What keeps people from joining social nudity?

What do you do when your agenda says that it’s time to write a new blog post for Naked Wanderings, but you have absolutely no idea what to talk about this time? If you ever find yourself in this situation, first of all, welcome to the team! Secondly, here’s a great tip: Head over to Planet Nude for inspiration. It never disappoints.

That’s how we discovered a thread in which ideas are being shared about what’s stopping people from trying social nudity. Now, you may be wondering why we would share other people’s opinions after running this blog for almost 10 years and visiting countless clothes-free places around the globe. Why not just share our own thoughts?

Well, here’s the truth. Just because of what we do, we sometimes feel like we’re losing touch with “the reality”. Especially when it comes to topics like this one. Other people’s comments sometimes bring back memories, as in “Hey, I kinda remember feeling this way a long time ago”. But, of course, we don’t agree with everything. We’d like to claim that feel like it’s our duty to respond to all this, but the reality is that we just can’t resist. So here goes.

One important thing to remember is that we are Europeans, while the readership of Planet Nude is largely North American. So we are also looking at certain cultural differences. An example of this is how the media looks at naturism/nudism. In the thread, Cynthia states: “When the media judges nudists the way they do it could make people feel they are a freak or weird if they go to a nudist resort”.

In Europe, today, we don’t have that impression at all. Today. But it wasn’t always like that. Back in the late nineties, the only time a media outlet would cover naturism was through “human interest” programs. You know, those shows where potential interviewees were screened on the likelihood that they would say something crazy, creepy, or controversial. The episode about naturism was typically part of a series that also included episodes about porn addiction, prostitution, drug abuse, and a bunch of other things you secretly hope your kids will never discover.

But today, it’s very different. Here’s the thing: All the media cares about is ad revenue. The more people read/watch/listen to a media piece, the more they earn. And nudity sells. Although lots of people may have concerns about social nudity, they all like to hear about it. The juicy or negative stuff may work better in the short run, but it also alienates the media outlet from the resorts, clubs, and organisations. If you keep publishing silly pieces, soon no naturist will want to talk to you anymore.

So instead, it feels like European media is tightening its relations with organised naturism, ensuring that it can have a continuous stream of content about social nudity. A popular concept, for example, is the “I went to a naturist resort and THIS happened”, where journalists actually go to resorts and write about their experiences. It’s almost always a positive story, talking about the freedom, body positivity, equality, and everything else we want the media to talk about. It’s a win-win.

Sometimes we wonder: “How can you NOT understand what naturism is all about?”. Back in the nineties, when your only reference was that human interest show, yes, that we can understand. We see how people in those days could think that naturism was just a cover-up to make orgies more socially accepted or a sneaky way to lure people to the dark side.

But this is the 21st century. You can ask Google, ChatGPT, or Wikipedia, and they will all tell you the exact same thing. Do you really think that if naturism were something different from what we’ve been saying for over a century, some whistleblower wouldn’t have exposed us by now?

Of course, this is also the age of misinformation. Because we’ve been into naturism so long and know so much about it, the difference between real and fake is crystal clear. We don’t even notice the fake news anymore. If yet another “Sexy Nudist Pictures” account pops up on our X feed, we block it without even thinking about it. But for others, this may well be the first thing they discover about naturism. Then it’s easy to conclude that if naturism is about taking naked pictures of young women and putting them on the internet, it’s probably not going to become your new pastime.

Someone also mentioned nudist resorts turning into swingers clubs. That’s definitely not helpful either, especially when they try to position themselves somewhere in between. We recently stumbled upon a website of a resort that claimed to be family-friendly from 8 am to 8 pm. After 8 pm, you have to lock your kids inside a room with a bag of earplugs (the website didn’t say the latter, but it could have). Well, this creates confusion.

This is, in our experience, one of the major pain points in social nudity. You want to give it a try, but your partner doesn’t want to hear about it. There are two subcategories in this. One is that your partner isn’t interested and doesn’t want you to be interested either. This could be due to misinformation. After you announced that you want to try social nudity, your partner goes on X, finds a Sexy Nudist Pictures account and thinks “oh no, I married a perv”. This can be solved by providing the right information.

But sometimes it has deeper causes like insecurities or jealousy. We remember a story about a woman who was sunbathing topless in some holiday park in Belgium (which is totally legal). The staff received a complaint and went over to talk to the complainant, and must have said something that children usually don’t care about the sight of a naked bosom. The complainant replied: “This is not about my children, I don’t want my husband to see other women’s breasts”. In those cases, it makes little sense to try to convince your partner before you’ve tackled the underlying issues.

The second subcategory is when your partner says, “Go ahead, but I’m not coming”. In a genuine way, that is, not the way that tells you that you’ll be in big problems if you dare to go. Your partner just isn’t interested. It is super normal to have different interests in a relationship. One partner likes tennis, the other prefers golf. Often, this is even good for bonding, like in our relationship, one of us loves cooking and the other loves eating.

In naturism, however, it doesn’t work like this. Most of the reluctant partners seem to be female, which should not be a problem except that social nudity appears to work best when there’s a decent male/female balance. So resorts and clubs often have “single men policies”. Sometimes making them pay more (which also sends a dubious message) or sometimes not allowing them at all.

