Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Naked
Transcript
- 0:03You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome to Why we Do
- 0:16what we do. I am your clothing optional host Abraham and I'm your never
- 0:21nude host Shane. Where a psychology podcast. We like to talk about all
- 0:26the things that people do and why they do them. And we take this
- 0:29a sort of very science e behavioral angle to understanding what people do rather than
- 0:33doing what I think is a sort of the pop psychology armchair angle. I
- 0:37mean maybe we do that a little bit. We have to speculate on things,
- 0:40we have our moments. Yeah, but the idea here is to really
- 0:43unpack this with a skeptical eye, with a scientific lens, with a behavioral
- 0:47framework, you know, adjective now and whatever. Put them all in there.
- 0:51And that's the thing that we enjoy doing. And if you're joining us
- 0:54for the first time, thank you for being here. Welcome, Happy to
- 0:57have you. You can support us if you like what you hear today,
- 1:00liking and subscribing, leaving a raining and review, joining us on Patreon,
- 1:03picking up some merch or you can go completely naked and just shave wwd wwd
- 1:08into your back hair and that would be a thing that you could do.
- 1:14Yeah, and I'll talk more about the ways you can support us at the
- 1:15end of today's discussion. I'm excited to get into our topic and I don't
- 1:19know if I've really given it away too much. But before I do this,
- 1:23I'd like to acknowledge that this episode is coming out on July twenty sixth,
- 1:27and there are some specific dates about which we like to acknowledge because it
- 1:30is July twenty sixth. Yes, today is all or Nothing day, you
- 1:36know, because we hate nuance here. That's right, there's no in between.
- 1:41It is that is all you get anyway. It is also at an
- 1:44Uncle day, or maybe it should be aunt or Uncle day. To fit
- 1:46in with all or nothing. Yeah, I mean that's Aunt or Uncle Day.
- 1:52I'm a proud uncle. I like being an uncle. It is one
- 1:55voice day, only one voice day, no more, no less. To
- 2:00fit in with all or Nothing day. This has to do with reading the
- 2:01Universal Peace Covenant, the ideas that everyone reads at exactly six pm Universal time,
- 2:07which I think is supposed to be Grinnage meantime. And this Universal Peace
- 2:12Covenant is a five hundred and seventy seven word pledge to bring everyone together into
- 2:16peaceful coexistence. So that's supposed to be the idea. I don't know how
- 2:20many people celebrate that sounds nice, yeah, but you could be one of
- 2:23those. So it's really like a celebration of peace type thing. I support
- 2:27that. Yeah, And importantly it is also coffee Milkshake Day, which you
- 2:30know, a few things in life are just so wonderful that sounds really tasty.
- 2:36Yeah. No, no, they've ever had a coffee milkjake. I
- 2:38think I have, but I definitely did another one. Yeah, well today
- 2:42maybe we'll get one. It's also moth Week indeed, the nocturnal butterflies.
- 2:47Yeah, goth butterflies. All right, So we are actually not a podcast
- 2:53that just breaks down holidays. That's just something we do for fun at the
- 2:54beginning of this to let you be better in touch with the things are going
- 3:00on in the world around you, because you know, sometimes we go off
- 3:04the rails on some very weird sort of sidebar topics that no people have ever
- 3:07heard of, and don't again after we've talked about this. But yes,
- 3:10before we get into our topic, I have one more piece of housekeeping,
- 3:14which is that the podcast awards are out. They're out in the world.
- 3:17You can nominate us you can vote for us. These are the People Choice
- 3:21Awards. They're open until July thirty first, so you're almost out of time.
- 3:24So go to Podcast Awards dot com. You can click to nominate and
- 3:29to vote. So go there and vote for us. I think we've been
- 3:31nominated for it by I'll go double check and make sure. Either way,
- 3:36you go there and check it out. If you'd see our name, then
- 3:38vote for us, and if you don't, then nominate us. In that
- 3:39way, we'll be on the list and we'll see what happens. Yeah,
- 3:42we'd like to be an award winning podcast. Yeah, the only awards we've
- 3:46won are the awards we've given ourselves. Yes, which you know, I
- 3:49guess is fine. Yes, it works. Although you know, we've had
- 3:53support and help from various organizations such as the Disseminating Behavior Analysis Special Interest Group,
- 3:59which of course were eternally grateful to their help. Anyway, Yes,
- 4:01that is a thing that's happened. Let's get into our topic today, shall
- 4:04we, Yes, we shall. All right, Well, let's start with
- 4:08a little background, So a bit of a story here. We're going to
- 4:11talk about someone just for a moment. She's not the star of the podcast,
- 4:14but she's going to help introduce it. Her name is Carolyn Hawkins.
