That first naturist outing of the season…you know when the weather is fine and lovely, yet the sea remains ever so slightly chilly? Picked up, thrown over the other half’s shoulder and threatened with an early season ‘dunking’.

Fortunately, he didn’t carry out his threat, but proceeded to remain irritating by photobombing my selfies.

Both poses (along with a couple of others that don’t really lend themselves to a naturist brief) can be found at the Frimon Store.  They’re all free, just dependent on you wearing your Fab Free or SLF&O or other group tags).

Ella

Marcia, an SLN reader in Australia, writes to tell me that she and her husband live in the ‘outback‘. They enjoy getting out and about, and go kayaking on a nearby (250 miles???) river. ‘We get naked out there’, she says, ‘but would you say it’s proper naturism, given that it’s just the two of us and a couple of kangaroos for company?’

Yes. Of course it’s proper naturism. Naturism is a lot of fun in a social setting, but that doesn’t negate any naturist activity done alone, or as a couple.

Our models try to recreate kayaking in ‘the bush‘.

Your Australian setting reminded me of the movie ‘Walkabout‘, wherein a teenage girl and her brother are lifted stranded in the outback after their father drives them out there and then kills himself. The remainder of the story is their chancing upon an aboriginal boy, who is on a walkabout, a ritual that leads from childhood to manhood. In the film, there’s a nude swimming scene, seen as very risque at the time of the movie’s 1971 release. The girl was played by the then 19 year old Jenny Agutter, the native boy by  David Gulpilil.

Gulpilil would be almost fully nude for the entirety of the movie, Agutter being nude in a skinny dipping scene as the trio attempt to survive the harsh Australian outback.

Replicating a scene in the Australian outback wasn’t quite achievable, but we did manage to capture a photo of a schoolgirl with a Masai warrior, once again demonstrating that most scenarios, however odd they seem, can almost certainly be achieved in SL.

The scene in the film can be described, to my mind, as a naturist one, and being naked in the great outdoors with your husband also very much qualifies as a naturist scenario. Enjoy your naked time in the wild!

Ella

I didn’t become a naturist until I was 19, but I’d abandoned nightwear for five years previous to that. Having slept nude, and the sense of coolness and freedom it gave, I could never go back. I decided on the same thing having swum nude too.

Of course there have been times when nightwear (and swimwear) have been required, but it feels…wrong!

I’ve had to wear nightwear when in hospital, giving birth, and a swimming costume when taking the children to ‘water babies’ classes. But I generally do without.

Even the idea of sheer, diaphanous nightwear doesn’t appeal. Why? What’s the point?

Ditto ‘sexy’ lingerie. I don’t see the appeal.

Still, if you do like sheer, diaphanous nightwear, you can find the set (above) as a free gift at Farspire Fashions (it’s a Maitreya gift, but works on classic avatars if you don’t use the alpha layer, apparently).

Ella

Hi,

I spotted this new Fab Free gift on their blog. A necklace camera. It’s from Zendra, whose store can be found here.

I rounded Harry up so we both have one of these while snapping for SLN. And here we are modelling them!

Diane

We’ve covered tennis, or its ‘unique to naturism’ equivalent, mini-ten, before. You can read more about mini ten via this link. It is very tennis like, but most ‘landed clubs’ (naturist clubs with their own grounds), sometimes don’t have the space to have a full sized tennis court, so miniten is a good alternative on a smaller court.

Naturists do love their sport. While it looks appealing, I often think that the court where I holiday is simply too exposed to the sun to make it an enjoyable experience.

Picking up on our post from earlier about Image Essentials pose sale, Esme has picked up a couple of tennis poses.

Ella

Naturism isn’t for everyone. But here in Europe, on our beaches, we’ve reached a point where going ‘topless’ on almost any beach won’t raise an eyebrow and, indeed, on some actually wearing your bikini top is likely to make you stand out from the crowd. A woman who would never drop her bikini briefs will readily lose the top.

