Culture is Politics

"Culture is politics."

So exclaims Frank Rich in his essay today on the Sarah Palin phenomenon. Whatever your political lean, there can be no doubt that Palin's rise stems from her connection to cultural issues, such as abortion and religion, and her seemingly effortless ability to resonate with people who are fearful of change. It's an apocalyptic message, repeated in an equally populist way by Glenn Beck, that America, and life as we know it, is about to end if leftist and progressive ideas and agendas are allowed to thrive.

Suddenly, with the election of our nation's first African-American President, these fears have bubbled to the surface, with teabagging masses descending upon Washington DC like the torch-wielding mobs in "Frankenstein", trying to kill what they simply do not understand. It's totally irrational, but people who are afraid do not take time to seek out the facts, they only know what they feel, and voices like Palin and Beck, with their incessant demonization-du-jour, tap into that raw, visceral emotion.

Matt Taibbi, in a must-read column, hits the nail on the head.

At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).

It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.

A month ago I wrote about AANR's director Erich Schuttauf and his public comments about two cultural issues - the man arrested in Virginia for being nude in his own home, and the parents in Arizona who were arrested for taking nude photos of their children. Schuttauf got caught up in the noise on these issues, the 24 hour news spin, and made them official AANR issues, when in fact they were of marginal passing interest, fodder for blogs and forums, and not worthy of official comment or statement from nudist organizations. As I predicted, both of these stories dropped off the radar just as quickly as they appeared.

The challenge for nudists and naturists today is to separate the real issues out of the incessant noise of cultural argument, and to formulate a plan for future acceptance of nude recreation in society.

The recent battle over San Onofre Beach illustrates how the cultural divide is threatening nude sunbathing. Without rehashing the entire case, suffice it to say that California Parks officials banned nudity at San Onofre more on cultural reasons than practical. As the Naturist Action Committee reported on 5/30/08: "It is their (Parks Department officials) firm belief that the only way to rid the park of the criminals in the parking lot, on the Marine Base and the occasional miscreant on our beach is to remove the most supportive and positive influence there, the honest naturists at Trail 6."

This is a clear case of public officials taking on a "cultural enemy" rather than deal with the real issue at hand, both as a matter of expediency and to create the illusion that they were on top of the issue. Allen Baylis outlines the irrationality behind the San Onofre decision in his "Fact or Fiction" essay.

As I've noted before, I supported the NAC's lawsuit at San Onofre, even though the chances for success were slim. It was important for nudists and naturists to band together and fight, even for a lost cause, in order to bring attention to the issue, and gather support. When AANR chose not to support the NAC and pursue a course of appeasement and negotiation, they effectively threw San Onofre Beach under the bus, and revealed nudists and naturists to be a divided and weakened force.

In this particular battle in the culture wars, the NAC decided to fight the real battle, while AANR decided to run with what Taibbi refers to as a "brainless soap opera", blaming the NAC, claiming "victory" through appeasement, and scoring political points at the expense of a real loss for nude recreation.

It's truly shameful, especially from an organization that calls itself "the credible voice of reason for nude recreation." Even the use of such a slogan is divisive, inferring that The Naturist Society or other organizations have no credibility. It's just like Fox News when it refers to itself as "fair and balanced."

On the other hand, TNS proclaims as part of its mission statement: "The Naturist Society believes the interests of naturists are advanced through education and community outreach. TNS recognizes it is part of a larger community and welcomes the challenge of spreading the naturist and nudist message."

Taibbi goes on to say:

Complaining about the assholes we interact with on a daily basis is the #1 eternal pastime of the human race. We all do it, and we get to do it every day, because the world is full of assholes...and when we get home from work, this is usually what our loved ones hear about for at least the first hour or so.

Not health care, not financial regulatory reform, not Iraq or Afghanistan, but — assholes.

AANR and the NAC have been engaging in the assholes debate for the last year and a half. AANR blames the NAC for endangering nudity on all California state beaches, and the NAC blames AANR for giving Parks officials the impression that San Onofre was expendable. Plenty of assholes to blame on this one.

The blame game has reached epic proportions in today's culture. Don't like health care reform? Blame Obama, blame Pelosi, blame Reid. Don't like the lack of health care reform? Blame Boehner, blame Bush, blame all the obstructionist Republicans.

Sarah Palin fits perfectly into this new meme, never taking responsibility for her own failures, but rather blaming all of the assholes in her life, like Katie Couric, Steve Schmidt, Newsweek, or any other person or entity which dares to stand in the way of her ordained mission to save America. She is the self-proclaimed "credible voice" of the people.

The problem with all of this brainless cultural chatter is that it accomplishes nothing. We leap from one argument to the next without ever solving real problems. Issues like health insurance reform, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the current economic crisis should not be fodder for petty political posturing, but rather battles that need to be fought together as the common interests of all the American people. Life and death issues should not be debated "Hardball" style day in and day out - there has to come a time when doing the right thing trumps doing the political thing.

Same with San Onofre. The time has come for the asshole arguments to cease. I don't give a damn who is the "credible" voice on the public beaches issue, I just want results.

There's a scene in the Pixar movie "Up" where a talking dog is engaged in conversation when he suddenly turns his head and exclaims "Squirrel!". This sudden animated canine distraction says more about our culture as Americans than it does about the dog. In the midst of world-shattering crises, we are all to willing to focus our attention on the inane, such as Balloon Boy, Jon and Kate, and the Thrilla from Wasilla who winks and says "You Betcha" as part of her political platform.

Mixing culture with politics not only further divides people, it over-simplifies issues into black and white, completely erasing the gray. Nuance and subtelty are the backbones of any meaningful debate, and the essence of problem solving, so when we reduce these complex matters into stick figure cartoons, we render ourselves ineffective and irrelevant. As Matt Taibbi says, we are in danger of waging a "virtually endless war over nonsense."

Nudists and naturists need to realize than in a culturally explosive atmosphere, the nude lifestyle loses. We have practically no political power, and even less when divided into opposing camps. We are also in the odd position where non-sexual social nudity is taboo for most of mainstream America, and too tame for the swinger and porn culture which is a thriving sub-sector taking over traditional nudist venues.

We are literally caught in the middle.

So what is the prescription for nudists in dealing with this society where culture and politics are one and the same?

The floor is open for intelligent debate.

Up, Up and Away

Frank Rich has a thought-provoking and highly perceptive column today, using the Colorado balloon hoax incident as a metaphor for our own media-hyped economic bubble, and its eventual crash to the ground.

