A friend in London emailed me this week to tell me about her second ‘rhassoul’ spa treatment. She’d previously had a rhassoul  (or rasul or sometimes even ghassoul) experience in London, but this time it was at a Wellness centre in Germany.

Let me explain what the Rasul/Rhassoul is first.

It’s a soap made from clay, so that if you lather it up you can effectively create a mud covering to your skin. Moroccan -Rhassoul comes from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco- people have used rhassoul for centuries as soap and shampoo. The ritual of using Rasul appears to be akin to the Hamman -although please don’t write and tell me if I’ve got that wrong! 🙂  although the ‘mud’ element does make it seem like another ‘wellbeing’ experience with which some of you may be familiar.

The healing properties of mud have been known for a very long time.

Which is why many people do it. But if you haven’t got mud baths in proximity to where you live, then the rhassoul ritual might be an alternative. I’d be pleased to learn of people’s experiences of mud baths.

For once, I was rather stuck for ‘mud baths’ of any description in SL. No thermal baths, no rasul type mud.

I had to improvise with a ‘muddy body’ applier from the Marketplace, priced at L$99

Ella

Wherever you are in the world, the chances are that you will be able to identify certain uniquely British things.

Just as the New York yellow cab is recognisable to people around the globe, so too is a British red telephone box.

But just as some of us who grew up watching American TV series on television were immediately disappointed when landing in New York to learn that all yellow cabs didn’t look like this…

or this…

…many people from around the globe will land in London and be equally peeved, particularly sci-fi fans of ‘Dr Who’, that police call boxes are almost extinct…

…and that the iconic red telephone box, symbolic of Britain almost as much as John, Paul, George and Ringo, are only marginally less extinct.

I grew up in London, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen a row of four, like this, for 25 years as mobile telephony (cellphone or handy, if you’re in the US or Germany). No one really needs to make many telephone calls from public call boxes anymore as everyone has a phone in their pocket or handbag.

I teleported into a London sim and two steps away from the TP point there was…

Yep. It doesn’t matter where you’re from in the world, London, England or Britain are red telephone boxes. Well…maybe there’s this too…

The photoshoot to ‘Abbey Road’, if you were to widen out that photo, or view it from a different angle at the time it was taken, or even now, you’d have seen the Belisha beacons that illuminated every British zebra crossing.

I mention this because SLN headquarters has, in the past, had Belisha beacons on site as a little nod towards it being ‘a little bit of Britain’. As of today, it appears to have both Belisha beacons and a red telephone box to symbolise its landlord’s Brit origins.

The demise of the telephone box also diminishes naturist ‘larking about’ opportunities.

Ella

There’s not much to report this weekend, of RL naturist related activity, and I’ve not really been bothered logging into SL or prepping up some posts because illness continues 😦 By the time I’ve managed work and the family, I’m exhausted, wrapped up in dressing gown, dosing myself with lemon and honey drinks and generally feeling under the weather. Hopefully back to normal next weekend. In the meantime, here’s a small gallery of SL naturist photos. Ella

The UK and Ireland* are currently in the middle of an epidemic of what has been dubbed ‘Australian flu‘, with many people off work, doctors’ surgeries bursting at the seams, hospital admissions up and every workplace you visit or hear of ravaged by absent staff who have succumbed to it.

Worst hit are Belfast (in Northern Ireland, just across the Irish Sea from here) and Plymouth (in Devon, the red area at the bottom left of England). A couple of areas of Scotland are relatively unaffected, probably more to do with being relatively unpopulated more than some sort of special cock-a-leekie soup being offered to fend it off. *As for the map…Ireland hasn’t fared any better. If anything, it’s worse with a variant which has been dubbed Japanese flu, apparently more contagious than the ‘Australian’ version.

I’m guessing that Belfast, and the rest of Northern Ireland (?) are being recorded as one of the ‘hot spots’ in the UK because they’re being bombarded from two directions by two different strains of flu.

