I’m just back from the Gabriel main store where there’s a number of free gifts on display, a couple being useful from a naturist accessory perspective.
The first two photos show a ‘body bag’ from front and back. I like the way it’s designed to fit neatly into my cleavage, as it would in real life.
The next item is a shoulder bag. There are other gifts, including shoes and boots for men and women, which I’ve chosen not to blog. All are L$0 on joining the (free) group.
For anyone wondering about a change of hairstyle (upstairs and down) again, I’ve literally stepped away from a photo shoot with Diane for part of our vintage season, to quickly blog this, hence a slightly more vintage look 😉
Does anyone out there make poses? I’d be delighted if there are, and they might get in touch, as I’d like to obtain a pose and will commission a pose along the following lines…
Arms up or outstretched, and with their bikinis in their hands (or a pair of swimming trunks as a male equivalent). Maybe a HUD to change the swimwear’s colour? If you make poses, know anyone who does, or can recommend a pose-maker who takes commissions, please let me know.
I have been able to locate both a bra and panties on the floor on the Marketplace (L$50 each), but if anyone could make these as swimsuits, I’d also be obliged.
The reason why I ask is because the photos above are something of a little bit of a naturist theme. You get nervous first timers who arrive on the beach (and the sun club I belong to also permits first-timers to wear a swimsuit for a while so that nervous newbies can find their comfort levels) who eventually lose the swimwear and photos do get taken in a triumphant debut. It would be nice to replicate that in Second Life if I can find a willing pose-maker to do one for me.
Look at the four photos above. They’re all from Montalivet, a naturist campsite in France. The bike park exists because so many campers bring bikes with them, and will have ridden 2-3 kms from their camper van, tent or chalet on the other side of the woods in which Montalivet is sited.
This photo (below) looking in the other direction gives an idea of the size and wooded aspect of the site.
Sometimes I think that Second Life beaches sometimes lack a little sparkle where their geography is concerned (not something that’s confined to naturist beaches). Second Life beaches, naturist or textile, are often focused too much on being tropical. Not all beaches in real life are like that. Few, in fact.
What did you see in the photos above? I saw cliffs, waterfalls, plunge pools, streams, rocky rivers, sand dunes and ferned woodland (similar to what you would walk through, or cycle through, from Montalivet’s campsite to its beach.
Of course, I’m not expecting the equivalent of a kilometre of sand with dunes behind it, sim costs would prevent that, but equally these are all naturist locations in real life that are less well addressed in Second Life.
To that end, I’m on a quest to source different and unique spots in Second Life where the skinny-dipping might more accurately reflect naturist opportunity than just a tropical beach.
A mini-series, which will also tie in with our championing of Wild Swimming recently, will be coming up shortly.
This post isn’t naturist, but I thought it worth blogging some autumnal outfits that look gorgeous, and are a bit unique, to my way of thinking, compared to many Second Life outfits. We often dress up in outfits that aren’t always true to our real life selves, but this trio are definitely very much from a real life wardrobe and look fabulous for it. I was minded to show some clothes just as reminder that the naturist season has now well and truly disappeared. It’s wet and windy where I am, and not much chance to roll out of bed and into the kitchen this morning wearing my birthday suit. It was necessary to get dressed! And so, a reminder that naturists do have to dress sometimes in this trio of outfits.
There’s no top to accompany the Sabbia skirt so it’s a little bit SL Naturist. All three are free right now and look great. That’s probably going to be the extent of out ‘autumn outfits for naturists whose season has disappeared with the equinox’ coverage, and it’s normal service being resumed in the next post.
Being dubbed the ‘million mask march’, a nod towards America’s ‘Million Man March‘, the mood can be seen above. ‘Our bank owners are our slave masters : wake up!’ is the general sort of message that gets delivered. Yes, that’s Nelson’s Column in the background of the photo. Yes, that’s central London right now. And yes, I’m not so very far away from where this photo was taken, right now, as I’m in London on work related matters today and tomorrow.
