I try to keep abreast of as many naturist related stories as I can, and picked up on one in the Toronto Star, which outlines the benefits of raising naturist children.

The conclusion is that people who spend time nude or partially nude around other people like their bodies more, regard themselves more positively overall and are more satisfied with life overall and that non-sexual nudity has no impact on children [with] positive effects in terms of confidence, self-esteem, and body image.

 

Children are an integral part of a family orientated naturist movement. Naturism’s future! Teaching them to grow up without body shame is, I feel, an important part of parenting, and my own children are, of course, naturist. They love nothing more than spending a hot afternoon in the garden in their birthday suits, splashing around in a paddling pool, running up and down, having fun and doing what comes naturally. And they’re smart enough to know that if they feel chilly, they put some clothes on.

I recently ran into Peter, an adult avatar, at one of SL’s naturist sims. As Britain recovered from WW2, he recollected going to what was then called ‘a nudist camp’ in the south of England with his bohemian parents, both keen naturists. ‘They were idyllic summers’, he told me, ‘the innocence of running around for an entire weekend without clothes’. Never married, Peter then found himself tainted by the ‘single male’ label that often is attached to single males, with their motives about naturism often questioned. Even now, many clubs refuse to admit single males, or will only level up the genders by permitting a single male to join whenever a single female applied for membership. As a result, Peter spent much of his adult life as a closet naturist, and it was only on retirement that he felt free to travel abroad as a single male naturist and enjoy the lifestyle.

‘When I discovered SL I was delighted to meet like-minded people in the game’, he says. ‘After a while I decided I’d like to recreate my childhood in SL and I got myself sorted out with a petite avatar [for the uninitiated, a petite avatar is a child-sized avatar] and immediately was thrown out and banned from one naturist sim I’d used extensively because it was deemed I was indulging in age play.’

When I began in SL agedly was quite common within SL’s naturist sims. Largely benign in nature, some avatars simply liked, as Peter did, to incorporate the recapturing of an element of his life into his SL game play. Of course, some exponents of it had other, darker motives and age play was banned from many SL sims, naturist and textile. I understand why it was done, in an atmosphere of paedophiles lurking on the grid, indulging in sick fantasies, but it did remove one strata of human life -child sized avatars- which sometimes feels like it has skewed the reality of naturist life on the sims.

As a keen advocate of family naturism, and it’s a topic I’ve often written about, I’ve often felt I’d like to accurately reflect naturism as it is, but have never done so before. This blog post changes that, as I got Peter to agree to wear his petite avatar to pose, complete with chic ice, as my son, to create a sense of ‘family naturism’. However, I’m also keenly aware there are some sick and sorry individuals out there, and thus I’ve opted to pixelate Peter’s avatar.

 

I hope that this doesn’t prove too controversial, and it’s likely that if someone, anyone, objects I’ll remove the photos from this posting.

 

That said, I feel it’s important to attempt to show family naturism in some regard, and to keep reinforcing the idea that it isn’t remotely sexual (apart from in the hands and minds of some people utilising child avatars for their own sick ends).

What motivated Peter to adopt such an avatar? ‘This may sound strange, but putting on the petite shape sort of transported me back to my childhood, and a whole range of long forgotten memories re-emerged. I could visualise my parents, now long dead, and there was one occasion where I came across a bicycles for rent stand and was immediately transported back to my father spending a weekend teaching me to ride a bike. It was an overwhelming set of memories, and I became so emotional at visualising him holding the saddle and teaching me to ride that I had to log off one night! It was just a happy-sad moment’

We refuse, rightly, to have our will bent to the shape of brain-dead terrorists, and refuse to allow our enlightened, modern, liberal lifestyles to be held ransom to some medieval death-sect. Why, then, should we bend our will to the sick minds of a few? Obviously, that does not mean providing a rich vein of material for their diseased minds, I have no intention of using real life photos…but let me ask the question…in posts where family naturism is relevant, would you be happy to see pixelated or unpixelated petite Second Life avatars helping to illustrate whatever the topic is? Would such photos possibly present a more accurate depiction of family naturism?

While researching ‘family naturism’ I chanced upon a website that acts as a directory for campsites around the world, including some naturist ones. The facilities for children were well to the fore, demonstrating that ours is a family lifestyle. It seemed a worthwhile opportunity to offer a set of new (to me) naturist photos that demonstrate the sense of family fun and innocence to be found in naturism.

 

 

 

 

(Photo removed due to potential copyright infringement)

 

 

Ella