- 4:16She's a perfectly normal person whose life was suddenly shifted in a totally new direction.
- 4:23Not bizarre out of you know, not that crazy or anything. But
- 4:26just if you saw her on the street, you'd be like, that looks
- 4:29like a person who's doing normal things. And then her life all of a
- 4:31sudden took a very different direction when her husband asked her to accompany him to
- 4:35Cypress Cove, which was a newest resort in central Florida. Ah. Yes,
- 4:41it's only an hour away from where I live, just down the road
- 4:46from Shane. Yeah. Now initially reluctant, he was finally able to convince
- 4:49her to go, although she resolutely insisted that she would not be taking off
- 4:53her clothes, and indeed she stuck to her rules, so she was fully
- 4:57clothed. Carolyn for a while. The whole time, and once in the
- 5:01midst of the community, she was surprised by many things. For one,
- 5:05everyone was kind, friendly, warm, welcoming, and not at all pushy
- 5:10about the fact that she had chosen the war clothes. And for another,
- 5:13the people she met provided, apparently to her a convincing argument fur their way
- 5:16of life, and finally that she kind of just stopped noticing the nudity that
- 5:21was around her or thinking of it as being in any way out of the
- 5:25ordinary. It started to just feel like, this is just people here,
- 5:29and there was really nothing else to comment on in that way. Yeah,
- 5:31So, despite her original reservations, she started to see the appeal, and
- 5:34by the end of that trip, she and her husband were registered members.
- 5:38She loved it so much that she started working there. Eventually, she and
- 5:41her husband moved there, and she even became the public relations coordinator for the
- 5:45American Association of Nude Recreation or a n R, which sounds really fun to
- 5:50work, like, be like, hey, they were naking people here,
- 5:53come hang out the an R. This American Association of Nude Recreation website amazingly
- 5:59helpful. One of the key resources for what I was able to find an
- 6:01information for this here. I found, you know, plenty of sources,
- 6:04but they just very very helpful place. Go check out their website. Now,
- 6:08apparently this kind of story is actually not terribly unusual for those who have
- 6:14found their way to what you might call a naturist way or to a naturist
- 6:17community. Or a nudist community or something. Many of the people who have
- 6:21joined these naturists or naturalist clubs, when they started, they were completely opposed
- 6:27to the idea of nudism. They're like, under no circumstances would I ever
- 6:31do anything even remotely like that. But nevertheless they find themselves completely ameshed in
- 6:36this sort of nude culture. Yeah, and there's some discussion to be had
- 6:41about the role of clothing and fashion in our psychology and how that impacts our
- 6:45behavior and our psyche, as well as lewdness or even being offended, but
- 6:48we are mostly going to leave that for another day. I think there's a
- 6:51lot there's a lot to discuss around puritan values in the United States and why
- 6:56we think nudity is a bad thing. Like, there's a lot, there's
- 6:59a lot there. There's no way we're gonna be able to tackle it here,
- 7:01right, Yeah, We've got enough to talk about just the history of
- 7:04nudism, and so we'll review that history as well as some of the behavioral
- 7:09and psychological implications of being unclothed for extended durations, possibly out most of the
- 7:15time. And Yeah, so we wanted to dig into why do people why
- 7:19are there people who find this nudest way of life so appealing. What's going
- 7:24on with these nudest colonies? Are these just big sex clubs and that sort
- 7:28of thing, And we'll talk about what's going on with these and sort of
- 7:31where it came from. This is one of those episodes that lends itself well
- 7:34to history, I think. Yeah, And so let's go ahead and start
- 7:38there. To anyone that's listening, they should come as no surprise that humans
- 7:41have not been wearing clothes throughout the entirety of human history. For as long
- 7:45as we could document, we know that people didn't wear clothes. So ancient
- 7:47Egyptian pharaoh akan Aton or Aton something like that. Acan Aton from thirteen eighty
- 7:55five to thirty fifty three bc BC purportedly started social nudism, and as we
- 8:00discussed in our Spartan episode, the Greeks were frequently in new lots of naked
- 8:03people throughout history. Yeah. Absolutely, And we're obviously born naked, and
- 8:07we do lots of things naked, and we usually bathe naked, and so