Next to the other hoaxes and fantasies that have been abetted by the news media in recent years, both the “balloon boy” and Chamber of Commerce ruses are benign. The Colorado balloon may have led to the rerouting of flights and the wasteful deployment of law enforcement resources. But at least it didn’t lead the country into fiasco the way George W. Bush’s flyboy spectacle on an aircraft carrier helped beguile most of the Beltway press and too much of the public into believing that the mission had been accomplished in Iraq. The Chamber of Commerce stunt was a blip of a business news hoax next to the constant parade of carnival barkers who flogged empty stocks on cable during the speculative Wall Street orgies of the dot-com and housing booms.

As Rich points out, Richard Henne is more likely to spend time behind bars for his hoax, than the "reckless gamblers at the top of Citigroup and A.I.G." will for theirs.

As a society we always tend to chase the bright shiny object rather than focus on the real problems. We prosecute children for "sexting" and ignore the underlying dangers of unprotected sex among teenagers. We arrest people for being nude in their own homes, yet we regulate and protect the pornography industry. We round up women for baring their breasts in coffee shops and charge them with prostitution, when it is actually men who buy and sell women as products. We arrest parents, charge them with child pornography, and take away their children over innocent vacation photos, while the true child pornographers still exploit and ruin young lives.

The balloon whipping across the Colorado sky was a distraction from the realities on the ground, a hypnotic spinning object which transfixed the country for an afternoon. It was simple to understand, gripping in its one dramatic belief, that there was a little boy inside and he was in almost certain fatal danger.

At the same time we were focused on the hoax, an average of 5 children under the age of 14 died in automobile accidents, and 504 were injured. In Miami, drowning has claimed the lives of 200 children since 2007. 5 children die from abuse each day.

And 45,000 people in America die each year because they have no health insurance.

Instead of solving the hard problems, we go after the easy. The alleged boy in the balloon was someone we could save with helicopters and emergency vehicles. When it turned out to be a hoax, we could show outrage, charge the parents with fraud, saddle them with millions of dollars in expenses for the rescue effort, and take their kids away for their own welfare.

And then we'll all feel better because justice was done.

It's like the Roman Polanski case. Even though he spent 42 days in custody 30 years ago, voluntarily deported himself, made financial restitution, has been forgiven by his victim, and will be forever known as a child rapist, we want to punish him even more, spending perhaps millions of dollars extraditing him, putting him on trial, and throwing him in jail.

One would think that police and government officials would better serve their community by working to rid Los Angeles of the term "Gang Capital of the Nation", a city which has a homicide rate of 9.6 (per 100,000 population), a forcible rape rate of 18.9, robbery 310.2, assault 302.4, and burglary 464.5.

But those problems are hard. Holding up Polanski as a law enforcement trophy will make everyone feel better, and will get lots of media attention as the "shiny balloon du jour."

To relate this to nudism and naturism, it was the NAC which did the hard thing when it came to the San Onofre beach case. When confronted with the California Department of Parks and Recreation's decision to ban nude sunbathing at that location, the NAC first tried negotiation, and when that failed, went to court.

AANR, on the other hand, decided instead to look at the shiny balloon in the sky, claiming "victory" by waving about a letter from the DPR which promised some sort of compromise.

Just like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved his "Munich Agreement" with Adolf Hitler and declared "peace for our time", when he opted for the shiny balloon instead of a real solution to the difficult problems of the day.

Appeasement, compromise, negotiation are all viable options to consider if one is bargaining from a position of strength. When an entity like the California Department of Parks and Recreation holds all the cards, including the courts, law enforcement officials and the entire state government, there is no negotiating. They do what they want. The only alternative is to fight.

Nudists and naturists are staggeringly weak when it comes to political power. In the case of San Onofre, when complaints about sexual activity began to rise, the DPR officials opted for the shiny balloon tactic by blaming the naturists instead of working to solve the root cause of the problem. When AANR refused to unite with the NAC in fighting at San Onofre, it cut whatever political power existed in half.

As long as nudists and naturists remain divided, hiding inside locked gates and drawn drapes, we will continue to be one of society's shiny balloons, something people will point to as the cause of many difficult problems, from child pornography to displays of public sexuality. The nude guy is always the first to be tased.

Miss California Pageant Eliminates Swimsuit Competition

They're taking the beauty out of beauty pageants.

Apparently the organizers of the Miss California Pageant want to turn the event into the style of a "runway show during fashion week."

I really have mixed feelings about this development. Yes, beauty pageants objectify women, they reek of phoniness, and they are hopelessly politically incorrect and dated. As far as I'm concerned, they should scrap them altogether.

And turning them into promotional vehicles for the fashion industry could be even worse than parading around women in swimsuits. At least the women are being judged by their actual bodies when they are mostly bare, instead of being judged by how well some designer's cloth looks on them.

No doubt that this is a knee-jerk reaction to the Carrie Prejean fiasco, which made the pageant industry look even more backwards in its neanderthal values. Surely there must be some other way for society to reward women for their achievements, rather than pitting themselves against each other in a false display of silicone-enhanced bodies and Cliff's notes prepared responses to judges' questions.

For all her bigoted views, at least Carrie Prejean had the courage to break with tradition and speak her mind. Her "opposite marriage" remark will likely go down as the most memorable line ever uttered at one of these events.

Pageant officials hate controversy. They prefer that their "winners" fit nicely into a mold which can be marketed to family values organizations. Mainstream America just loves a plastic Barbie doll.

So while the demise of the pageant industry isn't going to keep me awake at nights, I am a bit concerned over other ramifications of the removal of swimsuits by the California organizers. To me it's just another sign that we tend to perceive any displays of human flesh as something sexual. There's no doubt that putting women in bikinis on a stage isn't sexy, or appealing, but it's not sexual. If it is perceived as such, then are public pools and beaches next to be attacked for displaying too much skin?

As outdated as they now are perceived to be, at least nudist beauty pageants were honest. They were all about having the best bodies. No phoniness, no pretense, no politics, no talent competitions - just flesh. With the dawn of the feminist movement, these nudist pageants disappeared quickly, while mainstream public pageants have been dying a slow, painful death over the past three decades. The rise of child beauty pageants has been an odd development in this societal shift, raising the objectification of little girls, while at the same time attempting to reduce the objectification of grown women.

