Eleven days largely out of SL while I was heavily involved with RL, and now ‘logins are temporarily disabled’ when I try to get inworld! Frustrating.

Still, I’ve a few bits and bobs to post to the site, as soon as I can get inworld and do the last thing I do prior to posting, check the current, valid slurls to linked locations.

Hopefully, later today or tomorrow….

Whoops! I’m grateful to Brenda for pointing out that I’ve omitted, completely, utterly and without excuse, a slurl to Eden Naturopolis on the ‘live naturist sims’ page. My error.

I’ve corrected that omission now, and it’s maybe time to focus on Eden a bit more. We’ve covered some of the locations (with linked slurls) in previous posts, but the thing is that it’s so big -and we’ve said this in posts- that you cannot simply do the place justice on a single posting here. In many ways, Eden needs to be seen as a series of sims (which it is) with unique and special qualities as one  crosses to other sims on the estate.

The conference centre, yacht club, stage area, apartments, beaches with their own special qualities, sailing…each and every one deserves and will probably get its own post on this blog eventually.

Basically, it’s an unclothed virtual world within the SL world, and I do believe it would be almost possible to live within the Eden sims permanently, with rarely, if ever, any need to tp out, apart from maybe shopping for new hairstyles.

And I would say to any avatar with an interest in naturism or the lifestyle, Eden pretty much represents your starting point.

So to Brenda and Elbag, I say ‘sorry’ again for the oversight, and to everyone I say ‘expect more postings on individual facets of Eden soon (i.e. this time next week when RL can take a back seat for a couple of days and I can get back to giving the blog proper care and attention).

As a real life naturists I like to keep…ahem!…abreast of what’s going on in the naturist world out there, so I’ve a few sites bookmarked.

Clothes Free International has a news page, and I follow it regularly, as it gives a round-up of naturist news and events from around the globe. Some of it will have a direct interest to me, such as the status of free beaches here in the UK which I can, or cannot, use, according to decrees from local councils. And some of it informs the content of ‘SL Naturist’.

It’s a news aggregator, so stories I might otherwise miss, and which might make for interesting SL Naturist posts, are read, digested and then replicated inworld. This one, of full moon skinny dipping in New Zealand, will certainly make for a future SL Naturist item.

Another one I follow is i-naked, a UK based website with a lot of ‘relevant to my parish’ items. It also links to CFI’s news aggregator page, and its gallery page links to global events we, as naturists, may be interested in. One such gallery features Femen activities, which we posted on earlier.

We are a SL naturist blog, not the real world, so in the main I avoid using pictures from RL, or even mentioning issues pertaining to the RL naturist lifestyle. But occasionally events in the real world inform our blogging, particularly with regard to body consciousness. So we shall keep you informed of RL naturist events and activities in a roundabout sort of way, with posts here reflecting events and attitudes there.

I’ve picked up a report from French TV channel TV5 of another Femen ‘happening’ or protest in Paris yesterday.

Femen, in case you didn’t know, are a Ukrainian group who stage topless protest to highlight various feminist and political issues.

As one of their taglines suggests, ‘smart people are inspired, dictators are horrified’.

Normally, I’m appalled at the continuing sexualisation of breasts. I would have imagined in the 21st century we should have been over such things, and the continuance as a method os selling daily papers here in the UK (and in Germany, as far as I remember, too, and possibly other places) is disgraceful, with the models reduced to being nothing more than a pair of breasts.

But I suppose the other way of looking at it might be that who, exactly, is empowered by this? Maybe the models, using their own peculiar talents, are controlling a male dominated media. Maybe they’re sending a powerful message that ‘with these, I control your world’. Or maybe they’re just idiotic, dumb blondes (and brunettes) seeking a way in which to scale the giddy heights of ‘Z’ list celebrity and hang around with football stars. Who knows?

What gives Femen the opportunity to make such a powerful message is, of course, exactly because breasts are still seen in a sexual manner. Their exposure, whether in the centre of Paris, or from a breastfeeding mother on a bus in your town, still has the power to shock, in a way, despite our over familiarity with them in the media.

Concerns over political issues (Russian energy company Gazprom, the patriarchal system of Islam) are some of Femen’s targets, as well as objections to being ‘objectified’.

In solidarity with their aims, partly to diminish to sexualisation of breasts, or the exposure of the naked female form in a patriarchal society, we grabbed a model, tp’ed over to the Eiffel tower, and shot off a few pictures.