It’s not just the younger generation who routinely go topless. It’s commonplace to see the generation who grew up in the first wave of topless beaches still going topless. That’s women in their 60s and 70s now.

When I started in SL it was relatively easy to find free bikinis (and lingerie!) dotted around the grid in numerous stores, but sadly that’s no longer the case, and these items are much rarer and harder to find. So we’ve been out and about, several of us, to see what free swimwear is available out there.

Starting with Mal (above), her bikini comes from Chez Kitten, in tattoo and underwear layers. That means you can opt for a total cover up (as in the top pic) without overloading your avatar, important where there’s likely to be sim lag or a limit to your avatar’s overall ‘complexity’. I will often utilise similar bikini tattoo layers for exactly this purpose. I can be seen by everyone, rather than being rendered as a jelly ‘blob’ to others. (If you don’t play SL, this may not make any sense).

Barbara was altogether more cute, as one might expect of a long-term SL user, and headed for one of the many freebie stores around the grid – Lusch Haven Freebie Market to pick up several free bikinis and a wet T shirt! Often, freebies are maybe a decade or more old, the products of the earliest days of Second Life, and as such aren’t of the sort of quality and design we expect so often nowadays, but some of the products are still very serviceable.

Anything for the guys? Jake also ended up at a freebie market, The Lost Dove, more by accident than design, and snagged a mesh shorts and tank top set (which also included sandals). Not quite a pair of speedos or a man-thing, but serviceable enough as swimwear.

After all, guys have been going topless on beaches for decades! 😉

As a naturist, I understand the sense of fear experienced ‘first time’, be it going topless or fully nude. (‘Hey! Everyone is staring at my boobs!!!!’ – No, they aren’t, really).

Women, however, who may be initially reluctant to strip fully do, when presented with naturist opportunities, often see the folly of their ways…

Bikini bottoms aren’t very practical for swimming purposes, and oft is the time when you will see a bikini brief wearing lady enter the sea but after a brief battle against wave power pulling them off, she’ll simply give up! Sometimes, this scenario is a woman’s entry to full naturism. Once discarded, she quickly realises that they’re unnecessary items of clothing, and they may not be seen again for the duration of the holiday.

Ella

Image Essentials currently has a L$25 retirement pose sale on right now. Literally dozens upon dozens of fabulous looking poses.

Naturally, I gravitate to the beach type poses, as they fit with the remit of this blog.

The three above are from the “Carefree’ set (I’ve not photographed them all) and utilise a ‘scarf’ as they put it, but I like to think of this as a pareo being used, as a pareo is used, in RL naturist situations. (see the photos below for real life naturist sarongs/pareos and you’ll see how this set from Image Essentials works so effectively)

Above are some from a beach lay set (again, I’ve not photographed them all) so the poses are working out at about L£4-5 each. Bargain.

Everything from nativity scenes to zombie poses are at the sale. I was also particularly delighted to see some LGBT friendly poses being promoted. All at L$25.

Ella.

‘If I went to a nude beach I’d walk around with an erection all day’.

How often do we read words of that type in relation to naturism? Quite often. And the truth is no, no you wouldn’t. Because -we keep underlining this- despite the nudity, it’s non sexual. Naturism is non sexual, and in those situations there’s no sense of sexual arousal to manifest itself.

I’ve picked out a few photographs, featuring three or more people (above). Why ‘three or more’? In life, we can wander around naked in front of a life partner or significant other without becoming sexually aroused, very often. We know what the other person looks like naked, and while they may arouse us in certain situations, they don’t do that all the time, depending on circumstances.

So some photos of naked couples could be assumed to be of a couple who are in this situation. But that whole ‘I’d get an erection looking at naked women’ schtick…at least one person in all of the photos above isn’t a ‘partner’, so they’re looking at the third person in a sexual way, right? Wrong. In naturism, there’s no sexual triggers. Indeed, in many ‘group/publicly naked’ scenarios there’s no sexual triggers.

