I’ve been over to the Uber Monthly event this afternoon and picked up a couple of shirts ideal for the ‘naturist wardrobe’. I’m not a big spender on SL clothes, but I liked these so much I picked up two! (at L$245 each).

The plain coloured white one certainly shows off a little more than the patterned one. They’re very ‘naturist wardrobe’. Ideal to throw on after a day in the sun and a walk back to your apartment as the sun sets.

No, I don’t buy an awful lot of SL clothes, but what I like, I love. And these are great.

Ella

There’s a new trend on social media, apparently, for photographing your bare bottom at well-known locations.

Harmless, daft, utterly pointless, despite what the author of the pice thinks (click on the link above for her views) but still ultimately harmless. If it’s the choice between getting paralytic drunk in a city centre at a weekend, or baring your butt, bare bottoms win hands down as the thing for everyone to do.

Of course it’s silly. But in a tense, and getting more tense, world, why shouldn’t we have some silliness?

Ella

I generally dislike to see a tracksuit unless some sort of physical activity is connected to it.

In the UK, tracksuits are often so much associated with a certain (under)class of people –chavs– that some pubs have put up signs which effectively bars a certain type of ‘day wear’.

Some people simply don’t make any effort anymore. Can it really be only half a century ago that the mods held sway, working class people who spent every penny they earned on the Monday to Friday 9-5 on looking as sharp as their wages would allow?

The word ‘chav’ has been accused of being class abuse. Which is rather ridiculous, but when the name Polly Toynbee and The Guardian collide, you can be pretty sure some sort of identity politics come into play. Might it never occur to Ms Toynbee is, similarly, probably being abused by ‘chavs’ for being ‘posh’ or ‘stuck up‘? Does ‘class abuse’ only operate in one direction?

Anyway…chavs…

These guys are wearing their Sunday best, incidentally…

Two of my naturist friends, a couple who are often holidaying in the same location I am each year and whom I’ve got to know quite well, mentioned something to me a couple of years ago during a conversation that sprang into my mind at the weekend. They talked about their ‘tracksuit days’. They live in some distance from the sea, I have it on my doorstep, and they were talking enviously of my ability to hop over the fence and use a beach, weather permitting, and better still, use that beach which is inaccessible to the public.

As they don’t have that luxury, they utilise what they call ‘tracksuit days’ in the hills and dales around their home, often quite remote rural areas which, while accessible to the public, are very underused, particularly in midweek. If the weather is suitable, my friends go hill walking, and dress in tracksuits for the occasion because ‘tracksuits can be removed very quickly and we can be into any little stream or waterfall in seconds’.

In such a manner, their ‘tracksuit days’ can become ‘naturist days’, much closer to home than having to make a lengthy drive to an official naturist beach. In all the time they’ve been doing this, they told me, they’ve only ever encountered one single other hillwalker, whose reaction was to wave at them and stride on, unconcerned.

Their matching tracksuits can be found on the Marketplace for L$0.

The tracksuit comes in zipped and unzipped configurations, includes a couple of T shirts and running shoes.

Slipping out of a tracksuit to be naked in nature 

Ella

Congratulations to Trine, formerly editor of this blog, who gave birth to a son a couple of weeks ago, but we’re only hearing about it now. Mother and baby are doing well (no name for the baby was mentioned in Trine’s IM to me, hopefully when she establishes a routine we’ll hear more about it all) while partner Pete* has fainted on the delivery room floor.

Actually, I made that last bit up.

Congratulations to the new family from everyone at SLN.

Ella

*the role of Pete in the photos above is played by SLN photographer Harry, and in case anyone’s asking, we set this small set of photos up months ago, before Trine went off on maternity leave, precisely for the purpose of accompanying this news. Trine was hardly likely to want to log in to relive the moment, was she? 😉

Spanish avatar Tere reports on how growing up in a relaxed atmosphere to beach clothing eventually made her a naturist

by Tere Munoz

I grew up in a village in Spain which didn’t have an official naturist beach, although there was one about 7kms away, on a bus route. But when you’re 14 a bus ride is beyond the limits of the little money you earned from doing chores, so the local beach was our playground, all summer and even good days after school. Here in Spain it’s legal to go naked if you aren’t deliberately trying to cause offence to anyone,

Tere, centre, with her friends in various types of beach wear.