While people should never stop admiring beauty, there's something perverse about making nature's gift of sex appeal into a competition. Such obsession with mere physical appearance reminds me of Jack Nicholson's character Jonathan in "Carnal Knowledge", when his friend Sandy tells him "looks aren't everything, you know", and he responds with "believe me, looks are everything." Jonathan's obsession with looks eventually leads him to become a misogynist, never satisfied with any women he meets, until his only source of sexual arousal comes when his ego is stroked.

In a way, American Society has become Jonathan, constantly looking for the Utopian woman even in ways he could not imagine. Today he would be a plastic surgeon, trying in vain to create the perfect women to satisfy his own perverse visions. It's an endless stream of magazines, movies, books, internet sites and television shows which contribute to the media pageant of women's bodies, airbrushed and Photoshopped in wrongheaded efforts to sell this unattainable image to an insatiable public.

Even Carrie Prejean was not natural - the California pageant organization paid for her breast enlargement surgery. As despicably phony as this is, a recent pageant in Hungary required that contestants be surgically enhanced in order to make the cut. One young woman even had surgically adjusted toes.

So from my point of view, the banning of the swimsuit competition takes away the essence of what beauty pageants were originally designed to do - to honor natural beauty. As wrongheaded as it was in making beauty into a competitive event, especially in hindsight, at least it was honest. Adding talent competition, evening gowns, and scholarships to these pageants failed to obscure the fact that these pageants were really just all about a pretty face and a good figure.

Why do people watch pageants? A 1996 poll revealed that 87% of respondents voted to keep the swimsuit portion of the Miss America pageant when officials considered dropping it from the show. We are a voyeuristic society, no doubt.

We tend to turn everything into a competition, from ladies' garden clubs judging the best grown rose, to the American Kennel Club's dog shows. Movies, plays, television shows, books - they all have their awards. Even President Obama got a Nobel prize. Everybody remembers the gold medal winner, and nobody remembers who won the silver. Every college sells one of those "we're number one" foam fingers for sports teams, even though only one can make it to the top.

At least with beauty pageants, we are beginning to understand that that making physical attractiveness into a competitive sport is not only demeaning to the contestants, it's damaging to the perceptions of the viewers, the same way false images in magazines destroy women's self-esteem.

The more we drift from natural beauty into the distorted phoniness of the fashion industry, the more we lose contact with our own humanity. I fear this sanitizing of the pageant industry into an even more packaged product for mass consumption is even further dehumanizing the contestants, eventually to the point where we will no longer even need actual humans to compete, only a fashion designer's virtual fantasy.

Meghan McCain's T(w)itter Pic

The American obsession with female breasts continues. This time it's Meghan McCain who's coming under fire for having cleavage, after she posted a link on Twitter to the above photo of herself holding a book about Andy Warhol. Apparently some called her a slut.

McCain was surprised at the reaction, saying in a series of tweets: "So I took a fun picture not thinking anything about what I was wearing but apparently anything other than a pantsuit I am a slut, this is why I have been considering deleting my twitter account, what once was fun now just seems like a vessel for harassment.

"When I am alone in my apartment, I wear tank tops and sweat pants, I had no idea this makes me a 'slut', I can't even tell you how hurt I am."

"The kids were consequenced"

Several Minnesota students are in trouble for streaking and mooning at three separate St. Francis High School football games.

"The kids were consequenced," District Superintendent Edward Saxton said, adding that the students, all boys, were suspended for anywhere from one to 10 days...Immediately after one of the games, a road contest Sept. 18 in Fridley against Totino-Grace, three boys ran from one end of the field to the other "while the stands were still full ... and through the neighborhood," said police Detective Jennie Markham...The two 17-year-olds were accused of trespassing and disorderly conduct, she said. However, because of one of them "had no clothes, as in not a stitch [and] showing his genitals to people under the age of 16," a charge of fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct could be leveled, Markham said.

I'm not sure if "consequenced" is even a viable word, and this bastardization of the English language comes from a school superintendent?

Even more disturbing are some of the comments to the article, including one person who compares the streakers to child rapist Roman Polanski, and another who believes that throwing the teens in jail and imposing sex-offender status on them will straighten them out. Someone even offers that "there is no constitutional right allowing a person to show their genitals". Last time I checked the constitution, there was nothing in there banning genitals, either. Some comments are supportive, calling the sex-offender charge "horrific", and not to ruin the kid's life over a harmless prank. One commenter blames the overreaction on our "PC liberal society", and another blames the "crazy conservatives."

Back in the seventies, when I was in college, streaking was at its peak. One evening about 50 students ran around the campus in the nude, another day a group of young men streaked the dining hall, and the fad was so widespread that Ray Stevens had a hit song called "The Streak." What has happened over the past 30 years to turn something so harmless and funny into a criminal act? Roll back the clock a bit and decriminalize streaking and sexting. These excessively harsh punitive actions against our own children expose our society's deep-seated fear of our own bodies.

UPDATE: Here is another report which claims that when one streaker was captured, between 500 and 1000 people surrounded the police, yelling and throwing things to try and prevent the arrest. One protesting student was shocked with a stun gun. They also busted him with marijuana possession.

The school principal is quoted as saying that streaking is "a lot bigger issue than it was in the 1970s and it won't be tolerated." He is also quoted as praising the police officers, saying they did a "fabulous" job, and warned any further protests could be dealt the same penalties as the streakers. Whose side is this principal on? Does he really want half his student population in jail?

Good for the kids in protesting this idiotic persecution of streakers. They should all go on strike until the charges are dropped.

Aunty Mohja's Modesty Primer

At first I thought it was satire due to it's lighthearted and entertaining style, but apparently this four-part series for American Muslim women is serious, written by Mohna Kahf, a poet, novelist and a faculty member in the University of Arkansas' King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies. A snippet:

Who says Muslims are wrong about veiling? Honey, of course we’re right, Aunty Mohja says. The privacy of the crotch, the sanctity of the small of the back, and just plain physical dignity, those are some of the fruits of body modesty, and part of what sets us apart from species whose knuckles scrape the ground.

The hairy knees of the man beside me on the airplane and the tissue folded into the butt-cleavage of Aunty Mohja’s hometown coffee barista say that this civilized human trait can be drummed out of people. Bit by bit, through neglect, or deliberately, by embrace of the nutty notion that naked means free. Or by fashion and garment industries bizarrely out of touch with our elemental need for clothing that clothes us.