- 8:11like. If there's one thing that is true of all humans, it is
- 8:15that at some point in our lives we are completely naked unless you're Tobias Funk
- 8:20and unless you're Tobias fume k all right now, the Olympics even were held
- 8:24entirely in the nude, and athleticism was commonly in naked activity, particularly in
- 8:28Greece when this was going on. And it does make sense if you think
- 8:31about what clothing options were kind of available at the time that athletic events were
- 8:37going on. Casual daily clothes were barely tailored, right, They were often
- 8:41very warm, They were often very restrictive, so like swimming and exercising and
- 8:45warm weather in general just didn't really work right clothes right. Also, they
- 8:48were probably a fire hazard because they were often made of like dried plants or
- 8:54things like that, and so you're going to be if you're trying to keep
- 8:56warm and you're wearing one of these things, you might go too near a
- 8:58fire. Then you would have to throw your clothing away, which took who
- 9:03knows how long to make. So you know, there was just a lot
- 9:05of activities that people did that clothing was not very useful for, and so
- 9:11they only needed clothing for certain activities. Right. Bathhouses or bathing areas where
- 9:16people would gather to bathe together in the nude and even toilets where public places,
- 9:20so you found these kind of like these large congregations of people doing things
- 9:24that naked people do. They didn't have doors or walls, so they were
- 9:26kind of these communal areas where people were just kind of hanging out thinking,
- 9:30and people would sit next to one another and talk while they did their business.
- 9:33It was not something that was kind of taboo or it was kind of
- 9:37like a standard practice in the communities. Yeah, basically bathroom stalls without the
- 9:41stall part. Yeah, it was like a bench with a bunch of holes
- 9:45that you would sit on and then people would just talk to each other about
- 9:46the news while they did the thing. In the late sixteen hundreds, although
- 9:50most of the world was mostly bathing nude, some bathing costumes were developed for
- 9:56women and later men who would visit these bathhouses. Is sort of a precursor
- 10:01of things like it's like swim outfits and that sort of thing, sure,
- 10:05which is really interesting and the history of swimsuits is probably a whole other episode
- 10:09We've got to do. Yeah. Now, as the world became more global,
- 10:11nudity was increasingly scarce until the Renaissance, during which the human body regained
- 10:15acceptance and was accepted in art and in public, and even Christian leaders accepted
- 10:18to some degree the logic that if God created humans in its likeness and we
- 10:24aren't born with clothes, that the likeness must be naked and must be good.
- 10:28I love kind of the ebb and flow of Christian leadership and all that
- 10:33stuff. I think that's a fascinating thing. What they find morally a barant
- 10:37versus what's fine? You know, yeah, for a little bit. You
- 10:39know, people who like the Bible thought naked was good. Yeah, I
- 10:43mean that was the zeitgeist. Now the ultra conservative Puritans, a liberty hating
- 10:48people who worshiped shame and misery so thoroughly that they wouldn't even Bathe instead considered
- 10:52changing their undergarments periodically while hidden behind blankets or hidden behind or under blankets for
- 10:58modesty as good hygiene. And so what I'm saying here is that there are
- 11:01this group of people who were so opposed to nudity that they wouldn't clean themselves
- 11:09more than like a few times a year at most, and that they were
- 11:13like, all you have to do is change your clothes, specifically you're undergarments
- 11:16and make sure nobody sees you while you do that. And the Puritans really
- 11:18wanted to use government to control everything that everyone did, and so that's why
- 11:22they moved to the Americas to do just that. As they were like,
- 11:26we're going to impose our moral hang ups on everybody else, and we're just
- 11:30going to make that be part of the government here. And now they all
- 11:33wear red hats. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, well regarded public figures
- 11:37such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry David Throw thought nudity was very healthy. I
- 11:41just I love the idea of ben Franklin, just thinking like nudity is like
- 11:45the bee's knees, you know, he's out there flying a kite with a
- 11:48key strong to it, just like in the nude and just like kind of
- 11:52like this is great, this is like that's like this thing. Yeah.
