Absolut, a Swedish vodka manufacturer, currently has the TV advertisement (above) being shown on British television and, I’d imagine, across the rest of Europe too!

Ella

I found a tranche of photos online purporting to be examples of East German naturism (i.e. the DDR).

I can’t vouchsafe for their authenticity, although one or two definitely are -the book and magazine covers in the first two photos.

Another has a ‘DDR’ plate on a car. The car’s from East Germany, then, but it doesn’t necessarily place the model in the country, or underline her place of birth.

When Germany was divided in two after the war and the east fell under communist rule, it was run with an iron fist in many respects, its citizens under surveillance. The Stasi, the East German secret police, spied on its citizens, and one had to be very, very careful who one spoke to about what. So paranoid was the state that the security services analysed garbage. Yes…having your bin (i.e.. garbage can) searched for evidence of ‘western food packaging’ was part of their remit.

The Stasi employed a quarter of a million people, and had a further 175000 informants.

Little wonder, then, that naturism was so popular. It was a freedom that could not be controlled, and it’s hard to hide a tape recorder in your birthday suit! So at the naturist beach, people felt free. Free of state involvement, free to speak.

An excellent history of East German naturism can be found via this link.

I also found a short interview via ‘Vice’ magazine. Some of this is pure, typical ignorance on the part of the interviewer, immediately linking nudity with sex. I’d have redacted that part of the interview, but felt the line of questioning was dumb enough to be worthy of inclusion to demonstrate the levels of ignorance we naturists still encounter, so I’ve left it in. Apologies for the bit about people ‘jerking off’ which isn’t really part of a naturist lifestyle, most of the time. But it’s an activity that occasionally does rear it’s ugly…um…head at the periphery of naturism – watch out for a subsequent blog posting on that.

VICE: At what age did you get naked in public for the first time?

Florence: One or two I think. We were on holidays at Usedom on the Eastern Coast.

Could you get naked everywhere in the GDR or just at certain places?  Well, if you’d walk down the street naked people would have thought you’re completely nuts.

But it was socially accepted? More than accepted.

We in the Western part call this behavior exhibitionism and you’d get fined. Because you’re Puritans with little dicks.

Right. So dicks and c**ts meet at the same place? And there was nothing sexual involved? I mean come on… It’s about as sexual as going to the sauna. You don’t go to the sauna and think, Wow, that’s the dick of this old dude my aunt’s been dating ten for years. You’re just like, Ugh, old wrinkly dick, and don’t think about it anymore.

Well, but the old guy probably thinks something else. Ever seen someone jerking off there? Maybe some people did, but if anyone noticed they would have chased you away. It would have been as weird as jerking off in your classroom.

Why is it still so popular in East Germany? Because East Germans are more relaxed, I presume the East Germans have also got the wilder sex life. There are statistics about that and I heard stories that in East Germany there was no good TV program, which resulted in two things drastically going up: a) sex and b) alcoholism, so we could add c) nudism but I have no proof for that thesis.

So you were locked in behind the Iron Curtain because you were sex crazy animals?The other way around: You were excluded because you were uptight capitalists.

Ever had sex with a West German? Yes. And with lots of East Germans as well.

Who’s better? East Germans care less about protection, while, like, every West German gets a condom on as soon as you’re in the midst of the kissing part. East Germans forget about that more often if you don’t remind them. Who’s actually better? Hmm. East Germans. But West Germans tend to pay for the cab.

What was the craziest thing you did in your East German sex life? No one ever penetrated me with a Stalin statue on a beach, if you mean something like that.

Forget about that. Last question. Quickie on the staff toilet? Yeah right. That’s about as funny as these freakin’ bananas you bought us on Monday. Like, woohoo—Eastern Kids, here’s some cool fruit for you, they’re called Bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. That joke is so old it’s not even moldy anymore.

You know what? That reaction is exactly why it is so f**king funny, but you’ll never going to get that, will you? Nothing beats the banana joke!

As recently as last August a German politician was promoting the idea of expanded naturism in (the now reunited) Germany, speaking at length about it in the German edition of Playboy in August 2017.

You can read some of what the politician said via this link too. 

It’s a story we covered back in August 2017, so check our archives for more.

There are numerous German speaking sims in SL, and it’s no surprise to find a search for ‘FKK’ (an acronym for freikoerperkultur -free body culture, I,e, naturism) produces some results.

Model Malgorzata certainly found time to pose at ‘FKK’ locations such as Oblivion Bay and Bumrose

Ella

The news in the UK today includes a story wherein Marina Fogle, wife of British TV presenter Ben Fogle, and she’s been on daytime television talking about their lives together, and how they approach parenting, and interview reported in the Daily Mail.

Most of it is largely irrelevant to this blog, apart from one bit.

I’ve often preached the ‘healthier body image’ aspect of family nudity (as separate from our naturism) on these pages, and it’s good to see the ho-hum matter of fact aspect of it being discussed elsewhere. If we teach our children not to have shame, or curiosity regarding the human body, they’ll grow up as more rounded people.

We practice that nudity is quite normal, matter of fact and an everyday occurrence in our home, and we’d advocate that others -everyone, in fact- do the same.

Ella

A couple of weeks ago I was reading about a Costa Rican ‘cult’ called Melanation.

Led by the charismatic Eligo Bishop, of course nudity features a bit.

