sxnahm@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Nahm) (04/02/84)
Editorial
Managing Editor, Lee Baxandall
Reprinted from "Clothed with the Sun" May 1982
Issue: "1982 UPDATES ON NUDE RECREATION, BODY SURFING, ECOLOGY, AND MORE"
Copyright 1982 by The Naturists. Used with permission.
_A_l_l _t_h_e _N_u_d_e_s _F_i_t _t_o _P_r_i_n_t
Our cover is sure to raise some comment and we welcome that. Is it wrong
to present, for admiration and as a role model, a healthy young female? Ask
the question more sharply: Is it exploitative and is it sexist?
This question will come up not only with such covers but with any such
photos, no matter where placed. Even photos of the feminist Cross Your Heart
Support Network in this issue could be assailed under this suspicion. We
intend to face it now and head on.
We believe that all nude persons are fit to print. We will not limit out
scope to fend off too quickly formulated suspicions that ignore the actual
content and context and probable effect and intent. The unconcealed human body
is still strong stuff, strong medicine in our clothesist society. Its impact
can set off alarm bells. Particularly when pornography and advertising - the
hard and soft core exploitation of the routinized compartmentalizing of mind
and body, spirit and feeling - create understandable apprehensions.
This is our policy. We look for (despite present scarcity) photography
that documents the whole range of naked humanity: male and female, young and
elderly, hale and infirm, all countries, all faiths, all races.
We will not fetishize genitalia, breasts, or buttocks and neither will we
avoid them. They are part of the whole human animal and least well known in
their naked diversity.
Our exposure to a whole human being is healthy and wholesome. Moreover,
both diversity and fitness have a special place in our policy. If nothing that
is nakedly human is alien to us, health and fitness occupy a special niche. We
want to encourage a well-toned body. Its owner-operator has an added sense of
confidence in being nude, among other things.
_N_a_t_u_r_i_s_m _& _E_c_o_l_o_g_y
Our cover also approaches the ecology and conservation concern which is a
high priority with all naturists. Naturists cooperate with environmentalists
to respect the measures that must be taken to protect vegetation and wildlife.
At established beaches, this means generally staying out of the dunes. Or
where boardwalks have been provided, then using the boardwalks and other
indicated passages and trails.
A corresponding responsibility the evolves onto conservation and recreation
managers, tax-paid public servants who should not grant special privileges to
one part of the public, even when that part is (for the time being) a majority.
These managers should refuse prejudice, even if it is their own bias, and treat
all sectors of the public fairly. Where recreation is appropriate and
compatible with conservation, and moreover the site is (or can be made)
adequately secluded for clothes-optional use, a lack of swimwear should not be
construed as justifying repression on whatever "attractive nuisance" (drawing
crowds, gawkers) grounds. Management solutions are always available once a
fair policy of accommodating citizen wishes is adopted. More parking can be
provided or access can be limited. During a short transition period when
publicity may bring true gawkers (as distinguished from first-timers who have
to give the scene a look-over before joining in), simple crowd control measures
can keep voyeurs out of fragile or dangerous areas.
Citizens who come to a nude beach with the express purpose of being
offended should be redirected to a clothes-compulsory beach (and we recommend
that some beaches *not* be designated clothing-optional, to provided for this
need).
Naturists are among the most highly sensitised of beach visitors to
ecological patterns and priorities. We differ from clothes-compulsive
*naturalists* - such as Audubon Society members, who tend to fetishize their
L.L. Bean costuming and to raise binoculars between themselves and their
surroundings - by being far more participatory and at one with nature.
We prove it too. We seek out nude recreation sites which bring us in close
connection with cliffs, the ocean or other water, and wildlife. The notion
held by some wildlife officials that strict segregation should be enforced
between the beach visitor and wildlife refuges is, frankly, for the birds. And
intelligent reaccession of sensitive citizens to the natural world should be
enabled, not discouraged. It makes for better-informed citizens and voters.
Conservation and recreation budgets would not be in such tough straits today if
more Americans lived more closely with nature. As for breeding grounds, these
can be adequately protected with posting and restricted access, without denying
naturists all access to wild areas.
Naturists are quick to establish standards of personal conduct even where
managerial negligence is the rule. (See the Moonstone, Rhode Island section in
this issue for an example.)