- 11:54Throw regularly took nude walks, including to town, and Franklin would take air
- 11:58baths, during which you would open all the windows and sit and naked in
- 12:01them to receive the full effect of the air. President John Quincy Adams regularly
- 12:07bathed in the Potomac, so everybody was naked, ye, And they signed
- 12:09this big document that made our America the way it is today. That's right
- 12:13now. The practical reality of life for settlers who were building homestead on lands
- 12:18that had been illegally, forcefully or sneakily appropriated from indigenous people by the US
- 12:22government meant that families were sharing bathrooms and water for bathing. So if you
- 12:28were out moving out into the west and away from the cities, it was
- 12:31really common for these families to have basically one large metal tub. They typically
- 12:35bring it into the kitchen where they could easily boil water or heat water,
- 12:39and then the heated water was added to the tubs that each member could then
- 12:43take a bath, and rapid succession they could get in and have warm water
- 12:46and they take their bath. So nakedness of one's own family was just a
- 12:48simple reality, and it was very normal because that was just the way things
- 12:52happened. You people had to bathe and it was relatively difficult to do so,
- 12:56and so they would all sort of be around and see each other naked.
- 13:00And so also, again, clothes made at the time, clothes made
- 13:03for water really didn't exist, so swimming and bathing had to be nude.
- 13:07Right now, nakedness was much less acceptable during the Victorian era, where showing
- 13:13any amount of legs skin was shamefully immodest. And however, the idea that
- 13:16elites were so over the top prudish that they covered their legs the legs of
- 13:22their furniture to avoid arousal, as a myth, and that can be traced
- 13:24back to the humorous musings of British naval officer Captain Frederick Marriott. Yea,
- 13:30all right, we do have more history for you, but maybe peel off
- 13:33a layer while you listen to some ads and they'll be right back. Yeah,
- 13:35take your shirt off, it's probably chafing you. All right, we're
- 13:46back. You are as, however, clothed, as you have chosen to
- 13:48be at the moment. And we're getting into the eighteen nineties and the cities
- 13:54around the world, particularly in the United States, we're starting to grow to
- 13:56very large sizes, and often sanitary practices coupled with undeveloped engineering practices meant that
- 14:03where people were gathered and living in large groups, diseases were just absolutely thriving,
- 14:09right, And so the stuffy contemporary clothing, poor working conditions, and
- 14:13lack of regulations and policies for water cleanliness led people to the idea that getting
- 14:18back to nature, into fresh air and sunlight was very healthy, and that
- 14:24just in their clothing was part of that. Like getting back in the nature
- 14:26meant that you weren't taking your clothing with you. You were like leaving everything
- 14:30behind, your possessions, your clothes, your whatever. And so basically they
- 14:35had these sort of toxic health swamps that were cities because of poor engineering and
- 14:39poor regulation, and they move out away from the cities to areas that had
- 14:43not been so polluted by human activity, and they're like, well, this
- 14:48nature stuff seems to do wonders for our health, and so you leave all
- 14:52that stuff behind and clothing our underneath. Yeah. Now, groups of people
- 14:56who abstained from alcoholism and sex, who strictly vegetarian which was mostly synonymous with
- 15:01vegan back then, and practice natural medicine, felt that nakedness was an important
- 15:05ingredient in self help and healing. That's so different than today, right,
- 15:11So, after more than a thousand years of not having the Olympics, the
- 15:15Olympics were revived in eighteen ninety six with the attention of exactly replicating the ancient
- 15:20Greek practice, which was men only, clothing optional, mostly discarded, and
- 15:24your Asian countries began to take this more relaxed view of nudity again although the
- 15:28US. The United States did not art, and even literature that depicted nudity
- 15:33or sex were considered so obscene that owning or creating it could result in being
- 15:39jailed. Ah America. Anthony Comstock, a self hating prudish man, felt
- 15:45this mission in life was to police morality. He would love has today,
- 15:50that would be like his jam Like he would for sure be like the president
- 15:54of Has, but like make sure there's like a foreign policy in there too,
- 15:58like yeah. Now. Comstock appointed himself the leader of the New York
- 16:02Society of the Suppression of Vice exactly and saw anything on the spectrum of sex
- 16:07as evil. He had an early pioneer of birth control and planned parent and
- 16:11founder, Margaret Sanger, thrown in jail for distributing pamphlets about obtaining birth control
- 16:15because they were lewd and lascivious. He successfully petitioned Congress to pass a law
- 16:22to prevent the distribution of lewd material through the mail, which came to be
- 16:25called the Comstock Act. This guy sounds like he would be so fun at
- 16:29parties. Yeah, he also sounds like one of those like horribly repressed people
- 16:33or maybe like had always been turned down for anything remotely related to like relationships.
