Happy Easter, probably THE most important date of the Christian calendar, as it’s the day when Jesus rose from the dead. And a rebirth, a second life (no pun or diminishing of the resurrection message intended) is the core message in Jesus’ life.

I’m nominally Christian, although I’m not a church goer at all, but today seems like an apt date to kick off a short series in which nudity (and sexuality…we’ve found in discussions with numerous avatars in recent weeks that heir sexuality, as well as their attitudes to the naked body are tied to one, even though we, as naturists, know they can be kept firmly apart) and belief are examined.

Is it possible to be a Christian naturist? Well, yes it is. The two beliefs aren’t incompatible for everyone who professes to be a Christian.

We’re doing a series of posts on this topic because it seems that it’s a vexed issue for some. It is therefore interesting to discover where the incompatibilities and the crossovers exist. After all, the Bible begins with a story about Adam and Eve, naked and innocent.

So watch out for this short series being posted over the next couple of weeks, in which we explore attitudes to the naked body and faith.

Gigi

I saw some photos of naked archery (it’s a popular sport at many French naturist campsites, for sure, and  wondered if it was possible to do the same in Second Life. As with most things in the real world,it is!) Gigi

The UK’s Channel 4 TV station has launched a new series called ‘Naked Beach’, wherein several people with body issues are encouraged to embrace their ‘faults’ (none of them look to be particularly invested in ‘faults’ to me).

I’ve not seen it, but I’ve read of the ‘outrage’ trending on the Twittersphere #NakedBeach about *gasp* seeing a penis on television before the ‘9pm watershed’ (the watershed being a thing in British broadcasting where no nudity is shown before 9pm in the evening). To those ‘offended’ by a penis, while watching a TV programme called ‘Naked Beach’, well, perhaps you need to consider your viewing choices. I think the clue is in the programme’s title. You have other channels you can theoretically view, or an ‘off’ button on your remote. Typically, Twitter appears to be a platform where people go to become actively offended about something they had a clear choice to avoid. Absolutely daft!

Gigi

SLN has covered the topic of naturist ping pong or table tennis before.

But in the rapidly changing world of SL, it’s worth covering it again, and from a naturist perspective 😉

When I started writing for SLN I was shocked at how Ella managed to keep the posts rolling out regularly, but as she’s sort of back (mostly in an advisory capacity) I’ve been IMing her inworld and getting an insight into how she did it!

Basically, she appears to have researched real life naturism and then seen if she could match real life to Second Life. What a simple, yet effective, idea!

Yes, you can do naturist ping pong/table tennis in SL as well as it being a popular game at many naturist resorts, where ‘the good life’, healthy eating and pursuits, such as sport, are encouraged as part of a broader naturist lifestyle.

Gigi.

For those of you who play SL, I found some poses on the Markeplace by Maru Maru, three poses for L$1! I was struck by how classically styled these poses were, like the classic ‘arched back, boobs thrust forward poses that photographers have been asking for for decades. This isn’t a criticism. The poses simply struck me that they did have a ‘classic’ touch to them,and so I decided to pose them accordingly.  I’ve added a gallery of poses from real life naturism that demonstrate many of the ‘classic’ poses I’m thinking of.

Gigi

I previously blogged about Spencer Tunick in Valencia, but didn’t post too many photographs, as the source would have made it certain they were subject to copyright.

Since then, I’ve found some more photos from the event, and haven’t been able to clarify whose copyright they might be, or if any applies (yes, the original photographer’s work would make the photos liable to copyright, but not everyone is going to claim copyright on every ‘snap’ they take). On that basis, I’m publishing a few more photos from Tunick in Vanecia.

Gigi

Last week The Guardian published a piece on nudity being a new form of political protest, via a play called  Isto é um Negro? (Is this a black?) a reaction to the censoriousness of the evangelical movement that helped sweep Jair Bolsonaro to power last year. In part, it is a response to the president’s intolerance of feminism, homosexuality and even the country’s famous carnivals. Standing before us undressed, the performers seem to say: “I am here. I exist. Do not deny me.”

Nudity in the theatre is nothing new. There’s a long standing tradition of clothes being removed in order to spark some form of debate, and nudity still has a power that tends to focus minds on the message being delivered.

In this play it appears that the actors are stripped of their clothes as much as Brazil’s new president wishes to strip funding from the arts and culture.

I’m not really attuned to theatrical statement, so it’s not something I’m going to dwell on too much in terms of the message, other than to say that nudity maintains a powerful presence when used in some productions.

Gigi

The media often presents us with images of destruction in the wake of cataclysmic events, such as war, hurricane or tsunami.

Idyllic locations, from Asia to the Balkans to middle America have been laid waste, and there’s a sense of ‘how to begin again?’

Obviously there’s no comparison between real life horrors and what goes on in an online game, but late last year there was a sense of loss when Eden Naturopolis was ravaged by ‘a takeover’, if I can put it like that, that saw much of its beauty destroyed. Elbag and Brenda’s beautiful build suddenly saw abrupt ends to roads, lighting ripped out (Elbag and Brenda were given incredibly short notice to clear the sims of their stuff, as I recall) and a general sense that Eden now looked like something that had endured a bit of a war (and, in a sense, knowing some of the back story that was reported here on SLN, that’s exactly what had gone on).

SLN’s presence at Eden, many years standing, ended, mainly as a protest against the new owner, and I know many other Eden residents became, like SLN, ‘refugees’ in a sense. We were ‘stateless’ and ‘homeless’, with Howie scrambling around to find some inworld location we could call home. We were present in a skybox for a while, and are currently located at Lake Nekid (which is an equally lovely naturist sim in SL), but there has always been a desire to ‘come home’, and at least have office space located where we feel most at home…Eden!

With Brenda and Elbag now back in control, I dropped into Eden (and -hooray!- you can find a central TP point in the search engine of SL already) to see what’s emerging, the Phoenix rising from the ashes of many months of neglect and abandonment.

There’s a long way to go, obviously, to bring it back to its former glories, and I suspect this will be a long process. What’s nice is that we’ll be able to see it rise again.

It rather looks as though the central TP location has its foundations in, judging from the photo, and does that look like the navvies are getting some roads down?

It’s my intention to provide regular reports during Eden’s reconstruction, as we bear witness to it rising again as SL’s premier naturist location.

Gigi

Within the past hour the UK parliament has been interrupted by a semi-naked protest in the public gallery by climate change protestors. 

Police are apparently struggling to remove them because they’d glued their hands to the safety glass that separates the public from our political representatives (and there’s a clear disconnect between the ordinary people and those who lord over us).

Gigi