After months and months of winter, summer has appeared in the UK.

Long time readers of this blog will know that over the fence at the bottom of our garden lies a body of water leading into the Irish Sea. The next house is 1/4 mile away, and it’s all farmland, so the ‘beach’ over the fence -often merely a location for various bits of flotsam and jetsam washed up, or a lavatory for cows that have managed to break out of a neighbouring field- is usually free of people (and, it must be said, animals too).

As a result, naturist sunbathing is possible. Swimming too, but I never trust an isolated sea where currents may come into play while swimming alone, so I’ve never done anything more than paddle.

We’ve also fenced off our garden and put a lockable gate at the bottom of the garden. Nothing to do with being overseen while sunbathing nude, and everything to do with the beach being out of bounds to the children, for safety reasons.

Oddly, with the reappearance of the sun has come the reappearance of naturist related media stories. I’ll admit I really struggled for writing inspiration this last winter.

Anyway, ‘Granny’ (Audrey) and I managed to get down onto the beach today for a bit of a walk. We didn’t go fully nude, but a nice topless stroll was exhilarating nonetheless.

Ella

A Paris museum has opened its doors to naturists for the first time.

Something you’ve been able to do in SL for a long, long time 😀

Ella

I’ve just been reading about something called the Nimbim Mardi Grass festival (no spelling mistake). The town is, apparently, the ‘marijuana capital of Australia’.

I’m always a bit sceptical about such labels being applied. How many cities in Europe are ‘the Venice of the north’, for example? Bruges? Amsterdam? Giethoorn? St. Petersburg?

So if you’re Australian, please don’t write in to tell me that ‘no…there’s a place up near Alice Springs, or wherever, that is Australia’s real marijuana capital’ 😀

As usual, with bits of the counterculture, a bit of body freedom, body painting and general chilling is part of the event, as the photos above demonstrate.

During the Nimbin Mardi Grass, an annual rally to legalize marijuana, this woman interprets the style of the traditional Bundjalung aboriginal people. She dances for freedom of expression and to reject the prudish cultural preoccupation with clothing and the shame surrounding our inherent sexuality.

Nudity, in part, also connects with the indigenous Bundjalung people, as the caption that accompanied one of the photos I found describes.

In Second Life we’ve got Burn2, an inworld version of Burning Man, and it seems many people are drawn to counterculture events and lifestyles within SL. I’ve certainly noticed more ‘hippies’ or ‘boho’ avatars (and clothes styles) in SL over the past year or so.

Piercings appear to becoming more widespread in SL, with a septum piercing being particularly popular. In recent months I’ve noticed a septum ring being offered as free gifts from various stores, so I’m assuming there’s a market for them. Our new blogger Amaris, who would say she isn’t ‘naturist’, per se, has numerous avatar piercings.

A septum piercing

Over the summer we’ll being doing numerous spreads and articles on ‘the counterculture’ as it manifests itself in SL, particularly as it is very often nude-friendly.

Ella

I’ve a few small videos of naturist life in and around SL, several of which have been experiments in how the video software I bought at the beginning of the year worked, and how to interact it with SL itself. The editing is the tough part! And I’ve not yet worked out how to add sound successfully. I don’t think the movies benefit from me, or anyone else, doing a ‘voice-over’. English is an international language, yes, but I’m working on how best to make the action on screen speak for itself, so to best benefit a global audience for SL.

In the meantime, I’ll pop up some of these ‘naturist SL’ videos just to give readers a feel for SL naturism.

Ella

I’ve watched avatars develop over the years I’ve been in SL, with extra bits of ‘realism’ added on as time goes by. I loved flex hair when it arrived, because it gave movement to hair, and I personally think mesh hair is a retrograde step. I still use flex hair.

‘Physics’ was another important step in realism, as it gives boobs a little bit of wiggle and jiggle, just as in real life. And now Aero’s, thanks to Bento, have given testicles a little bit of realistic movement as well!

At the beginning of the year I got some software that would help me make naturist movies (from real and Second lives, particularly Second Life) for the blog. That was put on the back burner for a while there as naturism seemed so, so far away from my actual life as we ploughed through the harshest winter (and latest spring) we’ve had in the UK for some time. But thanks to that software, I’ve been able to capture the natural movement of the scrotum/testicles as they move in real life. Adding Bento balls is apparently a straightforward process, and they can be bought from Aero’s Cocks priced at L$450.

I’ve had to start a Vimeo account in order to upload the video, and it’ll be a ‘channel’ I’ll be adding further videos to in due course.

Ella