Guy’s image has been appropriated recently in the wake of the film V for Vendetta, and is growing into a symbol of resistance to government actions in many countries around the world.
I got a Guy mask on the Marketplace for L$0, and my protest, if I have one, is the manner in which some sim owners and Second Life bloggers object to nudity, with even skin designers blogging their products with ‘pasties’ or pixelation. It’s a computer game’s depiction of the male or female form. Everyone reading possess one or the other, and blurring, pastifying, or being in general denial of what each of us has is silly.
Back to ‘the southern hemisphere’ tomorrow after a flying visit home.
It all began with the photo above, of a couple of older people, perhaps not even ‘naturists’, leaping from a dock into water, with a positive message about not caring what anyone else thinks. I just loved the positivity of it all.
Maybe they’re going skinny dipping for the first time, just grabbing an opportunity. One thing then led to another, less regarding ‘older’ naturists or skinny dippers, but that moment of entry into water, a leap into the unknown, not unlike a first time naturist experience.
So I looked and found
Leaps, dives, moments of entry, a sheer sense of skinny-dipping joy in each.
The Belleck House sim has its own dock, so I asked Nan, an older avatar I know, if she’d like to pose for me, as there’s a couple of superb animations at the dock that capture the sense of joy in that leap, while still acknowledging the ‘older’ skinny dipper of the first photo.
I didn’t try to make them ‘arty’ at all. These are raw photos. I just felt that they’re one of the very best SL animations I’ve seen in a long time.
Abigail and I, looking confused outside the airport. Where’s our gate?
Check in is a drag, and there’s a queue. Customer service is not what it might be!
I only want to buy a sandwich, not purchase the bakery that provided the bread and the farm that provided the tomatoes! Ripped off again? Welcome to an airport!
Taking the escalator up to our Gate
And there’s our plane. Remind me, again, Abi, about Air Pukalani’s safety record #nervousflyer
Taking SL Naturist south for the winter seemed like such a good idea at the time! #stillanervousflyer!
I’m sure we’ll get to our seats once some idiot has managed to stuff an over-sized bag they should have checked into the hold into the overhead locker!
And we’re in the air! There’s the sun on the horizon.
All photos above taken at Phoenix Airport. Apart from the one taken over the Bay of Biscay while flying Jet2 back from the Med earlier this year. And obviously SL Phoenix Airport, not the one in Arizona. Oh, shut up, Trine, you gabble nervously when flying! 🙂
Brazilian singer Barbara Eugenia has performed naked on stage in the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo.
I’m not familiar with her music at all, but she’s apparently very popular, and no stranger to nudity, as this video for one of her songs, Jusqu’a La Mort, shows. Confusingly, the title of the song is in French, and means ‘Until death’.
The video is all rather artily shot, her face never clear, and while Barbara sports a couple of tattoos, well these could surely be easily replicated on a model, couldn’t they?
I should also add that I’ve listened to some other of her other youtube videos and the music is all rather good. This is not the music of a newcomer projecting her body as a distraction from rather feeble songs. The music sounds moody and beautifully sung. Put it like this, I’d buy it! No, Barbara is now 35 as she releases ‘Jusqu’a la Mort’, and follows it up with last week’s Sao Paolo performance.
‘What are you afraid of?’ the banner reads in Portuguese
Holding a banner that says ‘What are you afraid of’ during the concert, which began clothed, we tried to find out if it was some sort of protest or exhortation for people to lose their clothes.
The concert began with Ms. Eugenia dressed
She’s previously been photographed sporting tattoos while semi-clad.
I’ve only found one site which shows photographs of her nude performance, and information was limited as to her reasoning. But her Facebook page is a little more forthcoming, where she has written about the motivation on a website called Journalistes Livres (Free Journalism) and says -we’ve received the following synopsis via our Brazilian correspondent Natalia-
We are human, made of flesh, and are an ingenious machine. The body is only this packaging, this vessel. It’s natural and it’s beautiful. At some point in history, they decided it was ugly and vulgar. Especially the female body.