Speckled old thighs, for example, male or female be they, have presumably done some service in the world and are due respect, and sorry, they just don’t get it in Bermuda shorts, a garment invented for young British soldiers suffering the heat of empire at the turn of the twentieth century.

American society is at a loss for modesty, and Muslims are here to help. Aunty Mohja will show you how to take a leaf from our book of bodily modesty. For less tangible forms of modesty, you’re on your own. Aunty Mohja is not the best at working out modesty-of-the-self issues.

Part two is here. I'm at a loss for words, it's total culture shock to me.

Yet More Disinformation About Nudism

Jaunted has a snarky article about the nude hiking trail in Germany.

Do you know why our grunting ancestors decided to cover themselves with animal pelts? Because they realized that dirt is dirty. It must have been a radical insight at the time—"hey, all this sticky stuff doesn't get on my skin if I cover myself, and I even feel warmer"—but nevertheless they were able to apply their chimp-like analytical skills to the problem and crack that nut. Not so much with these hippies.

And don't get us started about the freedom of being able to drop the pretenses of civilization. The idea of covering yourself up to block the elements goes way beyond anything even close human culture. Elephants throw grass on their back to stay comfortable. Rhinos roll around in mud so they don't get sunburned. What's that? These naturists use sunblock? Well that's not very natural.

The truth is, the origin of clothing is still under debate. The most likely scenario is that modern Homo Sapiens migrated away from Africa to colder climates and needed more protection on their skin. Certainly there are a myriad of reasons for wearing textiles - warmth, decoration, modesty, business, religious and fraternal identities, protection from anything which can harm the skin, etc. Nobody disputes all that, so using these factors as a basis for an argument is pointless.

The issue is not that clothing is an important utilitarian and fashion element of our culture, it's that we have steeped ourselves so deeply into the wearing of textiles, that we have lost common sense on when it's appropriate not to wear clothes.

Take swimming, for example. What purpose is served by wearing a bathing suit, other than modesty, or Philistine laws? Hiking is another activity which is far better done in the nude, free of all the sticky clothing causing body temperatures to rise, and skin to chafe.

And don't forget that the original Greek Olympics were done in the nude. With all the recent controversy over new swimsuit technologies which are actually helping athletes to swim faster, perhaps we should return to the original idea of competing without clothes.

As for the sunblock argument, I'm so tired of this old meme which seems to pop up in every anti-nudist argument. Do not people in swimsuits also put on sunscreen to protect from UV rays? What about spectators in open grandstands, landscapers, construction workers, and anyone else being exposed to a lot of sun, don't they also need to seek relief and protection?

And what do people do when the temperature rises? They wear less clothing. They put on t-shirts, tank tops, shorts, sandals, flip-flops and anything else which allows the skin to breathe. The only reason people don't take everything off in the heat is because of society and culture, which stand in the way of common sense.

As for elephants, they don't have any sweat glands in their skin, hence their need to roll in the mud or throw dirt and grass on themselves. They do this to protect against sun and insects. Rhinos roll in the mud to keep cool and to kill ticks and lice.

If clothing was a viable answer to the discomfort of rhinos and elephants, would not zookeepers make every effort to cover them, and would not PETA be campaigning heavily against animal nudity?

People wear sunscreen, insect repellent, and they take baths. These habits of personal hygiene and protection are shared by all people, so ridiculing nudists for doing the same is a non-starter of an argument.

99% of people on the planet are not genetically blessed in a way that allows them to walk through clouds of dust Pig Pen-like and still look good at the end. It's not like a nude beach where at least people can wash off, and even nude beaches don't tend to bring out models of Olympian physique. Usually the opposite.

Another argument I'm really sick of. If 99% of all people are not "genetically blessed", then doesn't that make them perfectly normal? And the dirt accumulation argument is also stunningly stupid, as if clothing doesn't attract and hold far more dirt than skin does.

I basically see the same physiques at a nudist venue that I see at the local shopping mall. Perhaps we should only allow the 1% of people with "Olympian physiques" into retail outlets, or onto the beach, so nobody is offended by those who lack the Photoshopped perfection of supermodels and top athletes.

But this is the sort of pig ignorant attitude that we as nudist and naturists have to constantly counter with body positive information. Unfortunately, I think there are an awful lot of people who share this meatball's view that the human body is something to be reviled.

Actress Malin Akerman Says Nudity is Natural

In an interview published today, actress Malin Akerman ("Couples Retreat", "The Heartbreak Kid") credits her upbringing with her relaxed attitude about nudity.

Q. You've done a few nude scenes in movies and television. Is it your Swedish
background that makes you so comfortable with nudity?

A. I would imagine so. In Sweden, nudity is natural. It's not considered sexual. We've grown up with boobies on television. People are topless on the beach. My parents would sometimes walk naked from the bedroom to the bathroom. You don't blink because it's so natural. I always think of my parents when I take a role. If I had been brought up in a prudish household, perhaps I would think differently. But, if the role is a good one, the nudity is not even an afterthought.

Pennsylvania Sexting Case Reaches New Heights of Absurdity

Chambersburg Police Chief David Arnold is investigating about 30 high school students for sending nude photos with their cell phones, the the number could grow as the investigation proceeds.

"Currently, my understanding is what they could be charged with is felony child pornography. They would be on the Megan's list as a sex offender for the rest of their lives," said Eric Michael, Assistant Superintendent, Chambersburg Area School District.

Michael says he's now revamping the school district's Internet safety education program and extending it everyone.

"It's something that can't be solved by schools. It has to be solved by all of us," said Michael.

You can solve this problem right now by dropping the investigation and staying out of the private sex lives of teenagers. Nobody seems to care that these kids are actually having sex with each other, it's all about the images, which seem to have taken on some sort of power to sap the sensibility out of authorities.

This is about as absurd as the Supreme Court debating the legality of depictions of animal cruelty, when every night on television human beings are depicted as being raped and murdered under the most horrible of circumstances.

Do we really believe that the banning of images somehow makes the root of the problem magically disappear? In the case of sexting, does anyone truly believe that putting 30 high school students on a sex offender list will solve anything? It's truly stunning to hear a police chief and a school superintendent be so ready and willing to destroy the lives of perfectly normal teenagers in order to pursue some warped version of "justice".

These individuals have been given the task to protect and educate our children, not to ruin their lives.

Naughty Baristas

In a one-sided poor excuse for journalism article, Herald writer Debra Smith "reports" on the outraged crowd which gathered inside a Washington state church to "talk frankly" about the bikini hut scourge which is plaguing Snohomish County.

