Any of us who use Second Life will be aware that all avatars will have a name tag above their head. Here I am (below), with a screen cap taken to show those who don’t use SL how it works. (Yeah, sorry for yet another new hairstyle! 🙂 )

It certainly helps to identify people, and you can begin a conversation in a friendly manner with a cheery ‘Hello Pookes’ rather than making formal introductions -and then not remember half the names in a crowd anyway. Yes, you can choose to turn it off when in world, but exceptionally few avatars do. But this subject of adding a name tag, particularly in naturist circles, in nothing new!

We can clearly read that the lady on the right is called Phyllis, and the lady with the flowers has a name beginning with ‘G’. Gwen? This photo comes from White Oaks Lodge naturist club in America, taken sometime in the 1960s, I’m informed. It apparently served two purposes. One, being able to walk up to someone, such as the lady identified above, and say ‘Hello, Phyllis, how are you today?’ An informal, friendly approach.

I did some research and was able to discover that it had a secondary purpose. The Nudist Clubhouse website tells me that, in relation to the thorny question of whether people wished to be photographed at naturist clubs, Everybody would have their colour-coded first names written on their upper arms at the time of registration: GREEN or BLACK indicated unrestricted photography with signed release on file; YELLOW meant “okay on a picture-by-picture basis and release had to be obtained;” and RED for absolutely no pictures allowed.

I’ve seen such photos before and always assumed identification was the sole purpose, but it seems we can all learn something new about naturist history every day.

Pookes