We’d have liked to have got a ‘flash mob’ of semi naked protestors if we could, and maybe even had them wave placards. Unfortunately the shoot was done in a hurry, so you’ll have to make do with Pippa posing here. Not remotely ‘naturist’ in its intent or delivery, it is however an opportunity to highlight body issues in RL, and how the attitudes are sometimes reflected (‘wow! you have lovely tits’) within SL.

I’ve added some 1920s styled b&w photos, in period hairstyles, of how a couple of 1920s naturists might have looked at the very dawn of the FKK (freikoerperkultur) movement. I’m currently sourcing further locations for them, so stay tuned!

Harry.

I’ve been tidying up bits and bobs the past 48 hours, so much that you wouldn’t notice we’d updated anything. Spelling mistakes, typos, bad grammar and little things like that have been attended to, and much attention paid to the draft articles piling up. Finish them? Scrap them? Rewrite them?

We or, specifically, Harry have amassed a huge selection of photos which I’ve dumped to an external hard drive on the basis that if we’ve not used them already, we probably aren’t going to use them.

Some of the other pages have been ‘updated’ with additional text/photos too, but I’m not going to be publicising them individually. It’s an evolving magazine! Go explore!

Not sure about the photos included here, I have to say. Less naturist, more fantasy/fetish, maybe, but I couldn’t resist the apron and feather duster (both elements of a French maid’s outfit at Plausible Bodies, incidentally) included in a post about ‘spring cleaning’.

Things are quiet on the SL naturist front, so I’m using the time where there’s less to report by tidying up the blog, looking again at draft articles, and that sort of thing. After Thursday, I’m into an elongated period of work, so posting might be a bit thin on the ground next week. My apologies in advance. In the meantime, I’ll try to get a couple of new posts popped up today and tomorrow.

Ella.

edited to add…I’ve just deleted (after backing up to hard drive) 2.07GB of SL Naturist photos!!!! Harry has over 4GB of SL Naturist photos on his had drive. Granted, some are duplicates, and Harry has passed many to me, but still, between us we must have amassed around 5GB of photos. Wild! 

Deleting many of them, and not getting ground down in the eternal search for suitable pix, allows me to start afresh, and to think about how we represent the mag pictorially from a  fresh start. It has taken over an hour to do a hard drive clean up, but I think we’re good to go, and I can now look at the blog with fresh eyes again. As I said above, I’m onto a long slog of RL work now for the next two weeks, so posting will be limited. We’ve not gone away, though, and we’ll return in just under a fortnight with shiny new articles, ideas and pix.

We continue in our ongoing quest to bring you the best accessories a naturist can have in SL. We are also constantly thinking about how we want to enhance our, and subsequently, your naturist experience in SL.

Over at Summer Dream Naturist, you can pick up a free swim attachment. I won’t provide a slurl to Summer Dreams here, but instead point you at the ‘Links to Naturist Locations’ page, where I’ve just added it, and have slapped my forehead in anguish at not including it before now!

Areola takes to the Summer Dreams pool.

Just wear it, hit the ‘fly’ button, and if you’re in water, you’re now swimming! 

Areola does a front crawl in the Eden Conference Centre pool.

I like swimming in SL, and often you’ll find ‘Swim!’ poses set in the sea at various locations, naturist and textile alike. This free attachment from Summer Dreams gives you the freedom to swim anywhere, so for me it’s essential naturist kit, as swimming forms an integral part of our RL and SL naturist experiences.

Relaxing with a rubber ring.

Summer Dreams, I should add, also has a terrific pool with a couple of great, great built in swimming poses and loads of photographic potential. We’ll be reporting from there, in depth, in Issue 3.

Areola catching some rays.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so to speak, what we don’t find in great supply around the grid are an enormous number of swimming pools at naturist sims. It’s a bit of a search, sometimes. This is a little disappointing, because often pools can form a core location for the social element of SL much more easily than, say, a dance area or cafe. That’s not to say that dance floors or cafes don’t play an important role, but from a personal perspective I like swimming pools.

A rare sight! Ella dons a sarong in the Eden Conference centre canteen.

So what to do? Well…mix ‘n’ match, of course! I sent Areola over to Summer Dreams, firstly, to pick up a swimmie attachment, and subsequently to Eden (Eden generally has everything!!!!) where there’s a lovely little pool at the Eden Celebration sim, just behind the conference centre.

Areola kicks back in the Eden Conference Centre pool.

