Daily Archives: June 6, 2015

My holiday companion for June 2015

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This time last year I was about to set off on holiday with two non-naturist friends who, over the course of our week in Spain, became naturist by the week’s end, and I reported their findings over the course of a week with our usual ‘Postcards from Spain’ series. I decided not to do a ‘Postcards’ series in September, 2014, as I’d done it several times, essentially replicating RL naturist findings in an SL context as they occurred.

That decision led to several complaints 🙂

It appears that you seem to like the ‘Postcards’ postings, on the basis that they’ve provided some insight into a naturist holiday from both an experienced naturist and newbie naturist perspective.

In about three weeks I’ll be in Spain, again, for my first holiday of the year -the one where I go ‘solo’ and leave the family at home. Sign of a modern marriage? I think so. It’s what we’ve always done, right from when Mr.Keng and I were first stepping out together and took vacations away from one another. We saw no reason to change when we got married and we’ve more or less continued to take breaks independently of one another ever since. For instance, had the football results turned out differently, Mr. Keng might have been in Berlin tonight for the European Champions’ League final (it’s being played between Barcelona and Juventus -from Turin, Italy, if you aren’t familiar with European soccer) to watch one of the teams he admires, Real Madrid. They were eliminated at the semi-final stage. As it is, he was in Edinburgh last evening to watch Scotland beat Qatar 1-0, and today he’s off on a fishing trip, which will undoubtedly end up in a pub somewhere to watch the game with his pals. Me? I’m going to get in some quality SL time later, and begin planning what’s going in the holiday suitcase.

Holidays are, of course, best when shared, so let me introduce you to this year’s companion. 🙂

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You’ve read about her before on these pages…

Yes, it’s my Dutch cousin Sylvia, the one who led the way on my first introduction to naturism in Cap D’Agde all those years ago. We see each other from time to time, and I used to stay at her apartment regularly when work took me to the Netherlands on a regular basis a few years ago. Despite sharing a set of grandparents, we’re quite often chalk and cheese in our approach to life. One common interest is, of course, naturism. Sylvia, her husband and their daughters are members of a Dutch naturist club, and she’s as regular a naturist holiday taker as I am. Perhaps even more so, as opportunities are more plentiful for her. Despite our common interest, we’ve never actually holidayed together since Cap D’Agde, despite promising ourselves we’d do so.

Sylvia had her children a few years before I did, so we each went through a period of thinking ‘oh, my babies are too small for holidays, we’ll take a couple of years off from vacations’. Her daughters are now young teens, and despite them reaching that ‘awkward’ age, apparently remain keen naturists. Now that they’re almost grown, and mine are of an age where they’re at school, and with the 20th anniversary of my nude debut approaching (June, 1995: Sylvia had been to a naturist beach prior to Agde) we decided we should have an anniversary of it.

Obviously, a return to Cap D’Agde was discussed. Sylvia was more keen than me, being someone who would quite readily wear a see-through ‘chain mail’ type of dress, as often worn by patrons of Agde as ‘evening wear’, as perfectly suitable. As for the stiletto heels favoured by many ladies…I prefer flats, or something with a much lower heel. High heels are something I’ve never quite come to grips with 🙂

While I’m someone who will readily bare all on a beach, I don’t really see that type of clothing as ‘me’. 🙂

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The type of dress that can be Cap D’Agde ‘evening wear’

So, we decided on Spain for the 20th anniversary of ‘the debut’.

Sylvia has been to Vera Playa before, and stayed in the naturist Vera Playa Club Hotel, so she sort of knows the layout of the place and likes it although, like Pookes, she prefers Croatia as a naturist destination. The family generally drive from Amsterdam to Croatia each year.

 

Another way that we’re ‘chalk and cheese‘ is that, when depilation became popular, Sylvia embraced that, whereas I, as you know, favour a more natural look. 🙂 Yes, I did it once and I didn’t like it and never did it again. Sylvia, by contrast, has gone ‘bare down there’ for much of the intervening twenty years since our debut. (In 1995, shaving was much less common and we both sported a ‘natural’ look. In the intervening period, Sylvia has also tried various nipple, clit & belly piercings)

While we’ve been on the phone, dovetailing travel arrangements, she asked ‘the question’.

‘Are you still not shaving your pubes?’

Well, no!

‘You should! You should do this!’ Despite being half-English, she’s very much straightforward, straight-talking Dutch.

When I came off the phone I spoke to Mr. Keng. ‘Sylvia says I should go bare down there’.

‘Go for it’, he said, catching me off guard. ‘See what it’s like’.

‘But you prefer a natural look, as do I!’ I wailed.

‘True. But sometimes it’s about trying new things. You didn’t think you could ever be a naturist when you began, did you?’ He barely looked up from his magazine.

No, but….

‘I will if you will’, he laughed.

And so, SLN readers, I turn to you…

‘Below the fold’, as they say in some digital media circles now, you’ll find a poll which asks the question as to whether I should, or should not, ‘go bare down there’ when on holiday with Sylvia. It closes this time next week, and…well….let’s see what you think….

 

Ella

 

 

Free AO’s

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AO’s (animation over-riders) are an important part of an SL avatar’s arsenal, because they offer a natural walk, sit and stand that an avatar without an AO lacks. So we all use AO’s and I find that it’s important to have a small library of these because it means we can change it regularly and not be standing around looking exactly the same all the time.

So it’s nice to see a couple of new, free AO’s available, which I found on the Nessaja Freebies blog. The blog is updated almost daily, and it’s a blog worth bookmarking.

There’s a free female AO here, and a male version here, both on the Marketplace.

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Thanks to the Nessaja Freebies blog for highlighting these.

Pookes

#stopbullying

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Images ©2015 Sachin Parekh via Facebook

It appears we’re in hashtag heaven/hell today.

I’ve been taken to task for what one reader sees as my blanket dismissal of social media, and she suggests that ‘social media can often do good’. I don’t think that I can argue with the messages in the images (above) that she pointed me towards, as all reflect some people’s bullying of one another and the consequences of bullying.

The final image, though, sums up my cynicism towards social media.

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A familiar ‘I bet most of you won’t claim, and the kicker that you should be part of the 1% who share. Go on, you know you want to feel good about yourself, so click that button!

I’ve written about this before: we’re looking at this all wrong. The messages in society are ‘girls, don’t get drunk and get raped’ rather than ‘boys, treat women with respect and don’t rape or assault women’. The message in respect of this social media meme should be less ‘share and feel good about yourself in doing so and demonstrate your sense of caring’ and more of ‘teach your children these values so that it’s part of our societal DNA, not something (young) people need to be reminded to do (or not do)’.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the messages being delivered on social media. There is something wrong where it’s social media who push things which should be learnt at a mother’s bosom before a child can walk.

I accept the reader’s premise for thinking about the issues in the manner she does, but it does not convince me that drivel like Facebook should be core to our sense of values (particularly when they seem to persist with the idea that videos of beheadings are acceptable).

Ella

#HoldACokeWithYourBoobsChallenge

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I’ll begin this post with two links. One, there’s a ‘social media campaign’ going in which ladies are invited to hold a bottle of coke, in whatever ‘imaginative’ ways they can, between their boobs. And two, criticism of the same campaign.

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As is often the case, social media appears to be the natural home for anything moronic, a place that I hope history will record as a brief phenomenon belonging to the narcissistic and shallow.

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‘Cock in a sock’, ‘no make up’ and maybe the most idiotic of all, the ‘Ice Bucket challenge’, the latter even tipping over into SL, and which we blogged about previously, these are things people indulge in.

Yes, I’ve heard the arguments that some were ‘in a good cause’, but eventually the money or awareness raising elements of them were bypassed for no other reason than people wanted to act like ‘good sports’ or ‘idiots’ on their chosen social media.

The instigator of the hashtag  is quoted as saying “We never thought it would take off like it did. But it did. And then people started posting it was for charity and it was for breast cancer awareness. We had never plan [sic] on that nor thought of it. But since that’s what people want to do it for, we said why not do something good with this. So we went with it. They can ether [sic] do the challenge, donate to their favorite charity, or both. It’s up to them. Let’s face some real facts. Not every woman does their exams or goes and gets a mammogram. Several people are on the mind set it will never happen to me, I’m to [sic] young or old for it to happen to me, my boobs are too small… and so on and so on…We tell people to get their mammograms and to donate to any breast cancer charity they want too [sic].‘

OK, so it didn’t start as a ‘charity campaign’ but as a bit of fun. Fine. And it seems that those doing it have turned it into a charitable event (maybe). Also fine. The instigators are now, in retrospect, telling people to get checks or donate to charities because a bit of fun has gone viral in a way they never anticipated. Equally fine.

But it doesn’t get away from the fact that it’s certainly exploitative of young women (again!) who may regret their participation in events like these in later life. Or maybe their narcissism and shallowness is such that these sort of things are, sadly, key highlights in their lives.

I expect the first ‘hold a coke with your boobs’ pose to turn up in SL within a week…

 

Ella

edited to add: One Mum with breast cancer goes full on about the meme in the UK’s Daily Mirror newspaper today.

Further edited to add: The bottle cap nipple pasties as displayed in the top photograph are already an SL Marketplace item. This is not a criticism of the designer (and they look to be an item that pre-dates this current internet meme). SL designers and builders merely reflect or, in this instance, pre-empt what RL sometimes does.

There are also Coca Cola cans widely available in SL, and I assume it would be relatively easy to replicate the meme’s style by choosing to attach these to the avatar’s chest or spine rather than attaching them to the hand.