Goodbye, Young Naturists of America

Seven years after their foundation, the Young Naturists of America are closing down at the end of this year.
I know how hard it must be, and I've never even started. Building an organization, having it run successfully, it's all a lot of work.
My dream has always been to introduce and promote naturism in Taiwan, a country which unlike Europe, has no tradition of sunbathing, due both to the harsh tropical sun and to the local beauty ideal of having a skin as white as possible. Add to that legal restrictions on public nudity, with even advertising far less nude than what I saw back in Europe decades ago.
Setting up a naturist organization here would require people who are willing and able to devote the time and effort, and the publicity, to the cause.
First of all, most people interested in naturism have full-time jobs, and in Taiwan, that often means really full-time. After the day's and the week's chores, they must find the time to organize activities, but also to write promotional material and distribute it.
Setting up and running an organization also demands a level of bureaucracy which can temper one's enthusiasm for the cause. Legal requirements, the filling in of lots of forms, the registration process, the setting up of a website, all those are only the beginning.
An organization needs members, and then you have to seek out and filter who is suitable to join, you have to find where the true naturists are, you have to persuade the doubters, and you have to weed out those who are fake naturists and who might harm the image of naturism at large.
You have to have people who are familiar with the legal requirements, you have to have web-savvy members who can maintain, update and protect the website, you have to have people who know how and where to organize activities in a country which doesn't tolerate nude beaches or resorts, you have to find enough people who are free at the right time and who have the means to reach wherever you hold those activities.
Add to that, a raucous and intrusive press which is likely to give your organization a bad name just for the shock value of it, and you can understand why a naturist organization has not yet emerged in Taiwan.
There is a naturist forum though, at www.naturist.com.tw, and then there is the glowing example of Thailand, a nearby country with a similar naturism-reluctant culture.
With the Young Naturists of America saying goodbye, we wish naturists, young, not so young, or old, the best of luck, and we hope new organizations can emerge to fill the void.
For the goodbye letter from Young Naturists of America, read here:
https://youngnaturistsamerica.com/young-naturists-america-closing-letter/
Image courtesy of Young Naturists of America.

Wandering the world, the naturist way

Social media, most of them based in the United States, are notoriously uptight when it comes to nudity, with their watchers or censors making no distinction whatsoever between lewdness and porn on the one hand and non-sexual daily nudity - naturism - on the other hand.
Nevertheless, the Belgian couple Nick and Lins obviously have found a smart way around it, as you can see in the picture above from their Instagram account.
The couple suddenly appeared in the media worldwide over the past few weeks, as they advocate traveling the world 'as naked as you can.'
To some of the less-informed media - who still confuse the terms 'naturism' and 'naturalism' - that might seem funny or original, but the naturist traveler already has plenty of spaces around the world to practice freedom.
The unfortunate thing is that many times, naturists still have to go look far and away in distant corners to find a beach or resort he can call his second home.
I remember when I was traveling as a backpacker around Europe, I had to walk miles over rocky terrain to find a beach which had been marked in a publication as 'nudist-friendly.' Sometimes, that beach was just a stretch of steep rocks between a path and the sea, where you had to look hard to find a flat spot where you could lie down.
While in today's world, naturist beaches might still be few and far between, at least they have expanded across the continents.
Nick and Lins mostly concentrate on Europe in general and the Balkans in particular, where you can find anything from a stretch of beach reserved for naturism to an all-in resort or even naturist sea cruises.
However, naturism has already crossed the borders of Europe and North America to reach countries far and away: Brazil, South Africa and Thailand, to name but a few, all have different opportunities for naturists.
So what Nick and Lins want you to do, travel the world as naked as you can, is really becoming more and more possible.
You can find their blog at www.nakedwanderings.com and of course, they're also present on Instagram and Facebook, while if you google 'Belgian naturist couple,' you're likely to find all the recent media reports about how their naturist story started on a loud camping ground in Luxembourg.