Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Nudism not gone quite as planned

The Sydney Morning Herald has a story about how residents at Byron Bay, which has a (not very easy to get to, by the sounds) official nudist beach, are pretty sick of the creepy men engaging in offensive and harassing behaviour of a sexual nature.

I had also noticed, perhaps a year ago?, that an unofficial nudist beach at Noosa had attracted police attention and resulted in arrests and convictions.   

I find it interesting that public attitudes to the practice of nudism, in at least the English speaking West, have not really gone as someone in the 1960's might have expected.    Robert Heinlein, who I think was himself a nudist (and apparently sexually adventurous before it was quite the thing), used to write books in which appearing nude in public was not such a big deal in the future;  and given the hippy free love movement and nude mud baths happening at festivals in the 60's, it would have seemed a fair prediction at the time.

As society morphed on from there, you would get claims from time to time about how nudist tourism was booming, which seems a journalist trope that just never goes away.   Yet, it seems clear that, by and large, the nudist movement in America, England and Australia has gone backwards, both in terms of clubs and even use of nudist beaches.   

Why is it that, at a time of (relative) sexual liberation and less panic about nudity on television and media, actual nudity in public in the West has declined?   And why do nude beaches attract an increasing number of creepy men?    One would have thought the internet and porn would give them more reason to stay indoors.   Is there a line being crossed between internet porn being a diversion from acting out in public, and it working as encouragement to get out to commit offensive and worrying behaviour?

I mean, I guess nudism's connection with sexuality was never going to go away (despite high minded insistence by naturists that there is no essential connection), but I still didn't really expect its public practice to go backwards.   

Update:  Here's a theory:   while the internet means a lot more people see a lot more nude bodies than ever before, there is pretty good evidence from the rise in plastic surgery for breasts and labia that it has made (at least some) women more anxious and self conscious about perceived imperfections in their normally unexposed areas.   That, of course, is not the sort of attitude which makes public beach nudity appealing.   (And the rise of pubic hair removal has exacerbated this concern for women too.)   


1 comment:

Mayan said...

Or maybe concerns about the influence of porn have merit.