(Pastor and organizer Shahram) Hadian, a father of boys ages 5 and 2, said he is embarrassed to drive by the Grab-n-Go Espresso stand with his children. He talked with a 12-year-old neighbor who said the boys on his school bus shift over to one side when they drive by. The baristas have a right to self-expression, but the public also has a right to avoid seeing near-nudity and sexual behavior, he said. “There’s a part of me that said enough is enough.”By week’s end, organizers plan to set up a Web site, www.takeactionsnoco.info, where they want to post videos of baristas who appear to be violating county laws. They said they already have footage...“We sit here for an hour and we see them doing illegal things,” Hadian said Tuesday afternoon. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do some surveillance.”

So, the baristas have a "right to self-expression", but these people want that right revoked. Be careful what you wish for - these knee-jerk dress code ordinances don't stand up to constitutional scrutiny, and it's not likely that the city council will try to outlaw the wearing of bikinis, anyway.

I have a quick and easy fix for people who are offended by the sight of women wearing bikinis - look away. Don't buy coffee at the bikini huts. Pay attention to traffic and stop looking whenever you pass by. Drive down another street. Put away the cameras, or focus them on your own business.

And good luck to these vitriolic vigilantes when they set up their web site accusing people of illegal behavior. Not only are they setting themselves up for a healthy lawsuit, they will be actually promoting the businesses they are attempting to suppress.

I think it's hilarious that the boys on the school bus "shift over to one side" when they pass one of these coffee huts, as if that's something dangerous to their normal sexual development. You got trouble my friends, with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for "Boobs".

This is an issue that directly affects nudism because these people want to regulate "near-nudity", which seems to be a new concept that they just made up out of frustration and irrational thinking, and to arbitrarily designate such "near-nudity" establishments as adult entertainment subject to zoning and age restrictions. Any nudist venue or non-landed club could conceivably fall under these new restrictions depending on how the law is written, as would drug and convenience stores where girlie mags and condoms are sold.

My sense is that the city council is just going to have to live with the bikini huts. Any attempts to impose dress codes or widen the definition of adult entertainment businesses will only result in lawsuits and more trouble.

It's also likely that any overt sexual activity has died down at these joints due to all the increased scrutiny, so all the surveillance and investigations will just be a waste of taxpayer's money. As one reader noted in the comment section of the article, "Where was the meeting about the increased theft, gang and drug activity in Silver Lake?" It's obvious that police have more important matters to attend to.

The county prosecutor’s office advised the sheriff’s office that part of the county’s ordinance wouldn’t stand up in court, said deputy Jeffrey Miller at Tuesday’s meeting. He said his office wants to deal with the conduct, not the attire. The conduct has gotten “more out there than we anticipated.”“We are a public safety organization not the fashion police,” he said. “There are some things that have to be worked on the legislative side before we can take action.”

So the ball is in the court of the city council, which finds itself impotent to deal with the bikini huts and is desperately trying to make up something to placate the masses at Clearview Foursquare Church. Aside from monitoring the coffee shops for sexual behavior, there's really nothing they can do that's constitutional.

“The United States is watching us,” (Stephanie) Postier said when addressing the audience. “How is Washington state going to take a stand? This is not what we want to be known for.”

Right, you do not want to be known as the town that tried to ban the wearing of bikinis, so live and let live. Take away the freedom of the baristas, and you lose a little more freedom of your own.

Rejected by Nudist Clubhouse

This photo of me in 1955 was rejected by Nudist Clubhouse. According to moderator Brian, "our merchant account (Visa and Mastercard) will not allow photos of anyone under the age of 18, nude or clothed." Nude or clothed? Since when is any photo of a clothed child subject to this perverse censorship?

This sweet photo is allowed on Flickr:

There are thousands of lovely photographs of parents and their children on Flickr, many of them nudes. They are not pornographic, indecent, or inappropriate whatsoever.

What does it say about any organization that professes to call itself "nudist", yet rejects the most innocent of childhood pictures? Nudist Clubhouse is directly affiliated with AANR, which boasts on its website:

There’s probably no better recommendation for nude recreation than the high spirits of children and families at AANR clubs. Even non-nudist parents know how difficult it can be to keep youngsters from running around the house naked. Kids usually take to our clubs like ducks to water, joyfully running, playing, and splashing without a stitch on. No sandy swimsuits to bog them down. Best of all, when it’s time to clean up, a bath is just a hop, skip, and a jump in the nearest lake or shower.

All the hysteria over innocent childhood photos, including the case of the couple in Arizona who had their kids taken away for a month over nude vacation snapshots, is causing us to look at our own children through the eyes of a pedophile. Perversity is in the mind of the beholder.

I've left Skinbook and TrueNudists because they were basically meat markets. I've been giving Nudist Clubhouse a chance, and it turns out they are not much better, rejecting family values and accepting many photos from members that are nothing more than exhibitionist crotch shots like here, here, here and here. Where I once speculated that these online nudist social networks were going to be a positive influence in the future of nudism, I now believe that they are doing more harm than good.

It's like Caliente and Paradise Lakes, setting aside traditional nudist and naturist family values and going for the titillation factor, associating with swinger's groups or bringing in nude models to draw in male voyeurs and their wallets, and both leaving AANR as a consequence.

This is not a matter for negotiation, AANR, and you cannot have it both ways. On one hand you embrace children into the nudist lifestyle, and on the other you reject them outright. If you cannot stand by your principles, you haven't any.

Is Nudism Hedonistic?

Naturally Nude asks the question:

Is nudism just a hedonistic mind f**k? I often ask myself this question. Am I really in nude recreation for all the high philosophical reasons that nudists are always spouting about? When you ask any nudist "why" they're a nudist, the first thing they usually say is "for the freedom." Freedom? Freedom for what, from what? Anytime I hear the word "freedom" I think of someone living under political oppression yearning to be free. Are your clothes "really" oppressing you??

It's a fair question, and a subject that needs to be addressed on a regular basis. First, let's look at the definition of "hedonism":

he·don·ism
n.
1. Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.
2. Philosophy The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.
3. Psychology The doctrine holding that behavior is motivated by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

While not purely hedonistic, nudism is, in part, about the pursuit of pleasure. To be nude in nature, on a hiking trail or in the ocean, is a feast for the senses. No question about it. And nudists believe that such pleasure is "intrinsically good".

