The adult only movement within naturist venues is a nail in the coffin of naturism. We know that many are genuine we support their attempts to supply respectful naturists with a holiday. But why is the family being allowed to be filtered out. Unless national bodies fight this, naturism will cease to exist. Without families, we don't encourage innocent adventuring young couples without children either - as most people want to see people of their own age and also be assured that something is safe - family friendly is assuring. Before we allow an adult only venue to advertise on ANW we ask them very clearly to assure us they are not sexualised. This shouldn't be a concern but the truth is we have turned several business and venues away. Make a film adult only and you assume there is a good reason. The same will happen with naturism. Not only does that then push away the right people but it attracts the wrong people - those that do want more libertine behaviour. Before you know it those genuine naturists that are left (those of retirement age who don't need to worry about the children) are outnumbered and will back away and those stubborn ones that fight on will sadly not live for ever. Where does that leave naturism? It leaves it in the exact place that the protestors wrongly placed it. There is a school of thought that if you tell a good child that it is naughty long enough it becomes naughty. The people who protest about nudity wil be the actual people who make nudity actually naughty. They will be directly responsible for making the world a little more perverse. 

Anna and I invite everyone to help us fight this but we need the federations and their members fighting alongside us. Take back naturism and proudly call it a family friendly lifestyle before it is lost forever and pixelated into a memory. One day people may look at images like the one above an wonder what was behind the pixels - and assume that it wasn't just a happy innocent naked couple because they don't exist any more. Hitchcock often said that he liked to leave deaths to the audience imagination- as the audience is more disturbed than anything he could film - pixelate the image and it allows our nasty imaginations to run wild. 

It is time that naturism comes out from behind the pines trees, and the gates and the pixels and stands proud as families, couples and friends and says "No more banning, no more fake protests, no more misuse of naturism for libertine reasons. We are many in number, we have clubs and national bodies worldwide, we have a long history and we are standing hand in hand and ready to fight the protests and the misjudgement." Why oh why are national naturist bodies, and clubs and sites like ANW not working together to put this right. We want to, we have the passion and the drive. It is wonderful that boat trips like the one above are organised but we have to make sure that the people are there to board those boats in future years. Tell your national body that we have our hands out, tell them all to hold out their hands - let us all link together and build an unbreakable chain. Get them talking to us - and not just Anna and myself but the rest of this community. Better to win fighting together than be picked off one by one. We created ANW to be used as a platform to link naturists to clubs and national bodies as well as each other - we chose the name A Naturist World because we want to see naturism all over the globe connecting as a single community. We want ANW to, by linking all genuine naturist bodies, clubs, venues and individuals to make each and everyone stronger and more vital.  

I think it goes a lot deeper than just the media. I feel there is a fear from the powers that be. Naturism for me is the ultimate freedom. The whole concept of it is freedom and non judgement. Those in power do not want people to be empowered and think for them selfs so push a lot of propaganda against anything that goes against the norm.

I read a thread on BN, where someone connected to this trip challegened the paper that pixelated the pictures, and they did a follow up article, which was actually quite positive about naturism, alas, all the pictures provided were also pixilated, we have an uphill struggle, but whoever the idividual was that challeged them, was right to, and maybe that is something we should start to do, challange the narrative of the media every time they censor their posts.

[blockquote class='siteforum_icon_quote']Robin and Rin said: I read a thread on BN, where someone connected to this trip challegened the paper that pixelated the pictures, and they did a follow up article, which was actually quite positive about naturism, alas, all the pictures provided were also pixilated, we have an uphill struggle, but whoever the idividual was that challeged them, was right to, and maybe that is something we should start to do, challange the narrative of the media every time they censor their posts.[/blockquote]

The follow up article was by the same journalist who called me the day after the original article. To be fair the text he printed was actually good.

There are levels of censorship everywhere. We have a copy of "Nudism in a Cold Climate" and we are going to be interviewing the author very soon and sharing it on ANW. One of the first things we noticed about the book was that the front cover hides the ladies breasts, but more concerning is that there are many images inside the book but not one has a penis on show. One of the questions we will be posing is why that is? No doubt a publishing decision - but if you are buying a book on naturism you shouldn't be surprised to find naked men in the pages. 

Similarly in the book "Cinema au Naturel" the lady on the cover has bright white stars on her breasts - which actually makes you focus on them more than the title and there is a lack of male genitals inside. Steve has a collection of serious film books about general cinema from the seventies and eighties and some of them have nudity of some sort on the front cover and some nudity inside (among many images that don't show nudity - the books are about film and not nudity) but what is interesting is that the nude images from various film stills are shown in a grown up, matter of fact manner that doesn't bring attention to them but just part of the film essays/articles/review in question. Why were books a couple of decades back not about naturism or nudity able to sensibly show a naked man or women without apparently offending readers but today books actually about naturism don't feel the same sense of freedom? 

Incidentally the books in question, like old naturist magazines (pre 1950's-ish) do have images where the pubic region has been blurred out due to nudity rules of the time. Reprinting these as a reflection of that time does make sense in books and magazines today. But what is also interesting is that they were done carefully and tastefully - maybe made easier due to the images being black and white - but in the case of women it actually looks more like they are shaved rather than censored. I wonder if the need to "white" out pubic hair on older naturist images actually helped encourage the trend of shaving - as people got used to see blank space in the pubic area. But it is much more acceptable seeing careful censoring that blends with the image than splodges and pictures slapped over the images in todays media. 

When Steve and I share images of our sons on the beach we tend to either show them posed in "penis protecting" poses or from the waist up but occasionally we do some blurring - and we always do it in a way that reflects the old black and white attitudes carefully blending the area with a skin coloured covering. Hopefully in the images we have chosen the censoring does really stand out. We don't like doing such things and we do feel that the world shouldn't be that way but we do have to tread a fine line between promoting naturism as family friendly, discouraging voyeurs and protecting our children. But is does show that these things can be done with a little more respect and the image above and many others like it do not show respect. 

 

Above is a quick attempt at tastefully removing the nipple from the Cinema book - I only spent a moment on it and I am having to obscure the large white star rather than just the nipple, but already the eye is less drawn to the breast on the left and the censorship is less obvious. Did Andy and Patti not deserve such sensitive treatment in the newspaper above. It appears that this pixelling is more about taking a stand and make an exclamation about it. 

It is so sad if we consider that even though we are up against such attitudes  some naturist websites do the same - and even if they don't pixelate they still choose poses that back the continued censorship of the natural body - whose side are they on? Doing it on Instagram is one thing - doing it on naturist websites is something else entirely.