In the naturist world, body painting is a fairly common activity—which makes a certain kind of sense. What could be more ideal than a naked body for spreading paint on skin?

Most body painters work with brushes and sponges, covering the body completely from hair to toes, without omitting a single square centimeter. Sometimes to create abstraction, an animal likeness—or to blend a body into a natural landscape and create a sort of trompe-l’œil. In naturist spaces, the approach is often looser: buckets of water-based acrylics, big sponges, all left out for self-service. Fun and festive, without always being highly artistic—but that’s not always the goal.

My approach to body painting is very different. At the root of my art, I mostly love drawing on paper and canvas. I almost never use brushes, always markers. Initially, I didn’t envision using some of my equipment (Poscas, the only markers that are non-toxic for the skin) on bodies. To me, body painting was strictly about brushes!

Then I came across artists who only used markers at various festivals and public events. Since I regularly visit naturist campsites, it was only natural that I started drawing on people who wanted me to.

The approach of drawing with a marker is radically different from that of a brush. It’s a much finer and more angular tool, designed to create lines, lettering, symbols—and not large solid blocks of color. With this medium, you never cover the entire body.

This suits me very well. The “erased body” aspect of most body painting had always bothered me. From my very first attempts, other differences emerged: never anything on the genitals, and above all, I didn’t develop the same style as I did for my drawings on paper and canvas. Nor the same style as other body painters. So much the better—in art, the less conventional the approach, the more interesting.

On a traditional surface, I generally depict deformed, imaginary characters. That’s my thing! In a cubist and street-art style. On bodies, however, nothing figurative. Because the human form isn’t just another canvas: you have to follow its curves, its color, its presence. The drawing must serve the person, not the other way around.

This approach was quickly understood and appreciated in the naturist community, undoubtedly because it aligns with a certain philosophy. Since 2025, I have been wandering through naturist centers offering body painting sessions, followed by a photo shoot—not for simple souvenir photos: we are there to create art, even with amateur models. It is actually surprising to see how many people who have never particularly posed before do an excellent job.

Currently, nearly fifteen centers have been explored—and many more to come! For now, only in France, but perhaps one day in other countries too. The most exciting part is that every new encounter is unique. Unlike professional experiences, there are no real strict rules; quite the opposite, because the subject must feel entirely free at all times, and never constrained. There is simply an ethic: respecting everyone’s wishes, proposing rather than imposing, taking into account any potential restrictions.

The other unique aspects of the approach are brought about by the naturist setting. It wasn’t even necessary to add anything to the concept—the rest came naturally!

When I run my booth, I let people come to me, and there is no question of filtering them. Everything is inclusive, regardless of age or body appearance. Yet, even though it poses no problem for me to body-paint an obese person or an elderly person, very few dare to! Even in a naturist environment, you often encounter a sort of self-censorship. As soon as someone is “too” old, heavy, or has a body weathered by life, they are content to just watch or chat, without wishing to participate. It’s a real shame! Last summer at Bélézy, I managed to get a few older participants, but only because a young regular there went and convinced them.

This inclusivity also means that children and teenagers come to pose. Sometimes there are even more of them than adults! This is another point that sets it apart from other projects: while in the world of fine art photography, photos of children, pre-teens, and teens are quite common, it’s much less frequent for nude shoots. Even though other photographers explore this too (Sally Mann, Alain Laboile, among others).

Sometimes a child comes alone and the parent simply tags along; sometimes we do a mother-daughter session, which allows us to link them with a common motif. The results are sometimes astonishing! You’d think a child wouldn’t be patient, but they are actually so passionate that by the end, it’s the parent and I who are exhausted!

This last aspect sometimes makes the Symbiose project delicate to export. Several Facebook warnings, an Instagram account deleted without notice—over a thousand followers lost—three internet creeps I had to kick out of the project (once even notifying the authorities). So yes, despite a clear and wholesome concept, nothing is simple. Any unique artistic endeavor encounters stumbling blocks, and this project is no exception.

Every step is a new trial: searching for new centers (in summer 2026, La Chiappa in Corsica), navigating conservative vacationers who don’t always look upon it favorably, conducting the shoots without bothering anyone, social media censorship, a few malicious internet users. The life of an artist is complicated!

So why continue? Why does the project endure?

Because the positive experiences far outnumber the negative ones. Because for every problem encountered, ten positive elements counterbalance it—compliments, beautiful memories, moments of meditation, and personal growth. That is why the Symbiose project is undoubtedly not ready to stop anytime soon. 🪐

More work from Alexis and the Symbiose project a symbiose-body-painting.com.

The women in the Telegram channels don’t know they’re there. Their photographs — pulled from Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat — were uploaded by someone else, traded for cash, paired with threats, used as raw material for AI tools that stripped or replaced or fabricated. Tens of thousands of them, according to a report released this week by the research nonprofit AI Forensics. The word the report uses for what was done to them is “nude.”

The word is accurate, technically. The images are nude. They are also non-consensual, fabricated, weaponized, and in some cases illegal. They are components of coordinated harassment campaigns. They have ended careers, destroyed relationships, and according to researchers who study this ecosystem, driven women from public life entirely. “Nude” is the least interesting thing about them. It is also, somehow, the word that keeps appearing in the headlines.

I want to be careful here, because the easy version of what I’m about to say is wrong. The easy version goes: the coverage is conflating nudity with harm, which is unfair to nudists. That’s not my argument. The harm in those Telegram channels is real and it is serious, and the nudity—or what passes for nudity in AI-generated images of women who never consented to be photographed, let alone undressed—is genuinely part of the harm. When someone’s likeness is fabricated into a sexual image and distributed without their knowledge, the violation isn’t merely abstract. It is intimate and it is specific and it is, in the fullest sense of the word, bodily.

What I’m interested in is something subtler. Not whether the word “nude” is being misused in these stories, but what happens to the word itself—and everything it touches—as it absorbs this meaning by accumulation.

AI Forensics spent six weeks this winter studying 16 Telegram groups operating in Spain and Italy, analyzing nearly 2.8 million messages. What they found was not a fringe subculture but what they describe as a thriving economy: over 18,000 references to surveillance tools appearing alongside more than 82,000 abusive images and videos, with users trading spyware marketed as “parental controls” alongside photographs of women they knew personally—partners, former partners, sisters, colleagues. The most extreme content depicted children in incest and rape scenarios. The Wired headline, which was more direct than the AFP wire version most outlets ran, called it what it was: men sharing nonconsensual images of women and girls, buying spyware, and engaging in doxing.

According to the report, most of the users sharing nonconsensual sexual content are young, heterosexual men sharing content of women who are their partners, former partners, or acquaintances. This is not, in other words, a story about strangers. It is a story about the intimate surveillance of people who are known, by people who know them, using tools that have become startlingly accessible. In 2023, creating a convincing deepfake required a powerful GPU and coding knowledge. By 2026, it requires only a Telegram account.

The policy response has been swift, at least by European standards. Three weeks ago, the European Parliament voted 569 to 45 to back a ban on “nudifier” systems—AI applications that create or manipulate images to depict identifiable real people in sexually explicit or intimate ways without their consent. The vote was framed, across virtually every outlet that covered it, as a win for women’s rights and child protection. “Every day, women across the EU are targeted by deep-nude AI tools that strip them of their dignity, intimidate them online and make them vulnerable to blackmail and abuse,” said Dutch Green MEP Kim van Sparrentak after the vote.

She is right. And the ban, as written, is carefully scoped: it targets systems that create non-consensual intimate images of identifiable real people, with a carve-out for platforms that have effective safeguards preventing such misuse. It is, as these things go, a reasonable piece of legislation aimed at a genuine harm.

And yet.

The word “nudifier” is doing something interesting in that legislation. It is naming an application by what the application produces—a nude image—rather than by what makes the application harmful, which is the non-consent. This is not a trivial distinction. It is, in fact, the distinction the legislation itself tries to encode in its carve-out clause. But in the public conversation surrounding the vote—in the headlines, in the MEP statements, in the advocacy framing—“nude” and “harmful” have become functionally synonymous. The nudity is the harm. The harm is the nudity.

I want to add here that I write about nudity for a living. I publish a daily newsletter called Planet Nude that covers nonsexual nudity and nude expression through history, culture, politics, and art—not sex or pornography, a distinction I have now made so many times it has lost all meaning to me personally. I have been doing this for three years. If you’re reading this now, you most likely already know all this already. You’re most likely a subscriber. Anyway, I mention it not to establish credentials but because it gives me a particular vantage point on what happens when “nude” becomes a dirty word again. Because it does, periodically. And the consequences are not abstract.

Platform moderation is perhaps the most immediate example. The Guardian’s January investigation identified at least 150 Telegram channels distributing AI-generated sexual images of women, and noted that channels shut down by the platform would reopen under near-identical names within hours. Telegram’s moderation, in other words, fails the people it most needs to protect. But platform moderation, when it does engage, tends to operate on keywords and image-detection heuristics rather than context. “Nude” trips the filter. Whether the image is a fabricated sexual assault or a photograph taken on a clothing-optional beach with the full knowledge and consent of everyone in it does not always register as a meaningful difference to an algorithm.

This is not a hypothetical. Naturist organizations, figure photographers, body-positive health advocates, and artists working in the tradition of the nude have all had content removed from major platforms in recent years—not because their content was harmful, but because it was nude, and “nude” had been defined, by accumulating association, as inherently problematic. Instagram’s nudity policies, notoriously applied with spectacular inconsistency, have resulted in the removal of mastectomy photographs, breastfeeding images, classical art, and documentary photography. The content moderation systems that were ostensibly built to protect women have, with some regularity, been turned against women’s bodies instead.

Legislation follows the same logic, slowly. When the EU Parliament's nudifier ban moves through negotiations with the Council, its careful carve-outs may or may not survive intact. What will survive, reliably, is the cultural association that has been built around the word itself. Nudity, in the discourse that produced the legislation, is something that is done to people. It is a vector of harm. It is the thing that needs to be banned. In Arizona, AANR is currently opposing HB 2133, a bill targeting non-consensual image sharing whose language is broad enough to create liability for naturist clubs and members posting consensual photographs. The bill passed the House in February and is advancing through the Senate. Nobody writing that bill set out to criminalize nudism. That's the point.

AI Forensics researcher Silvia Semenzin, speaking about the Telegram findings, made a point that the headlines largely missed: “We tend to forget that most victims are ordinary women. The majority of this violence is directed towards people who the perpetrators know.” This is important for several reasons, the most obvious being that it reframes the harm away from stranger danger and toward intimate partner abuse—which has different causes, different patterns, and different remedies than platform-level content moderation.

But it also says something else. The harm in those Telegram channels is not the nudity. The harm is the violation of trust, the weaponization of intimacy, the use of a woman’s image against her by someone who has access to it precisely because she trusted him. The nudity is the instrument. The harm is something older and more specific and, in many ways, harder to legislate away.

This matters because we are in the middle of writing the rules. The Telegram report will inform platform policy discussions. The EU nudifier ban will move through negotiations. The US Take It Down Act, signed into law last year, requires tech companies to remove non-consensual sexually explicit images within two days of notification. All of this is happening now, and the language being used to describe the problem will shape the solutions that emerge from it.

If the problem is “nude images,” the solution is to restrict nude images. If the problem is non-consensual violation of a person’s body and dignity, the solution looks different—and leaves considerably more room for the bodies and dignities of people who have chosen, freely and deliberately, to live without clothes.

I am not arguing that nudism is equivalent to the harm documented in AI Forensics’ report. I am not arguing that naturists are the real victims here, or that the concerns of the beach volleyball community should weigh against those of women whose images are being traded like commodities in Telegram channels. That would be obscene.

What I am arguing is that language matters, and that the language being used to describe this harm is imprecise in ways that have consequences beyond the immediate policy debate. Every time “nude” absorbs another connotation of violation, it becomes a little harder to talk about the body in any other register. Every time the headlines reach for the most viscerally alarming word rather than the most accurate one—and “non-consensual” is both more accurate and more alarming, if you think about it—the word “nude” does a little more work it was never meant to do.

The women in those Telegram channels deserve better than the coverage they received this week. They deserve reporting that names what was done to them with precision—not because precision is a journalistic virtue in the abstract, but because precision is what produces legislation and platform policy that actually protects them, rather than legislation and platform policy that protects everyone from nudity.

Those are not the same thing. They have never been the same thing. 🪐

On March 31, 2025, a city councilmember named Lucy Lauser in Stevenson, Washington walked to the courthouse lawn and took off her shirt. It was International Transgender Day of Visibility. She had written four words across her chest in marker: MY BODY IS NOT A SIN.

Lucy Lauser was first elected to the Stevenson City Council in 2023, the first openly transgender person to hold elected office in the town of just 1,400, roughly, where the Columbia River runs just south of downtown. It is not a city where a sitting councilmember typically ends up at the center of a First Amendment case that goes to the state supreme court—but these are unprecedented times, and that is where the councilmember ended up.

What Lauser did that morning was not, on its face, complicated. She stood in public, in daylight, as a political act on a day designated specifically to celebrate transgender people, and she made her body the text of her argument. It was not sexual. There was no lascivious intent. It was not meant to titillate. It was a statement of protest.

What happened next is the story

Not long after the protest, two recall petitions were filed against Councilmember Lauser—both by the same Stevenson resident, Kathleen Fitzgerald. The first petition, based on the March 31 protest, alleged that by exposing her breasts in public, Lauser had violated her oath of office and committed malfeasance. The Skamania County Superior Court agreed, finding the charge legally sufficient—ruling that "malfeasance" required nothing more than commission of a crime, and the crime, in the judge's reading, was indecent exposure. That ruling sent the case to the Washington Supreme Court.

The second petition, filed after Lauser's July 4 arrest, made essentially the same argument on the basis of the new incident. A Skamania County judge dismissed it.

There was also an arrest. On July 4, 2025, Lauser returned to the courthouse lawn for a second protest—this time with her nipples covered in black tape, one arm painted red, mouth taped shut, and “woman, life, freedom” written across her chest. She was taken into custody and charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure—despite the black tape covering her nipples. She entered a not guilty plea. A Knapstad motion—a pretrial mechanism that asks the court to rule that even accepting all the facts, no crime occurred—was heard in Skamania County District Court in November 2025. The judge said the case raised “complicated stuff” and took it under advisement. As of this writing, that criminal charge is still pending.

The Washington Supreme Court, however, was not confused.

In a ruling issued February 26, 2026, the court dismissed the first recall petition and said plainly what the lower court had refused to say: Lauser’s protest was constitutionally protected expressive conduct. Indecent exposure under Washington law requires intentional, obscene exposure. Obscene means sexually motivated, or lewd and lascivious. A topless protest on International Transgender Day of Visibility, at a courthouse, with political text written on the body—that is not obscene in any sense the law recognizes. The recall petition was neither factually nor legally sufficient.

The ACLU of Washington, which had been actively advocating for dismissal throughout the case, called the ruling a vindication.

Despite the win, Lauser resigned from the Stevenson City Council on March 31, exactly one year after the protest that started all of this. She had planned the resignation for months, always intending it as the final act in a deliberate sequence. In her prepared statement, she explained why staying no longer made sense: “I’ve been able to do more to feed the hungry outside this position than in it. I've done more to provide shelter for the homeless outside this position than in it. And I've done far more to defend the constitutional rights of my constituents outside this position than in it.” She did not sound like someone who had lost.

