Breaking free from the social media trap
How newsletters can save nudism from censorship and disconnection and help our movement reclaim its voice
In January 2023, Meta’s Oversight Board overturned the company’s decision to remove posts depicting transgender and non-binary individuals with covered chests, calling attention to the platform’s biased nudity policies. The Board highlighted how these rules disproportionately affect women, transgender, and non-binary people, creating barriers to expression under the guise of content moderation. While the posts in question were reinstated, the case underscored a systemic problem: policies that arbitrarily censor marginalized groups, including nudists and naturists. Across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter), body-positive content and naturist messaging are routinely flagged, removed, or buried in algorithms with elusive “shadow bans.” This erasure throttles outreach, undermines community-building, and alienates organizations dedicated to promoting body freedom. At the same time, these platforms have transformed into powerful tools for far-right propaganda, leaving progressive movements, including nudism, outpaced and under siege.
It’s time for nudist organizations to stop relying on these platforms to build their movements. The solution lies not in algorithms but in the foundational tool of the nudist movement: the newsletter. By reclaiming this timeless and effective medium, nudists can regain control of their messaging, strengthen their communities, and preserve the values of body freedom and expression.
The social media mirage
Social media once promised to democratize communication, offering organizations and individuals an unparalleled opportunity to reach global audiences. But today, it’s clear that these platforms operate on a different agenda—one shaped by profit, manipulation, and, increasingly, political control and the spread of extremist ideology. For nudist organizations, these shifts have been disastrous.
Longstanding organizations like the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) have felt the full weight of these barriers. As a nonprofit advocacy group with a history spanning more than 90 years, AANR relies on its ability to depict simple, tasteful, nonsexual nudity in its marketing—or at least evoke the concept of body freedom. Yet even the most conservative or abstract depictions frequently trigger algorithmic censorship. Strict content moderation policies on platforms like Instagram mean that even educational or body-positive posts are often flagged, removed, or buried by shadow bans. Accounts face frequent suspension, which erodes trust and disrupts their ability to engage with their communities. Even when they don’t risk unexplained suspensions, legitimate organizations often fail to qualify for verified status, a designation that most nonprofits of similar stature and longevity can obtain with ease.
These challenges are compounded on top of a fundamental issue: organizations don’t truly own the networks they build on social media. Years of cultivating followers can be undone in an instant if an account is suspended or banned—often without explanation or recourse. Rebuilding those connections can take years, if it’s possible at all. The cumulative result is a profound loss of credibility and visibility. These tactics effectively delegitimize organizations like AANR in the eyes of the broader public, undermining their ability to attract new members and sustain their advocacy efforts.
For organizations that rely on public engagement to survive, social media has become a precarious and unreliable tool. Instead of providing a platform for growth, it has turned into a minefield of restrictions and risks, underscoring the urgent need for alternative approaches that are more sustainable and resilient.
A return to newsletters
Before social media, newsletters were the lifeblood of nudist organizations, essential for spreading ideas, organizing events, and fostering community. Early publications like The Nudist (later Sunshine & Health), Health & Efficiency in the UK, and newsletters from American nudist clubs served as the “organs” of their movements—a term that aptly conveyed their vital role in organizing.
Newsletters offered something social media never can: autonomy. They weren’t subject to algorithms, corporate censorship, or fleeting trends. Instead, they provided direct, trusted lines of communication that allowed groups to grow, educate members, and organize coalitions. This model remains as relevant today as it was decades ago.
A well-crafted newsletter allows organizations to control their message, build meaningful relationships with their audience, and mobilize their communities in ways social media cannot. Delivered directly to engaged readers who opt in, newsletters foster a level of intimacy and trust that platforms can’t replicate. Modern newsletters can also integrate multimedia, linking to blog posts, podcasts, or videos, making them a dynamic hub for engagement. While social media can help draw attention to a newsletter, the real power lies in owning your email list—a direct connection to your audience that isn’t at the mercy of shifting algorithms or content moderation policies.
Social media is undoubtedly a valuable tool for reaching wider audiences, but it cannot be the foundation of your communication strategy. Instead, it should act as a gateway, guiding people to your newsletter—a space where your message remains fully under your control.
Why newsletters must lead the way
The allure of social media has led countless organizations to rely on platforms they don’t control. For over a decade, marketing professionals have insisted, “You have to be here to reach people,” pushing groups to pour resources into building followers instead of sustainable infrastructure. But what has this achieved? A presence on platforms with shifting terms, fragmented audiences, and algorithms that can render years of effort irrelevant.
