non-profit boards, including current President of the AANR-Florida Region and Chairperson of the National Club Support and Value Committee, two-time President of the National Association of Branch Campus Administrators, and appointed to the Illinois Governor’s Commission on Volunteerism.

It would be an honor and privilege to put this drive and determination into advancing AANR.

What do people—members and non-members alike—most commonly get wrong about AANR, and why does it matter?

We need more AANR education: who we are and the importance of what we do. Here are some examples from different perspectives. Each example shows that non-understanding hurts member recruitment and retention.

• As Chairperson of the Club Support and Value Committee (CSVC), we learned that security concerns are the top reasons why individuals do not join or remain in nudist organizations. We are changing our websites, publications, and forms to emphasize that AANR clubs provide secure venues. We are also researching no-cost sexual offender searches and low-cost membership background check options for interested clubs. By virtue of the Association’s total size, we can get volumetric discounts at a larger rate.

• I recently called all Florida Direct Members whose membership expired in 2025, asking them to renew. Many at first were not interested, saying they no longer go to clubs.

My response was that a portion of your membership dues are applied to Government Affairs Teams. And that when you re-invest in AANR, you are giving back to the association that protected your rights to exercise social nudism, and you are paying it forward to future generations of naturists to enjoy the same rights. These discussions were highly persuasive for former members to return to AANR.

• As the Florida President, a team has successfully educated the executive branch on the differences between AANR and our practice of wholesome nude recreation compared to lifestyle clubs. This included documenting our self-governing practices that negated the need for regulatory legislation.

What’s the most important thing AANR hasn’t fixed yet?

Annual retention of members and clubs. Quarterly increases and decreases in membership totals fluctuate. However, the end-of-year 2025 Membership Report demonstrates a continued net annual decline in membership. AANR again in 2025 lost more current members than it attracted in new members. We also have fewer clubs than we once had.

Keeping and growing membership is one of AANR’s most pressing challenges. What’s your actual plan to address it—and how is it different from what’s already been tried?

Here are my suggestions for new opportunities in a recruitment and retention plan that would have to be approved by the Board of Trustees. They are based on successful past experiences leading non-profit associations.

Recruitment

• Implement approved security enhancements from the CSVC.

• Ask the new Ambassador and Speaker Bureau to identify and evaluate success metrics.

• Expand the Florida AANR Partnership Initiative. We are reaching out to family-friendly nudist clubs that are not AANR clubs to encourage AANR membership along with their existing membership(s). This brings more venues to current and prospective members and increased revenue to the clubs.

• Identify and offer clubs discounted software rates for user-friendly social media management software that supports individual posting across multiple platforms at the same time.

• Work with clubs to identify and address barriers that prevent all club residents from joining AANR.

Retention

• Increase messaging that when you invest in AANR, you are giving back to the association that protected your rights to exercise social nudism, and you are paying it forward to future generations of naturists to do the same.

• Expand the Florida pilot test of calling former members to encourage a return to AANR.

• Celebrate member milestone anniversaries.

• Identify people, structures, processes, and resources to help clubs under membership thresholds grow and thrive.

• Investigate angel investment opportunities for creating new or maintaining existing AANR venues when they are considering closing or are placed on the market.

The AANR president is a volunteer with limited formal power. What specifically can you do in this role—and what can’t you?

The AANR Bylaws are clear on presidential responsibilities. This important position is entrusted by the membership to:

• Conduct the business affairs and other activities of the Association in accordance with our Ruling Documents.

• Prepare and preside at the annual membership meeting and all other meetings of the Board of Trustees.

• Implement decisions of the Board.

This defines what the president does. Any other actions would be outside the scope of the position.

To the position, in addition to passion, purpose, drive and determination for AANR’s club and member success, I bring the values and emphasis on:

• AANR’s Ruling Documents.

• Communication and collaboration.

• Transparency and accountability.

• Partnerships with like-minded organizations.

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

These values and priorities are what have led to a career of accomplishments, respect, and trust.

AANR operates in an increasingly online world but has struggled to build a consistent digital presence. What does a real communications strategy look like, and what’s the president’s role in building one?