Takeaways and examinations

The Washington Supreme Court found that nudity, on its own, is not obscene. Obscenity requires a sexual element — a lascivious or prurient motivation that transforms exposure into something the state has a legitimate interest in suppressing. Remove that element, and what you have left is a body. A body is not, by itself, a crime.

This distinction matters far beyond the specific facts of Lauser’s case. It is the same distinction at the core of every fight over nude beaches, naturist parks, clothing-optional spaces, and the legal gray zones that body-freedom advocates navigate constantly. The law in most jurisdictions does not say nudity is illegal; it says obscene nudity is illegal. But in practice, nudity and obscenity get treated as synonyms — by prosecutors, by local ordinances, by school boards invoking “community standards,” by social media platforms that algorithmically flag the human body as adult content regardless of context.

What Lauser’s case gives the body-freedom argument is a piece of paper from a state supreme court that says: no. These are different things. And the difference is not a technicality — it is the substance of the law.

Lauser is transgender, and the context of her protest was transgender rights. It would be easy to read her story as purely a trans rights story, and it is that. But it is also something more specific: a case about what the body is allowed to mean in public space, and who gets to decide.

Part of what made her protest legible as a protest at all is the very double standard she was challenging. A shirtless man on the courthouse lawn on the Fourth of July is unremarkable. A shirtless woman is a different matter — potentially criminal, certainly controversial. That asymmetry encodes a presumption that female-presenting chests are inherently sexual, that they require covering not because of anything they do but because of what we’ve decided they mean. For a transgender woman, the double standard becomes a trap with two edges: her body is simultaneously too female to be uncovered in public and, in the eyes of her critics, not female enough to be protected by the same arguments a cisgender woman might make.

That trap is also, in a different register, familiar to naturism. The free speech frame that won Lauser’s case only protects the body when it’s saying something — when there’s a message, a courthouse, a marker on the chest. What naturism has always wanted to establish is harder to litigate: that the body doesn’t need a reason. That nudity isn’t an argument. That it shouldn’t have to be. The ruling protects the protesting body. The body that simply exists is still waiting for its day in court.

That distinction doesn’t diminish what Lauser did. It just clarifies what remains undone. The constitutional record now has something in it that wasn’t there before. The state may still try to convict her on the criminal charge. And the larger argument — that the body doesn’t need a reason — is still being made the slow way, outside courtrooms, one nude beach and one naturist park and one clothing-optional space at a time. 🪐

Let me paint you a picture. You’ve driven out to a clothing-optional hot spring, somewhere the landscape is stunning and the whole point is to slip into steaming mineral water and decompress. You shed your clothes, ease into the pool and try to do absolutely nothing. Exist without the weight of the world or, honestly, your swimsuit. And then someone slides into the water beside you, uninvited into your space, with eyes that are saying something you never agreed to hear.

If you’re a gay man or a woman, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about because you’ve also experienced this.

I’m a gay married man, and I love to visit my local clothing-optional hot springs. There’s something genuinely freeing about them. The radical normalcy of it all. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t walked away from a visit feeling uncomfortable, vaguely surveilled, and frustrated that once again, I had to manage someone else’s assumptions about what my naked body was broadcasting. I go there obviously to relax and let the stress melt away, not to be hit on by other gay men.

I used to enjoy attending the hot springs with a local “naked brotherhood” group on a regular basis, that is until a certain man joined the group and began attending as well. At first, there was no issue, he just seemed to enjoy hanging out with everyone having a nice conversation. That was until, there wasn’t anyone else nearby. He made me very uncomfortable by hitting on me and getting way too close. This didn’t just happen once, it happened a couple of times. Finally I stopped attending the nude soaks with that group to avoid being uncomfortable.

This is the conversation our LGBTQIA+ nudist community doesn’t always want to have, because we’ve spent so long fighting for the right to exist in these spaces at all. But it’s overdue. Especially in spaces like clothing-optional hot springs, which attract a genuinely mixed crowd of people seeking healing, rest, and connection with nature, and where the assumption of shared sexual intent can feel wildly out of place.

The myth that nudity is a signal

Here’s the thing that gets conflated constantly: being naked around other people is not the same as being available to them. These are two entirely different statements about a body in a space.

Mainstream nudism has understood this for decades. The naturist philosophy, in its traditional form, is almost aggressively non-sexual. Bodies are just bodies. This is often well understood in nudity required spaces, but clothing-optional spaces tend to operate in a grayer zone, and that gray zone is where things get complicated.

Consent in different location types fundamentally shapes how consent gets negotiated, with sex venues and cruising spaces often carrying a level of implied consent for sexual advances that other spaces do not. The problem is that when we are in a clothing-optional space we are not there for that implicit contract. Some of us are there for the sun. Some of us are there with our husbands. Some of us simply want to feel at home in our bodies without having to field advances we never invited.

The writer and cultural critic Michael Musto once observed that gay culture has “always had to negotiate the line between liberation and license.” That tension is alive and well at every clothing-optional venue where gay men visit or gather.

Part of what makes this dynamic so exhausting is how it’s often framed as a personal failing rather than a cultural problem. If you’re uncomfortable with someone’s advance in a nude space, the subtext can feel like: well, what did you expect? As if showing up is consent. As if you’ve opted into a particular kind of attention everywhere, always.

One framework for thinking about this holds that entering certain spaces involves accepting a kind of contract, and that everyone retains the freedom to participate or not in whatever way they choose. Saying no is always an option. That’s a generous and mostly useful way to think about it. But it assumes the contract is legible to everyone present, and that “no” is always received without pushback or social awkwardness. In practice, that’s not always how it goes.

In my experience a polite decline was met with lingering, hovering, or the kind of slow retreat that makes it clear the person wasn’t actually accepting the no, just waiting for a different answer. That’s not consent culture. That’s pressure wearing a patient face.

What’s particularly uncomfortable as a married man is the assumption that monogamy or disinterest somehow needs to be explained or defended in these spaces. It doesn’t. “No, thank you” is a complete sentence. It doesn’t require a footnote about my relationship structure.

What consent actually looks like here

Here’s what I’ve come to believe after several years of navigating these spaces, sometimes badly, sometimes well: clarity is kindness. Not just for the person whose boundaries need to be respected, but for everyone.

Respect for personal boundaries is genuinely considered a cornerstone of nudist community values, and staring or making assumptions about others’ availability runs directly counter to what these spaces are supposed to be about. That’s not a new idea. The nudist community has been saying it for generations. The specific gay context just sometimes forgets it.

Asking rather than assuming is the whole game. It sounds almost embarrassingly simple, but in practice it requires something a lot of us weren’t socialized to do easily: verbal, explicit checking-in. Not a look held a beat too long and interpreted as an invitation. Not a proximity that edges closer and waits to see what happens. An actual question. And then, crucially, a genuine openness to the answer being no.

This isn’t about sanitizing nude spaces or turning them into something clinical and joyless. Desire is real. Attraction is real. Gay men have built remarkable cultures of pleasure and connection that deserve celebration, not apology. But desire and respect are not in competition with each other. They should be the same practice.

This is the same thing that often happens with female identifying folks as well. They visit a nude space and instantly there seems to be some guy who thinks it’s a buffet and the neon open sign just turned on. It’s why many are afraid when there are too many men around at a nude venue or event. What I am saying is that… they are not alone in this feeling! It just so happens that no one talks about this happening to gay men, and that’s why I’ve chosen to share this with you.

The particular position of gay men who want different things

One of the less discussed dynamics in nude spaces with gay men is that we’re not a monolith. Gay men show up to these places with wildly different intentions, relationship structures, and comfort levels and the assumption of shared purpose can do real harm.

For married gay men especially, there’s sometimes an unspoken friction. The assumption from others can be that we’re secretly looking for permission, that the wedding ring is a bit of theater that polite insistence will see through. It won’t. And the fact that this assumption exists at all says something important about how we’ve constructed these spaces, and what stories we tell ourselves about what kind of gay man belongs in them.

You can be gay, happily married, and want to soak in a hot spring without it meaning anything other than exactly that. The freedom to be in a nude space without having to field advances is not a heterosexual value accidentally imported into gay culture. It’s just a value. Full stop.

This doesn’t require a manifesto. It just requires a little more care.

If you’re someone who approaches others in these spaces: read actual signals, not projected ones. Prolonged eye contact and a smile might be interest, or might just be a person being polite. When in doubt, ask or leave it alone. And when someone declines, let it be done. No hovering, no second approach ten minutes later, no slow orbit that communicates you’re still available if they change their mind.

If you’re someone who, like me, has found yourself uncomfortable in these spaces: you are not obligated to manage the discomfort of the person making you uncomfortable. A clear, calm “no thank you” or even just physically relocating is not rudeness. It’s self-respect in action. And telling venue staff when something crosses a line is not difficult. It’s how spaces actually improve.

The best clothing-optional hot springs nude soak sessions I’ve been to have one thing in common: they feel genuinely relaxed. Not performatively loose, but actually easy. Nobody is working too hard to be seen or to see. People talk, laugh, swim, read, and exist without a constant undercurrent of unspoken negotiation. That feeling doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built by the people in the space deciding, together, that everyone gets to be there on their own terms.

Gay men have always been good at building community. We’ve built it in the face of extraordinary pressure, in spaces that were never meant for us, out of almost nothing. We can absolutely build nude spaces that hold both freedom and respect. Those two things were never opposites to begin with. Just like the females I mentioned earlier in this essay, we just want to be respected and allowed to relax and just be ourselves.

And yes, I left that naked brotherhood group because it was the right thing to do. Even after expressing my discomfort to the leader of the group and getting nowhere, I felt it was the best course of action I could take. It’s sometimes not an easy choice to make but, it’s ok to walk away from a people group or space that makes you feel uncomfortable. 🪐

Before you read the article below, I want to be transparent with you about where I am writing this from.

After several years of writing about the joys and struggles of the nudist community and contributing time and energy to various nudist projects and organizations, I stepped away from my blog, my volunteer positions, and nudism itself over a year ago. For a variety of reasons, I came to recognize a growing misalignment between my convictions and the institutional direction of nudism, despite agreeing with many of its ideas. Though I am reluctant to call myself a nudist today, I have not stopped pondering what nudism means, what it has meant, and what it could mean going forward. I now also question whether the structures and assumptions of American nudism adequately address the very problems they aim to solve.

As I think back on many of my writings over the years, there was always a core tension that I could describe from various, narrow perspectives but I never quite took in the full picture. The following is not a rebuke of the nudist idea, but an examination of it through the eyes of someone who has stepped back far enough to, perhaps, see it clearly and who is not burdened with the responsibility of painting it in the most flattering light.

Writing this piece has clarified my own thoughts around nudism, and I hope it offers some kind of clarity to you as well.

In the beginning

Before American nudism, there was Freikörperkultur—not an accident of aesthetics, but a response to its historical moment. It was a pastoral reform movement that emerged in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany amid industrial acceleration and urban crowding. It imagined healing through return—to sun, soil, air—and through the disciplined cultivation of bodies thought capable of reaching their highest potential. In a Europe unsettled by mechanization and modern alienation, nakedness was framed not as spectacle but as restoration.

The body was not only something to be seen, but something to be lived. It was Körper—visible, physical, commandable, and external—and Leib—internal, feeling, breathing, moving in harmony with landscape and others, sometimes obedient, sometimes not. The promise of Freikörperkultur was not simply the exposure of the body, but its reintegration with the natural world.

When these ideas crossed the Atlantic in the early twentieth century, they entered a markedly different cultural terrain. Like Germany, America in the late 1920s and early 1930s was grappling with rapidly expanding industrial cities. But it was also charged with its own distinct social and economic upheavals. The market collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression brought mass poverty and a turn toward escapism. The Great Migration brought roughly a million Black Americans northward in search of safety from Jim Crow violence, reshaping cities and provoking backlash from white communities unwilling to share space. Women, newly enfranchised on the heels of a controversial suffrage movement, were swiftly pushed out of industrial jobs they had filled during the war. Queer communities carved out fleeting urban visibility even as police raids intensified and moral panic spread. Meanwhile, Federal Comstock laws criminalized the mailing of material deemed obscene and cast long shadows over conversations about the body itself.

In America, the body was already charged—politically, racially, sexually—before nudism ever arrived.

Into this atmosphere, American nudism offered relief: sunlight over soot, leisure over labor, simplicity over crowding. For some, that promise carried nostalgic undertones. Early nudist imagery almost exclusively centered white bodies in pastoral settings, subtly echoing the racial hierarchies of the era. Men and women appeared balanced yet distinctly gendered, athletic yet decorous, liberated yet orderly. For others, nudism suggested something more radical: a leveling of class distinction, a softening of rigid gender codes, perhaps even the possibility, albeit imperfectly realized, of broader equality through shared vulnerability in a world plagued by resistance to progress on those fronts.

The movement attracted idealists, pragmatists, reactionaries, reformers. The nudist idea held within it competing visions of what “natural” might mean: restoration of the past or progress toward a freer future. As nudism evolved in the United States, those tensions did not disappear; they were negotiated. In the process of translation, of determining what nudism would mean in America, some possibilities narrowed while others hardened into doctrine, shaping not only how the body would be seen, but how it would be allowed to be lived.

The tree of Leib & Körper

Nearly one hundred years have passed since Freikörperkultur arrived in the United States. History may not repeat itself precisely, but periods of economic contraction and rapid social change generate familiar tensions. When prosperity falters, when communities are reshaped by migration, when longstanding hierarchies and social norms are unsettled and institutions feel less secure, public discourse turns toward purity, belonging, and control over bodies and lives. Like a siren song, moments like these invite both escapism and scapegoating. It was in just such a climate that Americans first encountered organized nudism and began shaping it to their own context and needs. It is no coincidence that, in our present moment, the meaning of freedom feels newly urgent again.

This past summer, with today’s social, economic, and political anxieties on my mind, I set out to read On Freedom, in which historian Timothy Snyder examines how political systems cultivate—or quietly undermine—the conditions for freedom. Central to his argument are two dichotomies, the first of which is the idea of freedom from versus freedom to, and the second is Leib versus Körper, two German words for “body” which each carry their own philosophical implications.

A freedom from approach defines liberty by removing perceived barriers, whether or not those barriers meaningfully shape lived experience. It protects the body from intrusion and defines freedom negatively. From this perspective, taxes that fund public services are seen as infringements on autonomy; removing them is imagined to increase freedom, even if doing so leaves many without education, healthcare, or mobility: If we do away with taxes for me now, prosperity will find its way to you eventually, too.

A freedom to approach seeks to construct systems that expand access, increase mobility, and enable fuller participation in society. It defines freedom positively. In this view, taxes used to improve education, provide healthcare, and invest in transportation grant individuals greater participation in civic life, along with financial, medical, and geographic stability; in this way, taxes create the conditions for freedom by first expanding access to life-improving services and, consequently, removing the actual barriers to freedom.

Snyder pairs this distinction with another: Leib and Körper. Though both terms refer to the body, they are not entirely interchangeable. Leib, etymologically related to the English word “life,” refers to the body as an intimate, animate being capable of experiencing life, perceiving and interacting with the world around it and connecting with others. Körper, on the other hand, is etymologically related to the English word “corpse,” and refers to the body as a physical, countable object to be perceived, owned, shaped.

