This week on Planet Nude
Three nude spaces are in different kinds of motion this week, each in different phases on the spectrum between threat and renewal—and together they paint a unique picture of a movement in motion.
The most urgent is of the three is Mākena in Hawaii. A Maui Planning Commission hearing scheduled for June 23 will consider a Special Management Area permit for state park improvements the DLNR has framed as routine: better bathrooms, outdoor showers, expanded parking. Little Beach—the clothing-optional cove that has operated for more than five decades on informal tolerance, (not formal designation)—lies downstream of whatever decisions emerge from this process.
In Georgia, the long-open question of what would become of Serendipity Park has an answer. A California couple—Tanya Parker and Roger Johnson, both veterans of Southern California organized nudism—closed on the purchase June 8 and have rebranded it Serendipity Sun Club & RV Park. They’ve committed publicly to keeping it a family nudist resort, and that commitment is reinforced by something stronger than goodwill: a deed restriction written into the sale requiring nudist operation for at least 10 years. When nudist resorts in the South change hands, they have a history of not staying nudist. Serendipity’s sale was structured, smartly, against that outcome.
And on Saint Martin in the Caribbean, the longest wait in recent naturist memory may finally be ending. Ground has broken at the former Club Orient site, nearly nine years after Hurricane Irma destroyed the resort. The new project—La Griselle, though the name isn’t yet finalized—is planned as a five-star naturist hotel, backed by a €41 million commitment and a 60-year lease on public land. It’s a different kind of place. But it’s a place, and a place is a win.
Barbara Minney’s essay this week belongs in a different register but isn’t disconnected from these questions of access and belonging. A transgender woman who has been a nudist for nearly fifty years, Minney draws from her keynote at the EDEN conference in Michigan to write about the parallel work of living authentically in two communities that are both, in her framing, targets: naturism and the LGBTQ+ community. The movement’s body-positive self-image is a claim nudist spaces make about themselves. Minney’s account—measured, clear-eyed, and genuinely personal—is one measure of how fully that claim holds.
Check out these stories and more from this week on Planet Nude.
Join Team Planet Nude
Skinny Dip Day is July 11, and Team Planet Nude is back raising funds for the Fistula Foundation. Last year our readers raised more than $3,200 and finished just $243 behind first-place Gunnison Beach. This year we’re hoping to close the gap while helping fund life-changing surgeries for women suffering from obstetric fistula.
Whether you join the team, make a donation, or pick up some of this year’s new Zaftig Pink merchandise, every dollar goes directly to the cause.
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News of the Nude
Here are a few stories we’re tracking off Planet Nude this week.
Norfolk nudist camp’s furious response to sex club policy
Eastern Daily Press | Jun 20
Broadland Sun Association’s sharp response to a council consultation is a small local story with a familiar nerve running through it. The council says the club was contacted along with many other organizations and was never being treated as a sex establishment. The club’s irritation is still understandable. Naturists have spent decades correcting the same assumption: that nudity belongs in the same mental filing cabinet as sexual entertainment.
Topless open water swim to challenge stigma of giving women CPR
BBC News | Jun 17
Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance is organizing a topless sponsored swim to confront a grim public-health fact: women are less likely than men to receive bystander CPR, partly because people hesitate to expose or touch women’s breasts. It is not a naturist story exactly, but it lands close to one of naturism’s central claims. Cultural discomfort with bodies is not abstract. Sometimes it has consequences measured in minutes.
Summer shuttle bus starts to popular Costa Tropical naturist beach Cantarriján
SUR in English | Jun 17
Cantarriján’s summer shuttle is back, moving visitors down to one of Spain’s best-known naturist beaches while keeping thousands of cars out of a protected coastal area. It’s the kind of access management that can either preserve nude spaces or quietly restrict them. Here, at least for now, the system appears to be doing the useful version: reducing pressure without closing the door.
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
"Naked and Confused" maps the legal minefield naturists navigate in the U.S., tracing the key distinction between indecent exposure (which requires lewd intent) and simple nudity, and noting how enforcement varies wildly by state, race, and local politics far more than by actual statute.
The Orbit is Planet Nude’s weekly digest. Published every Saturday. 🪐