I’ve been reading a story about a university student who has begun a thing called JanuHairy in an effort to get women to be more confident about their body hair.

It has an Instagram page, a Facebook presence, as well as being reported on in newspapers and news outlets.

Of course it has got to the stage where body hair, on women, is practically regarded as a fetish, such is its absence on many. One bit of research reveals about half of all UK women under 35 are now removing all pubic hair, and we must have got to the stage now where almost every woman living in western society is removing underarm hair.

Worse, I think, is that women are conforming to their partners’ requests in this regard. I’m all for some compromise in a relationship, but in an era of feminism I found it rather shocking that men sort of demand how women groom.

And 1/3rd of men would reconsider the relationship based on their partner’s pubic hair preferences! :-O Unbelievable!

An exceptionally good article exists on the Guardian website about how porn has driven the need for women to be entirely hairless, and our archives suggest Ella wasn’t a fan of the hairless look or conforming to porn industry expectations.

That same Guardian article links to another in which it’s claimed that pubic hair is making a comeback in porn, and it will be interesting to see how this ‘trend’ (if it is one) develops. I’ve no real strong opinions on pubic hair, having been natural, trimmed and fully bare in my time, but I have been someone who has shaved their legs/armpits since puberty (which wasn’t yesterday) and I suppose I might be seen as buying into the idea of conforming to society’s beauty ideals in that regard.

It is possible to buy pubic, underarm and leg hair for female (and male) avatars in Second Life.

I’m not sure I’ll be joining in with JanuHairy, but I wish those participating well, and perhaps the realisation (particularly amongst men) that we ladies are free to do what we want with our bodies, and it isn’t for them, the porn industry or fashion to dictate to us what we do and don’t do.

Gigi

In our youth, we do things we regret in later life, or maybe deny ever having been involved in. Or maybe just recall with a smile when we’ve settled into a conventional adult, married life routine, little bits of us we never reveal to our nearest and dearest.

Of course, many of these tales involve alcohol. Or drugs. Many involve sex. And many involve nudity.

There’s a cocktail called a ‘skinny dipper’.

And a beer.

So there’s a clear link in the minds of non-naturists that one (often) follows the other.

Sometimes it does and sometimes it’s one of those things that people increasingly want to try, and there are numerous money-raising skinny dipping events around the globe now where people can raise cash for a charity while simultaneously wanting to tick another thing off their bucket list. It’s one of those things we feel compelled, at some point in our lives, to experience.

The world is full of hundreds of thousands of people who will never identify as naturist but who readily identify as people who have skinny dipped and liked the experience.

With this in mind, I asked some real and Second Life friends about their real life skinny dipping experiences. Remember that not every ‘naturist’ avatar in Second Life is a real life naturist! It’s often, in Second Life, something they do virtually because they lack the nerve or opportunity to do so in real life. Which is fine. If you live 1000 miles from an ocean, in a small-town, conservative location skinny dipping or any other form of social nudity is nigh impossible. So the appeal of Second Life naturism, to ask questions of like-minded individuals, or to just hang out with like minded souls, is clear.

I’ve titled this post ‘Going Wild’ because skinny dipping often takes place in ‘wild’ water, that is a body of water off the beaten track and now ‘a sport’ in itself. Checking back through the archives I notice that Wild Swimming has featured several times before.

Included in the gallery above is a number of historic photographs from the 1970s I would guess. I’ve included these as they’re exactly the sort of photographs that link to my notion of people doing impetuous things in youth that they might later regret. In the 1970s communal nudity would not have been as visible as it is now. Ladies, in particular, didn’t do this sort of thing. If we date the photos in question to 1975 and guess that the ladies are 20 at the time, that places them in their 60s now. I know from personal experience 😉 that growing older doesn’t mean acting more sensibly, not by any stretch of the imagination, but when I look at photos like these I often wonder if the people involved subsequently got married, had children and grandchildren, and if they have told their partners, children or grandchildren about the wild times when they went skinny dipping. Or if they still do go skinny dipping. Or if it was something of youth, now long left behind.

I shall pick this post up in ‘Part 2’ and feature a few testimonials of those who have skinny dipped and either consigned it to memory, never to be repeated to significant others, or are still doing it where opportunity strikes.

Gigi