And, well, I’m also succumbing to it. 😦 with several of the symptoms now apparent. With a husband overseas for a month, it’s exceptionally difficult to manage three children on my own so my mother-in-law, happily flu-free thanks to being of an age where she gets an annual flu-injection, is about to move into the guest room until I begin to feel ‘better’. I have to say that I’m not confined to bed, or incapable of functioning, but I am incapable of functioning at full speed, with every limb aching right now. With three active children to manage Gran’s presence is welcomed.

As a result, I expect there may not be too many posts as I attempt to fight it off or at least lessen the symptoms. If all goes quiet(ish) on the blog for a few days, well, it’s the double-whammy of single parenting and flu.

Ella

This isn’t quite naturism, but perhaps can be regarded as having some sense of kinship with naturism in that society expects and often demands a dress code. Anything that exists beyond that is ‘weird’.

After 9/11 several New Yorkers, in an attempt to put a smile back on the face of the Big Apple, travelled on the subway without pants (i.e American trousers…underwear was in place). And thus was an institution born, to the point where 60 cities around the globe participate in ‘No Pants Day’, riding their subway systems without trousers/pants.

It took place last Sunday, and thousands participated in London alone. Thousands upon thousands more in places like New York, Berlin, Paris and so on.

Of course it’s daft. Of course it’s silly and frivolous. Of course -like naturism- it’s challenging established dress codes. And like naturism, it’s fun. Of course, there’s po-faced commentators like those writing in The Independent who writes

It seems that thousands of people in 60 cities around the world had literally nothing better to do with their lives on Sunday than to sit around on public transport in their undies

I’ve naturally assumed that there must be some sort of charitable objective – perhaps to raise funds for good causes or awareness of people who simply don’t have access to the kind of “pants” they’d really like.

Yet as it turns out, it really is all just in the name of “silliness”; an opportunity for show-offs to remind others how hilariously whacky they are.

What a bloody awful world it would be without silliness and frivolity. What a bloody awful world it would be with the same dreary dress code. What a bloody awful world it would be surrounded only by grey men in grey suits, a world without kilts, African head-wraps, mini skirts, maxi skirts, transvestites, soldiers in uniform and, yes, naturists.

Here’s to all that participated! You make the world a brighter place!

Ella

Toni Erdmann is a German movie, a comedy, focusing on the relationship between a father with an appetite for pranks and his workaholic daughter, now emotionally remote from her father.

I’d never heard of it before yesterday, probably because I’m not such an enthusiast of movies.

However…

While a more traditional film about an uptight daughter and her freewheeling father might instead culminate with an argument and a maudlin display of reconciliation, Toni Erdmann’s climax, which involves some truly uncomfortable displays of nudity, is far hairier. Exhausted by the demands of her job and her father’s pranks, Ines reaches an emotional breaking point while hosting an extravagantly catered birthday brunch for herself. After struggling to get changed into a cocktail dress while the doorbell rings for what seems like hours, Ines breaks: Suddenly, she decides to ditch clothes altogether and answers the door naked.

The first guest is her friend Steph, who offers to help her get dressed. Ines refuses, and when the next guest arrives she spontaneously removes her underpants and answers the door naked, telling her guests that her birthday brunch is a “naked party”. Each of them reacts differently, with some leaving in disgust while others self-consciously strip off. …The party becomes increasingly awkward.

Quotes above via Vulture and wikipedia.

Vulture continues…(it’s a) rare scene where onscreen nudity (both male and female) isn’t used to titillate, but is instead used to underscore the characters’ vulnerability and confusion.

I don’t know much about movie making, and don’t analyse what it is film makers claim they’re trying to do, but I do recognise that going naked, for those unfamiliar with it in social situations, such as a naturist debut, does certainly underscore the ‘newbie’s’ sense of vulnerability. I’m not sure how much relevance the ‘naked party scene’ in Toni Erdmann might have for naturists, but it’s certainly something I would be keen to check out in order to assess how much it might reflect the first-time naturist experience.

It’s out on DVD, so I’ll get back to you on this…

Ella

Skateboarding doesn’t have as much of a culture or history in the UK as in the US, although we seem to have numerous skateboard parks.