When organizations depend on social media, they gamble their futures. Accounts can be suspended or shadow-banned without warning, cutting off access to cultivated audiences. Even when posts reach followers, they’re often lost in the noise of viral trends and clickbait.
Newsletters, by contrast, offer stability, ownership, and permanence. A well-maintained email list is an asset no algorithm can take away—a direct, personal connection to an audience that actively chooses to hear from you. Social media can amplify your message, but it should be treated as a tool, not the foundation of your communication strategy.
To thrive in this era, organizations must reinvest in direct communication. Newsletters allow for authentic engagement, meaningful relationships, and the preservation of values that aren’t subject to corporate control. It’s time to focus on tools that build trust, sustain engagement, and create real community.
The nudist movement was built on the humble newsletter. It should make sense that its future depends on it. 🪐
Lately, I've been thinking of that bit in The Sun Also Rises where a character is asked "How do you go bankrupt?" and he responds "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."
This seems relevant because I feel like wee've been watching a cultural bankruptcy unfold in America, gradually, then suddenly. We had the first signs back in the 90s when books like Bowling Alone began to identify there was a growing problem with the dissolution of civic institutions, like Elks Lodges and Bowling Leagues, a category which nudist organizations could certainly be included in. This gradual bankruptcy over the past decades became sudden over the past few years, and social played a big part in that, as what I see as method of radically redistributing cultural capital. The older means of acquiring cultural capital, participation in civic or communal life, developing friend groups, joining organizations, were suddenly replaced by a bizarre, lottery-like mechanism where cultural capital became determined by odd, parasocial ideas such as likes and followers. And we find ourselves in the situation we're in now, where a 15 second on the street interview in which a young woman improvises the sound of oral sex can launch an entire mini-industry that includes a podcast and a cryptocurrency. Wherever we are now, it sure as hell isn't Kansas any more.
But that also brings us to the ping-pong ball in a hurricane that community standards have become. The social bankruptcy has also made any kind of agreed on standard impossible, as the point about making oral sex sounds a legitimate path to fame decidedly illustrates. You describe the AANR's marketing as simple, tasteful, and nonsexual, which I agree with, only I'm not sure my agreement really carries much shared meaning nay more. Simple? Apparently that now means slightly changing the font size in corporate logo. Tasteful? Not to keep going back to her, but I don't think forty years ago Hawk Tuah Girl would have been invited to any of the better parties in the Hamptons. Nonsexual? I mean, when dressing up as a squirrel is a sexual thing where do I even begin?
None of this is an objection to your ideas, Evan, which as an old small press guy myself I find just wonderfully tempting. I do love the smell of a mimeograph machine in the morning. It is, however, to say that we need to address the problems we have, not the problems we want to have. And I'm not convinced that reinvesting in direct communication is enough unless the message is one that will address the issues that are slowly strangling organized naturism, and recognizing that they're just another variation on the issues that are slowly strangling all of civilized society. And not that I disagree with the principles behind it, but progressive messaging of the past few years has been focused heavily on "Someone more screwed than you must always come first" instead of what I think could have been a more effective message along the lines of "We're all screwed."
Now that I've brought you down, let me throw in some optimism here. Naturism may be in a unique place among this failing civic organizations to offer an appeal to what there is a demonstrated societal craving for but is in short supply. And offering things that were ion short supply to build community around was a key element to the thriving of those civic organizations in their heyday. Granted, in the case of the Elks Lodge it was usually access to alcohol and pornography when they were much harder to obtain, but the point is that it worked.
What I think that naturism could message as offering is something which has become in even more short supply these days - to be unobserved. To be in a place where continually snapping pictures is discouraged and even forbidden, to be in a place where judgement over appearance is socially taboo, to be in a place where you can be authentic without having to perform authenticity. A place where, in a world where more and more people don't want the world to be like that, the world isn't like that. Which also seems like a good way to start rebuilding community.
I am aware this is a fairly complex set of ideas to have to convey, and to a general audience the concept of "to be naked is to be unobserved" is going to be an interesting one to try and sell. But I do think that selling naturism as a way to escape the panopticon is the germ of a good idea.
Anyway, this was probably way too long and I think I may have wandered from the main point of your article ever so slightly. I should probably have just said "good article" instead of basically hogging the comments as a platform for some ideas which have been brewing in my head for a while now. I'll probably regret this later, but what else is new? So - good article. Let me know if you need some mimeograph-friendly cartoons.
Let me add that nudist libraries preserve newsletters--and thus your history for your members to read. If this article persuades you to start up your newsletter again, be sure to send copies to the nudist libraries.
Unfortunately, some so-called newsletters have turned into calendars of events. They're all the same, week after week. Newsletters need news. Newsletters need thought.