The Melanation religion preaches that humans are “God” and nudity is a way of being closer to nature. The latter bit I’d agree with, the first bit, well, Christians might argue that god is within us.

Of course, when you read that men are polygamous in nature and as such can marry multiple wives but that women only need one man alarm bells begin to ring. It begins to sound like the same old patriarchy in action and the leader wanting to have his cake and eat it.

Some of the concept, living naked in the jungle and eating naturally grown foods, sounds idyllic, up to a point. But when other elements are introduced…no. Just another false ‘god’ with feet of clay.

Ella

I saw this arty photograph online and thought it was fantastic, pink flesh and pink flamingos juxtaposed to a blue dress and sky.

It also made me think of where I take my naturist holidays in Spain,  because flamingos are in abundance there, using salt water lagoons near the resort of flying overhead on their way to Cabo de Gata National Park.

I’m not really a wildlife enthusiast, but it’s still beautiful to see a flock of these birds in the wild, or flying over, and I’ll certainly drag myself away from the beach for a bit every trip to go and watch them.

For me, being in nature is part and parcel of my broader naturism. And I’m not alone in that line of thinking. Many naturists will tell me that they’re not wildlife enthusiasts, or environmental warriors, and yet they will often stop what they’re doing to observe wildlife, or reflexively ensure they aren’t leaving plastic bottles on the beach and causing litter or a danger to wildlife. It’s almost subconscious at times. Naturists simply embrace a bit of care for the planet they inhabit.

Not flamingos, but French avatar Sandrine enjoys the company of some bird life.

Ella

BBC web pages carry a short video (3 mins) which explains the history of the nipple (in art and society).

I’m not sure if this will be available widely around the globe, or if viewing is confined to those of us within the UK.

I’ve covered many of the questions asked in the video within this blog, but I have to say that it’s interesting to see it compiled and compressed for a non-naturist audience.

Ella

Chinese New Year began yesterday, February 16th, and I’d like to wish all of our Chinese readers a happy new year…

新年快乐

Thanks to long standing SL friend Xiu for reminding me about it, and also posing in an Chinese kind of setting in an appropriate  kind of SLN setting 🙂

Ella

Now that I’ve got SL time to play with again, I’ve found over the past couple of weeks that I’ve got nothing SL (or indeed RL) naturist related to write about!

We’re deep in the dead and cold of a northern hemisphere winter, and there’s nothing really RL naturist going on right now. If I turn my attention to the Southern Hemisphere, well only the Rio Carnival (or Mardi Gras) has been offering any sense of public nudity. And we’ve already covered that extensively in previous years.

I have a sense that, as time goes on, there is less of a need for minuscule, ‘revealing’ costumes as there is for merely applying some body paint, glitter and ‘jazzle’ to a body-canvas and that is pretty much acceptable. Obviously, as someone who celebrates public nudity in all its forms, and sees it as the opportunity to normalise the human body in society, I welcome this.

I suppose it was almost 80 years ago that the ‘topless’ ban for male swimsuits was disposed of, and it’s 50 since the topless swimsuit for women first emerged. Odd that in the past 50 years, then, there has been no further progression towards accepting bodies as bodies, and making nudity on beaches acceptable everywhere.

Certainly, there has been a small expansion of nudist facilities in that time, although nothing like I’d have hoped for, and naturism existed before and after males were going topless on beaches, but I’d have hoped that over the course of fifty years we could have moved society forward to the point where all beaches were theoretically naturist for all who chose to swim or sunbathe thus.

And yet we’ve become stuck, bogged down and, in some ways, drawing a line in the sand to hold what we have gained. There’s a new conservatism in the air, pressing body freedoms in all directions. Look at the number of stories (many of which we’ve covered) about women demonstrating for top free equality…a full 50 years since the ‘monokini‘ first appeared.

And this new conservatism in society appears to have a loud voice, with identity politics and culture playing a central role in what should be, at all times and in all circumstances, a basic human right to strip naked for swimming purposes, be that in the sea or in a swimming pool.

Second Life, at one time, seemed to offer a way forward in this. An opportunity to re-think society’s rules about how we approach the topic of nakedness. And yet its users -many of who were clearly keen to explore areas of sexuality unfulfilled in real life (and continue to do so)- couldn’t adapt their thinking to nudity. Today, even in pixel form, the female nipple is routinely blocked out in many SL blogs, nudity banned from the majority of SL sims.

An alternative world should, surely, have its users rethinking real world social mores.

Ella

I’ve been reading up on some online movement called ‘Saggy Boobs Matter‘.

There’s a website by the movement’s originator, Chidera Eggerue, here.

If you can receive BBC videos in your location, you’ll also see a short video of Chidera speaking about it.

I’m not well enough endowed to really be ‘saggy’, but I don’t understand the need for everyone to look the same. Breasts (and nipples) are as varied as their owners. I’m not entirely sure there needs to be an internet thing about it, but if it helps some women feel more confident about themselves, I’m not going to knock it.

In SL we female avatars have a capacity to alter ‘breast gravity’ (i.e our ‘sagginess’).

I always set mine to 100% because it looks more natural on an avatar. Anything less seems to resemble a boob job gone wrong!

However you look in real life, ladies, learn to love your body. You’re beautiful! You’re always beautiful! Never feel you need to fit with anyone else’s -particularly the media’s- ideals.

Ella

2018 the year of nudity?

I can’t wait! 🙂

Ella