Naked at Lunch (37 page)

And if, after lengthy soul-searching and a few sessions of group therapy, we’re still not able to wrap our heads around the idea of “nudity is okay in all contexts,” then how about some official set-asides for the people who want to be naked? Beaches and lakes and hiking trails where clothing-optional recreation is permitted; places where naturists and nudists have equal protection under the law. In fact, places where nudists would be protected from photographers and Internet pornographers who post “amateur” photos of naked men and women. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so.

After writing this book am I a nudist?

No.

I’m not ready to join AANR and spend my days playing pickleball. Not yet, anyway. And I seriously can’t imagine ever dancing to the oldies wearing nothing but a T-shirt, socks, and sandals.

I wasn’t a nudist when I started this journey and, if I’m being truthful, I’m not a nudist or a naturist or an anti-textile now. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with any of those labels. They’re just not my scene.

I feel the same way about the libertines with their penis jewelry and their wife-swapping clubs at Cap d’Agde. I think it’s awesome that they’re into it, I can even see the carnal appeal of random sex with strangers in a disco filled with bubbles, but it’s not for me, not these days, anyway. I’m not even sure I would go on a cruise ship again, textile or nudist, even though I had a good time on the Big Nude Boat.

And still I’m changed. I think before this I would’ve been slightly uncomfortable seeing naked people at the beach or hiking along a trail. I might’ve thought they were part of some freaky sex cult. At the very least it would’ve made me nervous. For sure I wouldn’t have felt comfortable stripping down and joining them. But now, if they promised not to start a drum circle, who knows? Why not? It may not be de-alienating, but it is empowering to actually not give a fuck what people think about how you look. It means you’re okay with yourself. You take ownership of who you are.

Would I go out of my way for a nude experience? Probably not.

But I do know that if I ever find myself on a secluded beach somewhere, or if I’m hiking through the mountains and there’s no one around, or if my wife wants to sit outside at night and share a bottle of wine in the buff, then, if the weather’s nice, fuck yeah, I’ll be taking my clothes off. It feels good.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to the work of nudism historians Cec Cinder and Mark Storey, as well as Chad Ross, Daniel Freund, Brian Hoffman, Ross Velton, and Nina Jablonski for their excellent and informative books and articles.

I’d also like to thank the people who were kind enough to lend their voices to this book: San Francisco supervisor Scott Wiener, Dr. Dana Jo Grenier, Bob Tarr, Lisa Lutz, Richard Foley, Conxita Fornieles, Pascal Hausser, Roberto di Mattei, Vittorio Volpi, Mayor José Blanco, Pilar Guerra, Mara Amster, Stuart and Karla, Harry De Winde, Maarten van der Zwaard, Augustus Stephens, Erica Davies, Sharon Seymour, Felicity Jones, Juan Carlos Pérez-Duthie, Robert Proctor, Nancy Tiemann, and Bob Morton.

Big thanks to my editor Jamison Stoltz for his style, intelligence, and continued enthusiasm; to Morgan Entrekin, Judy Hottenson, Deb Seager, Justina Batchelor, Allison Malecha, Amy Vreeland, Charles Rue Woods, Gretchen Mergenthaler, and all the great people at Grove/Atlantic for their hard work and continued support; to Nancy Tan for making me look smart with a superb copyedit; to Tom Cherwin for an excellent proofread; and to Mary Evans, Julia Kardon, and Brian Lipson for representing. Special thanks to Simona Supekar for early reads of the manuscript, Geoff Dyer for his friendship, Dog and Pony, Claire Howorth for the merkins, Hind Boutlejante and the Guérif family for getting me drunk in Paris, and Olivia Smith and Jules Smith for putting up with it all. I want to give a super-special shout-out to the best and bravest research assistant a writer could ever have, Diana Faust, who makes every day fun.

Selected Bibliography

Barcan, Ruth.
Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy.
Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004.

Brook, Daniel.
A History of Future Cities.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2013.

Carr-Gomm, Philip.
A Brief History of Nakedness.
London: Reaktion Books, 2010.

Cinder, Cec.
The Nudist Idea.
Riverside, CA: Ultraviolet Press, 1998.

Crane, Diana.
Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Darter, Larry.
American Nudist Culture.
N.p.: s.p., 2011. Smashwords e-book.

Egger, Liz, and James Egger.
The Complete Guide to Nudism and Naturism.
2d ed. Hereford, UK: Wicked, 2009.

