Naturism at Travel Fairs and the INF World Congress

While we're on the subject of Italy, let's continue with a look at edition 45 of the Italian Naturist Association FENAIT's Info Naturista magazine.

Featuring prominently of course is the fact that for the first time ever, Italy will be the host of the International Naturist Federation INF-FNI's once-every-two-years World Congress. The magazine also reports on Italian naturists' participation in travel fairs, mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium.

The 32nd INF World Congress takes place from September 8 thru 12 at Pizzo Greco, a naturist camping resort near the town of Isola di Capo Rizzuto, in Calabria. For those of you who see Italy as a boot, then Calabria is the tip pointing toward Sicily in the far Southwest. Each Congress sees representatives from dozens of countries traveling to the destination to meet and discuss the promotion of international naturism. In 2004, Taiwan was represented at Valalta in Croatia. Info Naturista also hopes this year's event will receive a lot of attention in the Italian media. Theme of the congress is Ethical Naturism and Commercial Naturism, in other words the ever-present tension between large-scale resort ventures and small-scale, ecologically friendly campsites in forests and other remote tourism.

Talking about the ethical side, this issue of the magazine also features a report on a ecology-friendly naturist campsite in Montenegro across the Adriatic from Italy, and has a letter from a reader claiming a carnivorous nudist cannot be regarded as a true naturist, in other words, naturists should be vegetarians.

Turning to tourism fairs, in most European countries it is completely natural to have naturist resorts or associations holding a stand for their business. The magazine of course mentions Naturisme Totaal in the Dutch town of Utrecht last year, which was a travel fair completely devoted to naturism. 9,000 visitors in two days last December, the magazine reports, making sure that there will be a sequel in December 2010. The Italians were represented by four stands, each for a separate naturist resort. They were also present at the main travel fair - where most visitors might never have heard of naturism - in January this year, while Belgian naturist resorts helped distribute Italian promotion material at the travel fairs in Antwerp and Brussels.

Info Naturista again mentions the great fact that young Italians have formed a naturist association of their own, the GIN, with its own blog at http://gin.fenait.org. In addition, there are comments about the piece "Diary of a Smoker" by U.S. author David Sedaris about a first encounter with naturism. Local associations complete the magazine with reports about their winter activities, which even in Mediterranean Italy mean mostly sauna meetings safely indoors.

For a change, next time, we'll go back to Asia for a post about new associations promoting naturism in countries until now off the naturist world map. Hopefully, in the near future, they too can join the INF and be present at its World Congress.

45 Years of Naturism in Italy

There's little nude news going on in Asia or Taiwan, apart from the fact that Taiwanese model Lin Chia-chi, also known as Patina Lin, recorded a commercial for computer games while wearing nothing but gold liquid, if we believe local television reports. On TV, it looked more like she was wearing a golden bra.

Anyway, I received another issue of the Italian naturist association magazine Info Naturista, and this time it tells of the 45th anniversary of the organized naturist movement in the Mediterranean country.

While Italy is known around the world for its sunshine, its brilliant cuisine and its many beaches on one of the world's most beautiful seas, naturism unfortunately has not had an easy time.

A group of Italians first became aware of naturism in the early 1960s by visiting the famours Ile du Levant off France's Cote d'Azur, an island wellknown even to non-naturists. Later, they traveled to Corsica before deciding to set up a movement of their own in Italy. Only, when it was founded in 1964, the first Italian naturist organization actually put its headquarters in ... Zurich, in neighboring Switzerland. It wasn't until 1969 that the movement transferred its offices to Turin, the main city in Northwest Italy. That year also saw another major development: the opening of the first naturist center on Italian soil, Le Betulle, in the same region as Turin.

While many Italians now count themselves as naturists, the number of beaches and resorts is still limited and under threat. Most Italians go naturists in neighboring countries, in particular Croatia and France, two of the most naturist-friendly countries in the world.

In Italy itself, the mayor of Ravenna, the city famous for its Byzantine churches, wants to close down the beach known as Lido di Dante or Bassona, for more than 20 years a popular place for naturists. Oddly enough, the mayor hails from Italy's main party of the left, the Democratic Party, which you would expect to be more respectful of alternative lifestyles and freedom of expression.

The threat to Ravenna's naturist beach also reflects the problem of current legislation, which says nudity is not wrong on beaches "often frequented" by naturists. The problem is that local governments can decide on their own whether beaches are often frequented or not. Naturists want to move closer to the Spanish or Danish situations, so nudity would be allowed on any beach not specifically "reserved for various use," as the magazine puts it.

One positive sign on the horizon for naturism in Italy: the Pizzo Greco naturist holiday center will host the World Congress of the International Naturist Federation this September 8 to 12. The meeting is bound to attract media attention to the cause.

To return to the Info Naturista magazine and to continue on a positive note, the edition also includes a report on the official foundation of an Italian naturist youth movement, the Giovani Italiani Naturisti. Naturists are sometimes pictured in the mainstream media as a bunch of old people practicing a dying tradition.

The magazine also reports on the documentary Naked Conversations with Nude Women by Thomas Lundy, a naturist resort in the small town of Igarata just one hour away from the Brazilian megalopolis of Sao Paulo, and an essay on the normality of naturism by Pino Fiorella. Naturism's cultural principle of respecting all persons is the epitome of accepting normality, he writes.

Finally, a list of relevant web links:

www.fenait.org

www.mirantedoparaiso.com.br

www.iledulevant.com.fr

www.pizzogreco.com