I have to confess I’ve neglected the blog recently, mostly because I can’t get excited about SL at the moment. Right now it feels as though the loss of the jewel in SL’s naturist crown, Eden Naturopolis (it still exists, as a shadow of its former self) was a bitter blow.

So where do we, SL’s naturist community, go from here? A few, genuine naturist sims remain, but Eden was such a huge part of it all that it feels like the heart has been ripped out of SL naturism. As a result, I’ve been reflecting where the blog goes from here. I’ve basically covered everywhere in SL that exists as a naturist location and we’ve ignored the sims where naked avatars performing public sex is being passed off as ‘a naturist location’. These places aren’t and never will be naturist.

So a rethink is in progress. Where does the blog go from here? It seems that a new-conservatism so evident in society…a rise in far-right policies and support feeding this…also feeds off into SL, with nudity increasingly barred at photogenic locations, on pain of being barred from some sims (and it has happened to one or two of us, with one or two sims, where using their photogenic landscape to take naturist photos (usually, we’ve been trying out new, naturist-potential poses).

I’ll be posting less for a while until I can rethink our policies. No, we aren’t going to suddenly embrace these naked sex sims that purport to be naturist. Yes, the blog will continue. But it will have to be a little more circumspect in where we visit for a while. It feels as disturbing to find Eden gone as it would be to find a real life naturist beach suddenly lost to textiles, for example.

I have a week off next week, so I’ll be spending a lot of time in world, observing, researching, exploring, and we shall see where we go from there. In the meantime, here’s a vintage gallery from real life, as one of my first explorations will be to see what vintage sims (1920s Berlin, for example, has an ‘FKK swim session’ one evening a week at their pool) can offer. Ella

Spencer Tunick has recently undertaken another photoshoot in Bodo, Norway.

Apparently the town has around 55,000 inhabitants, is situated in the north of the country and, looking at the map, appears to be isolated enough to ensure that not too many people will have arrived from elsewhere to participate. For example, Norway’s capital, Oslo, is 1200 kms away, and Tromso, the only other major sized conurbation, is 500kms, and an eight hour drive, away.

So…it rather seems like the participants for this shoot are almost exclusively likely to be from Bodo itself.

In a town of 55,000, the chances are that you either knew someone in the shoot, or knew someone who knew someone in the shoot.

Naturism is, I think, often best undertaken amongst ‘strangers’. I’ve said this before, but it feels more relaxed amongst strangers (who often become good friends) than it would amongst friends and neighbours. Think for a moment : if your own street were to be invited to stage a Tunick shoot, would you be comfortable getting naked with your next door neighbour or Mr. Jones or Mrs Smith from across the way? I think it would be difficult. I wouldn’t really like to be going into the post office the next week having had my photo(s) splashed all over the local newspaper.

Of course, if I lived in an exclusively naturist town or village where we all routinely existed naked, I’d have a different view, seeing everyone naked every day, and indeed I do have a number of friends in Spain who I’ve never seen clothed!

So kudos goes to the people of Bodo who created another lovely Tunick shoot.

Ella

The ‘Naked’ sim isn’t one I visit regularly. I’ve nothing against it, it’s beautiful, but hitherto I’ve based myself around the now changing Eden Naturopolis.

One of the lovely elements of it is an art display called ‘Naked with a chair’, and numerous avatars have posed accordingly and their photos are on display. There’s also a little photographic area where you can do your own photo (with a limited number of poses) and so I’ve despatched several SL friends to pose accordingly, with the results shown below.

‘Naked with a chair’ has been a longstanding prop for photographers.

SL’s ‘Naked with a chair’ is the work of Mind Carlberg, and turns up in the destination guide to SL, as well as being the first search hit on Google when typing in ‘naked with a chair’.

Ella

A new version of Firestorm has been released, but the same old issues remain for me… 😦

My mesh (Tonic) body in SL viewer. Works perfectly!

My mesh body in the new (and previous) versions of Firestorm. Horrible shadings appear throughout.

I’ve no idea what the problem is, it has to be Firestorm itself, or my graphic settings. Either way, I prefer Firestorm as a platform and my relatively new mesh body. So neither is working for me as I’d hoped they would. Either sort it, Firestorm, or someone please explain if I can fix the issue myself so I can use my mesh body within Firestorm.

Ella