Over the weekend I began a tour of all of the ‘naturist’ locations I can find in SL, with the idea that I should update info on them, provide new slurls, if necessary, and give you some indication of what’s available on each in terms of facilities.

It was a rather depressing start, as one after another seemed to be populated with those who don’t have any conception of what a naturist or nudist beach entails. Beachwear, in many instances. Outdoor wear, in some. Folks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we’re losing ground to SL textiles within the few naturist locations we have.

This isn’t so much different from real life, if we let it happen. One or two textiles lay claim to a bit of naturist beach, more textiles arrive and the next thing we know we’ve lost all or some real life naturist beach that was hard fought for.

This is why some naturists are very militant. Some French beaches have ‘the nude police’ at the entrance, with volunteers saying ‘get naked or get lost’, in effect. Spanish naturists will all get to their feet and begin a slow handclap against textile invaders until the invaders get naked or get lost.

And this is now becoming a problem in SL, with textiles outnumbering naturists in some instances whenever you TP in. Like real life, I don’t necessarily feel ‘comfortable’ in a minority. If I arrive at a ‘clothing optional’ beach in RL to find that numerous textiles have laid claim to it, I don’t necessarily feel as if I’m going to strip off and become some sort of exhibit for them. If I arrive and numerous naturists are already there, I’ll merrily join in, even if there are one or two textiles, because I feel as if ‘we’ -naturists- have laid claim to it for the day.

It’s no different in SL. If I tp in somewhere and I’m the only one naked, I’ll be leaving, because there’s not any sense of being able to gauge people’s naturist bona fides. Believe me, there are locations where even though it’s just cartoon figures onscreen, the whole ‘nice t*ts’ conversation crops up from some badly shaped male avatar in a pair of bad board shorts and freebie hair from 2007.

What I’d planned to do over the next few weeks was visit, then revisit, every naturist or clothing optional beach in SL, including some that I had previously regarded as not being genuinely naturist in SL -the places that will advertise themselves as ‘nude, nudist, naturist, f***, c***, p****’ etc, on the basis that they at least need to be acknowledged as existing. An example is Turtle Coast. We’ve never really covered Turtle, on the basis that it included pose balls for more intimate displays in SL, but really, the ground has shifted radically in the past couple of years, where Turtle almost invariably contains numerous fully nude avatars dancing and socialising in local chat, with all of the pose balls available in discreet locations going unused (if I use the mini-map to locate avatars).

Contrarily, Turtle now feels much more genuinely naturist than one or two locations semi-permanently peopled with clothed avatars, but still advertising themselves as a ‘naturist’ sim. While these locations have zero pose balls, they now feel less naturist than some sims with pose balls.

Do I start to list sites with a ‘textile’ issue? Do I remove such locations from our list of ‘genuine’ locations because they’re no longer properly functioning as naturist sims? (Example: Sunday evening, 9 avatars on one naturist sim, only two -myself and one other female avi- nude. The remainder in various states of being dressed.)

C’mon, sim owners! Up your game in how you police your naturist sim. Let’s have beach officers enforcing full nudity within the sims. Either that or please, please, please re-designate your sim as ‘clothing optional’ and give up the pretence of running a ‘genuinely naturist’ sim.

Ella