The Orbit: June 13
This week on Planet Nude: Britain scans bodies, Arizona tests the law, and Denny Blaine nears judgment
This week on Planet Nude
This week brought three very different attempts to solve problems involving nudity. A Seattle courtroom considered the future of Denny Blaine Beach. British officials proposed software that would block nude images by default on children's devices. Arizona lawmakers advanced a bill intended to address deepfakes and revenge porn. Each begins with a seemingly-legitimate concern. Each also raises questions about what gets swept up when nudity itself becomes the thing being regulated.
Britain’s proposed device-level nudity detection is the most literal version of that problem. The goal is framed as child protection, and the harms it invokes are real. But the proposed mechanism depends on treating “nude images” as a category a device can recognize before any human meaning enters the picture. For naturists, that is the familiar mistake in its purest technical form: a body becomes a warning label first, and only later does anyone ask what the image actually was.
Arizona’s HB 2133 raises a related problem through law rather than software. A bill aimed at deepfakes and nonconsensual sexual imagery now sits on Governor Katie Hobbs’s desk, with AANR urging a veto over concerns that broadly written obligations could sweep lawful nude publishing into a compliance regime built for something else. The pattern is getting hard to miss. Bad actors create a real crisis, lawmakers reach for broad categories, and nonsexual nudity gets dragged into the net.
At Denny Blaine, the question is moving toward judgment. Closing arguments arrived this week in a case that has increasingly asked whether an informal nude beach can be understood as a legitimate public space with history, community, and civic meaning. The plaintiff has tried to frame the park as a nuisance. Friends of Denny Blaine has answered with continuity, culture, safety data, queer belonging, and the basic point that simple nudity remains lawful. That contrast matters. Institutions often recognize a place only after a community learns how to translate itself into institutional language.
With all that news about regulation and interpretation, it’s important to celebrate the good things too, and Skinny Dip Day offers a nice counterweight. Team Planet Nude is back this year and yes, for the next few weeks we are going to repeatedly ask for your support. Sorry in advance, and also thank you eternally for your patience and participation.
Last year, our readers raised more than $3,200 for the Fistula Foundation and finished just $243 behind first-place Gunnison Beach. This year we’re hoping to close the gap. More importantly, we’re hoping to help fund life-changing surgeries for women suffering from obstetric fistula, a devastating childbirth injury that remains entirely treatable.
Whether you join Team Planet Nude, start your own team, grab some merch, or simply make a donation, every dollar goes directly to the cause. It’s one of the easiest opportunities all year to do something fun, distinctly nudist, and genuinely helpful at the same time.
Recent posts in Culture
This week on Strips
Nudie Cutie Comics
More recent Strips
News of the Nude
Here are a few stories we’re tracking off Planet Nude this week.
Tanudan eyes Anti-Topless Ordinance; Cultural practices, use of traditional attire exempted
A proposed ordinance in the Philippine municipality of Tanudan would prohibit toplessness in public while exempting traditional cultural attire. The distinction highlights something nudists encounter frequently: public nudity laws often depend as much on context and cultural legitimacy as on exposure itself.
Toronto’s annual Naked Bike Ride happens this weekend, championing body resistance and activist causes
Toronto’s ride arrives amid unusually public conversations about inclusion, safety, and who feels welcome in activist spaces. The event itself is familiar. The debate around it reflects broader questions many volunteer-led communities eventually face as they grow.
Strip and Dip Goes Back to the Record Books with 80s-Themed Wicklow Challenge
Ireland’s annual Strip and Dip returns this summer with another world-record attempt and a fundraising mission. It’s a reminder that some of the most successful public nudity events work because they’re equal parts community gathering, media spectacle, and charitable effort.
Discord Dispatch
The server had a distinctly summer feeling this week. New members continued to arrive from across North America, introducing themselves and sharing how they found naturism, while regulars compared nudist bucket-list destinations, hosted visiting friends they'd first met online, and posted snapshots from gardens, bike rides, and everyday life.
Join us at discord.gg/8gt7D6ssMd — or click here to learn more.
Featured: 1 Naturist Life
After eighteen months of working from home as a naturist, the Dustin returned to corporate retail and discovered that getting dressed again was less a practical challenge than an existential one. The physical discomfort faded within weeks, but what lingered was the exhausting re-emergence of social self-consciousness and the daily work of assembling an image. The essay lands not as a complaint but as an honest inventory of what naturism actually provides: the permission to stop performing.
The Orbit is Planet Nude’s weekly digest. Published every Saturday. 🪐