- 16:40Oh yeah, he liked the original in cell right. Yeah, yeah,
- 16:42I think he Maybe he was. Meanwhile, in nineteen oh three,
- 16:45what could be considered the world's first modern nudist club, Freelicked Park, which
- 16:51was translates a free light park. The founder, Henrik Pudour, championed the
- 16:56idea of a naked lifestyle and several books that helped to act people to his
- 17:00club, and so this grew into the free body movement that reflected the earlier
- 17:07ideas of health, vegetarianism, and nudism, very similar to those other ideas
- 17:11that we're talking about before right now. In nineteen twenty nine, we saw
- 17:15the first organized newdist activity in America. Kurt Barthel was a German American who
- 17:19got a group of people together and rented a remote, undeveloped land outside of
- 17:23New York City over Labor Day weekend. There the group enjoyed a clothes free
- 17:29weekend of outdoor activities such as hiking and swimming, and it was not a
- 17:33sex thing, just to be clear about that it was just being outside naked
- 17:36and is basically an air bath. It was Ben Franklin's air bath. Yeah,
- 17:40very much so. And that was a very important piece of this is
- 17:42that this was really not about a sex thing. And we'll talk a little
- 17:47bit about the intersectionality that happens there later, but first, like we're just
- 17:51unpacking the history of these nudist organizations. Yes, so that was nineteen twenty
- 17:56nine. Two years later, Barthel's official naked club, the American League for
- 18:00Physical Culture, had a permanent location called sky Farm outside of New York City.
- 18:06Over two hundred people signed up for this the moment that it formed,
- 18:10and so the police are like, we're going to raid this. You know,
- 18:12anything successful that it is outside of the norm, We're going to tear
- 18:15it down. So the police rated it. I love the idea of the
- 18:18police rating it in terms of like the logistics, because the path downs would
- 18:22have had been so easy, so they could walk in and be like,
- 18:26nope, no weapons. Yeah, pretty much. However, the following trial
- 18:30solved a major victory for the club is the judge ruled in their favor.
- 18:33He cited the fact that they had gone out of their way to ensure their
- 18:37own privacy, and they were not in other people's space, and that they
- 18:40were, they weren't doing anything loot. Again, it was not about sex.
- 18:42It was just about being together with a group of like minded people.
- 18:47One of the things that they happened to be like minded about was being newt
- 18:49right. And the trial sort of garnered a lot of attention. The fact
- 18:53that it was successful also had a lot of people interested, and so this
- 18:56resulted in many more members signing up for the club and the attempt to suppress
- 19:00nudism actually gave it a tremendous boost, and not for the last time.
- 19:06We will find out as we're getting through history. But yeah, these these
- 19:08sort of ultra prudish, these people who are going out of their way to
- 19:11not do this in my space, I'm going to police them anyway. And
- 19:15the decision to do that resulted in a lot more people joining that club.
- 19:21So there're being a lot more people doing that. So the sort of backfired
- 19:23in a very lovely way. I think it's an important precedent for something like
- 19:26this right where and this is I think this will happen time and time again
- 19:30where somebody who tends to have a maybe a really conservative leaning, like more
- 19:36puritan leaning, I should say, not even conservative, but like a really
- 19:37puritan leaning. It will go after something and then a judge will rule on
- 19:41it. That will set a precedent for like more people kind of finding favor
- 19:45in that or getting permission to do something that is actually not loot and not
- 19:48a problem. But actually now there's legal precedent to say this is okay.
- 19:52Right. Yeah, And they weren't doing as we said, They weren't doing
- 19:56anything. They just decided to do normal activities minus clothes. Yeah, they
- 20:00were probably playing like chess and just eating food and telling stories. It was
- 20:03probably great. That was actually definitely think that happened. It sounds like it
- 20:07was probably a lot of fun. So now American Baptist minister Isisley Boone.
- 20:12Oh Boone's that name is familiar? Why is that name familiar? Oh?
- 20:17That's in Salem's Lot, the Lore of Salem's Lot, the evil preacher that
- 20:22like has ruined the town in one of the short stories. His last name
- 20:26is Boone. That's what I was like, there's any he was a preacher,
- 20:27okay, Eisley Boone decided his calling was to rule the nudist movement in
- 20:32the US, and he sees control from Barthel. Boone made the nudest Agenda
- 20:36his fight. He spent decades setting up and pushing for legality of nudist clubs
- 20:41around the country. He ran the clubs with strict guidelines that tightly controlled who
- 20:45could join, who could run them, and how people were to behave while
- 20:48there. And similar to many of the preceding clubs, Boone required members at
- 20:52many clubs to practice nudity at all times, practiced abstinence that's an important thing,
- 20:56follow a vegetarian diet, and practice regular alaesthetics. Yes, it's important
- 21:02to him that people sort of like look and present their best if they're going
- 21:04to be a part of this club. Boone also helped start a nudist magazine,
- 21:08which continued to push for acceptance and adoption of nudism, and by the
- 21:12mid nineteen thirties there were over eighty clubs around the country, mostly on the
- 21:18East Coast, which is still true today right now. In nineteen thirty six,
- 21:22New York decriminalized mail toplessness. So you know, it's been almost one
- 21:26hundred years since men could walk around without their shirts in New York City.