As for clothing "oppressing" people, it all depends upon a person's particular point of view. For me, I've always been uncomfortable in clothes. Throughout high school our dress code was jacket and tie in classrooms with no air conditioning. After swimming in the nude at the YMCA as a young boy, I hated wearing bathing suits, and the trunks often came off when swimming with friends in local ponds. For years my "uniform" was a t-shirt and comfortable jeans during the day, which is all I could stand wearing, and as far back as I can remember I slept only in briefs, and they usually came off during the night. I never shop for my own clothes - my wife does all the shopping for me, not because I'm lazy, it's just that I despise the process of trying on clothes in those little cubicles.

So for me, clothing is oppressive, and being nude is liberating. Only when completely naked do I feel like my true self. When clothed, I am inhibited.

I would say that for most people, the opposite is true. Clothing plays a major role in people expressing identity, from early childhood to old age, in expressing sexuality, professionalism, fraternalism, militarism, and more. It's nearly impossible to conceive of our society functioning without clothes because of the importance people place on textiles, from the beach to the board room.

Naturally Nude goes on to question nudist motivations, if the removal of clothes in social situations is merely a precept to swinging or other sexual activity, or are those who engage in nudism merely voyeurs or exhibitionists. Again, more fair questions.

I have no doubt that some people get into nudism in order to achieve a sexual thrill. If so, they will be quickly disappointed when they discover the mundane, matter-of-fact, laid-back and non-sexual atmosphere of a nudist venue. These folks need to go to Caliente or Hedonism, or a number of other adult lifestyle clubs in order to satiate their desires.

An exhibitionist or voyeur will be quickly spotted and removed from a nudist resort.

Any honest nudist will tell you that people do indeed look, and are looked at. That is normal. People check each other out when they're all wearing clothes, too. Ultimately, once the initial glances are finished, there's more eye-to-eye contact between nudists than in just about any other social situation, with everyone going out of their way not to stare.

A mere fifty years ago it was more socially acceptable for men to be nude with each other, at the YMCA, at the swimming hole, in the locker room, etc. The women's movement in the late 60s and early 70s put an end to nude swimming at the Y, and a rise in homophobia and Christianist influence outlawed skinny-dipping, and nude gang showers in the schools are rare, if non-existent.

So, my answer to Naturally Nude is no, nudism is not a hedonistic mind fuck, but society and culture are. We are taught from an early age to be modest, to be ashamed of our bodies, to sexualize body parts such as women's breasts to the point of making their exposure criminal, and we prosecute children for taking photos of their own bodies. It's the media marketing sexuality, coupled with the irrational response of the "moral" right and the therapeutic teachings of the left, which are causing this unhealthy and schizophrenic American obsession with sexuality. We are a country in crisis when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy, yet we are too embarrassed to even talk to our children about sex, deferring that responsibility to the government and schools, who push abstinence only education. It's all quite insane.

Nudism and naturism are a means in which to counterract all this nonsense that society heaps upon us. So while the shedding of clothes can be somewhat hedonistic, it's also authentic to its naturist philosophies. As the Naturist Society states: "body acceptance is the idea, nude recreation is the way". Perhaps not the only way, but getting rid of the clothes helps the mind to better formulate the true nature of humanity, stripped of textile identity and media manipulated imagery.

No Place for Children

Guy W. Farmer is apparently a long-time critic of Burning Man, and a new column published today attacks the festival as being a magnet for sex offenders.

So where was Child and Family Services? Don't ask. When I visited Burning Man last year I saw a naked middle-aged man who could have been a child molester cavorting dangerously near “Kidsville.” My official escorts laughed it off, explaining that everyone goes naked at Burning Man, “the way God intended.” OK, but I don't think God intends to make young children readily available to sex offenders on public lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which makes more than $1 million a year off a Black Rock Desert bacchanal that grosses $12 million to $15 million each year for its Bay Area organizers.

I'm not recommending that people take their kids to Burning Man, but this sort of hyperventilating over sex offenders is not only overblown, it's patently dishonest. Farmer cites an example of the arrest of a 20 year-old man arrested on a warrant for some fondling incidents in Texas unrelated to Burning Man, and then he exclaims that "he wasn't the only sex offender at the event" without presenting any evidence to support this claim.

Attendance at the 2009 Burning Man festival peaked at an estimated 43,435 people on one day. That would make the event roughly the size of Rockville Maryland, a very upscale and respectable city in affluent Montgomery County, which has a registered sex offender list with 55 people, making the ratio of residents to offenders 1104 to 1. By contrast, Burning man has a 43,435 to 1 ratio, if you go by Farmer's claims.

If you accept Farmer's argument, then you must conclude that the city of Rockville is no place for children.

Farmer's beef with Burning Man seems to be primarily that the festival is held on public lands, and his dishonest use of statistics is exactly how the California Department of Parks and Recreation has attacked the nude sunbathers at San Onofre Beach.

What is really at the heart of these attacks is the nudity - some people cannot accept the unclothed human body as the natural state. They believe that the addition of clothing, even a scanty bathing suit, will magically transform people into law-abiding citizens, while ignoring the fact that virtually all crimes are committed by people wearing clothes.

More and more nude events are being held on public lands -the World Naked Bike Ride, Spencer Tunick's photo installations, Bare-to-Breakers, Burning Man and the Fremont Solstice Parade, and more. Not only are these events well-attended and widely accepted, they have become modern traditions.

In a recent post on her Open Source Sex blog, Violet Blue wrote, "Those who can’t be bothered to understand can just suck it up. Or, they can live in the present with the rest of us and quite worrying what people think. This is the new school of life."

Now Violet is talking about sex, but the same attitude can and should be adopted by naturists in gaining more widespread acceptance. As The Academic Naturist recently wrote in his Guerrilla Naturism essay, "I believe that the primary reason that people don't like us is because they don't understand us, followed by the opinion that we are a rare group. The solution is to educate. We need to show that there are a lot of us, that nudity itself isn't bad, and that we are good people just like them."

I don't think the folks at Burning Man give a hoot what people like Guy W. Farmer think, and have no interest in educating anybody. Same for the folks at Bare to Breakers and other events. Much of this public nudity has little to do with defined naturism - it's a form of rebellion, a pushing back against the society and culture which has turned the human body into a product, something to be adorned, altered and admired for its appearance, and not its essence.

So Guy W. Farmer can rant and rail all he wants against Burning Man and other events with public nudity, and cry that they are somehow dangerous for children, but he ignores the overwhelming numbers of young people who are participating in these events. No place for children, Guy? These are your children, and they're not happy with the schizophrenic culture your generation has created, a society steeped in pornography and sexual imagery, yet still sexually repressed and immature.

