Naked at Lunch (27 page)

“When you became older then they got uncomfortable with their own sexuality,” I suggested.

“That’s what it seemed like to me. I really don’t know what happened. I mean I know that my mom, like my friend who was a naked person, she just didn’t care. I don’t know what that was about. Even in a women’s locker room you can see different levels of comfort in being naked. You know?”

“It’s certainly true in the men’s locker room. Did your parents ever take you to like a nudist camp or a nudist resort or anything like that?”

“Oh yes. So aside from the nude beach, we once went on this vacation where . . . I can’t remember the details. But it was like one vacation was changed so we just took a road trip. Now mind you, this road trip my mother didn’t come on. So it was me, my stepbrother, my stepdad, and that guy Harvey and his son. I was the only girl. And at some point we all decided we wanted to go swimming. I didn’t know what that meant. And Harvey and my dad heard of some nudist-colony-type place where you could get a day pass and go swimming. And so once again I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And, you know, we went and I remember when we drove up. There was this older naked couple—now this could be just some crazy memory that’s just gotten twisted over time. But I swear when we drove up I saw this old couple standing side by side. The man was holding a pitchfork and they looked like the nude version of that painting. You know what I mean?”

“
American Gothic
.”

“It looked exactly like that but they were naked. And I’m just like, ‘Oh my God.’ And then we went and we swam and it was just like . . . it was a weird day. We just spent several hours there swimming. Everybody around us was naked. And then we left.”

“And when you were naked at these places, how did that make you feel?” I apologized for sounding like a therapist.

Lisa heaved a sigh. “You got used to it on some level, but I didn’t like it. And I think if they tried to push it at a certain point where I developed my resolve it wouldn’t have happened. I think once age nine or ten rolled around, you know, it wasn’t going to happen at all.”

I asked her if she would feel weird if she saw people skinny-dipping in her pond in Upstate New York.

“It’s one of those things that I really wish I understood more. But I’m not really bothered by it. Like when my friend decides to be naked. It’s more for me a curiosity. Like ‘Wow, how are you that comfortable where you just want your clothes off all the time?’ I also wonder, ‘Why does it feel that much better to you?’ Because it just doesn’t to me. But I don’t know . . . how I would have turned out otherwise. But I think that I had a general sense that my parents were really not normal. So I think anything that they chose to like, I was immediately skeptical about.”

“Did you ever share this information with your other six- and seven-year-old friends?”

“No. I have two childhood secrets. It’s this and that we showed dogs, which I find more embarrassing by miles.”

The Fall of Nudist Clubs

W
hen you look at brochures and websites for American nudist resorts, you almost always see pictures of happy young people smiling at the camera, good-looking couples holding hands, and—in what I think of as a classic promotional shot for nudism—a full-body photo of an attractive young woman with an impressive derriere walking away from the camera toward the beach or swimming pool. The message seems to be that a nice ass, wordlessly urging you to follow, is the best way to sell nonsexual social nudism. The models in these photos—and let’s just admit that these are models doing a job and not your average nudist—are projecting a lifestyle of health and vigor and youthful sexuality. The smiling men and women playing naked shuffleboard in the brochure for Bare Necessities’ nude cruises, the topless women chatting in a garden, the physically robust couples artfully arranged around a pool—these images lead you to believe that going to a nudist resort would be an awesome thing to do: fun, exciting, maybe even sexy. But in my admittedly limited experience—I can’t go to
every
nudist resort in the world—the people sunning themselves at your average nudist club are not young and energetic models; follow the beautiful buttocks in the brochure and she will lead you to a bunch of sun-ravaged retirees sitting around a pool. Which isn’t a terrible thing, don’t get me wrong. For the most part the people are friendly and fun; they just don’t look like the nudists in the brochures.

This disconnect between the glamorized image portrayed in nudist advertising and the reality of nudist clubs is one of the reasons that organized nonsexual social nudism as practiced by landed nudist clubs and promoted by organizations like the AANR is in sharp decline. According to AANR’s own numbers, since 2008 membership is down as much as 30 percent and continues to fall. Which is not to say the number of nudists in the world is declining, just membership in the AANR and its affiliated clubs.

Nicky Hoffman, head of the Naturist Society, has an idea why this is happening: “The whole lifestyle will just disappear unless we attract a younger crowd. The problem is, most of these resorts aren’t geared to young people. They’ve become like retirement homes; they’ve sort of calcified.”
⁷²

Or as one of the young nudists quoted in the same article put it, “It’s not that I have anything against old people. I just don’t really want to hang out with them at the pool.”

This slippage is not limited to the United States. Membership in British Naturism has plummeted from a high of 18,500 to around 10,000 members in the last decade.

There are a number of theories being floated as to why organized nonsexual social nudism is suffering such a drastic decline. Some people, like British Naturism spokesperson Andrew Welch, think it’s a branding issue. “I’m not sure in the twenty-first century that people are as keen to say, ‘I am an
-ist
,’ as in naturist. It sounds too ideological, too fanatical, too eccentric.”
⁷³
Others point to Facebook groups and nudist-specific social sites like Richard Foley’s Naktivist “Nook” (Naked Online [is] OK), which provide ways for the nudist community to engage with each other without becoming dues-paying members of an organization.

One of the problems is visibility; even people who enjoy being naked don’t know about organizations like the Naturist Society or AANR. As Mark Storey said, “If you go to any nude beach in North America—and I’ve done this I don’t know how many times—I just walk there with my wife. We walk around and say, ‘Have you ever heard of Naturist Society? Have you ever heard of American Association of Nude Recreation?’ Maybe one out of ten’s heard of AANR and no one’s heard of TNS.”

