The nudists’ right to illustrate their journal with unretouched photographs posed a very sticky ethical dilemma. It
is basic to nudist philosophy that the nude human body is not indecent per se. Nor is any portion of the anatomy in of itself obscene. Now, a photograph purports to be nothing more or less than a representation of the subject; if the subject is clean and wholesome, its pictorial representation must of necessity be equally clean and wholesome. To retouch pictorial renditions of the body, then, would constitute a grave breach of professed nudist doctrine. It would be absurd for an official nudist publication to proclaim the wholesome character of the nude form only to air-brush the genital organs merely to placate Victorian prudes. It was against this background that many legal difficulties vis a vis the nudist press were interposed.

In and out of State and Federal courts for over twenty-five years, nudists ultimately won their inalienable right to promote nudism pictorially as well as in text. The Supreme Court of the United States had spoken — and it had spoken favorably.