by ALEX DELAVANTE

Many people in America question the motivations of all minorities. This is certainly true as regards the nudists, whose unclothed philosophy and play activities put them in the popular mind on a par with pacifists and rich old men who live in squalid houses with their life savings in a cigar box!

It may be that at the root of society’s fear of the nudist life is the mistaken conviction that nudism is entirely unnecessary and therefore suspect.

Why should a man and his wife show their privates to strangers in a public setting? Isn’t the naked body essentially an object for sexual excitement, to be reserved for the eyes of a loved one?

The nudist discards his clothes and goes about his business as if these questions did not exist. And, for him, they really don’t occur! Nudism for the sun worshiper is a necessity. It is the way he was created by God, without the stigma of shame that society has falsely created. It is the natural way to live, to play, work and develop the beauty of creation.

There is a distinct separation in gym-nosophy between sex and nudity. To be naked does not arouse the nudist as it would the average citizen. He has learned that there is a relation between the exposure of the human body with others in a communal and continuing practice and the fear of nakedness which leads to sexual interest alone.

The more one is expected to shed one’s clothes and live naturally naked with other nature devotees, the less one is ashamed and therefore led to explore the sensual side of one’s personality.

Thus, nudism cannot be a nuisance if it is seen as a necessity!

Nudism cannot function at all times for even the most dedicated! He must venture out from the camps to the everyday life of the clothed world. When children of the sun return to nature, they feel the outside world of society is artificial and stilted. This is a difference that only emphasizes further to the nudist that society does not only regard nakedness in ordinary public living as unnecessary, it often goes further and condemns those few times of relaxation when the nudist is with his own kind!

This is a stalemate. The average Joe Citizen feels nudism as a way of ordinary life is not only unnecessary but stupid. The nudist feels that the inhibition of clothes and false restraints is stupid and unnecessary. Who’s right? What attitude is the greater necessity or nuisance in relation to man’s highest development?

THE AMERICAN SUNBATHER
ISSUE: Number 1, March 1967
Publisher: American Sunbather and Nudist Review