June: A Month for Nude Weekends

The past weekend(s) was quite a high time for naturist and non-naturist nude activities.
As the logo above shows, the Naturist Association of Thailand held its 4th International Naturist Conference. I attended the previous conference last year, but unfortunately, due to other commitments, I could not travel to Thailand this June. NATCON is a true naturist event in one of the few Asian countries which has real naturist hotels. Even though, just like in most other Asian countries, public nudity is banned and there are no official clothesfree beaches, Thailand does allow naturist hotels with swimming pools as long as the activities are isolated from the outside world. The Bangkok area, Pattaya and Chiang Mai all have true naturist hotels.
In other news, last weekend also marked World Naked Bike Ride day in many parts of the world, including London and Manchester in Great Britain. While not real naturism, the activity does increase acceptance for non-sexual public nudity, as it allows men and women to ride bicycles naked through city centers. The original aim is to decry the lack of respect and support for environmentally friendly bicycles and to call for a reduction in the use of fossil fuels, but the event has grown into a worldwide nude festival, in the style of Spencer Tunick's photography marathons.
A third recent event related to nudity was the Free the Nipple gathering on a Los Angeles beach, calling for "topfree equality," the right of women to go without top there where men are allowed to do the same. After the movie "Free the Nipple," the movement has expanded to take root in places as different as Iceland and Taiwan, where a group of young women has been printing and distributing stickers. More about that in a later post.
While some of those events have made the media, it is also important to note that even when nothing is going on, the press can still put naturism in a positive light. The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph is generally regarded as conservative, and it does support the Conservative Party, but on naturism it has been taking a mature line, often featuring positive reports. The latest was a list of seven nude beaches in the UK itself: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/11675401/Britains-best-nudist-or-naturist-beaches.html
While I still haven't made any plans for my summer holidays and I don't know whether they will include naturism, I wish my fellow naturists a glorious nude summer.

The Importance of a Free Beach

Good news from Belgium. The government there has finally given its full license to the country's only seaside naturist beach - in Bredene near the main coastal town of Ostend - 10 years after it first opened. The main campaigner behind the beach was a politician from the local city council. While thousands of people have been crowding the beach for years, the final official license was still missing, threatening the 350-meter stretch of sand with closure. The slow red tape also meant that professional rescue services could not be present on the beach. While the beach is popular, any expansion right now is off the cards because that would need the approval of the neighboring town of De Haan, where there is no majority in the city council for naturism. The existence of the Bredene Beach is a key to promoting naturism. Belgium has several naturist grounds spread all over its territory, but visits are as far as I know limited to club members. Members of the general public eager to try out naturism will not visit those grounds, and most of them do not know about their existence and location anyway, but everyone knows about Bredene. That proves the importance of free beaches, where 'amateurs' can try out naturism for the first time. Especially in the case of women, naturism begins with topless bathing - which luckily is now legal and general in most of Europe. The second step - from topless to fully naked - is obviously more difficult, and that's where free beaches come in. If you see other men, women and couples with children fully naked and comfortable being so, you put aside your own inhibitions and become willing to try out complete naturism too. The step to real naturism requires a comfortable environment - and that's why we advocate the existence of free beaches in combination with reasonable policing - so that real naturism does not become threatened by extreme behavior that is not compatible with naturism and that can be exploited by opponents to call for a shutdown of the beaches. In the meantime, congratulations to Bredene and its naturist campaigners. By the way, the picture up here does not show Bredene, but another free beach popular with Belgians - Groede, just across the border in the Netherlands.