Naturist News from Italy

As promised, here is an overview of what I read in the latest issue of Info Naturista, the magazine of the Italian naturist association Fenait. Top  man Gianfranco Ribolzi returns to the old debate of naturism vs. nudism, are both different, how are they different, and can they coexist in the same organization. Naturists follow a philosophy, nudists just take off their clothes, is the usual explanation for the difference. 'The nudist gets nude to get a tan, the naturist gets a tan because he is nude,' is a quote from Ribolzi I will use again.
Fenait participates in international travel fairs each year where local naturist groups already have a stand, Utrecht and Brussels for example. The group says it distributed more than 500 flyers at those events as well as thousands of copies of its magazine. Do travel fairs outside of Europe also feature or even allow naturist associations to participate?
I already discussed the article about tattoos and piercings in my previous posting on this blog. The magazine continues with news from the local and regional naturist groups in Italy. Interesting to know: the Venice region might have a naturist beach at Jesolo, near the Laguna del Mort. According to the magazine, talks were going on earlier this year between Jesolo's city government and naturists, and optimism was the predominant tone of the talks. Naturism is apparently allowed, but the beach is not reserved for naturists only.
The Jesolo beach web site is here.
Other naturist activities include of course naturist hours at swimming pools and saunas, a frequent elements of naturism around the world, as well as beach-cleaning operations. Naturist groups also have stands at exhibitions on environmental and tourism themes.
As usual, Info Naturista ends with a bit of tourism and history, this time introducing the history of Turin with pictures of its churches and palaces.

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.

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

Naturism in Italy since 1964

The first Italian naturist organizations were founded 45 years ago, in 1964, the latest edition of the magazine Info Naturista tells me. Just like in Asia, the inspiration came from abroad. Italians went traveling to the Levant island off the French coast, to the island of Corsica to the west and to the then-Yugoslav region of Istria and saw how many naturist resorts and campings there were, so they wanted to have the same at home. Unfortunately, the magazine notes, naturism never became as large and influential a movement as in the other Mediterranean countries, and even today, Italy is still struggling to become a naturist destination, as we have noted in previous posts.

The magazine also notes how naturism stands close to nature, and has a narrow connection with health, environment and respect for others. Originally, the founders of the movement acted or reacted against the negative effects of industrialization, by promoting a return to nature and to basic humanity.

Turning to another aspect, Italy was the host earlier this year to an international meeting of the Young European Naturists - disproving the image that naturism has, especially with some people in the United States, of only attracting an elderly crowd. What may be even more surprising to non-naturists, is that the opening meeting at the naturist resort of Le Betulle in Northwest Italy was attended by the mayor of the nearby town of La Cassa and by the chief of police in Turin, one of Italy's major industrial centers, the home of car giant Fiat. Can you imagine a naturist congress in a major Asian city being attended by the mayor and the chief of police? I can't, but I hope it will become reality one day. The young naturists also dressed up for a city tour of Turin, but their buses were accompanied during the trip by police on motorcycles. Just like VIPs.

As usual, the magazine reports on the activities of the regional naturist associations. While mostly of local interest, it is nevertheless an eye opener for Asian naturists that for example a swimming pool in Milan, the capital of Italian finance and fashion, has hosted four naturist events so far this year, each time attracting about 80 naturists. The association covering Northeast Italy - the area north of Venice - even succeeded in acquiring a new naturist home, Castelsalus, with its own ground for sunbathing and sports.

Finally, let me give you a couple of websites for Italian naturist organizations:

www.naturismoanita.it

www.italianaturista.it

www.liburniats.org

www.naturismoanaa-fkk.org

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.

