My first ever naturist experience occurred almost 20 years ago at Cap D’Agde, the ‘naked city’ in France, when my cousin and I secured summer jobs in a restaurant. I would imagine that it’s not as easy to simply take the TGV to the south of France these days and simply secure a job as easily as we did; all manner of legislation would curtail that practice, but it was so much different in the early 90s.

Thanks to my (English) uncle marrying a Dutch woman, my cousin has grown up Dutch, and naturist. And it was my uncle’s friendship with a Dutch restaurateur that got us the jobs. At first I was apprehensive, fears allayed by the fact that we wouldn’t actually be nude when waitressing. Food hygiene regulations precluded it, so I wouldn’t feel ‘exposed’ when working. It was still a shock to encounter so many breasts, bottoms, penises and vaginas on my first day, I have to say.

We worked six days a week, long hours under a hot sun, and got Sundays off, as the restaurant had limited Sunday hours, and the owner’s family generally helped out on Sunday afternoons.

So on our first day off my cousin and I headed off to the pool at Heliopolis, the large circular complex at the heart of Agde.

Heliopolis complex at Cap D’Agde

We shared a one bedroomed apartment, so a fair bit of private nudity had been the order of the day for the first six days we were there, basically a routine of coming back there, stripping off, showering and then pretty much collapsing, exhausted,  into bed, but I still wasn’t prepared for my cousin rolling out of bed on that first Sunday, packing a bag of beach essentials and wandering off into the street au naturel, while a bikini-clad and sarong-sporting me followed.

Even though we’d been exposed to casual public nudity all week, and immersed in the naturist environment, it still felt odd to see her wander out into public like that. Of course, once at the pool, I felt inhibited by being dressed while surrounded by quite literally hundreds of naked people. I felt like all eyes were looking at me. They probably were, as I stood out by being dressed. I’d never so much as gone topless before, so I did that whole knees-up under my chin, or sunbathe face down for an hour or more before I gulped deeply and bared my breasts in public for the very first time. Of course, I felt like the whole pool was watching me. They weren’t, they were wholly disinterested. Eventually, the bikini bottoms came off too, which felt oddly less daunting, and I stood naked by Agde’s pool, my first experience of naturism. I’ve never looked back.

However, I’ve never been back. Cap D’Agde is now more readily known for it s swingers than its genuine naturists (although they do still exist). It has all become rather sordid.

We did have our own Cap D’Agde sim in SL for a while, but it failed while resolutely trying to replicate the exhibitionism found in its RL equivalent. I was a little surprised when it did fail, I half-expected that it would prove to be popular, complete with many sex poseballs. It just goes to show you that you can never anticipate the needs of SL’s residents. I guess that the closest we’d have to the Cap D’Agde ethos now would be SDI, which I kind of regard as a collection of circus freaks (sorry if you’re an SDI user, it’s just a personal choice not to like badly colour matched and ridiculously sized penises, pneumatic breasts and creepy guys).

(For those of you new to SL, SDI is ‘Skinny Dip Inn’)

A month old and still wearing his noob ‘skin’, hence his appearance in his underwear.

While some make a supreme effort with their avatar’s look (extreme left and right were exceptionally good looking avatars), others subscribe to an overly bulked up appearance

The extreme popularity of SDI makes for a long, long full rezz. I couldn’t be bothered waiting, but caught this weird looking fella with a weird looking appendage

Just wrong!

Map of Cap D’Agde

Further info on Cap D’Agde is available here (the CHM Rene Oltra website), and here (naturist-holidays website)

It looks idyllic, doesn’t it? But while genuine naturism is present, Agde’s image is (to my mind) tarnished by the presence of swingers, exhibitionists and freaks.

I think, too, that the exhibitionist element is also well to the fore at night time, when women, in particular, like to dress up to the nines in a variety of fairly revealing dresses. Getting dressed up for dinner is, of course, part and parcel of naturism in my experience, with many women packing some glamorous outfits, but this is taken to extremes in Agde. Perhaps we’ll try and do a post on ‘revealing dresses’ some time in the future. SL offers a variety of restaurants and bars on its naturist sims, so we’ll maybe explore the ‘glam evening wear’ element of that in future.

Ella.