Leib is our whole person, the body we are and experience. Körper is our shell, the body we have and that is seen.

Long before contemporary debates about autonomy and identity, European philosophers wrestled with the tension between the lived body—Leib—and the body as object—Körper. Nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche rejected the notion that the body was merely a vessel for reason—Körper—insisting that the self is inseparable from the lived, desiring Leib. Decades later, twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault examined how institutions discipline and regulate the body as object—the Körper. Between Nietzsche’s affirmation of embodied life and Foucault’s analysis of embodied power lies an unresolved tension: whether the body is the ground of freedom—Leib—or the surface upon which authority is stamped—Körper. This distinction becomes visible in the language that we use to discuss freedom. As Timothy Snyder argues in On Freedom, the very idea of “negative freedom” rests on an underdeveloped view of what a person is.

… negative freedom is the self-deception of people who do not really wish to be free. Those who present freedom as negative ignore what we are, ignore the Leib. If we are just Körper, physical bodies, then the idea of negative freedom would make a kind of sense. Objects can be restrained by other objects. Freedom could just be freedom from, without aspirations or individuality, without any sense of what life is or should be.

-Timothy Snyder, On Freedom, p. 23

The fruit

Perhaps not-so-subtly, the Leib versus Körper dichotomy is baked into the origins of the nudist idea itself, present even in the name Freikörperkultur, or “free body culture.” Whether consciously chosen or not, the use of Körper—the physical, visible, commandable body—aligns with the movement’s emphasis on discipline, exercise, and the deliberate cultivation of the body toward a “natural” ideal. Exposure of the nude body—to others and to the elements—was promised as a cure for urban malaise. American nudism emphasized escape from increasingly industrialized and—not-coincidentally—racially and sexually diverse urban environments. Yet this retreat into idyllic, isolated natural spaces also set nudism apart from civic life, quietly defining which bodies, which spaces, and which forms of exposure counted as natural.

It is unfair to paint the burgeoning American nudist movement of the early twentieth century as a purely Körper-focused pursuit. Even in Germany, alongside Freikörperkultur also existed the Lebensreform, or “life reform,” movement, which did indeed place Leib—the living body—at the forefront, at least in name. This umbrella movement encompassed much of what Freikörperkultur had to offer but placed greater emphasis on holistic living beyond physical fitness and nudity. Yet its long-term influence is more visible in contemporary organic and natural health movements than in American nudism itself.

Among the earliest American adopters of Freikörperkultur, views on the potential applications of social nudity varied widely. For some, nudism held possibilities that extended beyond physical health or pastoral retreat. American author and sex researcher Jan Gay, writing of her experience as a lesbian participating in social nudity in Europe, suggested an early openness to rethinking sexuality, intimacy, and community itself. Taking this further, early nudist pioneer and sociologist Maurice Parmelee argued in Nudism in Modern Life that nudism could reshape social norms, including through what he called the “play function of sex.” Parmelee’s controversial support of a more sexually liberated nudist practice, however, betrays the conservative, puritanical views that were far more common among the movement’s early leaders who preferred to frame nudism narrowly—as wholesome, apolitical, and non-sexual—revealing a foundational tension between nudism as social reform and nudism as respectable refuge.

While some nudist pioneers imagined some more lived, experiential, Leib-oriented elements of nudism, most nudist writings, including many by Gay and Parmelee, were decidedly more Körper-oriented, focusing on the exposure of the body and discipline applied to it to bend it to one’s will.

In a climate of sexual repression and economic hardship, nudism also found commercial opportunity. While Comstock laws restricted the distribution of sexual materials, nude photography and literature presented through a purportedly educational, nudist lens exploited a loophole. According to Brian Hoffman in Naked: A Cultural History of American Nudism, during the Great Depression, illustrated nudist publications were among the few profitable ventures, despite frequent censorship, quickly becoming a prominent marketing tool and unifying force of the American nudist community. As writer Mark Haskell Smith notes in an interview with CBC, American soldiers during WWII were provided with nudist magazines because the Pentagon could not sent them pornography. Upon their homecoming, nudist resorts boomed. Nudist imagery continued to occupy a carefully negotiated cultural space between pornography and propriety.

The blurring of sexuality with nudity that came as a result of censorship against pornography and obscenity benefited the American nudist movement but it also further complicated its relationship with sex and reduced bodies to commodities—Körper.

Though some leaders expressed their own views on sexuality, the early American nudist movement never articulated a coherent public vision of how social nudity might relate to healthy sexual expression—likely out of fear of censors and a lack of internal consensus. Nudist literature and magazines, alongside more overtly sexualized publications posing as such, circulated widely among nudists and non-nudists alike. Yet it became the party line to assert that these publications were strictly non-sexual and wholly educational. Defending against legal and public scrutiny required that nudism declare itself a wholesome way of life that resolved the problem of sexuality through repeated exposure of and to the body. In practice, this performance of respectability reshaped the movement itself: couples-only restrictions took hold, domesticity was elevated, whiteness and heteronormativity became policy, and identities deemed too disruptive—Black, queer, overtly sexual—were pushed to the margins or excluded altogether. Nudism promised freedom—but only for those deemed acceptable. Liberation and legitimacy came with invisible borders drawn around whiteness, heterosexuality, and domestic propriety.

Despite its own ideations of a world made more free, natural, and egalitarian through the practice of social nudity, American nudism did not concern itself with extending those freedoms to non-white or queer participants. A fleeting hope for racial progress existed in theory, yet the movement never acted; freedom was optional, inclusion was optional, and the body remained disciplined above all else. In Nudism in Modern Life, Parmelee did speculate that interracial nudism might one day soften racial prejudice through prolonged exposure, but he stopped short of recommending integration as integral to the movement. Only that if we remove our clothing now, other unfreedoms may someday resolve themselves.

In practice, American nudism adopted a freedom from posture. It sought freedom from obscenity charges, from sexual suspicion, from racial controversy, from moral panic. But it stopped short of embracing a Leib-oriented approach, from articulating a freedom to—a freedom to cultivate genuine interracial community, to integrate sexuality honestly, or to dismantle the hierarchies it quietly preserved.

The fall

Much like the unfreedoms that nudism promised to resolve, the defensive instincts forged in the early decades of American nudism have not disappeared. Instead, they have hardened into the organizational structures and community culture that define today’s nudist movement. The American Association for Nude Recreation’s own framing of its purpose reflects this orientation: protecting nude recreation from political interference, defending its wholesomeness and respectability to skeptical publics, and preserving its own organizational structures and institutional stability. Its language is careful, managerial, and defensive, oriented toward safeguarding the right to exist rather than articulating a broader vision of what embodied freedom might become. What is absent is an expansive account of how nude recreation might contribute to rethinking gender, race, sexuality, or communal life more broadly. The emphasis remains on protection and containment, on freedom from.

Within both formal organizations and everyday nudist culture, the longstanding anxiety over the conflation of sex and nudity persists. Conversations about race, sexuality, and other forms of difference are often deferred, and when they surface, they become contentious. Clubs continue to assert their respectability through family-friendly branding, strict codes of conduct, and occasional couples-only policies. Leaders debate whether the inclusion of marginalized participants requires intentional effort or will resolve itself over time. Online communities protest censorship and plead for visibility and exposure, framing their struggle in terms of corporate interference and limits on sharing nude imagery. Adherents police one another on appropriate expression, and may judge one another on adequate exposure. Meanwhile, the physical spaces for social nudity continue to shrink through club closures and, in the case of nude-friendly beaches, precarious legal protections. Yet even in the face of contraction, the movement’s energy remains focused less on articulating a transformative vision of freedom than on defending its fragile legitimacy.

Without such a vision, the modern American nudist movement prioritizes defense and visibility, holding out hope that broader social prejudices will soften over time, much as Maurice Parmelee once speculated that interracial exposure among nudists might gradually diminish racism.

Increased visibility becomes both tactic and aspiration: if nude bodies are seen often enough, framed as wholesome and respectable, and portrayed as free from the complications of race and sexual politics, perhaps acceptance and liberation will follow. By tightly regulating sexual expression and maintaining a strict separation between nudity and sexuality, the nudist movement seeks to shield itself from suspicion and secure public legitimacy. Yet these strategies subtly invert means and ends. Nudity became the goal, not the vehicle and bodies were curated for optics, not felt for life.

The American nudist movement’s focus on visibility and respectability often overlooks the lived, embodied experience that makes us human. It treats the body as Körper: an object to be displayed, curated, and consumed—a means of asserting the legitimacy of a larger cause—rather than as a felt, connected, experiential self. Leib, the body as we inhabit it, a site of perception, connection, and relational freedom, is largely absent from this vision. By treating the body as an object, the movement betrayed its own promise of liberation and reinforced the very hierarchies it claimed to escape. Nudism centered on Leib, in contrast, would begin with the lived reality of the body—its sensations, desires, and interactions—and consider social reception as a secondary concern. It would treat freedom as something actively experienced and shared, not merely defended or performed, and would measure success by interpersonal connection and the inclusion of diverse human experiences, with nudity serving to deepen connection across differences.

In striving to liberate the body, nudists may have objectified it; in striving to overcome prejudice, they may have simply absented themselves from the conversation. Escapism became the movement’s solution to worldly unease. “We’re all equal when we’re naked,” shrouded a culture of, “we don’t discuss inequality when we’re naked.”

The central roadblock for the century-old American nudist movement is an unresolved tension: a reluctance to embrace a bold, expansive, inclusive vision of freedom. Instead, the movement commodifies nude bodies in service of spectacle, framing clothing, sexuality, government intervention, identity discourse, and social media censorship as obstacles to exposure. While many practitioners carry a Leib-centered philosophy—sometimes identifying as naturists—these views do not drive the movement or its organizations. Without centering lived human experience and connection, American nudism continues to fall short of its promise. Its pattern of prioritizing image over experience, defending a narrow respectability, and avoiding engagement with difficult social questions reflects a broader human tendency to favor comfort and legitimacy over genuine connection. This philosophical misstep—the prioritization of a Körper-centered approach over one grounded in lived, felt, relational experience—is nudism’s original sin.

Return to Eden

Just like the America of the 1930s, America over the past ninety years has been marked by social unease, sexual revolutions, and modernization. The mistake American nudists made was believing that geographic and ideological escapism—absenting themselves from both the world and its ongoing struggles over injustice and inequality—was the solution. By centering the exposition of the nude body, stripped of deeper meaning or relational experience, and adopting a defensive posture toward its surrounding cultural context, the movement quietly bent toward the premise that freedom could be secured through exclusion. Certain people, certain conversations, even certain garments became framed as barriers. Yet the absence of those things was never freedom itself. It could only narrow it—contain it to fit within the space that nudists occupied.

Looking to contemporary social movements, we glimpse what a Leib-centered nudism might become. LGBTQ advocacy, racial justice initiatives, body-positivity campaigns, and movements for sexual autonomy place lived experience, relational connection, and the dignity of diverse bodies at the center—precisely the qualities largely absent from organized American nudism. These movements remind us that freedom is not merely the absence of interference or the visibility of the body, but the ability to inhabit one’s body fully, safely, and authentically within community. They insist that bodies are not abstractions or spectacles—they are lived sites of vulnerability, history, and relation. They also caution against a visibility-first approach: placing queer bodies, Black bodies, or other marginalized bodies before the public without attention to their lived realities risks turning them into symbols, commodities, props—Körper. A nudist philosophy attentive to this distinction would shift emphasis from defending exposure to cultivating connection, from curating appearances to honoring embodiment, and from policing sexuality to educating and celebrating it.

Whether the modern nudist movement can atone for the original sins of its forefathers is, I believe, a difficult question, because the solution requires deeper introspection than the nudist movement has previously demonstrated. Rather than looking to outside factors as the root of nudism’s limited success, nudists must examine their history, retrace their path, and take responsibility for the choices made along the way instead of becoming mired in resentment. The unfortunate problem I see is not that the nudist movement lost its moral compass along the path it took, but that whatever compass the movement had has been leading it in the wrong direction from the start.

Nudists must imagine what their movement could look like if it embraced a Leib-centered philosophy, one that treats social and artistic nudity as a path to fuller participation in civic life, mobility across identities, improved education around healthy sexuality, and ecological stewardship. In this scenario, nudity would remain an important condition of participation—encouraging vulnerability and heightening the body’s senses—but it would not be the end goal. Instead of retreating from the world, the movement might engage more fully with broader social initiatives, measuring success by expanding access to its spaces across communities, demographics, and regions. It would ask what freedoms it could build, rather than simply what freedoms it could protect. How can nudity expand the human experience, rather than limit it?

Exploring these possibilities would be an important exercise for the American nudist community: to examine why they believe nudity is uniquely capable of creating the kinds of freedoms they hope to see. Yes, it feels good, and yes, it is physically unrestricted—but freedom from restraint alone does not resolve broader unfreedom. In the previous example offered by Maurice Parmelee regarding optimism that interracial nudism might gradually erode racism, his suggestion rests on the assumption that proximity transforms prejudice—an assumption equally plausible in clothed social life. If simply being naked does what activism, education, and empathy already do, then what, exactly, is nudism for? Does a nudism that is unwilling to address unfreedom have a place in society? Is it really just about being naked, about seeing each other naked, and should that come at the cost of greater freedom? And if that’s the case, why do so many nudists claim that merely taking off our clothes will solve all these issues? It seems to me that the average nudist wants nudism to be meaningful and impactful—not just a hobby, not just propaganda, not just a body on display. To reflect on Timothy Snyder’s earlier excerpt, does the average nudist actually want freedom, or just a different set of restrictions?

I am skeptical that the nudist movement as it exists today can fully address the unfreedoms it claims to confront, but I do not doubt the unique and novel usefulness of nudity in that pursuit. Nudity can be powerful, and it deserves to be more than seen—it deserves to be felt, to evoke vulnerability and introspection, to open us up to deeper connections with one another and to the world around us. That, to me, is what has always made nudism appealing: that there is more to nakedness than met the eye. Perhaps the nudist movement can correct course, or perhaps another movement that recognizes the potential in nudity will rise to the challenge. In any case, I don’t see why nudists could not start asking for a movement that means more: one that expands freedom rather than containing it, that connects people rather than isolating them, that celebrates human experience rather than reducing it to bodies, that engages with the world rather than escaping it.

That is a nudism that could change people and systems and society for the better, that could make being human a bigger experience, not a smaller one. I hope one day to know that nudism, or maybe something even better. 🪐

And there we are. The shame about nudity gone, the self-image improved a bit, same for the self-confidence. But again, the routine of it becomes limiting too.

Your partner knows you do this, but doesn’t want to be confronted with this. In his or her mind, from his or her upbringing, this is wrong. You shouldn’t be doing this. What if the neighbours see you like this? What will they think of you? What will they think of me? What will they think of us? We’re a decent family, we don’t do things like that.

This spoils the good feeling you had earlier, and you agree to only be nude when he or she is away from home. At least it’s not behind the back, but it feels bitter that even your partner doesn’t want you to enjoy your nudity, your freedom.

After a while, you get used to this, it becomes the new normal to be nude in and around the house, and the excitement goes away. You still enjoy this wonderful freedom though, you can’t live without it anymore. Having to wear clothes feels very restraining now.

