What does utopia look like for naturists?
Ask naturists about their ideal world, and many will quickly reply that it’s one where clothes don’t exist. We kinda agree with this, albeit more for the fact that this would also mean that there would be nice warm temperatures year-round. If not, a clothes-free world would rather seem like a living hell.
A more reasonable alternative might be a world in which the clothed and the nude can live happily together. Where everyone can dress or undress as they wish without shame or judgment. Where the nude body isn’t overly sexualised and where you don’t have to fear that you’ll end up on a porn site when someone points a phone in your direction. All we would need for this to happen is a small shift in human mentality. But we’re afraid that this won’t be much easier than creating a shift in meteorological conditions.
What do we REALLY want?
In fact, there are places in the world where the weather is so favourable that you can literally be naked 24/7, 365 days a year. New Cambium on the Dominican Republic, for example. This spot has been carefully picked out by someone who had a skin condition and found wearing clothes physically painful. If you’re dreaming of a place to live without clothes, it won’t get much better than this. But yet, we haven’t seen the worldwide naturist community sell their homes and leave their jobs to start a new life in the Dominican Republic.
Similarly, there are places where the nude and the clothed manage to live together. Vera Playa in Spain is a town with a naturist zone, where it’s not unlikely to see people walking their dogs in the nude, going for a naked evening stroll, or having a beer at a terrace while working on their full tan. This is not a fenced-off resort or gated community, there aren’t even signs telling you where the naked zone starts or ends. It’s just there.
Where to go nude in Vera Playa
When we first visited Vera Playa, we figured that this would be the perfect opportunity to get an idea of what life without clothes would look like. We had been to the massive naturist resorts in France before, some of which are much larger than Vera Playa, where you can also find bars, restaurants, shops and all kinds of facilities that a mid-sized town has. But it’s not the same, because you know that there’s a fence between yourself and the outside world. There’s a fee to be paid and security to be passed. Which is not the case at Vera Playa.
We wanted to experience what it’s like to walk the streets naked, without the risk of shocking anyone or being called an exhibitionist. But what we quickly realised is that not everyone felt the same. Even on a sunny afternoon, when we headed towards Hotel Street, where most of the bars and restaurants are, we often found ourselves naked among the clothed. Nobody looked shocked, nobody called us names, nobody seemed to care at all, yet we couldn’t help but feel a certain level of discomfort.
Nude when comfortable
There is that old naturist mantra saying “Nude when possible, clothed when necessary”. But in this town, where clothes are definitely not a necessity, quite some people do prefer to pick that option. The reason: comfort.
Some of the bars and restaurants in Hotel Street, and all the shops, require that you cover up. Those are why the people in the street are here. They could have prepared a bag with clothes to put on in front of the door, but that’s not really comfortable, is it?
On the other hand, in the streets going towards the beach, we found that most people were naked. Not having to put on clothes for that short walk from the car or your apartment to the beach, now that is comfortable.
In our experience, most visitors to Vera Playa weren’t looking for a place to be naked as much as possible, they wanted to have the choice. And that’s where it becomes difficult.
Different levels of comfort
A comment we regularly hear about large naturist places is that there are always people clothed. That’s because different people have different comfort levels. Some like sunbathing naked on the beach, but wouldn’t find it comfortable to play volleyball without clothes. Others love to have a nude swim in the pool but find it more comfortable to dress up for dinner. The larger the place, the more different levels of comfort you will find.
The big cherry on the cake of discomfort is being nude among the clothed. We believe that every naturist has a “social nude ratio”. Some will only feel comfortable being naked if everyone else is too. Others can handle a 20% or 30% clothed, or maybe even a 50/50. And few couldn’t care less about being naked when everyone else is covered up. This sometimes creates a snowball effect. We’ve talked to people who didn’t really want to get dressed for dinner, but just did because they knew they would be among the very few nudes in the restaurant.
Will it always remain a utopia?
Can we ever get to a point where everyone feels comfortable, even though we have different levels of comfort and our comfort depends on that of others? The good news is that our levels of comfort tend to change. During our first naked strolls along Hotel Street or the back roads of Vera Playa, we felt like we didn’t belong there. As if we had misunderstood the theme of a costume party.
But the longer we stayed, the less we started to care. Even though most others were clothed, we felt that there was nothing wrong with us being nude. Our social nude ratio has changed along the way, as it has done many times before, since we’ve taken our first steps into naturism and even found it awkward to be nude among the nudes. And when it still does reach the point of discomfort, we know that it’s perfectly fine to cover up.
In the end, comfort is not a fixed destination, it’s a journey that shifts with experience, environment, and mindset. The next time you find yourself in a mixed environment, whether clothed among the nude or nude among the clothed, remember that comfort is not just personal, it’s communal. And that community grows stronger when we respect everyone’s journey toward their own comfort zone.
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“we often found ourselves naked among the clothed. Nobody looked shocked, nobody called us names, nobody seemed to care at all, yet we couldn’t help but feel a certain level of discomfort”
I wouldn’t be surprised if that discomfort wore off after only a few occasions. If it doesn’t shock or offend anyone, why imagine reasons to feel uncomfortable? I learned a long time ago to be comfortable naked, whether with hundreds of others or all by myself among textiles.
“Can we ever get to a point where everyone feels comfortable”.
We probably will.
The western society is finally comfortable *enough* with women without scarf, women in trousers, men earrings, miniskirts, colorful hair, bathing suits, bikinis and topless. All of these styles were not long ago considered bad taste, sexually or otherwise provocative, dangerous for society and penalized. And they still are in many places of the world, legacy rules have their momentum.
No reason why it would be different for naturists or “comfortalists”.
That’s what I try to tell some people. About 100 years ago in the U.S. it was illegal for men to be topless in public, even at the beach. Now no one cares if a man is topless at the beach or out for a jog.
This was a very good posting. I liked that you answered questions that were on people’s minds. That sounds like a very interesting place with healthy attitudes. I really liked that you gave so much practical information. Again…very good!