Throughout my 30+ year administrative career, I have found that an effective communications strategy combines rational value (discounts, services) with emotional value (community, identity) to strengthen the membership recruitment and retention proposition.

Other situations may focus on one of the value propositions depending on the matter at hand. But in any circumstance, our digital, print, and verbal communications need to:

• Include clear, specific, and measurable goals.

• Identify the stakeholders that will receive the message.

• Provide a simple, concise, and consistent message across platforms, including the relevance to the recipient.

• Use multiple channels where the audience spends time (e.g., email, social media, internal platforms, press releases) to achieve maximum reach.

• Provide opportunities for two-way dialogue (surveys, Q&A sessions, social listening, responding to feedback).

• Evaluate performance metrics and refine strategies and future messaging accordingly.

Many members view the President as the “face of AANR.” Therefore, the President should support the work of our Marketing and Public Relations Committees, Ambassadors and Speaker’s Bureau (of which I am a member of both), and other outreach efforts. Support includes requested use of their time and talents, advocacy of Committee and Bureau efforts, etc.

The President may engage in additional PR functions. However, the amount of time and the projects should be agreed upon by the Board of Trustees. They supervise the President.

AANR has a government affairs function that most members probably don’t think about until something goes wrong—a beach closure, a local ordinance, a legal threat to a club. How do you strengthen that work, and do you see public relations as part of that fight or separate from it?

We have exceptional leadership from our Executive Director and our national and regional Government Affairs Teams (GAT). They continuously identify, monitor, and act upon pending legislation in the United States and Canada. This includes proposed and pending legislation that would either advantage or disadvantage the current and future of social nudism. They spend extraordinary amounts of time on volumes of issues for which we are all thankful.

Both the Marketing and Public Relations Committees play important roles in GAT awareness and advocacy. From my successful experiences, the Marketing Committee should focus on marketing drives, sales, and promoting the Association. This includes the give-back and pay-it-forward campaign that I previously discussed.

And without question, the Public Relations (PR) Committee plays a critical and strategic role in government advocacy. PR builds a positive, long-term reputation and manages brand image. Their work also shapes individual and public opinion and policy.

As President, I would like to see increased collaborations between AANR HQ, contracted lobbyists, our GAT teams, and PR Committees in building relationships with officials, managing reputation, and influencing perceptions around proposed legislation.

What does success look like at the end of your two-year term—and why does any of this matter to you personally?

Success would be measured by being elected for a second two-year term. This would show that we had documented progress and success on our goals and priorities and that we evaluated and adjusted where our efforts did not have the desired ends.

Success matters to me because AANR is my passion and purpose. Our success is my drive and determination. And being elected is the highest accolade you can receive in a membership organization.

As with this and future elections, winning means that members paused to think about the status of the Association, the direction it should take, and the person with the highest ability to achieve the desired ends. To me that is both personally and professionally rewarding.

I thank everyone for expressing their voice and voting between May 1 and June 20. 🪐

Both candidates answered the same questions. The Linda Weber interview is here →

Every two years, AANR members elect the volunteers who run the largest nudist organization in North America. This year’s ballot includes candidates for secretary/treasurer, vice president, and regional trustee seats—most of them uncontested. Then there’s the presidential race. Two candidates, and all the attention that comes with it.

The AANR presidency is an unpaid volunteer position—no salary, no staff of your own, considerable responsibility. The president chairs the Board of Trustees and is the most visible face of the organization, but holds no voting power except to break a tie. It carries real weight, and the person in that chair sets a tone that ripples through everything the organization does.

Planet Nude sent identical written questions to both candidates. Their answers are published in full, in separate posts, unedited.

A disclosure: I currently serve as AANR’s PR Committee chair, which puts me in the unusual position of covering an election I have a seat near. I’ve worked alongside both candidates and have genuine respect for each. I’ve tried to let that inform the fairness of the questions rather than the softness of them—and they aren’t soft questions. I don’t think AANR is well served by soft ones, and this isn’t a PR exercise. Editorial independence is the whole point of doing this here.