Isn’t there any way to expand this freedom, this joy?

An unexpected invitation

One day, when you are very down and emotional about traumas from the past, and she gets very desperate about getting you happier again. And out of the blue, she suggests to go to a nudist beach together… wouldn’t that lift you up?

It is unbelievable at first. She was so adamant, so clear about this, no way that she would ever go naked in public. Your first thought is that she might keep her swimsuit on while you go naked. That would make sense.

But that’s not what happened. She was the first to get naked on that beach. And that one single gesture changed everything.

But how? Why?

The first thing you experience is a strong feeling of acceptance. Acceptance of yourself by yourself. But also silent acceptance from the other people there.

The second thing is the love that you feel. This gesture is so huge that it fills you with the feeling of being loved. If this person is willing to step that far out of her comfort zone for you, that can only mean that you’re worth it.

When we arrived at this beach, something I had waited for my whole life, I was unsure about how I would feel undressing in front of so many people. I think I was projecting feelings about undressing in front of a non-nudist public. But the fact was that nobody even noticed me when I undressed. In that environment, it was the most natural thing to do.

I can write about how I experienced all of this as much as I want, but I can not speak for others. I am convinced that most of the feelings that I’m trying to convey here will match with what a lot of nudists feel. My motivations are what they are, others will have different ones I’m sure.

Finding normalcy in nakedness

I think that non-nudists imagine the situation where they would face judgement and rejection if they were to go naked in public. Why? Because that’s the sort of reaction one would hear from non-nudists when the subject is nudism or naturism. And that gets in their heads. They won’t go naked not because they don’t like being naked, but because of what others might think about their lifestyle—about their body.

It’s not like we’re going out naked in the streets or to do our groceries. Because that’s when you would get strong reactions like this.

We go naked in places where other like-minded people go naked too.

Even I was expecting some sort of reaction or response from the other people there. But there was none, nothing. Nobody blinked an eye. Was that disappointing? No! It was so reassuring. What we were doing appeared to be normal—and exactly that was what I had been looking for my whole life.

When we went for our first swim, we had a slight hesitation to go deeper into the cold water. A naked woman, a complete stranger, was just exiting the water, and cheered us on. We chatted with another woman next to us on the beach, we helped a man put sunscreen on his back and we were all naked. And nobody cared about that, we were part of the crowd—part of some sort of community. That community had been there for a long time, we just didn’t realize it.

Freedom from judgment

Right there, it all came together. My life made sense. I wasn’t abnormal. I wasn’t a perverted person. I was loved enough for her to take this huge step. I wasn’t ugly or even unsightly. We saw people, men, women, even children, of all sizes and shapes, not caring about possible imperfections, but just enjoying being there, free from judgement, free of clothes. Clothes serve to hide things. In today’s society, the pressure is real to try and outshine others when it comes to clothes, makeup and lifestyle in general. All of that pressure evaporates when people don’t bother with all of this.

In the clothed world, your body is judged too. Your height, your weight, the size of your breasts, you name it, there are norms and measures.

In the nudist world, your body is free of this judgement. Your body can’t comply with fashion trends, because there aren’t any. And that is what’s so liberating. Nobody will look at you and evaluate your fashion choice and how expensive that might be. When you’re naked, you can only be judged by your personality. You could be judged by the shape of your body, you might think, but that is, “the textile way of thinking”. In the textile world, your body shape will determine what is best to wear or not wear; horizontal versus vertical stripes, long, short skirts or blouses. Take off the clothes and you are free of that “choice overload”. Your body goes well with your body, and with your person.

As I stood there, and took off my dress, I looked around me, and felt peace at last. I was there, nothing more, nothing less, and it felt right. I didn’t have to be afraid anymore that anyone could see me. Everyone could see me. And to my surprise, I didn’t care at all, or at least not in a negative way. I cared that it was possible, I cared that I allowed everyone to see me naked. I felt proud. I felt free. I hadn’t been so relaxed in years.

We went swimming naked for the first time in our lives, and I can confirm that there’s nothing like feeling the water stream over your skin, a sensation that is completely absent when you wear a swimsuit.

After our swim, we took a long walk along the waterline, and I was amazed by the realization that we were walking naked in front of a huge crowd and that it didn’t bother us at all. On the contrary, we walked proud. We even crossed clothed people, and there was nothing awkward about that at all. Again, on the contrary, it super-normalized our nudity in public. This was the ultimate in public nudity, so far—mingling with clothed people, not being sheltered in a secluded environment anymore, but out in the open.

The healing power of acceptance

We didn’t miss wearing clothes on that day, by no means. It rather felt so sad having to put on clothes again, taking away our freedom.

I’ve spent my whole life hiding things. Out of shame, uncertainty, all projected upon me by my environment, my upbringing, society. Even though she knew, I also had to hide from my own wife, because she didn’t want to be confronted with this. Again, that did project shame and a feeling of wrongdoing upon me. I felt like I was enforcing something wrong, perverted, shameful, upon her. It seriously hurt my self-image, the fact that I wasn’t just like anyone else but instead had desires that couldn’t be known to the outside world.

I felt like she deserved better than this, this wasn’t what she wanted, what she signed up for. She could have had a “normal” partner. I felt less than the others around me. They enjoyed the normal things in life, things that are widely accepted and normalized. I was again the odd one, the weird one, hoping for some form of acceptance. I was still at the mercy of the judgement of society. Where others have things to be proud of, like a husband, a “normal” marriage, I had to explain myself already as a lesbian woman. Hoping for acceptance, and then this.

Stepping into this world of public nudity changed everything. I didn’t have to explain, I didn’t have to justify anything. What we were doing was normal—we were part of something. I felt free as never before in my life, I could step out in a crowd, naked, hiding nothing at all, literally this time, and that was normal. No justification required, no explanation required. Unreal.

Ever since that day, when we go to sleep, we have a long cuddle, naked, until we fall asleep in each other’s arms. Everyone should try that. Nothing in the world is more relaxing and healing as this naked cuddle, skin to skin, holding the one you love, and feeling loved. It wasn’t the nudity by itself that changed me or our relationship. It was the trust and the love in and for each other, which materialized in this experience. Along with my clothes, I dropped my defenses. I wasn’t afraid of showing myself anymore, not physically nor mentally. And that was the key to healing, to a better life. 🪐

Editor’s note: This essay is part three of a three-part series by , exploring how nudists and non-nudists experience nudity differently. Part three is coming soon. You can find more of her writing on naturist life on her Substack:

Read parts 1 & 2:

Follow for more like this:

Catherina

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

The first scary step

Admittingly, the very first time you step out of the door naked, it is a bit scary. This is clearly not the normal operating procedure that you’re used to.

To a non-nudist, this is becoming a true horror story. Not just being naked, but outside of the house, and with the much higher risk of being seen. This is the stuff of nightmares. Why would you even do that? Well… let me give an idea of how it felt for me.

You feel the excitement of leaving the relative safety of your house and venture outside. You are apprehensive about the neighbours seeing you like this. They have never seen you naked, and you sure hope that today is not the day that they will. You have no idea about how you would even begin to explain to them why on earth you are naked in your garden. “I forgot to put on my clothes?” So you keep close to the back door, you leave some clothes handy near that door—as if that will save you when they see you.

At first, you just slip into and out of the house, quickly, almost like a burglar would. You look for blind corners of the back porch where the neighbours can’t see you, and start relaxing a bit. You have your coffee, read a magazine, anything to relax.

Once you get used to being outside, you start to venture away from your safe spots. You even start wondering why you were so afraid to go outside. It feels great. You’re in your own secluded garden, you have the right to your privacy, you’re not breaking any laws. So you take a lawn chair, drape a towel over it, and position yourself on the lawn, in the sun.

Feeling the elements

It is such a strange sensation, to feel the sun on your bare skin, to feel the wind over your body. You are barefoot, and it feels so natural to really touch the ground—it makes the experience complete.

But you’re still nervous. Access to your garden is open for anyone. What if the postman, or a courier driver, come around the house to drop off a parcel—as you instructed? What if the neighbour walks by behind the hedge separating your gardens, and catches a glimpse of you? What if my across the street neighbour drops by?

Yes, what if?

In your imagination, you put your hands over your boobs and utter some apology—as if that would be what the man would want.

The longer you think about it, the less you worry. If this happens, it’s their problem. They invaded your privacy, they have no right to be offended or shocked. You’re not a pervert, you’re not an exhibitionist, you just want to relax without clothes.

This thought relaxes your mind, and allows you to start enjoying your new-found freedom. Already you increased your self-confidence, and lowered any shame about your nudity. In fact, your awareness about your body has heightened significantly by now, in a positive way. These are the first signs of body positivity.

From now on, you get less cautious, you stop sneaking around your own house and garden as if you’re committing some crime. You get this higher sense of utter freedom. It feels so wonderful allowing yourself to do something that you didn’t know you needed, and of which you think it would be disapproved by most people you know. And it starts to make you wonder why they would disapprove.

Again you’re not harming any animals by doing this, not even the squirrel with wide-open eyes when he sees you like that. He’ll survive.

With the newly gained confidence, you start doing your chores outside. You installed a windscreen in front of this gap in the hedge separating your garden from the neighbours’. This allows you quite a bit more freedom to move around. In the evening, you spend some time watering all the plants outside, hanging the laundry to dry, cleaning up the garden here and there. And it feels so great stepping right into the shower afterwards, no need to undress before or dress afterwards. That’s two chores less to do.

One with nature

As I already wrote in a previous blog, I experimented with nudity at home during my youth. I sat naked around a local fishing pond at sunrise in summer, which was as relaxing as some illegal drugs might be to others. You feel one with the universe, you feel a real and true part of nature around you. You hear the birds awaking, nature comes alive, and you’re an integral and equal part of it now. No expectations, no judging, no stress, no worries—except getting caught. Just be.

As the sun rises, you feel its warmth on your bare skin. You can’t appreciate it or even judge it if you haven’t felt that. You are a part of a greater whole, and you belong. There and then, you are accepted.

To a non-nudist, you are probably not accepted. If anyone sees you, the atmosphere will change from light to darkness. Disapproval, rejection, even anger.

And yet, deep inside, I wanted to be seen so it could feel normal. But I knew that that wouldn’t be the response of anyone seeing me then. Being caught would have caused me to feel like a sick weirdo, because that is what was projected into my mind by my upbringing, and that would have been the reaction of any outsider probably.

The limits of privacy

So all of these experiences can be considered as private nudity, alone or with your partner. That alone is already a great liberation of the mind, letting go of the endless expectations that our society imposes upon us all. It feels as a relief to be able to let go of this, and do what you want within the confines of your privacy.

After a life of being productive in my job, being a parent, helping care for our household, being useful—for the first time I felt like I was able to just think of myself and my needs. And not just any needs, but needs that I won’t even share with just anyone.

And even that gets to be so normal that you yearn for more. But what is more?

The next logical step is public nudity. Oh my. 🪐

Editor’s note: This essay is part two of a three-part series by Catherina, exploring how nudists and non-nudists experience nudity differently. Part three is coming soon. You can find more of her writing on naturist life on her Substack: https://kath62.substack.com/

Read parts 1 & 3:

Follow for more like this:

Catherina

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

What attracts people to nudism and naturism?

We love being naked.

And how do you explain this to non-nudists? Do they even want an explanation? And why don’t they want this same thing?

So be naked, who cares?

As every nudist and naturist will confirm, just being naked inside your own home isn’t everything. It is a path, a journey, from discovery to exploring. As you get used to being nude, you want to push you boundaries and expand your experience.

The simple joy of home nudity

Let’s start with nudity in your own house, in private.

For people that do not have this need to be naked, this must already we weird. Being naked in your bathroom, yes. Being naked in your bedroom, yes. But no matter how they try, they will never understand what’s so nice about running around naked, unprotected, uncovered, cold—that’s their association, not ours.

To us, nudists and naturists, it’s about feeling free. Just the mere fact of being able to be naked is already bliss. Free of the shackles of what we were told. Get out of bed in the morning, go to the bathroom, go downstairs and to the kitchen, have some coffee and breakfast. Naked. That is already relaxing our mind, not having to bother with putting on some clothes.

I wonder if any of us can even explain why that is so important to us, why it gives us that feeling. And I wonder if all the other people in the world can explain why they hate even just the thought of it. The most heard reaction to this is usually “eeew… yikes”, as if we’re pooing on the table and smearing it on the walls.

Anyone who doesn’t understand this might as well wonder why a naked body triggers sexual response, arousal. Anyone care to explain? It’s not rational either, and nobody cares, they just enjoy it, rightfully. And so do we with our casual non-sexual nudity.

Maybe non-nudist might just be afraid to be seen by the neighbours, but might otherwise consider more nudity in the house. Some might be afraid of getting cold. Or getting dirty. Or getting the furniture dirty. Or they were just taught that nudity is a bad thing, is wrong, and they never questioned that point of view.

Turning the tables on textile comfort

Now let me turn the table. Let me ask the non-nudist what it is that attracts you to wearing clothes all the time? Why does it make you feel comfortable? Why do you prefer to sit in a wet swimsuit after a swim?

Hard questions, no? Absurd questions? Welcome to my world; nudists and naturists get the same questions about being nude.

The difference is that I’ve been in your place, I have been wearing clothes all my life—because I had to, but that’s not the point, and you haven’t been in my place—yet.

And I know clothing is comfortable, when it’s cold, or when it’s raining. Or when you ride a motorcycle and you want to protect your body in case of a fall. Or you step through the bush and don’t want to scratch your skin all over. And all of those reasons are rational ones. It is easy enough to convince people why they should wear clothes.

Until it gets really hot. You have to admit that you have thought at least once in your life how clothes can feel too much on a really hot day. You start sweating, your clothes get wet, and it gets very uncomfortable very quickly.

So now I have also found a rational reason to be naked.

The difference is that I can easily be convinced to wear clothes when it’s cold, but a non-nudist can’t be convinced to go naked when it’s really hot. The non-nudists’ reasons for not being willing to go naked are as irrational as the reasons that nudists have to wanting to be naked whenever they can. But the non-nudists have the advantage here that the majority in our society supports their irrational reasons and not ours.

So when we are at home, we just don’t feel like wearing clothes. No, that is not really literally our reasoning. We rather prefer being naked. Because it makes us feel good.

So doesn’t it sexually arouse us?

No, not really. Thinking like that might be a projection of the feelings of a non-nudist towards nudity. And that would be a natural feeling and reaction to nudity, of oneself or of others around you, nothing wrong with that at all.

Nudists can get aroused from nudity too—but in a different setting. When we’re with the one we love, and we’re “in the mood”. But not from nudity alone. I really adore the body of my wife. In a non-sexual context I can watch her naked body for hours, and admire it, enjoy it, love it. Just like a non-nudist can adore their partner in beautiful clothes, I can adore the sight of the naked body of my partner, without necessarily getting aroused by it. I admire it like a work of art, and it triggers strong feelings of love in me.

In a sexual context, we’re all the same. I get the same reaction to her naked body than everyone else when we make love. I mean, we’re not made of stone.