Thinking about this, I had the idea of doing a performance, an intervention on my show. Get naked and say a few words to show that a body is just a body. Arriving at SESC Belenzinho, the venue, I spoke to my dear partner Tata Airplane and Peri Pane, which would take part in some songs, and invited them to come with me holding a writing group, “you are afraid of that?” Man, woman, we are all made of subatomic particles.
This show happened the same weekend in which women (and many men) took to the streets to protest an absurd piece of legislation in which a raped woman is denied her rights.
I suggest we work every so that harmony reigns. It should be natural, so let’s roll up our sleeves! It is not the naturalness of nudity, is the naturalness of life.
Bravo, Barbara, very well said!
Here’s a few more photos from the concert, for which we salute Barbara Eugenia as one of our ‘heroes of naturism’.
I’m glad now that we’ve decided to take SL Naturist ‘south’ for the winter. We’ve kicked off our winter coverage with a story we’d maybe never have discovered had we remained focussed on a northern hemisphere’s winter.
Looking back over SL Naturist’s archives it’s clear there’s a Eurocentric dimension to the blog. That’s understandable, as the writers have been European, experiencing European naturism.
As the northern hemisphere’s summer and mild autumn slips slowly away, I though we might winter down south.
That means I intend to explore some southern hemisphere real life naturist locations over our northern winter months, and perhaps try to reflect the southern hemisphere’s approaching naturist season. It’s spring time down there right now, so hopefully there will be plenty to report.
And yes, we’re going to reflect that in our Second Lives. On the run up to Christmas, look out for us donning Santa hats but out on a Second Life naturist beach with a turkey dinner. You can sort of guess where this is going.
To that end I’ve secured the services of two avatars hoping to provide some insight into the southern hemisphere’s approach to naturism. The first is Natalia, a Brazilian avi, who I think we’re agreed will report from there (she speaks no English, I speak no Portuguese, so the posts may need to be edited to read properly in English. Our in-world conversations are conducted wither using a Second Life translator add-on, which is imperfect, or Google Translate, also imperfect). The second person going to help me out here is Charlene, an Australian living in the UK (so we’re on the same time zone) but who had experience and knowledge of some of Australia’s naturist locations prior to her decamping to live and work in London.
Hopefully, between them, they’ll be able to also report on Peru, Argentina, New Zealand and so on.
I have access to the SL Naturist photo archive, and I’m going to guess that you’ve only ever seen about 5% or less of it on SL Naturist, the archive itself running to thousands of photographs.
Diane Toxx, SL Naturist’s recently (re)appointed official photographer
It’s a testament to the hard work put in by SL Naturist’s past photographers Harry, Hugh and Diane.
I’ve no photographic talent, in or out of Second Life, so the issue of getting someone with a photographer’s eye has been pressing since I took on the editorial role.
Abi has some Photoshop experience which has benefitted us, but both of us might suggest to you that our ‘talents’, such as they are, are more in the roles of words and sourcing stories that reflect the naturist lifestyle in Second Life or stories from real life that we can apply to Second Life.
To that end I’ve been negotiating with Diane Toxx, a former SL Naturist photographer, and I’m pleased to say that I’ve secured her services once more. This pleases me on two levels. For one, the quality of the photography may improve. Secondly, it means there’s now a link to the previous editorial staff and that creates a sense of continuity which I think is important.
I referenced Diane in a previous post, in a roundabout way, and I’m pleased to say I’m now officially unveiling her as SL Naturist’s sole official photographer. I know there were ‘issues’ in the past regarding a post she made that resulted in a minor blogosphere spat. That’s not my concern and the slate is clear. I know that stupid little drama, precipitated by others, led to SL Naturist being de-linked to other blog sites and, from what I can gather, the loss of a SL Naturist office on the grid. I repeat: that’s none of my concern. We are where we are as a blog and we move forward. Welcome, camera-girl.
the sl naturist 