Foley, Richard.
Active Nudists: Living Naked at Home and in Public.
Aschaffenburg, Germany: Ed. Reuss, 2009.

———.
The World Naked Bike Ride.
Addlestone, UK: RFI Technical Services, 2012.

Freund, Daniel.
American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Fussell, Paul.
Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays.
New York: Summit Books, 1988.

Gay, Jan.
On Going Naked.
Garden City, NY: Garden City Pub. Co., 1932.

Hanson, Dian.
Naked as a Jaybird.
Cologne and London: Taschen, 2003.

Hoffman, Brian. “Challenging the Look: Nudist Magazines, Sexual Representation, and the Second World War,” in
Sexing the Look in Popular Visual Culture.
Ed. Kathy Justice Gentile.
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2010.

Ingebretsen, Ed. “Wigglesworth, Mather, Starr: Witch-Hunts and General Wickedness in Public,” in
The Puritan Origins of American Sex: Religion, Sexuality, and National Identity in American Literature.
Ed. Tracy Fessenden, Nicholas F. Radel, and Magdalena J. Zabrowski. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Jablonski, Nina G.
Skin: A Natural History.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Lange, Ed, and Stan Sohler.
Nudist Magazines of the 50s and 60s.
Los Angeles: Elysium Growth Press, 1992.

Lippman, Matthew.
Essential Criminal Law.
Los Angeles: Sage, 2013.

Robson, Ruthann.
Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality, and Democracy from Our Hairstyles to Our Shoes.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Ross, Chad.
Naked Germany: Health, Race and the Nation.
Oxford: Berg, 2005.

Royer, Louis-Charles.
Au Pays des Hommes Nus.
Paris: Les Éditions de France,
1929.

Singer, Mark.
Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists, and Others.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Storey, Mark.
Cinema au Naturel: A History of Nudist Film.
Oshkosh, WI: Naturist Education Foundation, 2003.

Surén, Hans.
Die Mensch und die Sonne
; rev. ed.
Mensch und Sonne: Arisch-Olympischer Geist
[Humans and the Sun: Aryan Olympic Spirit]. Stuttgart, Germany: Dieck, 1924; Berlin: Scherl, 1936.

Swaddling, Judith.
The Ancient Olympic Games.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980.

van Driel, Mels.
Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis.
London: Reaktion Books, 2008.

Velton, Ross.
The Naked Truth about Cap d’Agde.
Villa Park, IL: Scarlett, Oh!, 2003.

Webster, Nesta H.
The Socialist Network.
London: Boswell, 1926.

Notes

Interview with a Nudist

1.
Cec Cinder,
The Nudist Idea
(Riverside, CA: Ultraviolet Press, 1998), from the preface.

2.
The general definition of a “nudist.”

3.
hedonist-international.org

Skin in the Game

4.
Nina G. Jablonski,
Skin: A Natural History
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 43.

5.
A. Hamish Ion,
The Cross and the Rising Sun: The British Protestant Missionary Movement in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, 1865–1945
, vol. 1 (Waterloo, ON, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1993).

6.
Russell W. Chesney, “Theobald Palm and His Remarkable Observation: How the Sunshine Vitamin Came to Be Recognized,”
Nutrients
4, no. 1 (Jan. 2012): 42–51.

7.
Daniel Freund,
American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 99.

8.
“RCPCH Launches Vitamin D Campaign,” Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Dec. 14, 2012,
www.rcpch.ac.uk/news/rcpch
-launches-vitamin-d-campaign.

9.
“Too Much Sun Cream Results in Leicestershire Boy’s Rickets,” BBC News, May 14, 2013.

10.
Jablonski,
Skin
, p. 59.

Gymnophobia

11.
From Didion’s essay “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” in the collection
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968).

12.
From Fussell’s collection
Thank God for the Atom Bomb
and Other Essays
(New York: Summit Books, 1988), p. 182.

A Very Brief History of Early Nonsexual Social Nudism

13.
According to Grant Barrett’s
Official Dictionary of Unofficial English: The Slang, Jargon, and Lingo That Are Revolutionizing the English Language
(Chicago: McGraw-Hill, 2006), “junk” burst onto the language scene in the late 1990s.

14.
Daniel Brook,
A History of Future Cities
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), p. 96.

15.
The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 and is still active today. According to its website, “the Society is at the forefront of developing political ideas and public policy on the left” (
www.fabians.org.uk
).