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

One thing I’ve learned over the years with regards naturism or, indeed, any form of collective public nudity is how much peer pressure plays in getting someone to disrobe. From the Roskilde fun run, to coy, collective topless ‘hand bra’ shots on holiday, to the WNBRs, to Tunick shoots or even first time on a naturist beach, peer pressure often plays a role.

Last week I wrote about my first summer job in a naturist cafe in Cap D’Agde (consider this post to be ‘Agde Memories No.1), and how our day off at the end (strictly speaking, a Monday, the beginning of the week) allowed my cousin Sylvia and I to immerse ourselves in naturism.

Sylvia had previous experience of the lifestyle, I had none, so on our first day off we headed to the pool at the Heliopolis complex. It’s the large semi circular building(s) you see in many Agde photos.

The following photo isn’t me (we’re essentially in the pre-digital, pre-mobile phone days, so photography didn’t feature the entire holiday, and rather sadly, no photographic evidence of us exists on that holiday) but it’s the very pool where I would make my nude debut.

Back then, Agde hadn’t lost its innocence, it was a strictly naturist location, and the following photos capture images that would be in line with my memories of the place. Innocent naturism. No silicone, no genital piercings, no tattoos, no genital shaving. Possibly my outlook on naturism remains coloured by that first experience of the lifestyle.

Which brings us back to peer pressure.

There was a fair bit of communal nudity within the confines of our tatty apartment. No air con, hot nights, having worked ourselves into a lather during the clean up and wash down at closing time meant we’d come back, strip off and flop onto our respective camp beds. I’d always been an enthusiastic swimmer, so a bit of communal nudity in a changing room never bothered me, and didn’t bother me when it was Sylvia and myself in our apartment. The idea of public nudity was something else again, though.

Our first day off saw us striding towards the pool area, Sylvia nude, me clad in the bikini I’d specially bought for this working holiday.

Sylvia swam. Sylvia sunbathed. I sat on the sun lounger. And then I sunbathed in my bikini. Eventually I got as daring as I was going to dare to be, and undid the clasp of my bikini to let my back feel the full benefit of the sun.

And all the while Sylvia was gently reminding me that it was a naturist place. Some gentle pressure was being applied. The day was getting hotter, I was beginning to break out in a sweat and that pool did look inviting! And so…with a great big lump in my throat, I managed to slide off the bikini briefs while remaining seated on the pool lounger.

It’s fine, I would tell myself. It’s only my bottom now on display in public. No biggie! Stay calm Ella and enjoy your book!

I was positioning myself such that even though men and women were walking up and down next to my sun lounger, nothing important was on display. And I was bare in public, I’d remind myself. I was exceptionally brave, I told myself. But that sun was damned hot and I needed to cool down quickly. Eventually it got too much.

A dash to the pool side, everyone, the whole world, watching me as I attempted to reach the water with as much of me hidden as I could possibly achieve, like these ladies below. Everyone was staring!!!!!!!

Actually, no one gave two hoots for me, but that wasn’t how I saw it at the time. The water was terrific, though and I stayed in for ages, quite contentedly swimming around and innocently oblivious to the fact that anyone wearing a pair of swim goggles could see all of me anyway.

The run back to the lounger was equally half-covered, red-faced with embarrassment,  and sure the eyes of the world (in reality, no one) was looking at me. Again, refer to the gallery above…

But I was now a naturist! Not a very confident one, admittedly, but small steps and all that…

To a small degree, I felt cajoled into it, gentle peer pressure from Sylvia. And I guess that’s the same for many people in Tunick shoots, WNBRs or even mad (perhaps a little drunken) midnight skinny dips on holiday. ‘Hey, let’s all get naked and hit the…. (Tunick shoot/WNBR/sea at midnight/delete as necessary)’. Great idea, says someone else, and the next thing you know you’re willingly or reluctantly signed up for some form of public nudity. And you don’t want to be the shrinking violet, the one who baulks at the idea and seems afraid. You go along with it. Sometimes that’s the way into public nudity in a naturist sense. There’s strength in numbers.

I’ll subsequently pick this up in another of my postings that recall Cap D’Agde, and my discovery of naturism, next week.

Ella