"Young Nudists at Sunsport Gardens Naturist Resort Reveal More Than Bare Asses"
A 29-year old ginger with a low ponytail, Chris, came in from Washington State, where he and his wife help organize Vita Nuda, another naturist organization. Annette, as it turns out, is a 21-year old student from Westin who grew up getting naked with the family. She was at this Spring Bash with her brother and twin sister, their seventh bash. "It's not a big deal in our family," she said matter-of-factly, "I'd say we're very liberal... I guess." And we all laughed.
Chris clarified that whole point in coming here isn't about getting undressed in front of people, but rather it allows you to do the things you can't do at home naked, "It's not so much about being in public, it's about being able to do other things." They can play volleyball (again...), swim, and watch a band. We then discussed the uselessness of bathing suits.
He refused to give in and admit that there are things that can be more awkward when you're naked. I mean, I can think of like a million things that could get weirder when not guarding your balls with fabric. Jumping rope? Riding bike? Standing in a packed room?
Aaron, an insightful South Carolinian, joined our conversation. In his Southern drawl, he added that, honestly, some people don't like to do yoga naked. And you can imagine why.
"Being naked is a lifestyle, it's not for everybody," Annette said, "It gets you in touch with yourself."
Aaron, who'd been a naturist for three years, says he got into it for, he guesses, "deeper reasons." Growing up with body issues, after losing a lot of weight, "my skin didn't shrink up tight," he explained. Aaron was always wearing a T-shirt to the beach, now he's just naked. "For me, now, I'd rather be nude than just topless, I can feel that belt going around me, and I'm just more self-conscious. That's maybe just me."
We got on the steamy topic of nudity and sex. Usually, if you're naked, you're getting down, taking a shower, or something. How does IT become a thing when, you're already naked? Aaron pointed out: "That's coming from the viewpoint that nudity is an intimate thing." See, getting to the heart of the matter, this guy! "This setting isn't necessarily intimate." Except for the hot tub, he had a really valid point.
"Genuine intimacy is an actual connection with another person, it's not nudity," Chris noted. "This is actually meeting the other individual. Having everybody naked, in my opinion, at least, you meet the other person faster, because there's less of a barrier. Well, clearly there's less of a barrier." We all laughed again. "There's a few layers less!" Annette joked.
Sandy and I had spoken on the topic earlier. Being naked isn't inherently sexual, like getting a bath at the hospital, for instance. But how do people deal with the tension of being naked and out and frolicking around with their peers? She said men will typically stay in the pool if they get excited, and the Sunsport staff will ask someone to cover up and exit the area if they're inappropriate. I commented on how embarrassing that must be! She laughed, "I know it sounds really weird! But it's necessary, we're a family resort. We understand that these are natural things that happen." But she admitted there's an elusiveness in matters of sexual intimacy. "I can see my husband naked now, and it does nothing for me, but in an hour, it could. But why? Who knows what that reason could be. Part of that is what's going on inside. Your emotion that you have toward it."
Mid-conversation, Morley showed up to add his two cents with Florida native, Sunny -- who in an email said she'd be the one out there with the green pubes -- her partner Tommy, and Robbe. Sunny's 10 month old (who she calls the "community baby") is still breastfeeding. She's topless.
Sunny, whose fun, brightly colored sunglasses hung from her many necklaces said on the topic of meeting people without clothes, "There's no way to judge them, because there's nothing to judge them on." I pointed out her glasses are a form of expression. I asked if there's some sort of nudist subculture fashion, to express themselves with ornaments. Sunny said no, but there are styles of sarongs, body paint, tattoos. Robbe suggested hairy armpits. Sunny lifted her arms, and we all giggled.
Chris defined wearing clothing as a "less passive expression. When you're here, I have to actually go talk to you to know who you are. It's not that there's no expression, but you have to actually do it." Sunny added, "You can't look at someone here and pick up on little hints and clues on the kind of person they are. You can try, and you will, but most of the time you'll be wrong."
I asked them if they end up comparing bodies. "To a certain extent. You can't get to the point of being vain about it," Aaron admitted. Chris claimed he doesn't do it more naked than clothed. "It's not like when you see someone naked, you don't notice what they look like," they still are attracted to people. Annette, the idealist. proclaimed, "You have to tell them apart somehow!" She thought, like they all do, that the absence of clothing makes you dig deeper into people's inner lives. This is a theme that reoccured in my conversations with the naturists. But I think it's a little baloney. I was perceiving their personality through piercings, glasses, tattoos, haircuts, what they held in their hands or didn't, all of those things, just as much as if I were looking at people who are clothed.
But there was something in what they were saying. When Sandy said, "It's really about what's on the inside," I agreed with her. It is harder to be superficial when your junk is all over the place. One ball on the bench, the other off or whatever. But what I thought was really strange was the focus on the idea that status was being stripped away with clothing. Maybe these people were just all broke bad dressers? Couldn't be that simple.
I asked them directly if they're better than other people. Sunny answered no, not better, but added, "I think it's a good idea to try to be nude around other people. It's actually quite a challenge to not have any clothes to express who you are." She said people hide behind their clothing. By that logic, it's almost like naked people have more personality? No, they claimed, you can be shy, or whatever. They think it makes you more outgoing and encourages conversation? Robbe brought up the body issue thing again, that it's therapeutic for them to be undressed.
Morley, who'd been standing there observing, finally jumped in. "It's just that people see when they're here, all different body types, all different ages. What they see as normal is a wide range that people fit in." Then he muses on the Barbie doll and airbrushed movie stars in magazines. He thinks women and teenagers, get more pressure to look a certain way. The message he hears is, "You're not OK the way you are. You've got to be more like this. You will not be popular, and you will not..." he jokingly yelled, "get a man!" He then hit us with the naturist mantra: "Body acceptance is the idea, nude recreation is the way." Morley thinks teenagers growing up at Sunsport are happy with themselves, a sentiment Sandy'd echoed having raised two women in the textile world, and two boys at the resort. "Therapists have prescribed going to nudist resort," he informed us. Sunny screamed out, "really?" As if this practice validates her lifestyle.
"You know about anorexia, and bulimia, people committing suicide, all because they don't feel good about themselves." Morley continued. And though I don't agree that the media is to blame for people hating themselves, I thought Chris explained it best. People get dressed in pushup bra, tailored suits, he said, and you might think that's what they actually look like, but, "there's a difference knowing that that person may not look exactly as they are presenting themselves. Or that person looks different than I do and are just being presented." Out there at Sunsport, "there's no lifting and tucking." It's all out there. No illusions.
Aaron felt like going out there is a reset button. For a while after he leaves a Bash, he sees people differently, he sees them in a "whole person way."
Sunny left to pump her boob, it started to leak.
Morley explained about his first time at Woodstock, "I came out, and all of a sudden, this freeing feeling of feeling the water, the air, the sun. I was sold in one minute." Went back to Rochester, looked up nudism in the library and starting visiting resorts that summer. "It's freedom. This is who I am, guys, I don't need to hide. this is me! That's quite an amazing thing to feel. And my whole body unified instead of there's this part, this part," he gestured to his top half, lower half, someone joked about another part, there was a giggle. "And then society starts talking about private parts, which is crazy." Then we joked about doing things in private with your public parts.
"For me it's kind of a spiritual thing. I feel at one with nature, and part of nature when there's nothing separating me from everything else around. For me that's a big thing. I don't know if anyone else brought that up." None of the FYN folks had up. "I never want to stop growing, ever," Morley said sincerely. "And that's what this is all about."
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