A fun piece from The Times Online, United Kingdom
By Christa D’Souza
Meet the hipsters who are making nakedness cool. They don’t go to naturist holiday camps or insist on playing tennis starkers.
So would you call yourself a nudist? No? All right then, I’ll rephrase the question. Have you ever been skinny-dipping, sunbathed naked, hung out in a nude spa in Scandiland or stripped off at a festival “for fun”? If the answer is yes to any of the above, then, chances are, you’re part of a growing type of nudist: the nude-curious.
It was curiosity, after all, that led to the creation of Skinbook, the first global social-networking site for nudists. Set up last year by a group of students from Manchester, its 24-year-old co-creator Karl Maddocks says that most people joining the site (which has more than 7,000 members to date) are “younger people who like being naked at home, or have maybe checked out a nudist beach on holiday and want to explore the idea”.
As opposed to the traditional hardline naturist philosophy that it’s our human right to be naked, for the nude-curious brigade, it’s all about taking your clothes off in your own time and on your own terms. “The more political nudists say we should be able to go to the supermarket naked if we want,” says Maddocks. “But I’d never back that if people are uncomfortable with it.” And so you’ll find new nudists flexing their toned, tattooed limbs on the most fashionable beaches of Ibiza and Mykonos and lapping up the sensation of naked swimming in the public baths of Helsinki. You’ll find them stripping off in their back gardens to make the most of the short-lived British summer, baring all at the Benicassim festival and feeling a new depth of stretch in naked yoga sessions. Where you won’t find them is pulling on a pair of socks and sandals and signing up for two weeks at a traditional nudist holiday camp. And as it turns out, I know quite a few of them.