The Berlusconi Holiday Villa Scandal

You've probably read about the latest 'scandal' surrounding controversial Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
No, not the one about the 18- or 17-year-old model, where he well might have been in the wrong.
Of course, I'm talking about the so-called 'raunchy' pictures taken at his holiday villa in Sardinia and published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
What is the 'scandal' about?
The pictures show several topless women by a swimming pool and one naked man.
If you live in Asia or in America you might not know, but a vast number of women who go sunbathing in Europe - both in their gardens and private spaces, and at public beaches in all of Europe, including the Mediterranean - do so topless. It's completely legal and socially completely acceptable. So there is no element of 'scandal' here whatsoever, since judging from the pictures, all we see is several women sunbathing by a pool in sunny Sardinia. Completely normal.
The naked man is perhaps more surprising. His identity has since been revealed as former Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, and Berlusconi himself explains his colleague's nudity by pointing out the man just stepped out of a hot tub. "You don't take a bath with your suit and tie on, do you?" Berlusconi is quoted as saying. Again, perfectly reasonable.
So if we go by the pictures that were published, there is nothing wrong if what happened at the villa was just a bunch of friends sunbathing and enjoying a hot tub. This kind of thing happens everywhere, so unless there is evidence to the contrary, the nudity or partial nudity at Berlusconi's villa is not a scandal at all.
The scandal is really that a photographer intruded on private property by making pictures of people at home, in their home environment, doing perfectly legal things but that should stay private.
The other scandal, where Berlusconi critics might have a point, is that he allegedly used a military plane to ferry his friends over to the island. That is abuse of public funds and should be punished.
But again, with the pictures we have now, there is no scandal. Judging from the latest news from Italy, the Italian voters seemed to agree, because Berlusconi's party finished first in Sunday's European elections.
El Pais, a newspaper known as one of Europe's best, should apologize for turning to blatant sensationalism on what seems to be largely a non-issue.

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.

Italy Again

The latest copy of the Italian naturist magazine Info Naturista arrived in my mailbox.

Inside, a far too short report telling me that the Croatian naturist resort of Valalta celebrated its 40th anniversary. Forty years, that means it was opened in 1968, in what was then the communist country of Yugoslavia. Communism always used to have this image of being very conservative and prude, but Yugoslavia was certainly an exception, welcoming naturists with open arms that long ago.

I had the pleasure of staying at Valalta, near the picturesque town of Rovinj in northern Croatia, in 2004. It was a great experience, and I only wished there were resorts like that closer to East Asia.

Back to the Italian magazine: other articles mention a swimming competition, the naturist author Pino Fiorella, a proposal for a law on naturism at the Italian parliament - now there's good news - the publication of a book on naturism in Italian by Monia D'Ambrosio under the title "Il Corpo Nudo - Sociologia della Nudita" or "The Nude Body - Sociology of Nudity" which you can find at the publisher http://www.sylviaedizioni.it/. The magazine also has a theoretical article about naturism which also describes the early history of the movement in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The battle to keep a beach with the poetic name of Lido di Dante near the historic city of Ravenna on Italy's east coast in naturist hands is apparently still continuing, with Info Naturista publishing an open letter to the city's mayor. The campaign will sound familiar to activists worried about similar changes for some famous U.S., Canadian or Australian beaches. The magazine closes with some funny cartoons, including one in which a naturist wife berates her husband for watching a TV show with footage of 'textile' women dancing.

Naturist World Congress 2008

The International Naturist Federation holds its world congress once every two years, and this year it was the rare occasion that the organization ventured outside of Europe, to Brazil, for its 31st gathering.

The event took place in September at Tambaba in Conde, Paraiba State, in Northeastern Brazil, and is reported on in the latest edition of the Italian naturist magazine Info Naturista.

The passage that interests me, and would rejoice naturists all over the world and particularly in Asia, is that the congress was not a very hidden affair. Brazil's Minister of Tourism was present at the opening, there was a huge fireworks display, and a concert with 24 guitarists. Can you imagine that happening at a naturist congress in Asia? Too bad I can't. Yet. The event was apparently also sponsored by the Brazilian government, which no doubt wisely understood that this was a great opportunity to promote tourism. At a time when the global economy is going down, every event counts, and the naturist dollar must be one of the strongest new currencies in world tourism.

The INF congress elected a new chairperson, yes chairperson, because for the first time since its foundation in 1951, the world naturism organization will be led by a woman, Sieglinde Ivo, former INF Youth Department chief and former head of the Austrian naturists. She will lead the INF at least until the next election, in 2012.

Other decisions of the congress, according to Info Naturista, are:

-keeping a closer watch on legal developments relating to naturism in Europe, particularly with the European Union authorities and the European Parliament;

-developing the http://www.inf-fni.org/ website;

-the abolition of direct membership by individuals with the INF and the return to sole membership for national naturist federations;

-holding the next INF World Congress in September 2010 at the naturist camping village of Pizzo Greco in Italy, more specifically in its southwestern region of Calabria.

You can find the next world congress site at http://www.pizzogreco.com/. A Brazilian naturist resort featured in the Italian magazine Info Naturista is http://www.praiadopinho.com.br/. And the Italian magazine, which also has some articles translated into English or French, is at http://www.infonaturista.org/.

Coming Up: Asianaturist will soon select its Naturist of the Year.