"Take out more litter than you bring in" is the naturist's improvement on
the garbage in, garbage out" writ. Indeed, this year's National Nude Weekend
is centering on the ecological fastidiousness of nude beachgoers. (See Naturist
Reports[, this issue].)
Yet government has - with a very few exceptions - ignored the need of
clothes-optional sites for normal management services, from parking to safe
access, from life guarding to conservation support, from toilets to safe water
- and it has benefited from, while ignoring or even denigrating, the
ecological sensitivity and practical energies of nude beachgoers.
Where cooperation between rangers and naturists has sprung up, this has
been good for everyone. For instance, the Wreck Beach Committee in Vancouver,
Canada - many of its members avid users of this highly popular nude beach - has
succeeded in winning the erosion control and stopping a freeway which would
have utterly destroyed this wonderful environment beneath the cliffs of the
University of British Columbia. Had this core of competent people not been
intimately involved with the fate of Wreck Beach, it is certain that other
(salaried) conservationists in the area would have allowed Wreck Beach to be
paved over in concrete and gassed with internal combustion fumes.
While no comparable environmental resue cooperation can be cited as yet in
the United States, the potential is suggested by the joint work of U.S. Forest
Service officials and regular users in recouping nude Cougar Hot Springs in
Oregon, after years of official neglect. Unfortunately, disaster stories,
tales of elected or appointed officials too cowardly to cooperate with naturist
users, are prevalent. Perhaps the worst instance is famous Black's Beach,
where a dozen visitors have fallen to their deaths in recent years owing
exclusively to official refusal to provide adequate access. Numerous others
have been injured. Beachgoers have themselves provided insofar as possible for
improved trails, information, conservation, and a safe environment.
We are sharply raising the issue of official negligence in the face of
naturists' efforts to provide for recreation and conservation needs.
About the irreversible growth of popularity for clothes-optional recreation
we have not the least doubt. In Europe and the Caribbean an acceptance of the
natural body, without clothing fetishism, is well advanced beyond most areas in
North America, and this acceptance is building here rapidly. All indicators
show it. One thing is lacking: Courageous public servants. Or shall we say
public servants simply responsive to the needs and wishes of substantial parts
of their constituencies?
The time to be fearful, let alone tolerant of negligence or hostility from
these officials, is long past. We are, in law, a legitimate constituency.
While we should not have all recreation slots open to us, because some citizens
will inevitably be offended even in today's climate, nonetheless our paid
recreation and conservation managers should not be allowed to ignore or
intimidate us. With patience, courtesy, and persistence, we should work and
cooperate with them to arrive at managerial solutions.
_A_b_o_u_t _S_o_a_p
Oh, yes. Our cover person carries a bar of soap. Is she introducing a
non-biodegradable object into the waters of Fire Island National Seashore? A
pertinent question. But, no, her soap run-off will instead enter the ground
near the outdoor shower of a Fire Island summer home. This seashore uniquely
integrates beach communities with federal beaches. Her soap will not join that
vast gob of black undersea sludge, deposited there by New York City's
officialdom, which periodically inundates the metro coastline with the
reminder of how awful official policy on the ecosystem has been.
Naturists know not to pollute the waters and lands they love.
_S_e_x_y _- _O_r _S_e_n_s_u_o_u_s_?
Along with the issues of sexism and nudity comes that of sexiness. Does
nude mean sexy? We feel it's the mark of a nation built upon Puritan assump-
tions that being divested of garments is equated with eagerness for sex. It
can be so, but it ain't necessarily. Our British friend, the author Phil
Vallack, sheds common sense on this matter.
Vallack notes that when we speak of being caressed by the breezes or the
waves and touched by the sun, "there IS a words to describe pleasure from the
senses not predominantly connected with sex. This useful little word is
'sensuous,' which can often be used instead of 'sensual' if talking about the
pleasures of sight, sound, touch, smell or taste. Apparently 'sensuous' was
invented by the poet John Milton, who wanted to express 'sensual' without the
association with sex. He described poetry as needing to be 'simple, sensuous
and passionate.' A valuable word in the context of out interests."
We agree. *Sensuous* allows us to acknowledge the hedonism of sensory
experience while differentiating it from sex-seeking.
[Transcribed by Stephen X. Nahm]
--
Steve Nahm
sxnahm@bbn-unix (ARPA)
{decvax,ima,linus,wjh12}!bbncca!sxnahm (Usenet)