Nudity, Tattoos and Piercing: The Italian Debate

Tattoos and piercings are one of the fads or fashions growing around the world these days, but I never thought they would touch off a stringent debate, least of all inside the naturist community, at least when I read the Italian naturist organization Fenait's magazine, Info Naturista.
To me, tattoos and piercings are like flipflops and those frames women in East Asia wear now without glasses inside. They're fads, they come and go, I don't like them, I won't participate in them myself, but I wouldn't feel offended by them or want to ban them.
Yet, the tattoo and piercing craze has caused antagonism within the naturist movement. In the latest Info Naturista, a writer named Daniele Agnoli lashes out at people who cover themselves in 'brass farthings' because they consider themselves a tribe different from ordinary people. The  authors also describes them as 'anti-social' and 'un-naturist' because they cover their body with something.
My personal opinion here is that he goes too far. Yes, a tattoo or a piercing 'covers' a piece of one's body, but only in the sense that say, a suntan lotion would. Or a wedding ring. It's different from clothes, it doesn't really hide any body parts, it just changes their color or adds to them. Even if you go to naturist resorts, like I have, you will see true naturists wear hats to protect themselves from the sun, or shoes to protect themselves against pebbles or sharp or dirty objects on the road. Does that violate naturism?
Of course, the answer is no. While I am not taking sides in the debate of whether tattoos and piercings are esthetic or not - I don't like them, but as the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder - I certainly disagree with the premise that 'real naturists don't wear tattoos and piercings.'
I can live with naturists having tattoos and piercings, even though I would never think of having them applied to my own body.
I'm sure we'll hear more about this issue in future editions of Info Naturista. The magazine also provides information about naturist events from the recent pasts, such as international travel fairs and local activities. I will try and bring you some of that information in a next posting on this blog, if my slow laptop and Internet connection allows, within the next few days.

Living Through Winter

It's hard being a naturist in winter. Personally, I still can't complain too much. Yes, right now, I'm looking out at a dreary gray mass of clouds and I have to wear clothes or I'll endanger my health. Still, weather is a variable thing. Just days ago, temperatures were around 26 degrees Celsius and there was sunshine, perfect weather for naturism if only the environment - read the other people - allowed it.
But in these winter times, I have to think of naturists who are far worse off than me. Europe's been hit by one of the coldest spells in recent memory, with frost continuing for two weeks on end, day and night. That's the kind of weather that any person, naturist or textile, would want to leave behind for good.
Yet, even in the coldest of times, there is still hope. A naturist can think of better things. Australia for example. A rare look at the CNN weather report told me that Melbourne had 32 degrees, Cairns 30 degrees, Darwin 33 degrees, Perth 34 degrees, and Alice Springs a scary and unnecessary 39 degrees. But then, that's why people in Australia call that summer.
Another way to survive winter is to pretend it doesn't exist. Like those brave people who go out swimming in mass events on the Atlantic coast of the US and Canada, or on the North Sea coast in Europe. Or people who take pictures of themselves in the snow wearing swimming suits or absolutely nothing. The former are known as Frosters, the latter as Naked Snow People, and guess which group got booted off Facebook?
Finally, if like me, you are not brave enough to venture into the snow or the icecold water, and you don't live anywhere near Australia, all you can do is dream and look forward toward the summer in your place of the world.
The people at the Italian naturist group Fenait helped me do that by sending me another edition of their magazine Info Naturista. One way to spend part of the naturist winter is to visit travel fairs which have a naturist presence, such as the January 10-15 fair in the Dutch city of Utrecht.
Staying with the magazine, it reports on an international naturist swimming competition held in Prague, the clash between naturism and neoconformism, a review of an Italian book about nudity in art, the social aspect of naturism and naturist associations, and the latest news from Italy's regional naturist associations. I live a long way from Italy, but I visited Sicily in 2006. While as we said before, naturism in Italy is still weaker than in other Western European countries, it is growing and deserves our support and attention.
With wishes of courage for all naturists to make it through this winter, I leave this blog now to make it back to the warm comfort of Twitter at http://twitter.com/thenudeguru. See you there.

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.

Legal Progress in Italy

Italy seems to be making progress with legislation allowing naturism, but first let's turn to other topics in the latest edition of Info Naturista, the magazine of the Italian Naturist Federation Fenait which I receive on a regular basis. From the travails of our Italian friends, we can learn a lot about how naturism in Asia might evolve.

In his foreword, chairman Gianfranco Ribolzi mentions the year 2009 as the year of 'keeping afloat' because there was only a slight increase in membership.

However, in another article we read that worldwide, about 25 million people practice naturism, i.e. non-sexual public nudity such as swimming and sunbathing naked. So if you are in a naturism-unfriendly country in Asia, don't think you are just part of a small minority. 25 million people are already with you.

The International Naturist Federation has awarded its first world quality certificate for a naturist resort, and it went to Valalta in Rovinj, a picturesque town in the far north of Croatia, close to Slovenia and Italy. I had the pleasure of staying there back in 2004. The certificate system will be expanded to include all of Europe within the next three years.

Back in Italy, the biggest event concerning naturists has been the formation of a youth group, the Giovani Italiani Naturisti or GIN, putting to rest the often American perception that naturists are all elderly people. The group addresses naturists between the ages of 16 and 30 and will take part in a European naturist youth meet in Hamburg this year.