Some of the problems stem from the actual membership of the clubs themselves. There is an unintentionally funny complaint on the consumer advocate website
RipoffReport.com
that tells the story of a young couple going to a nudist club for the first time. In the complaint, a young man tells how he and his girlfriend felt “watched” and then, after they had kissed in the hot tub, how he was reprimanded by “some old gray haired man.” Of course as any experienced nudist knows, the old gray-haired man was merely reminding the newbies of the rules—public sexual behavior will not be tolerated. But then Bret did the unthinkable: he got an erection. “As we made our way toward the lounge and pool area, we were confronted by about seven people on golf carts who asked us the reason we were there, and questioned us about the hot tub and about my erection. I couldn’t believe this! They insisted that we pack up and find another resort to visit. My girlfriend was in tears and scared to death when they surrounded us on golf carts. Who did they think they were talking to us like that?”

I can understand both sides of this. Bret and his girlfriend are young, they’re on a romantic getaway, and they’re just doing things young people in love do, like get naked in a hot tub. Meanwhile the older nudists have worked for a long time to be nonsexual, and are worried that even something as innocent as kissing might cause some kind of kerfuffle in the local media and change the perception of the club and, consequently, of them and their lifestyle. They’re just protecting what they’ve built up over the years. And they’re old and cranky.

There are a couple of other stories on the Ripoff Report website complaining about being kicked out of nudist resorts, and they all involve accidental erections. Of course the flip side of this issue is that many younger women don’t feel comfortable going to nudist resorts because they don’t want to be eye candy for a bunch of old men. And, seriously, does anyone want to see an accidental erection from an old geezer?

Or as Mark Storey puts it, “Why in the heck would I pay five hundred dollars a year to sit in a chlorinated pool, sitting next to this gross guy drinking bad light beer, when I can go to the beach and go bodysurfing.”

This generation gap is the principal reason that clubs and the AANR are in decline. That and the fact that people get old and die. Which isn’t to say that the AANR isn’t making an effort to reach out to young people. It has a program called Gen Next that offers a “young adult” membership fee and student discounts to nudist clubs and resorts. AANR is trying, and despite this, its membership is dwindling.

There is a theory that young people have been so bombarded by images in the media, the Photoshop-perfect actresses and models with their flawless bodies, that they don’t even like to shower in the gym anymore in case someone sees their imperfections. And while there’s some truth to that, I don’t necessarily believe that advertising has shamed the impulse to be naked out of young people—I saw a lot of young people without clothes around the pools and on the beaches in Spain and France and on Black’s Beach in San Diego. Maybe this new generation has its own ideas about what nudism and naturism can be.

One of the most interesting nudist groups that’s sprung up recently is Young Naturists America (YNA), an organization whose mission is “To impact the world in a positive manner!” and whose mantra is “It’s all about the love!”
⁷⁴
Unlike a typical nudist organization, the YNA is also about environmentalism, social responsibility, top-free equality, and body acceptance; and while many resorts are couples only and exclusive, YNA presents a refreshingly inclusive attitude. It has many of the usual prohibitions against sexual behavior in a socially nude setting, but also requires mutual respect and open conflict resolution. Which means that members probably wouldn’t ride around in golf carts hassling young men with boners. In addition to the rules, the group has a set of “ideals.” These include: helping others in need, giving back to the community, mutual cooperation with other nudists and naturists, and “No discrimination of anyone as long as they abide by the rules (regardless of sex, race, sexuality/sexual preference, body art/piercings, body type and so on . . .).”

The YNA has chapters in New York, Oregon, New Jersey, Southern California, and Kansas City. It is also connected to a small network of affiliated nudist clubs scattered across the country.

Felicity Jones is one of the founders of YNA. She’s a twenty-five-year-old activist and blogger who has had her naked body painted in Times Square, and has been arrested for a nude art performance on Wall Street. In other words, she is not shy about being naked. Lithe and attractive, the Penn State graduate lives in New York City and, because of her job, uses Felicity Jones as her
nom d’nue
.

“Honestly I grew up doing a lot of the things other kids do, just without clothes and a lot less hang-ups about my body,” said Jones. “For most of my childhood I spent almost every weekend of every summer at a nudist club called Rock Lodge in New Jersey. It was my home away from home.”

I wondered if her family practiced nudism at home.

“My regular home was a house in suburbia. My parents weren’t really into home nudism so we didn’t really hang out naked there, plus there were always neighborhood kids coming over. But it obviously wasn’t a big deal to see each other naked in the house.”

It reminded me of Pascal, the French naturist I hiked with in Austria, who was concerned that his teenage children had become textile. This is not uncommon. At the naturist resort in Vera Playa, most of the teenagers wore as many clothes as they could pile on. I asked Felicity if she went through a time when she was a teen where she felt like abandoning the nudist lifestyle and if she had any thought on why this happens.

“I think it’s at least partly because of just the general awkwardness of puberty and dealing with changes in the body. For some I think they are more influenced by their peers outside of the club and/or don’t want to hang out naked with their parents anymore. If there aren’t any other teenagers at their home club, then they are definitely unlikely to stick with it. Teenagers want to go where their friends go. If I didn’t have a best friend at the club where I grew up, I most likely would’ve stopped going. There weren’t any boys my brother’s age, so he stopped. But now in his twenties he’s come to YNA events. He’s still comfortable with it and everything, he just doesn’t seek it out. A lot of times people don’t return to it in their twenties either because there still aren’t others their age, or their significant other isn’t into it (very common, I think), or they’re busy pursuing activities they can’t do at their local nudist club. Some will go back when they have kids.”