Mud, mud, glorious mud,

there’s nothing quite like it for cooling the blood

So sang popular (in the UK) 1950s/60s ‘music hall’ act Flanders & Swann. You can see/hear them performing the song in question here. (It’s actual title is ‘The Hippopotamus Song’).

Now, we naturists have a thing about mud. We can’t wallow around in it enough, it seems!

And why not? Mud baths have long been associated with providing health benefits, and many of France’s naturist resorts will have some sort of spa on-site where residents can indulge themselves in all manner of hydro-therapy treatments, mud baths and massage. But even away from a more organised ‘well being’ sense of a mud bath making you feel cleansed and refreshed, we -naturists- also seem to enjoy rolling around in it too. Not just naturists…there’s textile mud baths around the globe where people enjoy the experience of being enveloped in the stuff!

Cards on the table here. It’s something I’ve never done. More through a lack of opportunity than lack of desire. Oh, sure, I’ve gone for spa weekends with girlfriends (generally as part of a ‘hen do’ -readers around the globe may know these as ‘bachelorette parties’) but frankly the idea of wearing a swimsuit in one of these places seems to defeat the purpose. So that’s on my naturist ‘bucket list’.

In the context of SL, I’ve not yet seen a ‘mud’ layer for a skin (probably would be best designed as a tattoo layer), nor have I seen any any ‘mud baths’ either in the wilds, or as part of an SL spa, so I can’t really give you SL photos of that experience. A few years ago ‘mud wrestling’ seemed to be popular at some of SL’s naturist locations, but that’s not quite the same thing. So a mud bath is something I’ve not been able to try in SL either! Maybe someone will come up with a mud skin tattoo layer soon, and then we can replicate this RL naturist experience in SL.

Ella.

Edited to add…Shortly after posting this I was surfing some SL blogs and noticed the Kirstentacular blog had a gardening scene in which a tattoo layer called ‘digging in the dirt’ was used to denote mud on several parts of the avi’s body. So far my attempts to locate Miss Shippe’s Studio in world have come up blank, as has this tattoo layer on Miss Shippe’s marketplace presence. I’ll keep looking and get back to you.