The local culture was that going without a bikini top was normal, even on the local beach. When you are eight years old it is no remarkable thing. When you are 14 maybe a little more remarkable but you’ve grown up seeing your mother, aunties, grandmother maybe, and all your friends, be without a top, so it didn’t really matter.

So the beach was a top free beach for all ages. While not naturist, you would encounter people fully nude while changing all the time so that didn’t seem particularly remarkable either. People would pull off shorts to change into bikini bottoms or swim trunks. I knew what a naked man looked like before I was even old enough to process the thoughts that it was a penis.

By the time I got to 14 I had no feelings of being self-conscious. Sometimes I wore a bikini top, sometimes not. My friends did the same.

I think that the casual approach to nudity in the wider Spanish culture does lead to an acceptance of the naked body early on. At least, it does for those of us lucky to grow up on the coast. Maybe those in the interior are less free with their bodies, I don’t know.

This girl can go confidently nude amongst her topless female or clothed male friends because the culture she grew up in has given her that body confidence

Because we get long summer holidays at school in Spain, ten weeks from the end of June to the middle of September, our summer holidays were beach focused. At eight years you use the local beach. At fourteen we’d cycle to the naturist one because it was the beach for the grown ups, even though we weren’t grown ups. Locally, the summer of your fourteenth year was when the transition from local beach, filled with kids, ended and there was a rite of passage to the naturist one. We’d cycle there 3-4 times a week. I and most of my friends would have sunbathed or swum naked that summer, even if we sometimes would go back to wearing bikini panties. The guys would cycle with us, sure. We’d probably seen these guys nude when they were 7 or 8 or 9, so it didn’t make much difference to us seeing them at 14 or 16. Or us to them. We’d seen it all before. It was unremarkable.

The baby will grow up with body confidence its naturist parents taught it.

At 14 you are beginning to see the other sex in a different perspective. A guy in my class liked me, I liked him. We started dating. But I’d seen him naked lots of times before we dated, and he’d seen me naked. There was no desperate curiosity there to explore the other naked person.

Teens growing up with naturist learn respect for one another, and acceptance of the other gender.

I think this is an important lesson from the naturist culture. We grew up with a ready acceptance that boys and girls were different, knew what they looked like and didn’t feel any desperate need to tear each other’s clothes off. Naturism taught us the physiology of the opposite sex more practically than books or rude magazines. Naturism also taught us respect.

In a naturist society, we do not teach children shame about their bodies. We do not censor. This ‘learned behaviour’ will, in the future, be regarded as bad parenting.

I now have a daughter, and in the holidays I will take her to the beach, as my mother did with me. Sometimes my mother comes too. Spain is now richer, in some ways, than it was when I was growing up. Back then, we only had our bikes. Now, many more people have cars, including me, so I can drive to the naturist beach and not go to the local beach at all. There, three generations of our family can spend a day nude and it seems like a natural thing. There is no sense of shame or embarrassment. Naturism has taught us to respect our own bodies, those of other people, and to love the bodies we exist within.

Tere

(Photo captions by Ella)

Global warming. We’ve all read how it is affecting the weather. Sea levels are rising, and shifting patterns have occasionally revealed some historical treasures washed ashore. For example, some way down the Irish Sea coast from where I am, a ‘ghost ship’ emerged on Merseyside a year ago, One of Henry V’s warships was also discovered in Hampshire. Your local press may have covered some of these ‘ghost ships’ emerging during record low tides, possibly partly caused by shifting weather patterns and tides as well. Sweden is one such country where equally record low tides have revealed old wrecks.

It looks as though low tides have dislodged a well preserved galleon at Su Casa Naturist, and the members there have been active in ensuring its survival, while imaginatively utilising it as a feature on the island. Old cannons have been turned into tables, the wheel utilised as a table, and some sort of tarpaulin draped over the ship’s broken spine to make it a bit cosier and weather proofed inside.

It all looks marvellous, I have to say, and demonstrates how a sim should be run. Su Casa doesn’t change much -that is a huge tick in my boxes as there’s a slow, organic change to the place rather than constant tinkering, yet the galleon certainly freshens up the sim. A marvellous, imaginative change to Su Casa since I last dropped by, and well worthy of a visit.