Well, after a hard evening’s discussions about future posts for SL Naturist, there’s nothing the staff like better than nipping into the pool and getting some nice aerobic exercise.

Ella and Areola discuss future articles for SL Naturist.

Harry joined us to take a few pictures, and we managed to get some quality staff time in, discussing our vision for Issue 3 of the SL Naturist. I confess to feeling a bit tired, so opted not to join Areola in the pool, but as you can see from Harry’s pics, the pool looks fabulous.

Areola waits in vain for the owner of the super looking speedboat.

Remember! Sometimes it’s worth a bit of mix ‘n’ matching, with this accessory from that location, as it can create a whole new look/feel/experience to a sim, or SL activity. The addition of Summer Dreams swimmie attachment does just that in the Eden Celebration pool.

Next up for Areola? Well….. :)….. I’ve asked her to pop on a swimming cossie, initially, and do a bit of exploration of SL’s public swimming pools where maybe, just maybe, we can indulge in a bit of skinny dipping!

Words…Ella. Photos…Harry.

‘Hi, I’m Howie Lamilton, CEO of the Second Life New Media Publishing Group. That all sounds very fancy, but in reality it means I started a group, a couple of blogs, and had a ‘vision’ for the promotion of various endeavours within Second Life.

‘One, the first one, was an inworld blog/magazine dedicated to naturism, a popular lifestyle within the realms of Second Life. And it occurred to me first because I’m a SL, and a RL, naturist.

‘I decided to start up the magazine maybe two years ago, but these things take time, and what they require most of all is a dedicated team. I ‘headhunted’ Ella for the editor’s role, and I think you’ll all agree she has made a terrific job out of it and I can’t express enough my delight at her hard work, fabulous writing and assembling of a great team around her. It’s all her doing. I don’t take credit at all, other than the fact that ‘headhunting’ her proved to be a smart move.

‘I became aware of Ella through her writing on a blog run by an avi called Emmanuelle Warden, which focussed on the more erotic end of Second Life. While not overly preoccupied with the erotic, I was drawn to it purely because ‘sex’, in all its various colours and flavours, is -it cannot be denied- a major source of many avatars’ Second Lives. And also because I knew Ella from away back, when we were both members of ‘Manatee Naturists’, a much loved and sadly defunct naturist venue. To be honest, I didn’t even remember her, or remember speaking to her, until she reminded me of the fact. A quick check of the chatlogs revealed her to be correct!

‘One of my regrets is that Emmanuelle’s team at her 2EX blog seemed to fall apart about the time I decided to get SL Naturist up and running, and her blog seemed to fall into dis-use. A shame, because I really liked what she was doing and tackling a topic many others seemed afraid to mention. Even now, bloggers resort to nipple pasties and censored boxes when reviewing skins! While they might be aiming for a ‘family’ type readership, I’m of the opinion that nudity isn’t remotely offensive. What I find offensive is the television news offering a form of pornography, graphic violence, into our homes each night without we, as parents, often doing much to stop it, and desensitising our children to it. What I find offensive is the extent of guns in SL, as though we don’t get enough of it on the news and need to run around ‘killing’ other avatars in shoot-em-up sims.

‘I’ve been in long, hard discussions, since Christmas, with Jayne, 2EX’s new owner, and Emmanuelle, its original owner, about reviving it. I’m glad to say that I’ve been able to ‘acquire’ 2EX to add to the Second Life New Media Publishing Group’s (SLNMPG) portfolio (again, that all sounds too grand for it) and we’ll be rejigging that and giving it a fresh lick of paint. It’s a blogger site, and I favour WordPress, so I’m going to see about importing it all to a new WordPress site, redesigning it, and getting that going again. Jayne will remain as a writer, Emmanuelle is going to return in some form, and a fair extent of the blog’s inactivity since Christmas can be put down to me as we attempted to come to some common vision for its future. A statement on the blog’s future will appear on the blog in the next day or two.

‘I’ve also begun the process of making the next SLNMPG project ‘live’. A year ago I formulated SLAP (Second Life Arts Production), which is largely self-explanatory. If someone was producing photography, importing original art, performing original music or whatever in Second Life, I aimed to promote it. The ‘vision’ statement, dated March 2011, is available via the Blogroll link on the right hand side of this page. A link is also available to the 2EX current site.

