As naturism is such a core part of our lives, indoors and out at home and publicly on holiday, I don’t generally think about it in terms of ‘home’ at all. It’s just something that I/we do.

But I was speaking to an avatar recently who said that part of the attraction SL naturism is that it allows him to practice naturism by default. Either that or what he called ‘home naturism’ or ‘closet naturism’, sometimes together.

Living in an apartment block, hundreds of miles from the sea and lacking the self – confidence to go nude in public, the gentleman in question who lives alone confess his naturist activities to coming home from work, drawing the curtains, stripping off (if the weather’s warm enough) and logging into SL. He was well-versed on SLN too!

I did some research and found that there appears to be many ‘home naturists’ out there for, whatever reason, can’t experience the real thing. That’s disappointing. As a community we need to do some outreach to these people and increase naturist visibility around the globe.

I joined Jack at his apartment at the Blue Lagoon Naturist Estate, and asked him about his real life naturist situation while he fixed us a pot of tea.

‘I think there’s a lot of people like me’, he told me, ‘who can’t for various reasons enjoy naturism for real. So I feel like I have a naturist spirit without having been able to experience it for myself’.

I assured him that this doesn’t diminish the bit of naturism he does experience, the simple pleasure of moving around nude, even within his own home. It remains a legitimate naturist experience, even if it’s not done socially or communally. Jack told me he’d met some really nice fellow travellers within the context of SL naturism, some with the same circumstances as myself.

I know when speaking to people in real life, and inworld, another familiar tale is that of the reluctant partner. Again, that’s something the naturist community needs to examine. In these cases the male partner (usually the male partner) is keen to try it but his wife/girlfriend is against the idea for reasons of her own body insecurities. I don’t wish to make that sentence sound like I’m down on the females, far from it. I recognise their concerns. What I would be down on is the media who constantly perpetuate the beauty myth and reinforce women’s body anxieties.

Jack doesn’t have a partner in RL, but I know of another SL avatar who is married and who faced the same problems in his RL domestic situation. He was keen, his wife set against the idea. She was too old. Her boobs were too saggy. She had a caesarean scar. Holidays involved a full one-piece swimming costume. He invited her to join him in SL and she eventually became an SL naturist. While full nudity in RL remains off the agenda (for now?) she has become well-versed, via SL, in the real life version of naturism and etiquette and they went on a clothing optional holiday three or four years ago. He was able to go nude, and thus experience naturism first hand, while his wife would cover up with a sarong. And on the privacy of their apartment balcony, she now sunbathes nude or topless. So SL naturism could possibly be playing a role in introducing virtual or home naturists to the real thing in due course. Who knows?

Nina : now more body confident after speaking with SL naturists and then carrying what she’d learned into real life.

When we get home, and the weather is clement enough, we’ll strip at home as unconsciously as some textile readers might change from workwear or a business suit the instant they’re home. At this time of year, a comfy pair of track bottoms and a jogging top might be the order of the day. In summer, we’re naked at home, potentially on a 24/7 basis.

Anything that can be done at home clothed can be done naked. So if your domestic situation is such that real life naturism is currently off the agenda, remember that home naturism, or closet naturism, is an equally valid naturist experience.

Ella

In many countries, my own included, graduating from university means popping on a gown and mortar board to receive your graduation diploma.

Scenes sich as those above will be familiar to many of you, and I’m guessing that a fair proportion of the SLN readership have thrown their graduation mortar boards in the air themselves.

They do it slightly differently in Scandinavia.

Above are Danish students wearing their graduation caps. Just across the water, in Sweden, the headgear is the same, just in a different colour, the caps seeming to replicate the colours of the relative country’s flags.

Classmates will write their names in your grad cap, an item that has its own customs and traditions.

The student cap is a very much a tradition in Denmark, and there is a long list of special traditions attached to the cap:

– It is bad luck to wear the cap before you have passed your final exam

– You write your last grade inside the cap

– Classmates and friends write messages in the cap

– Tooth marks on the shade of the cap mean good luck

– The students with the biggest and smallest cap in a class have to buy a round of beer for their classmates

– You get a notch in the shade if you throw up because you have drunk too much

– If  you jump in the harbour wearing only the cap you get a drawing of a wave in your cap

– Drinking a case of beer in less than 24 hours allows you to wear a beer capsule as a tassel for the cap.

Suitably emboldened, Honey takes to ‘the harbour’ wearing just her ‘studenterhue’, entitling her to have a wave badge added to her cap

I rather like the idea of this graduation tradition rather than my own wearing of a gown, on one of the hottest days of summer, all those years ago!

Ella

Cosplay is ‘costume play’, where people dress up in various ways. Sometimes it’s used to describe, or be part of, various scenarios of a sexual nature, sometimes it’s just fantasy as associated with comic book conventions and so on. ‘Cosplay’ is, I guess, whatever you want to make it.

Cosplay could be anything from being a bunny girl, a belly dancer, superhero characters, or various ‘erotic’ variations on that theme.

I’ve said it before, but naturists are particularly keen to throw on a costume at any opportunity. Go figure! But if you have a look at naturist photos, you’ll find quite a bit of ‘dressing up’ going on, with everything from ‘Red Indian’ headdresses to togas to revealing belly dancer outfits being donned for club parties. (Note: most of the photos below cannot be remotely described as naturist in any sense – coming more from an ‘erotica’ line of photography, but I’ve included them to illustrate the point).

While thinking about this, I thought that many of us, at least in western culture, are conditioned from birth to embrace ‘cosplay’ in many forms. Think of us in kindergarten in the ‘dressing up’ corner, or Christmas/birthday presents where at 5-6 years of age we can embrace our inner cowboy, policeman, princess, nurse, etc. So by the time we become sexually aware, there’s something deep in our psyche where we merely continue this conditioning. We -all of us- love to do a bit of dressing up, both in our real and Second Lives. While some of it will be of a ‘fancy dress’ aspect (naturists in togas or ‘Red Indian’ loincloths where relaxed clothing codes meet our expectations as naturists) some of it is of a sexual/erotic nature. It exists in the bedroom, again from dressing up as nurses where cosplay meets role-play.  Many people find it enhances their sex lives. Which is fine. Whatever works for you. But that aspect of cosplay is beyond this blog’s brief.Historically, naturists also favoured a ‘nude pageant’ beauty contest, but these are exceptionally rare now, due to feminist modes of thought about women not being judged on ‘beauty’, but rather misses the point that, in naturism, there was always an equivalent male version. Certainly, you can make a case for guys not being judged on ‘beauty’ either. Equally, you could be moved to suggest that killjoys merely diminish the sense of daft fun in the world.

The photos above show a conflation of both cosplay and beauty pageant in naturism.

Denied beauty pageants on grounds of sexism or cultural appropriation, either by killjoys or self-policing by naturist clubs, naturists have shifted their emphasis to a different mode of ‘dressing up’, in a sense, with body painting. You can now see this in a naturist environment quite a lot, as well as events such as the World Naked Bike Ride, charitable events such as the Streak for Tigers, and science-fiction conventions.
It would also appear that the body painting aspect of it is being embraced in the likes of Brazil’s Mardi Gras, with actual costume becoming less and less and body paint replacing it.

Within SL there’s also an enormous amount of ‘cosplay’ goes on, and I’m going to explore that aspect of SL within a future post.

Ella