The practical realities

Now let’s get back to nudity inside the house. One might wonder—Isn’t it uncomfortable when your skin touches the furniture for instance? We have leather seats and a sofa in our house, and yes, it isn’t really comfortable to sit directly with your naked skin on a leather surface, true. But there’s a simple solution for that: we use towels to sit on. It is a bit fiddly, I admit, but you get used to that very quickly. It becomes second nature—after you got tired of your skin sticking to the leather when you get up.

But that doesn’t diminish the great feeling of bodily freedom that I described above, of getting out of bed, going downstairs, have breakfast, all without bothering with clothes. You really have to experience this with an open mind, before judging. There is nothing wrong with doing this, we are not bothering anyone with that, no animals or children were harmed by us being naked in our own house. And the world order won’t collapse because of that (there are plenty of other reasons currently). On the contrary, I’m absolutely convinced that the world would be a much better place if everyone would do this, and I’ll later explain why.

Beyond the walls

Even though this inhouse nudity feels very liberating, it does become limiting after a while. You want to feel more, you want to feel more “normality” about it, and that isn’t achieved by hiding yourself inside your own house, afraid of anyone seeing you. It still makes you feel too much like what you do needs to be hidden, like it’s a weird thing to do, and that annihilates the feeling of liberation. There must be more that you can do.

Like going outside? 🪐

Editor’s note: This essay is part one of a three-part series by Catherina, exploring how nudists and non-nudists experience nudity differently. Part two is coming soon. You can find more of her writing on naturist life on her Substack: https://kath62.substack.com/

Read parts 2 & 3:

Follow for more like this:

Catherina

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

There’s this moment that happens sometimes when I’m at a naturist resort or at a clothing-optional hot spring. I’ll be completely in my element, soaking up the sun without a stitch on, feeling that particular brand of freedom that only social nudity can provide. And I’ll think about my husband, who’s likely at home, probably doom scrolling TikTok, very likely partially clothed. And instead of feeling sad, I feel this warm gratitude wash over me.

We’ve been together for nearly 11 years now, married for just over two. He’s not a naturist. Never has been, probably never will be. And you know what? That’s absolutely okay.

I know this might sound strange to some people. In the naturist community, there’s often this assumption that if you’re committed to the naturist lifestyle, your partner should be too. Articles about naturism and relationships tend to focus on how to convince your reluctant spouse to join you. And while that’s beautiful when it works, it’s not the only way to have a healthy relationship when one partner is a naturist.

The difference between acceptance and participation

My husband has always been what I’d call “nudity-neutral.” He’s not uncomfortable with nakedness. He’s been nude with me at a cabin we rented, and he’s even hiked nude with me on a couple of occasions. And often on our textile cruises, he will join me out on our private balcony nude. But he doesn’t seek it out. It’s not his thing, and he’s honest about that.

What he does do is, support me. Completely, unreservedly. When I want to spend a weekend at a naturist resort, he encourages me to go. When I come home buzzing with that energy you get from a day spent clothes-free in nature, he listens. He asks questions. He’s interested in why it matters to me, even if he doesn’t feel the pull himself.

As relationship expert Esther Perel has said, “The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” What makes my relationship work isn’t that we do everything together. It’s that we respect what matters to each other, even when we don’t fully understand it.

What I’ve learned about relationships from this dynamic

Being in a relationship where I practice naturism and my husband doesn’t has taught me more about love than I expected. Research from the American Psychological Association shows that trying new activities together can boost relationship satisfaction, but that doesn’t mean you need to share every single interest.

My husband and I have our shared loves: good food, terrible reality TV and traveling to places with excellent culture. But we also have our separate passions. He has his video games. I have my naturism and woodworking. We’ve learned to celebrate each other’s joy rather than expecting to feel exactly the same joy ourselves.

More importantly, it’s shown me what true acceptance looks like. My husband has never made me feel ashamed of my naturism. In a world where naturists still face stigma, having a partner who sees your passion as just another part of who you are is incredibly valuable. As Marc, a naturist blogger at Nude and Happy notes, “Healthy nudism requires consent from all involved. This is sometimes frustrating, but allows respect to be front and center, a core tenet of naturism.”

The practical side of making it work

Of course, this doesn’t mean there are never any challenges. Early in our relationship, we had to figure out what this would look like practically. Did he feel weird about me being naked around other people? No, because he understands that naturism isn’t sexual. Would I resent him for not joining me? Only if I let myself, which I choose not to.

We’ve developed some unspoken rules that work for us. I don’t pressure him to participate, and he doesn’t make me feel guilty for going without him. I keep him in the loop about where I’m going, not because he demands it but because that’s good communication. Occasionally, he’ll join me for something low-key, like being nude at home or on a secluded hike.

Those moments when he does participate feel special because he’s choosing to step into my world. It’s his way of saying, “I love you, and I want to understand what makes you happy.”

The freedom of being fully yourself

Here’s what I think is most underrated about having a supportive partner who doesn’t share your passion: it gives you permission to be fully yourself. I don’t have to tone down my enthusiasm for naturism.

There’s something beautifully queer about this too. As gay men, we’ve both had to navigate being ourselves in a world that doesn’t always make space for us. Maybe that’s why my husband gets it. The people and passions that light us up deserve to be honored, not diminished.

Psychologist Alan Downs writes in “The Velvet Rage” about how gay men often struggle with authenticity after years of hiding who they are. For me, naturism is part of reclaiming that authenticity. My husband supporting that, even without participating, feels like the deepest kind of love.

One thing I’ve stopped doing is trying to make my husband love naturism. Early on, I probably hoped he’d suddenly become a regular at the nudist activities with me. But that’s not fair to him, and it’s not necessary.

My husband has given me the autonomy to pursue naturism on my terms, and I’ve given him the same freedom with his interests. We’re stronger for it. We have things to talk about that aren’t just our shared experiences.

A different kind of couple goals

Social media loves to show us couples who do everything together, who have perfectly aligned interests. And that’s lovely when it’s real. But it’s not the only model for a successful relationship.

My marriage works because we’ve built it on respect, trust, and genuine affection for who the other person actually is. My husband doesn’t need to get naked at a resort to prove he loves me. He proves it every time he asks about my weekend.

Knowing that he supports me without getting anything directly out of it himself makes me love him even more. It’s pure acceptance. He’s supporting it because he enjoys me being happy.

After 11 years together, this is the kind of love that lasts. Not the kind that demands we be identical, but the kind that makes space for both of us to be fully ourselves. And if you have that kind of support from your partner, you have something truly special. 🪐

To the leadership of —

This week, The Guardian published an investigation detailing how Substack earns revenue from newsletters that promote Nazi ideology, white supremacy, and antisemitism. The reporting showed that these publications are not only hosted on your platform, but monetized by it, and surfaced through recommendation systems that steer readers toward similar content.

Our Substack newsletter, Planet Nude, rejects fascism, Nazism, antisemitism, and white supremacy without qualification. These are not abstract ideas to be weighed in debate. They are ideologies rooted in dehumanization and violence, and their normalization online has measurable real-world consequences. We are publishing this letter openly because our readers deserve clarity, and because your decisions now directly affect the credibility and sustainability of the many publications like ours that are built on your platform.

By your own measures, Planet Nude is a Substack success. We are a Substack bestseller, a top-ranked culture publication, and a sustainable business supported by a niche audience. We publish daily, pay contributors, and operate squarely within your stated rules. We are not writing from the margins.

Planet Nude has thrived on Substack in part because of your open content policies. Our work has been restricted or erased elsewhere for lawful, nonsexual expression rooted in art, culture, and civil liberties. We have seen firsthand how blunt moderation and opaque enforcement can destroy years of work overnight. We understand why Substack positioned itself as an alternative to that model, and we value that stance.

That is why your continued monetization and amplification of explicitly Nazi and white supremacist publications presents a growing problem for us, not just ethically, but practically.

As a publisher, we answer to our readers. Increasingly, we are being asked to explain why our work lives on a platform that profits from hate ideology. That association does reputational damage whether we endorse it or not. At a certain point, the trust we have built with our audience is eroded by proxy, simply by remaining tied to infrastructure that refuses to draw basic lines.

This is not hypothetical. It affects subscriber confidence, partnerships, contributor comfort, and long-term brand integrity. No amount of editorial clarity can fully offset the reputational drag of platform association once it becomes widely understood.

For this reason, it is precisely this situation that has pushed us to begin laying groundwork for alternatives: backing up our archives, diversifying infrastructure, and exploring paths that reduce dependence on systems that profit from hate. We would prefer not to do this. Migration is costly, disruptive, and imperfect. But inaction carries its own cost, and it is one we ultimately bear.

There is a fundamental difference between protecting contested human expression and subsidizing hate ideology. Substack’s current policies collapse that distinction. Demonetizing and de-amplifying publications that explicitly promote Nazism, white supremacy, or Holocaust denial is not censorship. It is a refusal to reward belief systems built on exclusion and erasure. Algorithms and recommendation systems are active, not neutral. When extremist publications are surfaced and sustained, Substack is shaping an ecosystem and benefiting from that shape.

We understand the risk of overreach. We do not want Substack to become another platform where nuance is flattened and creators are disciplined for discomfort, ambiguity, or misunderstood expression. Nudists and naturists, in particular, know how quickly those distinctions collapse. We have experienced that failure firsthand on other platforms, and it is deeply corrosive to creative and civic work.

But caution is not the same as inaction. Substack has already shown that it can make careful distinctions—most notably in recognizing that nudity does not inherently equal sexual expression and in building space for that understanding to exist. That same capacity for judgment can and should be applied elsewhere. Platforms are not obligated to subsidize ideologies rooted in dehumanization and hate speech cannot be treated as just another form of protected expression without damaging everything around it. Platforms that refuse to act eventually narrow their own culture. If the only voices that feel fully welcome are those pushing dehumanization, others will leave silently, one by one, until the platform reflects the values it failed to challenge.

We urge Substack to adopt a common-sense approach that protects inclusive, nuanced human expression while clearly excluding ideologies rooted in hate and violence. Specifically:

• Demonetize publications that explicitly promote Nazism, white supremacy, or Holocaust denial.

• Remove algorithmic recommendation and amplification of extremist content.

• Provide transparency about how such material is identified and handled.

These steps would help protect the ecosystem Substack depends on, preserving the kind of thoughtful, varied publications that give the platform its real diversity of ideas and made it an appealing home for creators in the first place.

Planet Nude would prefer to keep building here. But our responsibility is to our readers, our contributors, and the integrity of our work. If Substack does not change course very quickly, the cost of staying will soon have outweighed the cost of leaving, and that is not a calculation we control alone.

We are asking you to act while there is still something worth holding together.

Respectfully,

Planet Nude 🪐

Editor’s note: We’re keeping comments closed on this letter so it can stand on its own. If you’d like to share your thoughts, reactions, or experiences with platform moderation and publisher risk, we’ve opened a dedicated discussion in our #News-of-the-Nude channel on Discord.

You can join the conversation here: https://discord.gg/3u2SNS5Hqc

As always, we ask that discussion remain thoughtful, informed, and grounded in respect for one another.

The first time someone enters a naturist space, there is usually a moment of profound realization. It is not necessarily the thrill of the breeze or the sun on skin that hits first. Rather, it is the visual evidence that the airbrushed images we see on billboards are a lie. In a true naturist environment, you see surgical scars, stretch marks, uneven tans, folds of flesh.

For a movement that prides itself on being the ultimate expression of body acceptance, you would think that diversity would be its greatest strength. Yet, as much as naturism claims to be a refuge from the judgments of the clothed world, it is not immune to the pervasive reach of fat-shaming.

When we bring our biases into these spaces, we don’t just hurt individuals who are obese, we undermine the very foundation of what it means to be a naturist. For a movement that purports to help people find body acceptance, it sometimes adopts a toxic view of body positivity. To make our way of life accessible and inclusive to a broader coalition, we need to shift our focus from an ethos of body positivity to something more grounded and sustainable: body neutrality.

For years, the mainstream conversation around body image has been dominated by body positivity, and the reasons are understandable. Who doesn’t love positivity? It is a well-intentioned movement that encourages everyone to love their reflection and see themselves as beautiful. While this has helped many, it also places a heavy burden on the individual. It suggests that if you do not feel beautiful every time you look in the mirror, you are failing.

Body neutrality offers a different path. It is the radical idea that you do not have to love your body to respect it. It is about acknowledging that your body is a vessel, a tool that allows you to experience the world, rather than an aesthetic object to be constantly appraised. As Anne Poirier, author and body image expert has noted, “Body neutrality is the bridge between body loathing and body love.”1 It allows us to exist in our skin without the pressure of performing confidence.

“Body neutrality is the bridge between body loathing and body love.” —Anne Poirier

In a naturist context, body neutrality is incredibly powerful. It takes the focus off the visual and places it on the experiential. When we stop worrying about whether our bodies are “good enough” to be seen, we can finally focus on the actual benefits of social nudity: the sense of equality, the connection to nature, and the removal of the social markers that clothes provide. The freedom we all love. And importantly, true body acceptance.

Fat-shaming in naturist spaces represents a structural failure. When fat-shaming enters the naturist movement, it creates a hierarchy in a space that is supposed to be egalitarian. Naturism is built on the idea that without clothes, we are all just human. We lose our status, our wealth, and our social class. However, when thinness becomes the new “uniform” of acceptability, we are simply replacing one set of restrictive social markers with another.

Fat-shaming in these spaces is often subtle—especially for people who have never been obese—but the more you keep an eye out for it, the more you see it. It shows up in the lack of representative imagery in club brochures, in accessibility of grounds or lodging, in inclusivity in sports and programming, or in just in the way energy shifts in certain social encounters. Often it is more overt, disguised as “concern for health,” a common tactic used to justify exclusion. This behavior is toxic because it reinforces the idea that some bodies are more worthy of being seen than others, and pushes against people’s autonomy over their own bodies and health.

If a person feels they must lose weight before they are “ready” to visit a nudist resort, then that resort has failed its mission. Naturism should be the cure for body shame, not a place where it is amplified. By allowing fat-shaming to persist, the movement alienates a significant segment of the population, and one that could benefit most from the freedom of social nudity. It turns a philosophy of liberation into a gated community for the aesthetically privileged.

The myth of the visual diagnosis

One of the most persistent barriers to true body neutrality is the urge to equate a person’s appearance with their medical records. In many social circles, including naturist ones, fat-shaming is often rebranded as a “concern for health.” This allows the critic to maintain a sense of moral superiority while masking their bias. But the reality is that health is a complex, multi-dimensional state that cannot be determined by looking at a person across a pool or on a hiking trail.

The idea that thinness is a universal synonym for health is a medical oversimplification that has been thoroughly debunked by modern medicine. Metabolic health, cardiovascular fitness, and mental well-being exist across a vast spectrum of body types. Many larger individuals lead active lives and possess excellent clinical markers, while many thin individuals may struggle with chronic illness, poor nutrition, or sedentary habits. When we judge a body based on its size, we are relying on a visual shorthand that is frequently wrong.

Weight is not a behavior, and it is not a direct proxy for health. By moving away from weight-centric thinking, we recognize that health is about what a body can do and how it feels, rather than how much space it occupies.

The tendency for people—however well-meaning—to visually diagnose others is particularly damaging in the context of a naturist environment. It creates a culture of scrutiny that is the exact opposite of the relaxation and acceptance that the movement promises. If we are busy assessing the “health” of those around us, we are failing to practice the core tenet of naturism: acceptance of the human form as it is. This tenet inherently cannot come with conditions.

