Shucking Oysters: Fleshy Bits
By Alex Allen
Like being naked? Your global tribe has got you covered, as it were. Bits and Bums. Naked Earthlings. The Cantankerous Naturist. The Discerning Nudist. The Free Range Naturist. The Meandering Naturist. The list goes on. In the world of fleshy protuberances, it’s a veritable buffet of naked wisdom and adventure out there.
The Rocky Mountain Naturist Club out of Denver hosts a naked bowling night where you can strike a pose while bonding with fellow naturists. Imagine laser tag naked, where every hit feels just a little more personal. At the 300 Club in Antarctica, members must endure a temperature swing of 300°F, by first enduring a sauna that is heated to 200°F and then running naked around the South Pole with an outdoor temperature below -100°F. Or how about a naked cruise? Bare Necessities, a Texas-based travel company specializes in such spectacles. To be clear, it’s a cruise for nudists not for intentional sexual liaisons on the upper starboard deck. Their website explicitly states, “If you are seeking a lifestyle or swinger experience, we are not the appropriate cruise for you.”
So, what does a naked cruise entail? One Reddit member bared it all. First, no photos in pubic – I mean public – areas, including the pools and dance venues, but you can place your naked butt pretty much anywhere. The self-serve buffet is clothes-free, however, clothing is required for meals in the dining rooms. Passengers can freely roam the ship nude when it’s at sea or anchored at port, but when docked alongside a non-nude cruise ship, clothing is mandatory. Similarly, when port authorities are on board, nudity is strictly prohibited. While prices vary depending on who you cruise with for 11 days, the most popular stateroom – a cabin with balcony – will set you back almost $4,000. Ocean view staterooms without balconies are around $3,000. And no surprise, the basic passenger profile is older (50s and up) and predominately from the US. Naked cruises seem to be the perfect antidote to retirement: go frolic and get naked with a bunch of strangers.
Of course, as Paul Simon wrote, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. A French resort town, located in the Vendée region on France’s Atlantic coast, recently announced fines of up to 150 euros ($175) for those walking around the town “half-naked.” Mayor Yannick Moreau posted: “If you want to show off your pecs and your best swimming shorts in Les Sables d’Olonne there are 11 kilometres of beach at your disposal.” It’s the latest in a string of French towns cracking down on what is seen as disrespectful behaviour. And it’s not just France. In 2023, authorities in the Spanish city of Malaga announced that anyone seen in the street or public spaces without clothes, or wearing only underwear, would face a fine of up to 750 euros ($874).
On Hornby, from the local grocery store to the pizza joint, we are witness to every style of swimming attire imaginable, often revealing too much or too little. Hannah Brooks Olsen in an article on how the swimsuit has evolved, wrote: “In the past several years, body-positive bloggers and personalities have come out hard against the idea that only the genetically blessed or extremely diligent dieters deserve to don a bikini. Now, from plus-sized suit options to hashtag campaigns encouraging folks of all sizes to take it off, the new beach bodies – which is to say, bodies on beaches – are having a moment.”
For the vast majority of human existence, a beach body was about the same as any other kind of body: a nude one. It wasn’t until we residents of the Western world perfected the art of body shaming that our beach bodies became our bathing-suit-wearing bodies. Today, as Brookes Olsen wrote, “outfits for aquatic recreation have pushed at our collective limits. They’ve blurred the lines around which body parts we can expose and under what conditions.”
In her succinctly titled blog, “Felicity Jones Nude Bathing Is Better Than Bathing Suits,” Jones’ claims that the bathing suit is one of the most useless articles of clothing ever invented by humanity. “Its only purpose is to cover up the body parts that American culture (and other cultures) has deemed obscene: butts, genitals and female nipples.” Jones’ notes, in the Western world, the general consensus seems to be that by removing our bathing suits, all hell will break loose. We will become overrun with public sex. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it would seem that nude beaches and nudist resorts would create a more equal and less sexual environment because everyone is on the same level: naked.
Charles Hope, a Washington DC, pastor, warns that we need to regain our senses at the beach. “I’ve always remained astonished at the tiny and revealing swimwear worn by many women. Frankly, it’s so revealing and over the top that I don’t even find most of it attractive, just lust provoking, and lust isn’t pretty. No, I see a naked woman, not a modest one. Wearing a bikini is not modest. It just isn’t. And frankly, a lot of the tight fitting, low cut, one-piece suits aren’t all that modest either.”
Out on the beach, sadly, Pastor Hope, only sees young girls and women “denuding” themselves, in his words: “I walk, I do not sit on the beach, lest my celibate eyes, were to alight on a particular woman and stare too long.”
For the record, and for the sake of equality, Pastor Hope did add, “if a man wears a tight Speedo, I am going to say he is out of line and is dressed immodestly. But frankly, I almost never see that today. Most men would not be caught dead in such a silly thing.” Let alone budgie smuggling.
