Naked Germany at CNN

 

Congratulations, CNN!

On the whole, I don't really like a lot of the international media, but in this case, CNN - at least the website, I don't know about the TV station - has brought a balanced and serious account of naturism, in Germany.

The main reason is that the story comes from an insider: a German who like most of his compatriots grew up in a family where naturism was not an ideology but a way of life. He tells the story of what naturism is, how it originated more than a century ago as a health movement, and what you can do and not do in the nude in Germany.

Freikoerperkultur - Free Body Culture, the German term for naturism - may have most of its followers in that country, but as Germans traveled all over Europe from the 1960s on, naturism expanded. It came back from the Mediterranean shores to envelop all of Europe.

Proponents of today's Free the Nipple movement in the United States and Asia would do well to study the lessons of naturism and follow its example. The starting points of both movements are widely different, but in the end, it is all about respect for others, for one's body, and for the freedom of non-sexual social nudity.

You can and should read the CNN article at http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/06/travel/naked-germany/

The German naturist federation is at www.dfk.org.