Many people who participate in one of Spencer Tunick’s many installations won’t identify as being naturist, so their experience of being in a mixed gender nude scenario will be even more limited than that of someone who does identify as naturist. Do you see any erections? No, everyone is resolutely flaccid.

Simply because there’s no sexual triggers involved. So, please, don’t keep on with the ‘I’d be running around with an erection all day if I visited a nude beach’ nonsense. It’s simply never going to happen.

Despite the presence of two beautiful female avatars he remains flaccid

In a sense, Second Life’s mechanics can teach us this in its own small way. To become erect, the male avatar has to do something -push buttons.. Because he’s probably more wrapped up in the conversation on screen, pushing those buttons isn’t top of his priorities, even when surrounded by lovely naked women. And naturism’s like that too in real life. You aren’t focussed on how beautiful her breasts are, more the conversation -often about mundane topics. And removed from the sexual triggers, there’s no erections.

No erections on these naturist beaches

People simply get on with whatever they’re doing, reading, tanning, swimming, talking, drinking coffee… Sex, and arousal, is not on their minds. Neither will it be on yours.

Ella

My day begins early today with my usual trawl of the news websites. This is often ‘work related’, but occasionally a story involving nudity will catch my eye and work its way into the blog.

One story, widely reported in the UK media, involves a rather bizarre naked protest at Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, wherein they killed a sheep (!?!?) at the gates, then stripped naked and chained themselves together before the police were called and the protestors removed.

Unfortunately, the nature of ‘news’ is that it’s often not followed up, so it may be that we never hear the motivation behind this bizarre protest. Some media reports suggest it was in protest against conflict in the Ukraine, and while this is laudable, their choice of venue is not, besmirching the memory of so many people who were forcibly stripped in order to humiliate them when they arrived at Auschwitz, before going to their deaths. And killing a sheep? Naked protest still has a power to create media interest, and publicity, for causes around the world, but there are some places where it’s unacceptable. Auschwitz would be one such location where the memories of those who lost their lives to a horrible, screwed-up ideology needs to be preserved and protected.

1.1m died at Auschwitz, mostly Jews. It’s a harrowing place to visit. I’ve been and was rendered speechless just by the enormity of the hatred that took place there. It will be interesting to know if the 11 arrested, aged between 20-27, will be revealed to have the slightest comprehension of the enormity of history, and man’s inhumanity to man, that occurred there. Quite simply, an awful, ignorant way to protest.

Ella

Having posted about Twitter, and some of the really backwards attitudes to be found on there, I found myself growing increasingly angry about one tweet…

…that there’s ‘just no excuse for ginger pubes’. Happily not all of Twitter is like that, as there’s at least one Twitter page celebrating all things ginger.

But in today’s society, there are a few who think that verbally abusing red-headed children is OK. There has been serious debate about it in UK newspapers, although the conclusion appeared to be that it’s a prejudice but some prejudices are more acceptable than others. Neither is it a debate confined to the UK, with Australia also writing about it all… MIA‘s video for ‘Born Free’ was removed from youtube because it showed ginger people being rounded up (although I think youtube missed the point here…I took that to be more of a commentary on general racism and hate-crimes than specifically anti-ginger, and showed how prejudices are allowed to grow with no basis in any sort of logic).

I’ve got numerous friends in SL who are red-heads, some of whom are Irish and one of whom isn’t an Irish red-head in real life. ‘I use red hair to mess with the lazy stereotypes’, she says. ‘Some people expect the Irish to be redheads, something born of ignorance about Ireland. They think we all live in whitewashed cottages too. So I play SL as a redhead, while my RL pic is on my profile with a full head of black hair. And people say ‘that can’t be you as you aren’t a redhead’.

They’re all attractive looking redheaded avatars, no different from real life redheaded people…

Beautiful, red-headed people. The idea that ‘there’s no excuse for ginger pubes’ is ignorant and stupid. But, hey, you’re on Twitter, so you have the perfect platform to demonstrate ignorance and stupidity.

Ella