On the topic of legal progress, Gino Palumbo writes a report in the magazine about the different legislative proposals to allow naturism in Italy. One version wants to hide naturism too much in places "where non-naturists and children cannot see them." In fact, despite this formulation, many naturists I saw on beaches in Western Europe and at Valalta and Croatia are in fact young couples with children, and like parents everywhere, they should have the right to spend their holidays with their children, naked or not. Other problems with the new legislation include a possible bias in favor of large commercial resort operations, versus the free beaches without amenities and the small campings often run by grassroots naturists.

Palumbo also emphasizes the economic benefits of naturism. Each summer, Italian naturists hold an "exodus" to Croatia in the East and Corsica in the West to find naturist beaches and resorts, he says, and many North-European naturists just avoid Italy altogether and spend their Euros in other countries. The author points out rightly that Italy would be foolish to turn those tourists away, just like it would catastrophical if it didn't want tourists visit its churches and castles. Italy will make a fool of itself if it sends the police on to the beaches to persecute innocent naturists, he says.

One of Palumbo's suggestions is that each municipality with beaches should set aside a minimum of 5 or 10 percent of its coastline - along seas, lakes or rivers - to naturism. The measure should not only apply to beaches, but also to parks or other areas suitable for naturism, with naturist associations involved in the management of those areas.

The magazine further also mentions that a new naturist association for the Venice area saw an increase in membership of 56 percent - though it does not mention how many people that actually means - and that the group has been active in organizing sauna and dinner meetings.

As usual, the magazine concludes with a non-naturist tourism report - a visit to the ornate Stupinigi hunting lodge near Turin.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to be reporting on this blog about the next edition of Info Naturista, and more importantly, about new naturist associations in Asian countries.

Naturism, Italy, and the Law

Thanks to the Italian naturist magazine Info Naturista I receive, I know that Italy is about to take a giant step forward toward naturism.
A group of seven senators have brought a bill to the Italian parliament for the 'decriminalization and legalization of the practice of naturism.'
Their arguments are mainly economic: if Italy remains the odd one out on naturism, it will miss the income from thousands of naturists who will spend their holidays elsewhere.
The argument is absolutely right: France and Croatia are famous for not just their nude beaches, but also their completely naturist resorts, where men, women and children can spend their family holidays together without the fear of being gawked at by non-naturist outsiders. Spain and Greece also have countless naturist beaches, and a growing number of naturist villas, apartments and small resorts.
Italy really is the odd one out. There are only a handful of naturist clubs catering mostly to local members and to limited groups of foreign naturists, but large-scale seaside naturism is virtually not in the picture.
The senators made their call for the legalization of naturism in Italy on World Naturist Day, last June 7, and we'll make sure we watch how it will proceed. The key supporters come from the Radical Party, a small group within the leftwing opposition, though it has to be said that unlike what many outsiders think, naturism is not a left-right issue, so there is no direct fear that because the right has a majority, the law will not pass.
Senator Donatella Poretti's piece in Info Naturista notes that there are 500,000 Italians who practice naturism inside the country or abroad. Europe has about 20 million people who practice naturism, sometimes only during the holidays, while the United States has 40 million. In other words, the senator says Italy is missing out on 60 million potential visitors.
The proposal also mentions that the naturist beach areas should be clearly marked to warn non-naturists.
As far as I can see, this piece of legislation should find no opponents - Europeans are already completely used to topless sunbathing, while naturism has been winning ground, as images of the naked human body without any sexual connotation have become more acceptable.
If millions of naturists can enjoy holidays in Spain, France, Greece, Croatia and more northerly countries, there is no reason for Italy to stay outside. An orderly introduction of naturism to the country would benefit everybody.
The Italian legislation could also form an example for Asian countries, where unfortunately true naturists are still a small, fragmented and misunderstood minority. Instead of having police going all nervous about three topless Brazilian athletes on a Taiwanese beach during the World Games, maybe we should have the Italian type of legislative proposals instead.
You can find the full Italian legislative proposal in the original version on Senator Poretti's blog at http://blog.donatellaporetti.it/?p=385.

Italy 2009

The latest edition of the Italian naturist magazine Info Naturista www.infonaturista.org, the official publication of the Italian Naturist Federation www.fenait.org tumbled into my mailbox again recently.
The opening editorial seems to do away with the classic differentiation between naturists and nudists, where the former are often environmentalists, vegetarians, peace activists, followers of natural medicine opposed to consumerism and alcohol, and the latter are just people who take their clothes off but keep all their other vices intact.
The difference doesn't matter, the editorial says, as long as all followers respect their bodies, each other, and the environment. The main expression of naturism is nudism, the article says.
The latest issue of the magazine has general writings of a philosophical nature as well as straightforward holiday reports - such as one bilingual English-Italian report about the Vritomartis resort on the less-frequent southern coast of Crete. The naturist hotel has no fewer than six - 6! - beaches in the neighborhood where naturism is the norm. You can find more information at www.vritomartis.gr, even though that part of the world will be mostly considered too remote for us residents of Asia. Pont Rouge in the Canadian province of Quebec might be a more likely destination.
The magazine concludes with the reviews of the activities of Italy's regional naturist organizations, including the everlasting campaign to keep the Lido di Dante beach near the historic town of Ravenna in nudist hands. There is also an extensive review of the naturist resort Le Betulle near Turin, which is run by the head of Italian naturism himself, Gianfranco Ribolzi.
If only Asia could have such naturist resorts and beaches, and such naturist magazines.