‘Also in the pipeline is our very own naturist village sim, complete with some (free or inexpensive) housing. I’ve wanted to do this since I got involved in Second Life, and the plan is to have a small sim, or to rent somewhere -an island perhaps- within an established Second Life naturist sim and  site an inworld SL Naturist office there. Somewhere a growing band of readers can meet up with those who bring you the blog each week.’

‘These projects are time consuming, so it’s best that the workload is shared around. To that end, I’m hoping to appoint an editor to SLAP imminently and hope I can make the same inspired choice as I did with Ella. I hope I, and the people we assemble, can do the projects justice. I’m a few years off retirement just yet, so Second Life fits into ‘free time’. I hope I’m not spreading myself too thinly. Time will tell. In the meantime, if you’d like to get involved with wither 2EX or SLAP, drop me an IM’.

‘Thanks for your patience in reading this’

Howie Lamilton.

Sorry for the relatively slow week’s blogging. We seem to have been working harder than ever this week, with almost nothing to show for it other than Pookes’ posting about Hypnosis.

We’ve not been idle, it’s just that there’s a couple of big posts in the offing, and they’ve involved a bit more work. I’m not satisfied either are ‘complete’ yet, so I’ve held them back and this week’s blogging looks a bit thin.

Ella

We’re constantly searching to bring you more naturist sims in SL. I was exploring earlier and discovered Hypnosis, which is new to me.

I’ve wavered over handing this over to Ella, or reviewing it myself, and decided I’ll do it because the jury’s still out on whether it can be considered a ‘genuine’ or ‘non genuine’ naturist location. As usual, these categories are according to SL Naturist definitions. Genuine sims don’t contain sexual poseballs. Non genuine sims do contain sexual poseballs, which places Hypnosis in the latter category. The poses are, however, largely done in a fairly discreet manner, but the sauna did contain some explicit poses.

Eva at the Hypnosis tp point

I guess how it is defined, by us, will depend largely on the clientele of the sim, and we’ll try and contact the owner to get their input on the place. 

Hypnosis DJ booth

What can I tell you? I like the spacious feel with plenty of beach space and sun loungers, so that there’s a certain ‘feel’ to it, one that suggests the potential for a more sociable naturism. Sometimes, unless it’s a larger build, places (naturist or not) can feel cluttered by detail. We at SL Naturist have said this before. We’ll probably say it again. But Hypnosis feels right in that respect.

Hypnosis beach overview

Beyond some water features, and a main, spacious beach area, are the tiki huts. Available for day hire (L$50), I’m guessing that the bed possibly becomes active on hire, but maybe longer rentals are possible as they offer a 100 prim limit, so maybe the huts are intended for naturist living within the sim.

Hypnosis massage tent

After I’d visited, I IMed Harry and requested he pop along to take some more general shots of the place, and he seemed to be in agreement over the poseballs, suggesting that the sauna, in particular, had a ‘two women for every guy’ sense of sexuality. 

The sauna

I don’t wish to be overly critical of the sexual poses, or dwell on them too much. No one is compelled to use them, and they’re just a small part of the build in general. I still like the ‘feel’ of the place.

Eva was particularly taken with the little details, such as the guitar and watermelon. Nice!

What I’d like to do is get the input of the owner and determine their vision for the place, as Hypnosis certainly has some potential.

I didn’t spot any group joiner, so either that’s a development to come, or else there’s a sense of it being seen as a ‘free’ place.

A fresh looking interior to one of the tiki huts

The best thing I can say is that you maybe pop along and see for yourselves.

Tiki hut with exterior jacuzzi

Words and self portraits by Pookes. Landscape photography by Harry.

Ella adds… The following rules/notes, available by clicking the sign at the tp point, suggests that the owners of Hynosis properly understand naturism, and their bona fides are clearly being established through the production of the notecard (reproduced below). I’ll wait until the owners contact Pookes, (it’s Pookes from now on, she doesn’t wish to be ‘Eva’) and we can maybe get their input, but on balance I would say Hynosis is going to fall into the ‘genuine’ category.

Definition:

A nudist is one who prefers to be nude whenever possible while socializing.

A nudist is one whose behavior doesn’t change simply because people are nude.

A nudist is one who has respect for others, and doesn’t practice nudism in inappropriate situations.

A nudist is one who has respect for others, and doesn’t stare, stalk, or otherwise behave in a manner that would cause discomfort.

A nudist is one who refrains from using nudism as a sexual opportunity.

A nudist is one who shows no overt interest or fixation on body parts.

A nudist is one who understands the effect bad behavior can have on everyone’s freedom to enjoy social nudism.