It was never something that came across my radar even as a teenager, and at the time I was those of a similar age to me who indulged in it seemed to be weird guys who put baseball caps on backwards and said ‘dude’ a lot. I’m not knocking skateboarders -everyone has their own way of enjoying themselves, so knock yourselves out- but at the time it seemed like adherents of the sport were wannabe Americans stealing wholesale from US skateboarding culture rather than developing their own variation on it. I’ve no idea if this is still the case, and I’m way beyond an age where skateboarding is part of my leisure culture. I assume that the UK may now have a slightly different skateboarding culture that’s a bit more unique.

Anyway, naked skateboarding appears to be an adjunct of the WNBR rides. The pictures, above, got me wondering if naked skateboarding is a possibility in SL too.

Well, in theory, it is but surprise, surprise, it’s one of the things I’ve discovered there isn’t a huge opportunity to do in SL, clothed or naked, at a dedicated skateboard park. However, that’s not to say my model wasn’t able to find a host of ‘urban’ sims where it was easily done.

Ella

There are thousands of SL blogs, avatars who turn their hand to blogging and in the main blog about SL clothing, hair, poses and so forth. What’s new, where and so on. Great! I use many of them daily and I’m not knocking anyone’s work one bit.

What I do take objection to is that a Second Life, that alternative life, is often ruled by first life attitudes. Particularly regarding nipples. Or, at least, just like first life, female nipples.

It seems to me that people just can’t shake off their phobias, at least in this regard. I just don’t get it. A female nipple is more or less exactly the same to look at as a male one.

The absolute ludicrous nature of social media’s objections is laid bare in the graphic above. Cut, resize and paste male nipples over female ones and…problem solved?

And the above photo shows the last, desperate idiotic stand by the likes of Zuckerberg and his flunkies at Facebook for what it is. The nipples are the same, and it’s only the volume of breast tissue (most of the time) that differs. So if that’s the major difference between men and women’s breasts, why focus on the nipple? There’s no logic to it at all. Just as there isn’t in SL fashion blogging.

I seems that it’s fine to blog ‘sexy’, however that’s defined, with hi-cut jean shorts showing half a backside, or bras in which ‘the cups runneth over’. It’s OK to blog ‘slut’ wear described as such, it’s OK to even sexualise an SL teen avatar away beyond whatever age that avatar’s trying to present, but nipples? Even clothes that show nipples evident through clothing (as in something called ‘pokies’) seem to be deemed OK.

Each and every one of these bloggers has it within their gift to simply stop self-censoring. The readership will not drop down in a dead faint if they show a female nipple while blogging. Particularly the nipple of what is essentially a cartoon character. The idea of SL is to be able to have experiences that are beyond some people’s RL expectations, be it parachuting or scuba diving. I could do both in RL, certainly, if it wasn’t for the idea of throwing myself out of an aeroplane or never managing to get the breathing right on an oxygen tank. But I can alter my RL mind set a little to be able to do both in SL. Others may choose to indulge in fantasy, be it as some intergalactic trooper or a sexually liberated experimenter. Real life values or sphere of experience need not apply.

The same goes for nipples. What is ‘G’ rated or ‘X’ rated in RL does not need to apply to SL blogging. Please, ladies (and it’s overwhelmingly ladies who blog), drop the black stars or similar censorship.

Ella

It’s one of those rare times in RL, again, where -every couple of years or so- Mr. Keng’s work takes him away from me for a month or longer! Only a month this time, but looked at from this side, it seems a blooming long time until he returns. 😦

Saying ‘goodbye’ to him tomorrow afternoon for a long, long month, and anticipating his return 😦

Ella

I came across this article the other day in which someone makes the case for being naked in space travel, although the respondents kinda spoil the argument with practicalities, such as ‘pockets’.

There’s always one sneering realist, isn’t there?

Amaris

Ella adds: I’ve some new contributors lined up, of whom Amaris is one. I had hoped to properly introduce them first before publishing their first contributions, but I was so amused by the article and comments Amaris provided that I’ve jumped the gun with the article and have gone ahead and published. Proper introductions to follow over the weekend for her and two others…