A bunch of nudists jumping into cold water to cure a disease most people have never heard of. It sounds like the setup to a joke, and we’re happy to let it be one. But the reason Team Planet Nude does this every July is worth saying plainly, because it’s easy to lose under all the splashing, and your support can change lives.
Obstetric fistula is a childbirth injury. It happens when a long, obstructed labor goes untreated, usually somewhere without access to a surgeon, and it leaves a woman with chronic incontinence she can’t control or hide. The result is almost always the same: she’s pushed out. Out of her marriage, out of her work, out of her community, often blamed for a thing that was never hers to prevent. It is one of the most isolating conditions a person can live with, and it is built almost entirely out of shame.
That last part is why this cause sits so squarely with us. We’re a community that has spent a long time arguing that there’s nothing shameful about a body, that shame is something done to people rather than something they’re born owing. Obstetric fistula is body shame in its most brutal, literal form. And unlike most of what we write about, this one has a fix.
One surgery. About $624. It repairs the injury and gives a woman back her health, her dignity, and her place among other people. The Fistula Foundation has funded over 100,000 of these procedures. Every dollar we raise goes straight to the next one.
You don’t have to take off a stitch to be part of this. You don’t have to send a photo, buy a shirt, or get anywhere near a body of water. You can just give, and know that you moved a real woman somewhere closer to a cure.
That’s why we’re dipping. Join us. 🪐
This is a powerful reminder that body shame is not only cultural discomfort or embarrassment. Sometimes it is social exile attached to a treatable injury. The link between naturism and this cause makes sense: if we believe bodies deserve dignity, then that belief should include women whose bodies have been made a source of isolation through no fault of their own.
Never heard of that disease and neither has my family, but we skinny dip anyway just because it's fun 😁