How do you solve this? It’s kinda unfair to ask your partner to do something she’s completely not interested in, just so you would be able to do it. And finding a replacement is also strange. Although we’ve met couples who are very open-minded about this, we understand the awkwardness of telling your husband “Find yourself a female buddy and go spend your weekends naked together”.

This is one for which we uniquely need to rely on the experiences of others. Although we’ve been baptised and all that stuff, we don’t consider ourselves religious. At least not to an extent where we would allow some priest, rabbi, or imam to tell us what we can or cannot do. But the problem is that this is about much more than just what the Holy Writings say. It’s about community.

As someone mentions in the threat: “Just yesterday, my pastor told me I am not qualified to serve at our church due to my stance on Naturism”. The pastor isn’t just saying that naturism is wrong, but actually excludes this person from the church community. This isn’t about fearing the wrath of God, but about the risk of losing your friends and family.

Purely religion-wise, there are alternatives. Several Christian naturist groups are investigating the stance of the bible when it comes to nudity, sometimes even organising their own meetings and ceremonies and whatever else Christians usually organise. Joining these groups won’t only change your perception of nudity and religion, but will also include you in a community of like-minded people. But it won’t change how your other communities (friends, family, coworkers,…) think about it.

Social nudity has become a costly pastime. Especially if you look at how it was a few decades ago. Back in those days, social nudity was organised through volunteer organisations. You had to pay an annual fee that was usually just enough to cover the paper and ink to print your membership card, and then you had to dedicate a certain amount of time to do volunteer work at the club. Easy and cheap.

But then clubs became resorts, as someone showed in the example of Lake Como Nudist Resort in Florida. More amenities are added, more marketing is being done, a commercial approach is being taken, and the prices skyrocket. We moved from a volunteer concept to a pay-to-play model. Is this necessarily something negative? Absolutely not. We know quite a few resorts that would never have survived if they had remained a volunteer club.

We believe in fair pricing. If you’re getting a lot of amenities, you’ll need to be willing to pay for that. What we think is wrong is when resorts start asking premium prices just because they can. Because they happen to be the only place around. But even that is just a simple case of supply and demand.

Is this stopping people from trying social nudity? We don’t think so. For one, there are usually cheaper options than a resort. Like nude beaches, hot springs, or even local events. But also because we believe that if you really want to try naturism, the price won’t stop you. It’s not like you need to buy a private jet to get to the resort. A weekend at a nudist resort won’t cost you much more than a night out in a fancy restaurant.

In the Planet Nude thread, the story of Mike about how he never knew that there was a nudist resort just 20 minutes away from where he lives really got our attention. Can it be so simple that people just don’t know it exists?

During our years of travelling, we lost countless precious hours because we couldn’t find a resort. Even though we got quite specific instructions. We don’t want to claim that we’re such great navigators, but if you’re in a place you’ve never been before and there’s no sign indicating you’re going in the right direction, it’s complicated. Several times, our GPS just sent us up a long driveway, and we had to hope that at the end, there would be naked people and not some angry guy with a gun.

The fact that some resorts are so well hidden doesn’t just make them hard to find for new visitors, but it also keeps them unknown to people who might be interested in visiting. If you’re driving on Highway 404 between Toronto and East Gwillimbury, you’ll see a sign indicating the exit you need to take to get to Bare Oaks Naturist Resort. Not one of those self-made things, but an actual government sign like those pointing you to tourist highlights.

We once asked Stéphane, the owner of Bare Oaks, why he pays for such a sign (which probably isn’t cheap) in times when everyone has a GPS. He replied: “This sign is not for people who want to come to Bare Oaks, they will find the resort without it. But it’s for those many thousands of others who drive up and down the 404 every day”. From that point of view, this sign is worth every penny (do they have pennies in Canada?). If you see the same sign over and over, one day or another, you’ll look it up on the internet, or just take the exit and go see for yourself.

If Mike had lived in northern Toronto, it’s very unlikely that it would have taken him years to discover that there’s a naturist resort nearby.

A topic that hasn’t really been covered in the thread (at the time of writing this blog post), but what we think is another big one, is that people just don’t see a reason to try social nudity.

Whenever we talk with our friends in the rat race, it blows our minds how full their agendas are. There’s work, hobbies, sports, friends, kids, kids’ hobbies, kids’ sports, kids’ friends, and all those Netflix shows that aren’t going to watch themselves. They are all but looking for yet another thing to do.

All the previous pain points make it even less likely that they’ll try social nudity. They don’t know anyone else who does it, don’t know if there’s a place nearby, you’re kinda expected to go both (and together), the church isn’t all too happy about it either, and you might end up on some Sexy Nudist Pictures account. No, thank you, I guess I’ll try pickleball instead.

The only way to cope with this is to consistently be open about it. To talk about social nudity in the same way as you’d talk about any other pastime. To point out the benefits and how fun it is. Well, at least that’s our strategy. We tried social nudity because we were curious what it was all about, and we hope that through our content, we can tickle the curiosity nerve of others.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this in the comments, or head over to Planet Nude to join the conversation.