So remember, Guy - at Burning Man, they are burning you.

Punish the Monkey, Let the Organ Grinder Go

Well, they found a way in Washington state to close down those bikini hut coffee shops - they have charged five young women with prostitution.

Detectives also witnessed some of the women charge customers to touch their bare breasts and naked buttocks. Touching of that kind, for pay, falls under the city's definition of prostitution.

As is typical in "investigations" like this, it was the undercover cops who were the recipients of the alleged sex shows.

On a second visit, a detective was told he couldn't have a mocha because the stand was out of chocolate. He also was told he couldn't order a small drink because they only served 20-ounce beverages.The barista told him that for $20, she and the other barista would give him a show. He paid and they bared their breasts and pulled down their undergarments, police reports said.

He paid. HE PAID. And apparently lots of other men PAID. Yet the "city's definition of prostitution" apparently does not include any responsibility on the part of the men who employ, encourage, exploit and PAY women to take off their clothes.

This wonderful little photo essay "Waiting Topless" on the Vassalboro topless coffee shop, which later burned to the ground, shows the humanity behind the objectification, that these young women who bare their breasts for money are just trying to make ends meet in a horrible economy.

So congratulations to all involved in the Washington state bikini hut scandal, you have successfully taken down the weakest members of society, likely ruining their lives, and the lives of their loved ones. What real men you must all be.

Epiphany

A columnist at the Burning Man festival looked forward to the "Critical Tits" bicycle ride like an "eight-year old on the night before Christmas", but as he stood there with his camera when the topfree riders rode by, he had an epiphany.

Here’s the thing. When I was nine, my father caught me smoking one of his cigarettes. He made me smoke the whole pack. Suddenly cigarettes weren’t so alluring. When you are standing alongside a dusty road and 3,000 pairs of breasts are cruising by you, they lose their mystery, their seduction. You start to realize that the woman in front of you is more than a collection of body parts. Maybe at the end of the day, that is what the ride is about.

It's not easy overcoming decades of female breast objectification in the minds of modern males, but this particular example proves that it is possible to wipe away the distortion, even if it has to be done one brain at a time.

14 Year-Olds Are the Most Sexually Dangerous Group in America

America is turning its children into sex offenders. The chart above, from the US Department of Justice, illustrates how we are criminalizing what was once a normal part of adolescence - experimenting with sex. Via Andrew Sullivan's blog comes this essay.

In our new bizarre world of sexual offender legislation each child is a victim and a perpetrator. As the victim, they get no help, of course. The victim status is the excuse needed so that the sledgehammer may be used on the other child. So each becomes a perpetrator. They will be arrested; they will be forced into court. They are likely to be convicted and sentenced. They may be placed into the various prisons for children that have been established—places where they will learn what unwilling, sexual attacks are really like. They will be tortured by therapists and eventually released—maybe. Even that is no longer guaranteed under our sex panic. Today, someone who has served their sentence can then be held in preventative detention for the rest of their natural life because the mob demands it. And the politicians give the mob what it wants.

As any reader of this blog knows, I've been railing against the criminalization of "sexting" and other youthful sexual indiscretions for some time now. Teens have been having sex since long before recorded history, but it is only now in the age of technology and information that there is hard evidence that such activity exists. Where once a heavy petting session in the back seat of an automobile yielded merely some boastful claims and the hushed passing of secrets, now there are cell-phone photos, text messages, and Internet postings, all flowing in the trough for overzealous prosecutors, Christianist lawmakers and panicked parents to feed off.

It takes so little for this happen to a child. A girl in school has oral sex with a boy in school. She becomes a sex offender for the rest of her life. Streaking a school event, as a practical joke, becomes a sex crime in the new America. Two kids “moon” a passerby and are incarcerated in jail as sex offenders, where they may well learn a lesson or two about rape. A teenager, who takes a sexy of photo of him, or herself, is paraded around the community as a “child pornographer” for the rest of his or her life. Two kids in the back seat of a car have fumbling sex. The law says one is an offender because the other is a “victim.” One week later, a birthday passes, and it is no longer a crime. One week’s difference and a life is ruined. In other cases an act that is legal on Monday is illegal on Tuesday because the older of the two turned one year older. That becomes enough to qualify him, or her, as an offender.

The magnitude of this perversion of natural and man-made laws cannot be underestimated. Recently The Economist ran an editorial on the harsh punishment of sex offenders.

Because so many offences require registration, the number of registered sex offenders in America has exploded. As of December last year, there were 674,000 of them, according to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. If they were all crammed into a single state, it would be more populous than Wyoming, Vermont or North Dakota. As a share of its population, America registers more than four times as many people as Britain, which is unusually harsh on sex offenders. America’s registers keep swelling, not least because in 17 states, registration is for life.

So the rounding up and persecution of sex offenders is the new red scare, the new witch hunt, the new crucible in which to burn our fears. I recently received a postcard telling me that a sex offender moved into the neighborhood, giving his name and address. I'm sure everyone in the area got one, too, and everyone is now living in a certain amount of fear. I do not know what this man did, but I do know that I have never in my life received a notice when a bank robber, murderer, embezzler or violent criminal ever moved into my neighborhood.

I cannot state enough that true child pornographers, rapists, kidnappers and other violent criminals who would take the innocence, health or property of any other human being deserves to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Human vermin like Phillip Garrido, if found to be guilty of the heinous crimes with which he is accused, deserve no mercy from the courts.

But to take a teenager who is only fumbling around and experimenting with sexuality, and turn that kid into a sex criminal, is doing precisely the opposite of what the law intends. Thankfully people are beginning to wake up to this bastardization of justice, but it's too late to help so many of the kids who ended up behind bars, kicked out of school, found themselves unable to secure meaningful work, or ended up living in the streets.

These kids are criminals, not necessarily because they violated the life, liberty or property of another person. They are criminals because the politicians defined them as criminals. These damned “family values” conservatives, and compassionate feminist Leftists, who banded together to “save the children,” turned America’s kids into sex offenders by fiat. And they feel good about it. They are satisfied by it and only wish more had been rounded up earlier. The Left wants everyone in therapy and under the perpetual care of the state, and the Right wants everyone in prison, or in fear of the law, and under the thumb of the police. And that is what is happening. [Classically Liberal]

Columnist Belittles Topfreedom Movement

One only has to read this column to realize that the women's topfreedom movement exists in order to counter the immature attitudes and actions of men.

