Frank, a reader in the US, provides a short, yet very valuable, recollection of his first experiences of naturism and the values it instills in people from a. very young age. He writes…

Hi Ella. I saw this photograph [attached by me, Frank an attachment in his communication : Ella] online and it reminded me of my own childhood, growing up as a naturist child to parents who belonged to a landed club here in the US in the 60s. I can’t actually remember my first time as nudism was always there in my family. I’d have been taken maybe weeks after I was born and been wandering around there before I can consciously recall. I took some of my first steps at the club and learned to swim at the club. I can recall running around playing with other kids, male and female, all around the same age, without ever thinking ‘hey, she’s different from me’. We were just kids loving life in the sun most weekends and vacations.

I can’t remember now, but I guess I’d eventually have begun to notice differences in boys and girls as we all hit puberty but it still didn’t seem to matter even though we were all going through that highly-charged period of our development. I also recall developing a crush on a girl a couple of years older than me when I was about 14-15. It had nothing to do with her being a beautiful (and naked) young woman and more to do with her just having such a sense of fun, of being the life and soul of the teenager events the club held at weekends. We’d dance to Beatle records and just have the most fantastic time with much more in the way of the freedoms than non-nudist children. Being outdoors at weekends, naked in nature, also gave us a love of nature. The girl I had the crush on, being a couple of years older, seemed so wise and educated. I could sit there for hours, open-mouthed, while she talked about the bugs and birds that we’d find around the club.

By the time I started dating girls and had a car, the nudist lifestyle had given me a great sense of respect for women. I knew what they looked like under their clothes. I had no curiosity. One girlfriend remarked how we’d gone to a drive-in and she’d seen the movie, rather than fighting off someone desperate and determined to get his hand into her underwear. She liked it. She felt that my respect was kinda chivalrous and gentlemanly. It was enough to sit with my arm around her shoulder, and just kiss her when I left her home. Nudism had created a sense of chivalry and gentlemanly behaviour towards women.

So when I look at this photo (see above) it transports me back in time to my early childhood and parents who gave me, through nudism, a deep respect for women I carry with me to this day.

Frank

Just to clarify. Frank and his Mum aren’t the people in the photograph. My titling of the blog entry is a little misleading in that, at first glance, it suggests they are the folk in the photo. As Franks says in his text, it just evokes a memory of that time for him : Ella