True body neutrality accepts that some people are healthy, some are not, and most are somewhere in between, but none of those states should determine a person’s right to exist comfortably and without judgment in a communal space.

The weight of fat shame

As a gay man who is considered overweight by “textbook” standards, I have felt the sting of silent judgment more times than I can count. In the queer community, there is often an intense devotion to a specific kind of lean, muscular aesthetic that can make anyone outside that narrow window feel like an outsider. Even with the security of a loving marriage, I am not immune to the way strangers project a narrative of poor health onto me simply because of my size.

The irony of this judgment is particularly sharp when I look at my own medical reality. If you were to examine my chart, you would see a man in excellent physical standing. My blood pressure is textbook, and my bloodwork labs come back near perfect every single time I have a checkup. These are the objective facts of my health, yet they are entirely invisible to a person looking at me across a pool or a sauna.

This disconnect between my actual health and how I am perceived is where the true damage occurs. While my physical body is thriving, the constant pressure of being shamed for my weight takes a significant toll on my mental health. It is exhausting to feel as though I must constantly defend my right to exist in a body that others have deemed a problem. When I enter a naturist space, I am looking for a reprieve from that exhaustion. I am seeking a sanctuary where the social hierarchies of the clothed world are supposed to vanish. When fat shaming follows me into the one place where I am meant to feel free, it erodes the sense of safety that is essential for true relaxation.

Building a more neutral future

The survival of the naturist movement depends on its ability to attract younger, more diverse crowds. For many people in their twenties and thirties, body inclusivity is not a luxury; it is a requirement. This generation has grown up with a heightened awareness of how harmful traditional beauty standards can be. If they walk into a naturist club and sense a culture of judgment or “fat-talk,” they will not return.

Furthermore, fat-shaming hurts everyone, even those who fit the current beauty standard. It creates an atmosphere of surveillance. When we judge others for their size, we are implicitly acknowledging that we are also being judged. This keeps everyone on edge, constantly checking their posture or wondering if they look okay from a certain angle. It robs us of the relaxation that is the entire point of being clothes-free. It denies us the basic respect that is the currency of naturism. Without it, the movement is just a collection of people without clothes on. With it, it becomes a transformative and radical social practice of rejecting the pervasive stigmas of the outside world.

To move forward, organized naturism, naturist advocates and individuals must actively work to dismantle the “body beautiful” myth. This starts with representation. If your website and social media posts only shows young, fit, athletic couples, you are sending a clear message about who is welcome. We need to see bodies of all ages, sizes, and abilities reflected in the movement’s public face.

On an individual level, it means practicing the art of not commenting on bodies, even in a complimentary way. In a body-neutral space, we talk about the temperature of the water, the quality of the hiking trail, or the book we are reading. We move away from the “look at you!” culture and toward a “glad you’re here” culture.

The naturist community has the potential to be lead the way in the body neutrality movement. It is the only space where the reality of the human form is consistently and honestly on display. By rejecting fat-shaming and embracing the idea that every body is a neutral fact of life, we can create a culture that is truly liberating. We can finally stop looking at each other and start seeing each other. 🪐

A recent Times of India lifestyle column advises parents not to change clothes in front of young children, presenting the idea as expert guidance on childhood boundaries and child safety. The piece centers on the views of Dr. Anuradha H. S., a pediatrician, teen health specialist, and parenting coach based in Bangalore with decades of clinical experience and a practice focused on confidence-based parent training. Dr. Anuradha, founder of the Confident Parenting Hub, hosts social media content for parents and positions herself as an authority on early childhood behaviors, privacy, and boundary setting.

In the video and article highlighted by Times of India, she warns parents that letting a spouse change clothes in front of a young child “may blur important lessons about personal space and respect,” and suggests that children under six “may assume bodies are always open for viewing” if adults undress nearby. According to the Times of India summary, she says modeling privacy by dressing and bathing in private helps teach respect for bodies and can “arm them with defense against child sexual abuse.”

That recommendation is framed as a matter of child well-being, yet the article does not provide citations to peer-reviewed research supporting the idea that non-sexual parental nudity confuses children or increases risk. It substitutes authority by assertion for data, repeating a common belief about nudity and children as if it were settled science.

The advice itself sounds reasonable at first glance: teach privacy, model boundaries, protect children from harm. But the leap from those goals to a claim of psychological risk tied to ordinary, non-sexual parental nudity is where evidence is essential. Decades of research have asked that question directly, and the answers are far less alarming than what the Times of India article suggests.

What the research actually says

The idea that children are harmed by seeing a parent nude has circulated for generations, often as “common sense.” When researchers began testing it, the results failed to support the fear.

As early as the 1960s, psychiatric researchers examined whether early socialization experiences, including exposure to parental nudity, distinguished children with mental health challenges from control groups. In all of those early studies, they did not. If parental nudity were a hidden driver of pathology, it should have shown up there. It didn’t.

Later work moved beyond indirect measures. Studies of nudist families and communities in the 1970s documented ordinary, rule-bound social environments centered on trust and responsibility, not boundary confusion. In the 1980s and 1990s, psychologist Marilyn Story conducted controlled comparisons and found that social nudists often reported healthier body self-concepts than non-nudists. In 1986, the book Growing Up Without Shame by Dennis Craig Smith and Dr. William Sparks studied adults who had been raised in nudist environments. Their studies found that children who had grown up in contexts that allowed for nonsexual and family nudity had healthier sexual outlooks and were more comfortable with their bodies than adults who were raised in non-nudist contexts.

The most rigorous evidence arrived in the late 1990s. An 18-year longitudinal study by Paul Okami followed 200 children from early childhood into late adolescence, tracking outcomes across self-acceptance, relationships, behavior, substance use, and sexual adjustment. Early exposure to parental nudity was not associated with negative outcomes on any of these measures. The researchers found no empirical basis for the widespread belief that such exposure causes harm.

More recent work, including pre-registered studies published in the 2010s and 2020s, particularly by Dr. Keon West, continues in the same direction. Participation in naturist contexts correlates with improved body image, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Retrospective studies examining childhood exposure to non-sexual family nudity find no adverse effects. Some even suggest downstream benefits in comfort with one’s body.

This does not mean “anything goes.” Researchers consistently distinguish between everyday, non-sexual nudity and sexualized exposure. The former is what these studies examine. The latter is where real harm is documented. Conflating the two collapses a crucial distinction and muddies public understanding.

The cost of evidence-free warnings

The Times of India article gestures toward child sexual abuse prevention, implying that avoiding nudity helps “arm” children with defense. That concern is understandable. In India, as in many countries, conversations about child safety unfold against real fears about abuse, silence, and stigma. Parenting advice does not emerge in a vacuum, and cultural norms around modesty, privacy, and respect for elders shape how these warnings are delivered and received. Acknowledging that context matters. But context is not evidence.

Child protection research, across countries and cultures, does not identify ordinary, non-sexual parental nudity as a risk factor for abuse. What consistently increases risk are secrecy, coercion, grooming behaviors, power imbalances, and exposure to sexualized content or conduct. Teaching children about consent, bodily autonomy, and the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touch is essential. None of that requires parents to frame their own bodies as inherently confusing, dangerous, or inappropriate for a young child to see.

Some clinicians and educators have argued the opposite. When children encounter bodies in everyday, non-sexual contexts, they may be better positioned to recognize when something is out of place. Familiarity can reduce mystification and shame, making conversations about boundaries more concrete rather than more difficult.

This is where cultural distinction matters. Privacy norms around bodies vary widely across societies and historical periods, including within India itself. What counts as appropriate exposure in one family or community may differ from another. The problem arises when a culturally specific preference is elevated into a universal claim of psychological harm without supporting data.

Saying that privacy is valued, or that modesty plays an important role in a given cultural setting, is one thing. Saying that parents who change clothes in front of a toddler are making a “huge mistake,” or placing their child at risk, is another. The former is a social norm. The latter is an empirical claim, and it requires evidence.

When advice columns present unevidenced claims as child-safety imperatives, they do more than misinform. They risk reinforcing body shame and amplifying fear, especially in cultures where discussions of the body are already tightly constrained. Parents already navigate a dense web of expectations and anxieties. Adding moral urgency without data raises alarm rather than understanding. If the goal is to help children develop healthy boundaries, the evidence points toward clear communication, respect for consent, and a firm distinction between ordinary bodies and sexual behavior. Ordinary family nudity, on its own, does not undermine those lessons. That harm claim has been repeated far more often than it has been demonstrated.

Parenting advice deserves the same standard we apply to any claim about harm, regardless of culture. Ask for data. Ask what studies actually show. When we do, the picture that emerges is calmer, more grounded, and far less sensational than a viral warning suggests. 🪐

More to explore:

The first morning of the year always arrives quietly for me. No fireworks. No countdown replaying in my head. Just light moving across a room and the feeling of being awake before the rest of the world asks anything of me. I wake up nude, not as a statement, but because that is how I sleep now. That alone says something about how far I have come.

There was a time when the idea of greeting a new year without clothes would have felt exposed, even reckless. Now it feels honest. Necessary, even. Over the years, naturism has stopped being something I did and started being the way I live. When January arrives, I do not reach for resolutions. I reach for clarity. And clarity, for me, begins with having nothing to hide.

I did not come to naturism looking for a movement. I came to it looking for relief. Relief from expectations. From the constant negotiation with my own body. From the pressure to perform comfort instead of actually feeling it. What I found instead was a way of life that asked me to slow down, to listen, and to stop editing myself for an imagined audience.

As the naturist writer Ilsa Franz once observed, “Nudity does not make us vulnerable. Vulnerability already exists. Nudity simply removes the distractions.” That idea stayed with me long after I first encountered it because it put language to something I felt but could not yet articulate.

Starting a new year nude is not about optimism or self-improvement. It is about presence. It is about acknowledging where I am, how I feel, and who I have become without rushing to reinvent any of it.

The weight of hiding

Most of us spend years learning how to hide long before we ever learn how to be seen. We hide our bodies behind clothes that promise confidence. We hide our insecurities behind humor or silence. We hide our fears behind productivity. Even when we think we are being honest, there is often a layer of protection between who we are and who the world gets to see.

Before naturism, I carried that weight everywhere. I knew how to stand so my stomach looked flatter. I knew which angles worked best in photos, which is ironic considering photography is my profession. I knew how to talk about body acceptance without fully practicing it myself. I was good at presenting an image. I was less practiced at inhabiting my body without critique.

As photographer Nan Goldin famously said, “I want people to see exactly what I see.” That desire has always resonated with me, not just in my work behind the camera, but in how I wanted to live. Naturism eventually became the place where that honesty was no longer optional.

Standing naked among others made it impossible to maintain the illusion that everyone else had it figured out. Bodies varied. Comfort varied. Confidence came and went. What surprised me most was how quickly the pressure dissolved when comparison lost its power. Without clothes to signal status, style, or belonging, what remained was humanity.

The first year I truly committed to naturism taught me that hiding is exhausting. It also taught me that vulnerability does not require explanation. You can simply exist.

What nudity reveals over time

There is a misconception that naturism is about becoming fearless. It is not. It is about becoming familiar. Familiar with your body as it changes. Familiar with discomfort when it arises. Familiar with the way confidence ebbs and flows depending on the day.

Over time, nudity stopped being something I noticed. It became a baseline. What I began to notice instead were the thoughts that surfaced once the distraction of clothing was gone. Old narratives about worth. About desirability. About who gets to take up space. Naturism did not erase those narratives, but it gave me room to question them.

As author and cultural critic Susie Orbach wrote, “Bodies are not projects. They are places where we live.” That sentence could serve as a thesis for my entire naturist journey. Once I stopped treating my body as something to fix, manage, or improve, I began to experience it as a home.

I write often about how body acceptance is not a destination. It is a practice. Some days that practice is gentle. Other days it is deliberate. The new year has become a checkpoint not for measuring progress, but for checking in with my relationship to myself.

Am I listening to my body or managing it?
Am I present or performing?
Am I honest about what feels good and what does not?

Starting the year nude gives me a clear answer to those questions. There is no costume to hide behind. No role to play. Just skin, breath, and awareness.

January light and quiet intentions

There is something about January light that feels honest. It is thinner, cooler, less forgiving. It does not flatter. It reveals. Sitting nude in that light, hot cocoa cooling in my hands, I am reminded that intention does not have to be loud to be meaningful.

I no longer make resolutions to change my body or my habits. Naturism has taught me that chasing an ideal version of myself only reinforces the idea that who I am now is not enough. Instead, I set intentions rooted in presence.

This year, my intention is simple. Continue living with nothing to hide.

That means showing up authentically in naturist spaces without needing to prove belonging. It means writing honestly, even when the truth feels quieter than outrage or celebration. It means allowing my body to age, soften, strengthen, and change without narrating every shift as a problem to solve.

The philosopher Alan Watts once said, “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” Naturism has helped me resist that panic, especially at the turn of the year.

In my work as a photographer, I have always been drawn to unfiltered moments. Real light. Real skin. Real life. Naturism aligns with that instinct. It asks me to trust what is already there instead of manufacturing something more acceptable.

Community without costumes

One of the most profound shifts in my naturist journey has been my understanding of community. Without clothes, there is less room for posturing. Conversations tend to move quickly past small talk and into something more grounded. Not because nudity is intimate by default, but because it removes many of the usual barriers.

Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote extensively about the roles we play in everyday life, noting that much of social interaction is performance. Naturism disrupts that performance in subtle but powerful ways. When the costume is gone, what remains feels more real.

Community, in this context, is not about uniformity. It is about coexistence. Different bodies. Different stories. Different levels of comfort, all sharing space without hierarchy. That experience reshaped how I think about belonging.

As the new year begins, I think about how the naturist community supports living with nothing to hide. Not through agreement, but through presence. Through allowing others to be where they are without judgment. Through recognizing that confidence looks different on everyone and that discomfort does not mean failure.

Naturism has given me a space where showing up as myself is enough. I don’t have to hide my scars or who I am as a gay married man. That alone feels like a radical way to start a year.

What I am no longer hiding

Living with nothing to hide does not mean living without boundaries. It means being honest about where those boundaries are. This year, I am no longer hiding my need for rest. I am no longer hiding my discomfort when conversations turn performative or exclusionary. I am no longer hiding behind the idea that advocacy must always be loud to be effective.

Writer Audre Lorde reminded us that “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.” That truth applies just as much to how we inhabit our bodies as it does to how we use our voices. Naturism has taught me that care and courage are not opposites.

Shame does not exist in isolation. It is taught. Reinforced. Monetized. Choosing to live nude challenges that system in small but meaningful ways. Not through confrontation, but through consistency. Through showing that another way of relating to the body is possible.

Starting the year with nothing to hide means acknowledging that my relationship with my body is ongoing. Some days I feel deeply at home in my skin. Other days I feel self-conscious for reasons I cannot always articulate. Both experiences are valid. Neither disqualifies me from this way of life.

Looking forward without reinvention

The pressure to reinvent ourselves at the start of a new year is relentless. New body. New habits. New identity. Naturism has taught me that reinvention is often another form of rejection. It implies that who we were was not acceptable.

I am not interested in becoming someone else in 2026. I am interested in continuing to become more present as myself. That includes honoring the work I have already done and recognizing where growth still feels possible.