From my vantage point, there were only a dozen or so women who were nearly nude on top — I say "nearly" because they all wore pasties to prevent any actual toplessness. So basically, National Go- Topless Day was more like National Gawking-Men Day.

The men, by the way, were not topless themselves, for which I was grateful, as some of them had bodies the shape of meatloaf. By "meatloaf," I mean both the food and the singer.

The organization behind the rally is the Raelian Movement, which, according to the literature they handed out, "recognizes that life on Earth was created by advanced extraterrestrial scientists." So no, the whole "Go-Topless" thing is not the craziest idea they've ever come up with.

Naturally, this "writer" goes on to further ridicule the Raelian movement, which illustrates the problem with having a marginal UFO cult aligning itself with a serious equality issue.

The columnist goes on to say:

Somehow, seeing women dressed seemed sexier to me than seeing topless women marching down the street with a guy exhorting them with a bullhorn, but I guess it is all a matter of personal taste.

"Personal taste" has nothing to do with it, but this line does show that the criminalization of women's breasts in our society has nothing to do with equality, or civil rights, but more with the immature mental state of the American male.

Image via Wikipedia

"Talk to a Therapist"

A woman writes to Ellie complaining about her 25 year-old daughter's penchant for wearing low-cut and see-through tops.

We now have a good relationship and she visits us often. However, she has taken to going braless in flimsy materials where her full breasts and nipples are visible. I wouldn't want any woman coming to my home with my husband there, wearing practically nothing.

Instead of Ellie explaining to "Stressed" that nipples and breasts are nothing to get upset about, she offers this advice:

It's time you stopped being afraid to alienate her ... This may even be her adult way of "testing you," wanting you to care enough to be honest (without putting her down). Try to do it gently and with humour, as in, "You're gorgeous but we're seeing too much of you for parental comfort, so here's a shirt to wear while you're here." Also, be upfront in explaining that the younger girls aren't allowed to dress like that, as they're not as capable as she is of handling any overt reaction.

However, "sexual jealousy" has nothing to do with her clothing. It's related to your insecurities – perhaps about middle age, perhaps about your marriage. If it persists, talk to a therapist about it.

So, Ellie tells her to alienate her daughter by telling her to cover up, teach the younger children that the older daughter dresses like a slut, and to talk to a therapist. All over the sight of female breasts! How about telling the woman to simply stop staring at her daughter's breasts if they're upsetting her so much.

What other culture on earth would allow nipples to potentially break up a family? Complete insanity.

More on Cassidy Nicosia's Topfree Protest

Phillip Bantz of The Keene Sentinel has more details on Cassidy Nicosia and why police prosecutors dropped the indecent exposure and lewdness charges for her topfree protest on August 23.

Last week, police prosecutors D. Chris McLaughlin and Eliezer Rivera decided to drop the charge of indecent exposure and lewdness against Nicosia. The charge was dropped because walking down the street topless does not qualify as a crime under state law, Keene police Lt. Jay U. Duguay said.The law states that a person commits indecent exposure and lewdness if he or she fornicates, exposes genitals or performs any other “act of gross lewdness … likely to cause affront or alarm” in public.“She wasn’t fornicating or exposing genitals — breasts aren’t genitals,” Duguay said. “No one who complained about it said that it was gross lewdness.”While towns and cities may enact ordinances that prohibit women from going topless in public, Keene has no such ordinance, Duguay said.

One of the more interesting aspects of this case is that one of the reasons the charges were dropped has to do with the prosecutors' fears that should the issue have been presented to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, it was a good possibility that the language in the statute could be ruled as being "too broad", and therefore the judges could throw it out completely.

A topfree demonstration in support of Nicosia was scheduled on Wednesday, and it's not clear if that event will proceed. At any rate, even though no court decision come down on this case, it appears that Cassidy's protest has revealed that women's topfreedom is legal in Keene, New Hampshire.

Eyesores

A commentary in the Times states that a precondition for a naturist beach is a "suitably secluded coastline."

The human body unadorned is only rarely a thing of beauty, and in few cases does its loveliness increase. A wish to avoid the unexpected sight of it is not prejudice but aesthetic sense.

Pure, unadulterated hogwash, and completely offensive, too.

The editorial also claims that naturism is a personal choice, and therefore not subject to legal equality considerations. Well, the wearing of clothes is also a personal choice - deciding what costume to don, what color combinations, what style. Same with beachwear. Some wear suits which cover most of the epidermal landscape, some wear next to nothing. One does not discriminate against people on the beach based upon their degree of coverage, so why should society place barriers against complete nudity, which is only one small step from what already exists?

The aesthetic argument against total nudity does not hold up considering the disastrous fashion sense of many people, or the fleshy folds which pour over the sides of bikinis and speedos. How can complete nudity be any more or less offensive than the supposed eyesores which already dot the human landscape?

No, the real issue here is genitals and nipples. Mostly the genital thing. Somehow over the centuries, people and their governments have decided that these sexual organs simply must not be seen in public, that they somehow have this power which will transform the average viewer into some sort of monster, out of control and destroying society. So we cover these parts up neatly and discreetly, protecting the children and little old ladies who might be ruined for life or sent to an early dirt nap at the mere sight of a penis or vagina.

Truth be told, we've all seen these body parts, and we see them every day when we get dressed, or bathe, or make love. We also see them in magazines, movies, art museums, and anywhere visuals occur, and when it comes to the Internet, it's becoming increasingly hard not to see genitals close up and angry, pounding into each other in full high-definition wide screen glory.

But somehow in natural, non-sexual settings like beaches and hiking trails, these genitals and nipples are eyesores, subject to the "stigma of the snigger", as the editorial so subtly puts it. And to dare call naturism a mere "personal choice" as if this is something to be dismissed - well, where would we all be without personal choices, which give us all uniqueness and spirit of life? Denying naturists their small spot of sand, merely because someone looking might be offended, is stomping on personal choice, and treads upon the basic human freedom we all should have to be natural in nature, as is intended by design, divine or otherwise.

There are very simple solutions for all those who are offended by naturists. Look away. Avert your glance. Bury your nose in a book. Cover your eyes. Walk somewhere else. Go to another stretch of beach. Do any or all of these things and you cannot possibly be offended, unless you harbor some inner prejudice which precludes you from accepting the simple personal choices of others.