The following interview is with Linda Weber, the incumbent AANR president seeking a second term. She came to the role not through a traditional organizational climb but through a membership growth plan she developed that caught enough attention that people encouraged her to run. Her first term has focused on modernizing AANR’s membership structure and making the presidency more visible and accessible to members.

Voting opened May 1 and closes June 20.

Both candidates answered the same questions. The Joe Rives interview is here →

How did you become a nudist or naturist, and what made you want to lead the organization that represents it?

I was about 13 when I realized clothes were being used as a judgment tool in school. Impressions were based on the clothes we wore, not getting to know the person. At home, I started sleeping nude which was great because I didn’t get hot or tangled up in my nightgown. I started coming home from school and taking my clothes off. My parents didn’t see it as an act of rebellion; it was more like I just didn’t like the feeling of clothing on me. I didn’t realize there was a word for it—nudism or naturism—nor did I realize there were other like-minded people out in the world. My family didn’t join in but they didn’t stop me either. I was fortunate to discover nudity in my formative years because it gave me the confidence body positivity brings at that critical juncture in adolescence.

I actually had no plans as to running for AANR President however, after participating in the combined Member Marketing/PR Committee; I realized there weren’t any plans to grow the membership. I came up with a 10-point plan that got the attention of a number of people. Nine of the objectives were embraced. That is when people started encouraging me to run for President. After much deliberation with my husband, I decided that I wanted to have a hand in returning AANR to an organization members and Clubs would be proud to be a part of.

What do people—members and non-members alike—most commonly get wrong about AANR, and why does it matter?

I don’t think people really have a grasp of what AANR is and what it does as an organization. If you ask our members, they sometimes can’t even describe what the organization stands for. This is a failing on our part for not educating both members and non-members alike about what AANR does as well as creating a modernized Mission Statement. For so long we pushed the “recreation” side of it which is the Club discounts and visiting clubs. AANR is so much more. We actively fight legislation that would literally put us all back in our houses, hidden behind closed doors as nudists. For those who have no idea, they think it is an organization for “hook-ups” and sexual adventure. Because of this lack of clarity in the minds of members and non-members alike, it hurts the organization for attracting new members as well as member retention when our messaging is so vague and unfocused. It is clear we need to work on our messaging and our goals.

What’s the most important thing AANR hasn’t fixed yet?

The organization is 95 years old and we are stuck in the “Einstellung Effect.” Rather than embracing new ideas and technology, we take comfort in relying on a familiar solution, even when a better one is available. I hear phrases like “this is the way we have always done it,” or resistance to new technology and thought processes. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This affects every corner of our organization and the fact that change is met with resistance indicates we have individuals in the organization who are uncomfortable making decisions, though right for the organization and our members, which may lead to active discourse and uncomfortable changes. As an organization, we need to seek out and reward progressive thinkers and out-of-the-box ideas rather than deciding to kick the can down the road for another administration to deal with.

Keeping and growing membership is one of AANR’s most pressing challenges. What’s your actual plan to address it—and how is it different from what’s already been tried?

I brought into policy two initiatives that have been put into practice and are showing their value so far. One is the “Dual Direct Option” which allows two people residing at the same location to avail themselves of a $15 discount if they signed up or renewed together. This opened up a lot more opportunities than the limited “Couples Discount.” Everyone loves a discount and this was a way of recapturing many people who left after the previous discount ended and was one thing I heard about when I was campaigning for my first term. The other initiative is “Auto Renewal.” With all that is going on in our lives, it is sometimes difficult to keep track of everything that we have membership in. This was initiated in July of last year so we will see an uptick in member retention in July 2026.

As to looking to the future, I have been working with individuals who feel they would join if they had possibilities within a decent distance of their home. By focusing on “non-landed or social Clubs,” this opens up opportunities for more people to join others in social nudity. We have seen a burgeoning of these new Clubs as well as Participating Businesses due to listening to our members and contacting existing groups to see if they would like to link with AANR. Many have never been contacted before or if they did, no follow-up was done to work with them to affiliate with AANR.