Living with nothing to hide is not about perfection. It is about alignment. When my actions match my values. When my words match my lived experience. When my body is not treated as a project, but as a home.

As I step into this new year, nude and unguarded, I am reminded that the most radical thing I can do is stay. Stay with discomfort long enough to understand it. Stay with joy long enough to trust it. Stay with myself without asking to be different first.

The year will unfold as it always does. With challenges. With beauty. With moments that test my patience and others that remind me why this path matters. Starting it with nothing to hide does not guarantee ease, but it does offer clarity.

And clarity, I have learned, is more valuable than any resolution.

I begin this year the same way I intend to live it. Present. Honest. Uncovered. 🪐

There is nothing wrong with looking at nude bodies. Seeing ourselves and others without clothes can be grounding, affirming, joyful, scary, freeing, empowering, etc., etc. Images have always been part of how nudity circulates in culture, and for reasons that are obvious: they are immediate, emotional, impactful, and importantly, they’re easily shared. Plus, often times, they’re striking, and reliably tend to grab attention. But when nudity becomes reduced to images alone, something larger gets flattened—and I’m not talking about all of the body’s dimensional bumps and bulges.

Much of today’s nudity discourse lives on screens, across social and traditional media. Carefully curated and intentionally framed bodies, meant to signal confidence, rebellion, freedom, allure, liberation, etc., etc., in a single glance, and those messages are often so heavily weighted that, even in the best of circumstances, what we’re seeing reflects more of a photographer’s vision than a genuine moment of truth about nudity. Even in spaces that reject sexualization, the visual still tends to dominate more nuanced understandings of nudity’s truly liberating and therapeutic qualities, and the nude body easily becomes the point rather than the doorway.

That focus is understandable; images travel faster than ideas. They bypass language. They can provoke. While they can be deceptive, they can also tell the truth about something. Art has real power to move people, and images can condense emotion, politics, and intention into a single frame in ways language often can’t. But they also narrow the conversation. When nudity is treated primarily as something to be viewed, it adopts the logic of spectatorship. A picture may indeed be worth a thousand words, but those words are often not the same for every viewer. Plus, sometimes you need more than one thousand words to make a point. Interpretation often beats intent.

For the uninitiated, a nude image is still often read as something scandalous or taboo, regardless of intent. A glance at the comment section beneath a female naturist’s photo on social media is usually enough to see how quickly an innocent expression of nudity is reinterpreted as sexual spectacle. The result is a version of nudity that appears provocative while being filtered through familiar assumptions about sex, exposure, and transgression.

That visual logic also isn’t neutral. The history of nude imagery in naturism, even when created with good intentions, has been shaped heavily by the male gaze. Women’s bodies have often been positioned as proof points for freedom, beauty, or legitimacy, framed in ways that subtly center male desire and expectation. Those images may appeal to women as well, but they still carry inherited narratives about who nudity is for, who it welcomes, and who is meant to be watching. Over time, this skews perception. It can attract more men than women, reinforce gender imbalances within nudist spaces, and not-so-subtly suggest that women’s participation exists primarily as visual validation. None of this requires bad faith. It’s the result of repetition, of visual storytelling doing too much work on its own, weaving small fictions into what claims to be a simple truth about nude bodies. What gets lost is everything nudity does beyond being seen.

What gets lost is story.

Story matters here in a way images rarely can. Most people do not decide to try nudity because they saw a convincing photograph. They decide because someone they trust told them what it felt like. The awkward first moments. The unexpected normalcy. The relief of realizing nothing dramatic happened at all. These experiences move through narrative, not imagery.

In shared nude settings, the most striking thing is rarely how bodies look. Most newcomers remark first on how quickly bodies stop being the subject at all, as conversations take on a different tone and people move and speak with less self-monitoring. Before long, the social hierarchies that tend to organize clothed spaces begin to loosen. These shifts are subtle and difficult to capture visually, but they shape the experience far more than any photograph ever could.

When nudity is shared as story, it gains texture and stakes. Story carries doubt, context, and consequence. It allows room for fear, humor, resistance, change, etc., etc., over time. An image can show a body and its scars. A story shares what that body went through to earn those scars, what it learned and how it felt, why the experience mattered, and what it meant. For people standing at the edge of curiosity, story provides permission in a way images never can.

To be clear, going beyond the nude image does not mean abandoning images as part of advocating for nude acceptance or body freedom, and it certainly isn’t a call for people to stop sharing their nudes. Have at it, baby. Visual culture will always be part of nudity’s ecosystem, and it should be. What it does require is a bit more care in how images are used and understood, and a resistance to substituting visibility for meaning. A movement that leans too heavily on being seen can flatten its own complexity, while a practice grounded in story, experience, and history develops the depth and durability needed to last.

That depth comes from story, and from people being willing to tell it. Nudity becomes legible to others not through images, but through lived experience shared honestly. Stories carry hesitation, context, and change over time. They explain why something mattered, not just what it looked like. For many people, hearing a real account from someone they trust does far, far more to open the door to nudity than any image ever could.

If nudity has shaped your life in any meaningful way, tell that story. Share it with friends. Write it down. Talk about what surprised you, what challenged you, what stayed with you. These experiences do not need to be dramatic or definitive to matter. Diverse perspectives make this conversation stronger, and every sincere account adds something worth hearing.

Planet Nude is one place where those stories can be shared. I’m always open to essay submissions, reflections, and thoughtful personal writing that treats nudity as lived experience rather than spectacle. If you have a story you’d like to tell, you can send it to evan@planetnude.co.

A love for nudity or an interest in nude recreation spreads because people talk about it far more than just because it looks good in a photograph. If we care about nudity as a lived practice, then telling those stories is where the work actually happens. 🪐

Editor’s note: This essay first appeared in the June 2025 issue of H&E Naturist. The author has also published it on his Substack, available here. It reflects a more traditional faith-based perspective than we admittedly tend to publish on Planet Nude, but we think it adds an important voice to the wider conversation about the body, identity, and belief.

It’s a word that evokes a certain response from the average Christian: nudity.

For many modest, church-raised believers, the term carries an almost reflexive discomfort—a flush of embarrassment, a sense that the unclothed body is automatically immodest or morally suspect, or simple confusion about how people of faith could view nakedness as acceptable in any context. Within much of contemporary Christian culture, the unclothed body is approached with caution, shaped by long-standing stigma rather than curiosity or nuance.

I used to be one of those people who thought that nakedness was immodest, sinful, bad, and immoral. I was raised a Catholic, and I can say, at least from my personal experience, that many in the community are very hostile towards skin exposure. For my entire life, I had never questioned it. But recently, something life-changing happened.

Tracing a Christian lineage of nudity

Last year, curiosity led me into unfamiliar territory. I had been asking whether a Christian could in good faith participate in social nudity, and that question eventually brought me to the American Association for Nude Recreation — better known to most readers here simply as AANR.

AANR has been around for 94 years, and its early leadership included Ilsley Boone, a Baptist minister often credited with formalizing the modern American nudist movement. Realizing that one of the country’s most influential naturist organizers was a clergyman challenged many of the assumptions I had carried since childhood.

From there, my research widened. I found a section on Clothes Free International examining nudity and Christianity through a historical lens—pointing to naked baptisms, unclothed prophets, and, of course, the Eden narrative before the Fall.

I also discovered two groups, Christian Naturists of America and the Christian Naturist Association, which promote social nudity and worship among believers who see no contradiction between their faith and the unclothed body. Their work suggested a worldview I had never encountered: that non-sexual nudity and Christianity could coexist, even complement one another.

The more I read, the more I felt compelled to understand this subculture that sat entirely outside my upbringing.

A first step into social nudity

After careful consideration and lots of prayer, I did something I never imagined I would do: I started getting naked in the privacy of my own home.

But I went even further. I researched the nearest nude resort to my hometown, and I decided to embrace the experience. Yes, I visited a nude resort and got naked with a bunch of strangers.

To be completely honest, I was very nervous about this decision. I had no idea what to expect and worried that I might struggle with lustful thoughts or be unable to control my urges. I also wasn’t sure whether this choice conflicted with my faith.

However, once I arrived, everyone was friendly and welcoming. They made me feel comfortable, and after about ten minutes I completely forgot that I was naked. To my surprise, the resort even had a chapel for religious gatherings and weddings.

But the most unexpected part was realizing that I didn’t experience lust or gaze at a woman inappropriately—something that genuinely shocked me. Everyone respected personal boundaries and treated one another with dignity.

It felt like a small city, but with naked people simply being themselves and doing regular activities like swimming, hiking, tennis, volleyball, and dancing. It was a surreal experience in the best possible way.

This experience completely transformed my entire view of the naked body. Throughout my life, I have always felt embarrassed and ashamed to remove my clothes. If someone had asked me ten years ago if I would be doing this, I would have said “never.” However, engaging in recreational nudity made me more comfortable with my body, resulting in less embarrassment when walking around naked. This is a strange thing to hear coming from a faithful catholic like myself.

Where personal experience meets belief

I’m not saying this is right for everyone, but I encourage all Christians to reconsider their views on nakedness. It may be strange, and that is understandable, since nudity is very much stigmatized in Western society. Two books, ReNude Life by author Jason Stern and Who Said You Were Naked? by pastor David L. Hatton, examine how society can reshape its perception of the human body. The authors address issues that affect our understanding of nudity.

Is there anything in scripture or the catechism that suggests that simply being naked is immodest, bad, sinful, or immoral? If so, I have yet to find it. What matters is the intention behind nudity. Most of the stigma surrounding nudity originates from puritanical customs prevalent in the United States.

Even the Vatican features statues of nude people. If nudity were indeed a problem, it’s unlikely the popes would permit these displays in public. In fact, the recently canonized Pope John Paul II discussed the naked body in his book titled Love and Responsibility. His words were: “The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve intact its splendor and beauty. Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness. Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person.” If a person can be immodest while clothed, then they can also be modest while unclothed. This is an undeniable fact.

But what if I told you there are benefits to engaging in non-sexual, social nudity? According to a PubMed journal article written by psychologist Keon West, people who engage in social nudity tend to be more body positive and experience less social physique anxiety compared to people who do not. They are also more likely to decondition the body as a sexual stimulus, meaning they are less prone to sexual arousal and lust when seeing a naked person. Another psychologist, Justin Lehmiller, affirmed the same benefits on an article from Psychology Today, such as enhanced body positivity and greater respect of others’ bodies. Additionally, the increased sun exposure provides adequate amounts of Vitamin D.

Everyone is born naked. As children, we swam naked, embracing our natural state without shame. Historically, baptisms were done naked, symbolizing purity and renewal. In many cultures, full or partial nudity is common, reflecting respect and comfort surrounding the body. I also learned that there are even Christian communities that worship in the nude, which was the most surprising to me. Authors like Jason Stern and David L. Hatton explore how Christianity and nudity can coexist. A prominent Christian writer, Justine Hudson famously advocates for nudism, stating, “it’s about shedding the layer of shame, fear and insecurity when it comes to our bodies.”

Regardless of whether you are Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, it is important to rewire our minds about how we perceive nakedness. If that means getting naked around others in a safe environment, then I encourage it. Let it be a New Year’s resolution or an item on your bucket list. Your life will change for the better. Mine definitely has. 🪐

Like this? Check out more of the author’s personal Substack:

In theory, a naturist venue or space should be the ultimate safe space, where the concept of “body positivity” isn’t a trend, but a living, breathing reality. Yet, for those like myself with a larger body, the lived experience often feels like a sharp betrayal of this promise. Now, this isn’t the case at all naturist places, but it does feel that way at some.

I want to dive into the uncomfortable truth behind the scenes of some naturist spaces. It’s time to call out the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle fatphobia that lurks where it should least exist, and look at the crippling hypocrisy of claiming body positivity in theory while practicing judgment in reality. I hope that you will gain a deeper understanding of this crucial issue and feel empowered to advocate for truly inclusive spaces, whether you’re a seasoned naturist or just curious about dipping your toe in.

At the heart of naturism is a simple and powerful philosophy: embracing non-sexual social nudity as a means of personal and collective liberation. It’s meant to break down the walls of shame and guilt that clothing often builds up. The idea is that when we are all stripped down, our differences fade, and we recognize our shared humanity.

Part of this philosophy is the explicit embrace of every body type, shape, scars or no scars and age. The common narrative celebrates the freedom from having to look “good” or fit a certain mold. It’s supposed to be a place where the cultural obsession with thinness is finally shed alongside our swimwear. Naturism is where people should realize that what we see on modern media is all altered to be the “perfect” ideal body.

Come as you are

In naturism, we live by the statement “Come as you are. All bodies are naturist bodies.”

Growing up in a non-nudist household like many people, I was not immune to the pressures of society. The media influences were just as pressing for me as a male as they are for a female. Of course, most of society won’t discuss how the “perfect” male body image that is seen on television is also an issue for boys growing up.

Even in school, the other children around me also teased me about my weight or the size of my penis. All of this teasing obviously has to come from somewhere. It came from what was and still is portrayed in the shows and movies we watch. A man should be physically built to be a tank with huge muscles that are perfectly toned.

Back in time when I was a child, I faced the same pressures and bullying as any female that grew up around me. Sure the pressures and bullying might look different but let’s call a spade a spade because it’s all harmful to a child and how each one of us perceive ourselves. The harmful narrative that we as humans have to look a certain way and be a certain weight to be seen as being healthy is just wrong.

In school I was often not picked to be on a team for a game of tag or even to play kick ball or anything else that had a team element, likely because of my larger size. This happened not only among the children but even the adults, such as those who coached the soccer team I was on in middle school.

It stings when the invitation never arrives, not because you weren’t top of mind, but because of a silent, predetermined judgment about your body’s capabilities. There’s a particular kind of exclusion that happens when the kids or even adults around you organize a game of pickup kick ball or plan a challenging mountain hike and simply don’t ask you to join, operating under the assumption that you’re “too fat” to want to participate or, worse, that your presence would somehow inhibit the experience for others.

Anti-fat bias

Historically, in many cultures, including early on in the United States, being fat or “plump” was often seen as a positive sign of wealth, health, and prosperity, signifying freedom from disease and ample access to food.

By the 19th and early 20th centuries, as American prosperity grew, a different cultural shift occurred among the white middle and upper classes. The ideal body in modern American society became thin, tight, and fast-moving. In this context, a thin body became the new status symbol, signifying that one could handle the excesses of a wealthy society through discipline and self-control, whereas fatness was mocked in popular culture as incompatible with progress and leisure.

As anti-fat bias became more entrenched, a counter-movement emerged. In 1967, the first “Fat-In” was held in New York’s Central Park to protest discrimination. This led to the founding of the National Association to Aid Fat Americans (NAAFA) in 1969 (now the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) and the more radical Fat Underground in the early 1970s, launching the fat acceptance and fat liberation movements to fight discrimination and promote the view that all bodies deserve respect and equal rights.

Anti-fat bias remains one of the most entrenched forms of prejudice, with studies showing that, unlike other forms of bias such as race or sexuality, implicit weight bias has not significantly decreased in recent decades and is still highly prevalent.