Su Casa merely reflects, to some degree, RL naturism in its ‘wreck’ vista. While the ship may be from a different era, one of Romania’s naturist beaches, Costinesti, is dominated by a shipwreck, the Evangelia, and there are some conspiracy theories as to why it ran aground in 1968, possibly deliberately wrecked by its owner, Aristotle Onassis, to collect the insurance money!

On a clear day, I can see Northern Ireland from the coast here, and it seems the Evangelia was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyards over in Belfast (the same yard that built the Titanic) in 1942 under the name ‘Empire Strength’.

It certainly is a feature of a great many Romanian naturist photographs.

Hopefully, Su Casa’s latest attraction will form a backdrop to as many SL naturist photographs as the ‘Evangelia’ does to so many of Romania’s naturist photographs.

Ella

Thanks to the Fab Free blog for posting a couple of ideal ‘naturist wardrobe’ items.

The first is a ‘kini with a ‘cover up’, essentially a strong dress. Now, these don’t look practical, but trust me, they work. Coming out of the sea, for example, a ‘dress’ such as this can break up any breeze you feel, particularly n the upper half of your body.

It’s free, if you have the ‘Fab Free’ group tag applied, at Marquesse Pret a Porter. Clearly, Fab Free intend this to be utilised with the bikini underneath, but we’re a naturist blog…

…and so the bikini had to go! 🙂

Such items can be readily purchased in many naturist and textile locations, judging from my experience.

Also from Fab Free, Luziefee have a floral top, intended to be a floral top, but which lends itself well to my wardrobe as being the sort of item I can wear (a) as a floral top when out of an evening and the temperatures are falling and (b) also utilised as something to throw on while prepping breakfast at dawn -a regular occurrence for us on holiday. While the rest of the family slumber, I’ll set the table and quite often enjoy a cup of tea on my own as the sun is coming up. A cardigan such as this helps keep that early morning chill at bay.

Ella

Fellas, you’re still at it!

No matter what I say, I go to naturist places in SL where the penis is less a sexual organ, more the third leg on a milking stool. Stop!

This is not your relative penis size. No way!

A glance at vintage and even contemporary naturist photos will show that, in the overwhelming majority of models portrayed, their penis is normal sized. Normal in that it’s not, relatively speaking, very big when flaccid. Quite small in most instances. At least, compared to their other two legs.

Four inches in India. Just over five inches in America. Five and a half inches in the UK. And these are the erect sizes.

Now, erect penises don’t really fall into the remit of SLN, except when we’re underscoring that they’re a myth on a naturist beach, but the way many, many male avatars present themselves in SL is laughable and unrealistic.

The guys in the gallery above will have or do have girlfriends and wives. Even at five inches, the chances are, assuming the guy knows what he’s doing, that these women will have had satisfaction during sex, probably had an orgasm and almost certainly been or will be pregnant at some point. Listen, guys, it works! It does what it needs to do! It doesn’t need to be exaggerated. India, incidentally, is one of the most populated nations on earth, so clearly four erect inches does what it needs to do.

Neither does it need to be exaggerated in Second Life.

I’ve said this before and I’m saying it again now. An oversized SL penis can spoil the overall effect of a great looking avatar. It also creates the impression of insecurity and boasting, attributes most of my SL female friends say is a ‘no no’. More than one -and these are avatars who will indulge in SLex- have said to me that an avatar with an unrealistically large penis is pretty much an excuse to log out, mute or reject, because these male avatars have no real concept of women. They feel they begin a conversation based on a sense of unreality, and how much further does this unreality extend in their Second Lives?

Oddly, older male avatars are exceptionally good at keeping it real. If a guy presents himself as an older avatar, overall, I’d say there’s 90%+ chance that his body shape -including penis size- will be more accurate than in younger avatars. Sure, we all like to pack a few less pounds in SL, but older SL male avatars do keep it real. Young whippersnappers, learn from this.

Fellas, keep it real! Whether you’re wanting to bed as many female avatars as possible, or just look ‘magnificent’ on a naturist sim, keep it real! Women avatars prefer it that way. And you’ll look better that way. Besides, if a female avatar is going to judge you on the size of your equipment, the chances are she’s as fake as you are.

Ella

Ever been to a naturist wedding?