The AANR president is a volunteer with limited formal power. What specifically can you do in this role—and what can’t you?

Not a lot of people know that as President of AANR, you are the most visible person with daily responsibilities however; the position has no voting power with the rare exception of a tie by the Trustees. The Trustees hold the voting power and the way the organization is supposed to work is that the Trustees make decisions based on what is the best for the membership. Personal agendas have often gotten in the way of serving our membership. In this voting year, we are finally seeing more than one candidate for some of the positions which means the members get a real choice in who they want to represent their interests. Rather than remain a figurehead of the organization, I have worked to make the role as visible and available to the membership. I am a part of every Committee within AANR to support the work that is being done by our volunteers. I attend the Meet and Greets twice-monthly to get in front of our members and answer questions and have done so for four years. I answer every email or letter addressed to me personally, as well as answer inquiries on social media platforms.

AANR operates in an increasingly online world but has struggled to build a consistent digital presence. What does a real communications strategy look like, and what’s the president’s role in building one?

This has been something that has perplexed me even when I was a Director. Why aren’t we where the people are—members and prospective members alike? When I suggested that the Regions, which many struggle to find a volunteer who is versed on social media, turn this responsibility over to AANR so we could have consistent messaging, it was met with resource-guarding and opposition. One Region has no social media presence on any platform. I have been an online advocate for over seven years. I have watched the evolution of online content. I didn’t just hop on while I was campaigning. Leadership does not understand the value and power of social media because they are not on it. With that mindset, AANR will never be at the forefront of any kind of digital presence. Until we can appeal to those in Leadership positions as to the importance of social media and its ability to get our message out, we will always be at the back of the pack in our communication. We need people who have grown up with and use social media and who understand its value. I also do not believe we should rely on volunteers to handle such a vital role. My recommendation is to have a paid position with someone who is well-versed in social media as well as creating and maintaining a digital presence with a real connection to our members and prospects.

AANR has a government affairs function that most members probably don’t think about until something goes wrong—a beach closure, a local ordinance, a legal threat to a club. How do you strengthen that work, and do you see public relations as part of that fight or separate from it?

For many years, the focus for AANR has been to highlight the “recreation” part of the organization, the Clubs, and the discounts we give our members. The discounts are important to many people and this is not to negate these benefits however, if legislation like the bills we are currently seeing in 2026 legislates us out of business, what advantage was that focus? The work the Government Affairs Team (GAT) does is vital in protecting our nude privileges year after year. I emphasized we needed to uplift the work and inform our members more about this part of AANR. We have our “GAT Challenges” to raise awareness as well as much-needed funds. We also have “5 Minutes of Advocacy” at the beginning of our AANR Online Meet and Greets as well as an Advocacy Breakout Room where Executive Director Erich Schuttauf speaks about bills that AANR is currently monitoring and what work can be done to educate the legislators on how these bills may inadvertently be snaring us in their net. Our Weekly Friday email also contains updates from our GAT Chair on legislation and the number of bills being monitored.

Public Relations is an integral part of disseminating information however, we need to walk a fine line. AANR protects the privacy of members who need assistance. With legislation, changes happen often on a daily basis and we don’t want outdated information disseminated. This causes a conundrum; how do we get the word out about the work being done without jeopardizing our strategy?

What does success look like at the end of your two-year term—and why does any of this matter to you personally?

Success to me means the members feel they are being served, listened to, and appreciated, and that AANR is poised to reclaim the title of “largest nudist organization in the world.” As a servant leader, I prioritize growth, well-being, and the wants of our members over being called “President.” I value feedback on what we are not getting right to focus on improving the experience rather than accolades and a title. This is deeply ingrained in me and deeply personal. My job would be a lot easier if I didn’t put 110% in but then I would be letting down the members, as well as myself, and we can no longer accept the status quo.

It would be an honor and a privilege to be re-elected to another term as President because that would indicate the members are seeing the right changes being made and that the organization is improving. I want to be able to continue to advance the organization for our members and Clubs as we near our 100th AANRversary in 2031. 🪐

Both candidates answered the same questions. The Joe Rives interview is here →