I’m sure that the exclusion I experienced wasn’t usually malicious, but it stems from deep-seated anti-fat bias that incorrectly equates size with a lack of interest, fitness, or endurance. It forces people like myself to battle not just the physical challenges of the activity, but the psychological burden of constantly having to prove your athleticism and desire to move, often before you’ve even had a chance to lace up your shoes. This experience strips away the opportunity for camaraderie and fun, leaving behind a frustrating mix of disappointment and resentment towards a world that judges your potential based on a visible metric.

The reality on the ground, however, often tells a different story. While many formal naturist venues usually have robust policies on anti-discrimination, the casual, cultural fatphobia ingrained in wider society can’t simply be taken off like a pair of shorts.

Many individuals with larger bodies report feeling a distinct, often isolating difference in the atmosphere. I have also felt this same thing at naturist venues where there is just a feeling or a gaze that gives me the feeling that someone has an anti-fat bias. It may not manifest in overt insults, but in a thousand tiny cuts.

The gazes directed at someone with a larger or more “plump” body feel heavier, more scrutinizing and less accepting than those directed at bodies that conform to the modern beauty standards.

Marketing bodies

Another area where I have seen the anti-fat bias happens to be in many promotional materials for resorts, clubs, naturist blogs and even naturist organization websites. They often lack representation of various body sizes to include those who are larger. It sends a clear message about what bodies are considered “ideal” in naturist spaces.

There is also the stigma that someone who weighs more than the “ideal” or textbook weight is not healthy. This persistent cultural narrative that equates thinness with discipline and health is another area that creates and perpetuates the anti-fat bias. Often a thin person is seen simply as a body, but a fat person is seen through a lens of a lifestyle choice that is being judged.

This creates a pervasive sense of being tolerated, not truly celebrated. For someone who has taken a huge, courageous step to embrace nudity in a social setting, only to find the same subtle layers of bias they sought to escape, it is profoundly discouraging. The shame that naturism is supposed to erase is, in these moments, amplified and reinforced.

Every person on this earth has been uniquely designed to be different. We all have a different body shape, color, height, weight and overall biological makeup. This uniqueness should be celebrated and welcomed in naturist spaces.

If we want naturism to be relevant, we must actively and intentionally dismantle the internal fatphobia. It’s not enough to simply state, “everyone is welcome.” Welcome must be translated into a feeling of belonging. This shift requires more than just good intentions; it demands action from the community and its leaders.

Clubs and organizations must prioritize visible and authentic representation of diverse body types, including fat bodies, in marketing visual assets. This helps to normalize the reality that truly all body shapes and sizes belong. Additionally these organizations should be integrating conversations about body size prejudice into their orientations and member conduct guidelines. Lastly, we should be creating platforms for naturists with larger bodies to share their experiences and feelings about the fear and backlash they often receive in regards to their size.

True body positivity isn’t just about your acceptance of your body; it’s about creating a world where every body, regardless of size, is met with equity, respect, and neutrality. When naturist spaces commit to this difficult but necessary work, they won’t just be offering a relaxing day at the pool, they’ll be offering genuine liberation. 🪐

Love this?

Support Dustin by subscribing to his blog 1 Naturist Life on Substack.

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

My comfort with nudity didn’t start on a naturist beach or at a resort. It started in the most ordinary place, the college gym locker room. Walking through the locker room, grabbing a shower after a workout, and chatting casually with other guys while nobody thought twice about being nude was simply part of daily life. Nobody stared. Nobody acted weird. It was just what you did. It didn’t start off that way for me but after some time, I was doing the same as everyone else, just simply walking around without a towel wrapped around me to hide my body.

Those spaces taught me something that wouldn’t fully sink in until years later. When nudity is handled casually, it feels casual. When people treat it as normal, it becomes normal. The idea that nudity equals sex didn’t match what I experienced there. It was just a bunch of students getting clean, getting ready, or cooling off after working out in the gym.

As naturist author Mark Storey puts it, “Naturism is about being comfortable in your skin and connecting with nature, not about sexuality. The moment you step into a real naturist environment, you realize how ordinary and wholesome it actually is.”

I didn’t realize it then, but those communal showers and locker rooms laid the groundwork for the ease I would later feel discovering naturism.

My first steps into naturism

When I eventually chose to explore naturism intentionally, I wasn’t chasing a grand revelation. I just wanted comfort. I wanted to quiet the constant body expectations I’d internalized. I wanted to be more present. What I found was something deeper than I could have predicted. I started off during the COVID-19 pandemic by joining other naturists and nudists online in spaces that had been created for online social nudity.

My first in-person social nude experience happened about a year after the lockdowns had been lifted. The first time I got nude with others in a public setting was at the Dakota Hot Springs in Colorado. Within minutes of being in my first naturist setting, everything clicked. I felt grounded, comfortable, and strangely at home. No one was staring. No one acted awkwardly. The energy was almost identical to what I felt in those college locker rooms. Familiar. Safe. Completely normal.

That experience inspired my own reflection, something I’ve said many times since: “Nothing prepared me for how natural naturism would feel. Within minutes, I stopped thinking about being nude and started thinking about how relaxed and grounded I felt. That’s the real magic of this lifestyle.”

Many naturists talk about the physical and mental benefits of nudity, and I’m absolutely one of them. My body feels freer without clothes. The air hits differently. The sun feels more alive. Even my breathing becomes more intentional.

Author Dr. Paul Bowden sums it up beautifully by saying, “The non-sexual foundation of naturism is what makes it so powerful. It’s not about eroticism. It’s about authenticity, self-acceptance, and living naturally.”

Naturism deepened my relationship with nature in a way I didn’t expect. Feeling wind, water, and sunlight on bare skin creates a sensory connection that clothing simply dulls. And it’s not just physical. It’s emotional. Being nude outdoors has become one of the most grounding practices in my life.

Naturist writer Richard Foley echoes this feeling when he said, “Being nude outdoors reminded me that my body is part of nature, not something separate from it. That shift in perspective is life-changing.”

For me that same feeling has also extended into the wood shop. I grew up working in the wood shop with my grandfather, crafting amazing decor pieces, and even some furniture items. In the last two years, I began working in my own wood shop at home more often, but the difference is that I am now doing my craft clothing-free. My connection to the wood I’m working with has deepened and I feel far more respect for the natural resources I am working with.

Sometimes the reason people embrace naturism is simple comfort. Clothes are restrictive, they itch, they squeeze and they distract. Once I learned how freeing it felt not to have that constant layer, it became clear why nudity feels so right for so many.

As I often tell readers, “For me, naturism is where my body feels at home. Not for attention. Not for shock value. Just for the simple comfort of being myself.”

A culture built on respect

One of the most misunderstood parts of naturism is how deeply respectful the culture is. Sexual behavior is not tolerated and boundaries matter. Families participate in naturism because they know the environment is safe and structured.

British Naturism’s Stephanie McManus said, “Once people realize that naturism is rooted in comfort, health, and human dignity, they begin to understand why families and individuals feel so at ease in nude spaces.”

In my own experience, I know that if people experienced naturism firsthand, most of the misconceptions would disappear overnight. It’s the most non-sexual environment I’ve ever been part of.

Naturism has reshaped how I view bodies, including my own. When you’re surrounded by real, unfiltered people, the comparisons and judgments start to fall away. You see humanity, not insecurity. You see authenticity, not performance. You get to know the real person, not filtered by the textiles of society.

Dr. Carol Queen explains it perfectly when she said, “People think nudity means sex because that’s the cultural script we’ve been handed. But naturism rewrites that script. It shows us that bodies can simply be bodies.” And in many ways, that’s what naturism has done for me. It didn’t just transform my comfort level. It transformed my perspective. My perspective on how I perceive my own body and that of others has significantly changed. It also changed how I interact with other people and with the nature around us.

So what is the bottom line to all of this? Naturism isn’t about sex and it never has been. It’s about honesty, comfort, connection and treating our bodies as natural and not something that is taboo or to be ashamed of. It can be simply summed up in one sentence, “Naturism isn’t about taking clothes off. It’s about taking pressure off.” For me, naturism feels like the most natural thing in the world. And looking back, maybe it always did. Maybe it was always intended to be that way.

Love this?

Support Dustin by subscribing to his blog on Substack.

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

I attended a celebration of life for my sister, who died on June 18, 2023, in Lancaster, California.

I knew I needed to get up and speak, but I hadn’t expected it to go quite the way it did. I’d prepared some notes the night before—just bullet points on my phone—but mostly, I spoke from the heart.

What I hadn’t counted on was being the first person to speak, essentially kicking off the ceremony. Nor did I expect to introduce the person after me—an LA County Sheriff’s deputy I’d never met. The minister never spoke at all, probably because my nephew isn’t religious, I’m not religious, and my sister wasn’t either. That’s just how it was arranged.

From the very start of my speech—my eulogy, I suppose—I had people laughing. Those who had been crying stopped by the time I was halfway through. I think I got them laughing five times in total.

And here’s what I told them: I told the story of how I introduced my sister to nudism, and why.

She had visited my house the previous October when she was already quite weak from cancer, so we couldn’t go camping as we’d hoped. She had never been a nudist, but every morning she stayed with me, we started the day with coffee and breakfast while bird-watching, and then went swimming—completely nude. She loved it. She soaked up the sun all over for the first time in her life. She was 69.

She had volunteered for the LA County Sheriff’s Office for at least two decades, so there were several cops in the audience. They laughed too. The deputy who spoke after me had clearly listened to every word, joking that he’d never be able to get the image of my sister, nude, out of his head. The audience got a good laugh out of that too.

It was a reminder to promote body freedom when you can—you may be surprised at how positive the response can be.

Oh, and I’m told I actually spoke for 30 minutes. Nobody minded at all. 🪐

To advocate is to speak up, to share the truth, and to stand for what you believe in. As naturists, that’s something we’ve always had to do. For decades we’ve been misunderstood, criticized, and too often labeled unfairly. This has caused many of us to keep our nudism secret and to fear discovery. And now, in the age of artificial intelligence and algorithms, we’re facing a new kind of threat: fake digital images, distortions of who we are, and a perpetuation of misinformation.

I’ve been a practicing naturist for over 30 years. As a former AANR PR chair, a speaker, and a writer, I’ve dedicated much of my time to telling the world what naturism really is: a healthy, human, and life-affirming way to live. But in today’s digital world, our message often gets buried under sexualized stereotypes, ageism, and outright fabrications. It’s time we reclaim our own story.

A recent article in Planet Nude raised concerns about AI-generated “nudity” and how it undermines consent and dignity. The “Fake Nudity Crisis,” as Planet Nude has also called it, is here, and it is being normalized by tools that can fabricate convincing sexual images of anyone from friends to colleagues to children to celebrities—without their knowledge or consent.

This isn’t an abstract thing, it’s painfully real right now. I still think about the young woman in my city who took her own life after classmates spread a fake nude image of her. Technology that should connect us is instead being twisted into tools of shame and harm.

And then there’s the more familiar territory: “perfect” bodies on Instagram, TikTok filters that erase wrinkles and curves, and comments that reduce naturism to something only for the young and thin. When CNN once featured me in a video about nudist etiquette, I was thrilled by how many people responded positively. But one comment stuck out: “Why didn’t they pick someone younger?” I’ve also heard, “Who wants to see old naked bodies?” These remarks are hurtful, not because of vanity, but because they reflect how deeply society struggles to value real, aging, diverse bodies—the very bodies naturism welcomes and celebrates.

Social media hasn’t helped. Non-sexual nudity is often censored or deleted, even when it meets the platform’s own rules. And sadly, even a children’s coloring book depicting a naturist family engaging in wholesome activities has been refused production by a printing company because it doesn’t meet their standards of ‘tastefulness!’ But sexualized, commercial nudity slips through social media under the banners of “fashion” or “fitness.” The double standard couldn’t be clearer: nudity is acceptable if it sells something, but not if it’s simply about being human. And then there is the issue of researching some aspect of nudity online and finding that using the word “nude” has been distorted by the internet and returns explicit, X-rated content.

At my club, Solair Recreation League in Woodstock, CT, we’ve seen firsthand how the media often sensationalizes naturism. That’s why I created a simple policy for visiting reporters: they must agree to portray us honestly and respectfully. It’s not about demanding glowing coverage—it’s about making sure people see the truth of who we are.

But the newest and perhaps most troubling frontier is AI “nudify” apps—programs that digitally strip clothing from photos of real people. These tools are voyeuristic, deceptive, and harmful. They target women and minors most of all, and they reinforce unrealistic ideals instead of celebrating the real diversity of human bodies.

The problem is a lot bigger than naturism. AI-driven imagery and filters feed us back a narrow, airbrushed version of humanity, leaving out the elderly, the disabled, the transgender, and anyone who doesn’t fit a manufactured mold. Naturism, by contrast, insists that every body has dignity, beauty, and worth.

That’s why I believe social nudism and naturism are a counterforce to the digital misrepresentations of the body. We offer something rare: the freedom to be unedited, unashamed, and authentic.

So where do we go from here? We need to speak out. We demand fair treatment on social platforms. We push for ethical AI that protects consent. We keep writing, teaching, and living by example. And most of all, we stop hiding.

Naturism is about health, freedom, equality, and connection. With so much of life these days filtered and fabricated, naturism offers the world a much-needed reminder: there’s nothing more human than being comfortable in your own skin. 🪐

More reading:

As a longtime social nudist, I’ve seen many changes in how our community connects, shares, and keeps our culture alive. For years, naturist voices were few and far between, often drowned out by stereotypes or left to the occasional mainstream article that never quite got it right.

But in recent times, something inspiring has been happening. More and more nudists and naturists are stepping forward as independent creators—writing newsletters, hosting podcasts, publishing blogs, and sharing their stories with honesty and authenticity. A recent compilation of the 40 Best Naturist Blogs on Feedspot illustrates this point quite well. In most cases, these aren’t polished PR campaigns; they’re real people speaking from lived experience. And the result is a wonderfully rich and diverse collection of naturist thought, history, and reflection.

Each time I learn about a new naturist initiative, I find this encouraging, exciting and deeply affirming. These voices remind me that naturism is not only alive but evolving—nurtured by people who care enough to share their insights and creativity. Listening to a podcast on body acceptance or reading a blog about someone’s first club visit brings me a sense belonging.

And yet, here is where my frustration lies. As much as I would love to support every one of these independent ventures, I simply can’t. Even when focusing only on preferred works, the total cost of subscriptions, memberships, and Patreon pledges can become difficult to manage financially.

To be honest, this feels like standing in front of a banquet table, filled with nourishing and meaningful food, but knowing I can only take a small portion. I wish I could support every voice, because I know how much work and heart goes into creating these resources. I know how important they are for our community’s future. But wishing and affording are not always the same thing.

Still, I try to do what I can. I subscribe to a few favorite creators. I read, listen, and share. I recommend creators to friends. And I send encouraging notes. Although financial support is important for creators, expressing appreciation for their work is another meaningful way to encourage them.

I imagine I’m not alone in this dilemma—grateful for so many authentic naturist voices yet wishing I could contribute more tangibly to their efforts. Maybe, as our media landscape grows, we’ll discover more sustainable ways to support one another: collective funding models, shared platforms, or community collaborations.

For now, I’ll continue to provide whatever support I can and even if I can’t pay for all of them, I will applaud the emergence of naturist voices that keep me informed and strengthen the culture I hold dear. 🪐

More reading: