As I’ll be on holiday with Sylvia, I thought that I’d get her to tell us a bit more about herself. She’s not an SL player, so the photos we’ll be using are from one of my alts, the ‘Eve’ that gets rolled out a couple of times a year. I’ve tried to create a bit of a resemblance to the real life Sylvia in terms of hair length and colour, and also in terms of her style (which isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do on an ‘alt’ I don’t wish to spend money on).

The photo I used yesterday in introducing her wasn’t quite her style, as I recall. A forty year old woman doesn’t really go out in booty shorts and nothing but a bra under her jacket. 🙂

The leather studded jacket was, however, very much ‘Sylvia style’. It certainly was the last time I saw her in real life, paired up with a shirt and a pair of jeans. Going bra-less with a tank top is also something that would qualify as ‘Sylvia style’.

I’ve not spoken to her in advance of relating her nude debut, but we’ve spoken enough of it in the past for me to be able to describe it.

As is the case for many of us, a car offers our teenage selves the chance to spread our wings in terms of independence, and so it was when Sylvia and her contemporaries began to drive. In the UK, almost everyone begins to learn to drive when they turn 17, and many people will be given a set of driving lessons for their 17th birthday. This was how it was for me, although it’s rather daunting learning to drive in central London! In Europe, people aren’t quite so eager to learn to drive as soon as possible, it seems, and certainly the proliferation of bicycles in Amsterdam, and the compact nature of the city means that many teenagers still prefer to use their bikes, only learning to drive when it becomes necessary, such as getting a place at a university some distance from home, or else when it seems that a job will require it.

A group of friends decided to spend a day at the seaside when one of them got a car, but Sylvia says that it wasn’t even planned as a beach day, they just drove out of Amsterdam and headed north, eventually stopping at a beach called Callantsoog. None of the party were aware it was a naturist beach. After much giggling at the sight of the naturists on the beach, typical teen bravado and dares were offered.

After much ‘I will if you will’ challenges, coupled to the fact that it was unplanned, so no one had brought towels or swimwear, the mixed group began to encourage one another. As Sylvia remembers it the entire group had stripped down to their underwear on a scorching hot day, and they thought that a swim seemed to be a delightful thought. Go into the sea wearing underwear? Someone logically said that, when back out, they’d have to sit in the car in damp underclothes all the way back to Amsterdam, and it didn’t seem an attractive proposition to any of them. Besides, if they all returned to their clothes, they’d have to remove their underwear to get the rest of their clothes on again to avoid this discomfort on the trip back home. And as it was a naturist beach, and they’d been observing naturists for almost an hour now, didn’t it make sense just to go nude like everyone else?

For me, I think it would have been a daunting prospect. Going nude in front of strangers would certainly be easier than going nude in front of friends you’d known for years. Maybe you quietly liked that guy, or that girl, imagined what it would be like to kiss them, hug them, dance with them, make love with them. Going naked in front of them? Would it not wholly change the nature of the relationship? I say this because I’ve never experienced it in real life. Yes, I’ve seen several female friends fully naked when we’ve taken our children swimming, but I’ve never been in that situation regarding male friends. Of course, I’ve subsequently met naked people on holidays and they’ve become friends, but there’s a different perspective there. What’s your take on this? Would you find it more daunting to strip off in front of someone you’ve known for years as opposed to a total stranger?

Eventually, our little Dutch group did strip naked and run to the sea, hands covering as much as they could manage. By the time they emerged from the waves, all sense of feeling bashful appears to have gone, and they lay around naked on the sand until they’d dried off, after which they dressed and headed home.

For Sylvia, it appears to have been a cathartic moment, and the realisation that she loved the range of feelings being naked outside provided. While her friends saw it as a one-off, wild, teenage experience and a bit of a giggle, Sylvia determined to repeat the experience, pretty much on a weekly basis, for the remainder of her summer holidays, often travelling to Callantsoog alone to spend a couple of hours sunbathing and swimming nude, feeling more relaxed about the experience of being naked outdoors with each subsequent visit. It was on one of these day trips she got into conversation with an elderly couple, she told me, who spoke of their naturist club. Sylvia subsequently joined the club herself, and was thereafter able to enjoy winter-time naturist swims in Amsterdam.

Thus, we reached a point where Sylvia was a confident and ‘experienced’ naturist. I, about 18 months younger than her, was still probably unaware of any such lifestyle and had no idea how much of a role it would play in my life. The rest, you know about. My uncle’s friend owned a cafe in Cap D’Agde, and was looking for staff for the summer. My uncle suggested Sylvia and, in turn, I got invited along.

The instant we got there, Sylvia eagerly went naked when she could, mostly in our apartment. Not that she was afraid of being naked in public, more that neither of us were aware at that time of the naturist etiquette. She would most certainly have walked naked to and from our apartment before and after work, but it took us a couple of weeks to accept it was normal for us to do so at 100am, and walk nude the distance between the cafe and our cramped little apartment.

That first day off we had, Sylvia walked confidently and nonchalantly around the pool area at a time when I was still in a bikini. In a sense it was Sylvia’s devil-may-care lead that I took my cues from. It was in Cap D’Agde that we came of age, in terms of our naturism.

Since then, Sylvia and her family have taken naturist holidays on an annual basis. She’s been nude on a beach while eight months pregnant (something I would not have done!). We’ve spoken about our attraction to the lifestyle. Is there something in our genes that attracts us to it? Is it something we’ve come to simply through exposure and experience of?

I imagine we’ll be discussing these aspects of our naturist lives in a couple of weeks. I can’t wait!

Ella