I’ve been to a couple of SL naturist weddings/partnerships in my time, and in real life I’ve been to a wedding between two naturists, although the wedding itself, involving friends and family at the ceremony and reception resulted in it being a clothed affair.

I was at another naturist wedding in SL today, sort of, a partnership between two naturist avatars, neither of whom are actually naturist in RL.

They held a quiet ceremony, but the reception was at their home in SL where nudity, for the wedding party and guests alike, was the expected mode of (un)dress.

As happens in these SL affairs, there’s usually a slew of guests and friends from different time-zones, so the wedding disco is rolling on as I publish this post. The happy couple took some photos, though, which they were keen to share with the SLN readership, if only to show that what is possible in RL is also possible in SL.

Ella

My last posting on Agde memories reached the point where I’d made a public nude debut as far as the pool and back. I’m still some distance from being a confident naturist, The days were long, and Sylvia and I would be tired on our return to the apartment we were sharing. The following gallery paints a rather idyllic picture of apartment life and a round of lazy coffees and pillow fights. In reality it was decrepit, two teenaged girls finding out about a rather more low-rent existence than we were used to.

Hot water…sometimes. No air-con. A couple of camp beds and our ‘wardrobes’ were the suitcases we’d arrived with. But it was OK in the sense that we didn’t have to stay there for much of the day, it was really only for sleeping, or washing clothes -initially- that we returned to it.

Our day finished when we’d done the dishes and prepared for the next day, and we quickly learned that the washing machine went on to do tea towels, dish clothes etc, so by the second week, when the shutters went down, we’d actually strip naked in the cafe’s kitchen, throw our clothes in there, and do the last of the washing up while naked. We were still bringing a change of clothes for the walk back to the apartment at this point.Sylvia then decided that it was a great idea to wash our clothes, hang them up to dry in the tiny back yard area, and walk home nude. Then, the following morning, we could simply roll out of bed, have a shower, dry in the morning sun and walk nude back to work.

The kitchen after closing time? Yes, it was something very much like this.

Which is precisely what she did for the next week or so, while I still wandered back and forward in a T shirt and shorts. I could serve naked people all day, but still didn’t have an enormous amount of self-confidence about my own nudity.

Sylvia always seemed cooler and fresher for her nude walk to and from the cafe each day, while the sweat was trickling between my shoulder blades. It might have continued like this until a leaky bottle of olive oil dribbled into my bag one night, and my fresh clothes, for walking home in, were left swathed in oil. I could walk home wearing them, put on my still wet clothes out of the washing machine, or follow Sylvia’s lead. I followed Sylvia’s lead.

Walking home nude at midnight

You have to remember that, after dark, naturists often dress for dinner, and so naked bodies on the streets are rather rarer than they are by day. But there was something about the cover of darkness that gave me a little more confidence.

Once again, the photos above show a bustling Cap D’Agde, while in reality our near midnight walk was along much quieter, almost deserted streets. Almost anyone we encountered would be clothed, but because anyone we encountered was almost certainly naturist, no one blinked an eye. Besides, we found a route away from the main thoroughfares which meant we could get back to the apartment most nights without encountering a single person. We weren’t doing it to be coy. It was simply that taking the back streets was the most direct route to our apartment.

The cafe opened at 1000am, and we had to be there at 900am to set the tables and chairs out again and set the cutlery. The sun would be long up, and people moving around, naked, by the time we left for work, heading for cafes and breakfast, already making moves in the direction of the beach and so on. Agde was waking up to another naked day in paradise, and now I was part of it!

I surprised myself at how quickly, during that second week, that nudity became normal, comfortable and natural, and by now I was looking forward to our next day off. Of course, we still had to dress while serving coffees, croissants and baguettes. Right across the street from our cafe was a shop that sold sundresses, pares and such like. Having been paid for our first week I splashed out on a couple of sun dresses that were more comfortable than shorts. For one thing, they allowed me to go without underwear, and a cool breeze made working more comfortable with…certain parts free to that breeze!

By week two I’d enough confidence that I’d have happily served nude, inside the cafe or out on the terrace, but the proprietor insisted on clothes being worn, mainly for hygiene purposes, so a sundress, without underwear underneath, was the second best option.

By the time our second day off rolled around, I felt like a happy, confident, contented naturist, such was my rapid acceptance of the lifestyle. All thoughts of shame or embarrassment had evaporated.

Ella