- 21:29Yeah, without being in violation of the law. During World War Two,
- 21:33the military distributed nudist magazines to soldiers as it could not distribute pornography. So
- 21:37this nudist magazine was selling very well, at least among the military. Obviously
- 21:41the soldiers wanted pornography, but these nudist magazines were better than nothing. What
- 21:45was kind of interesting as an outcome of this is that after the war,
- 21:48many former soldiers they decided to join these nudist clubs that were presented in these
- 21:52magazines. I think that makes sense because it's probably like, with all the
- 21:56things that you had to have seen during World War Two and now Tara was
- 22:00like, it probably makes sense to just go back and be like, there's
- 22:03peace here, right, you know, I imagine that the nudist clubs are
- 22:06incredibly peaceful. Yeah. Now, in nineteen forty one, Congress reinstated the
- 22:10Comstock Act no distribution of lewd material through the mail. That's what was going
- 22:14on. But Boone took the fight to the US Supreme Court, which again
- 22:18overturned the Act in nineteen fifty eight, So another win for nudists, that's
- 22:22right. So we kind of did a skip there because that was like a
- 22:26seventeen year period going on. At the fight in the middle of that,
- 22:29in nineteen fifty two, the Supreme Court also overturned the Haze Code. And
- 22:33this was for those people who are big cinema buffs will recognize this, but
- 22:37the Haze Code entailed a strict censorship of nudity, strong language, and even
- 22:41the depiction of generally quote unquote inappropriate behavior in films. So this was largely
- 22:48the precedent that later set up the MPAA, who like, when films didn't
- 22:52have a rating system, they didn't have the Haze Code, there was this
- 22:56blurry space in between where film makers could make whatever they want wanted, and
- 23:00then the MPa was like, under no circumstances, we hate art, we're
- 23:03going to shut that down. And then that's what's been in place ever since
- 23:07then. Yeah, and honestly that that kind of thing has happened across multiple
- 23:11mediums. If you go back and look at the history of comic books,
- 23:12it's the same thing for a very long time. That's why Superman. One
- 23:17of his powers is that he can shoot tiny versions of himself out of his
- 23:19eyes, I think, and he has like miniature versions of Superman that go
- 23:23around and like that was a superpower he had for a minute. I mean,
- 23:27it happened with was we talked about with video games obviously, it happened
- 23:30eventually with TV shows like syndicated serialized TV shows as well as music has gotten
- 23:37all this. So yeah, anywhere where there is art, there is someone
- 23:40trying to tear it down. Turns out, Yeah, throughout history. Now,
- 23:42over the following decades, nudism waxed and weigh into the US. Although
- 23:47largely maintained, they maintained a steady growth, estimated to be about an eight
- 23:49hundred million dollar industry by the end of the nineteen nineties. So people are
- 23:53really stoked about this. It could be a moneymaker. Yeah. And then
- 23:57the last thing to sort of say the history of the timeline here there.
- 24:00I mean, there's sort of a last word that has continued to grow.
- 24:03They're still around. There's lots and lots of people who do this, and
- 24:07that's the thing we'll get into. But also I think an event that many
- 24:11people will have heard of is called burning Man. This is an annual event.
- 24:15This began humbly on a beach in California in nineteen eighty six and now
- 24:18regularly attracts over seventy thousand people to northern Nevada's Black Rock Desert, which is
- 24:23only a couple hours drive from where I'm at. A matter of fact,
- 24:26most people will fly in Torino, and there's this whole burner culture that happens
- 24:32because seventy thousand people is a lot a lot of people. Add burning man,
- 24:37if you weren't familiar, There's a lot of things that go on.
- 24:40But essentially it becomes its own little, temporary, self regulating government, and
- 24:44people are allowed to practice naturism or nudism as much or as little as they
- 24:48wish. You can go there and be totally clothed the whole time. You
- 24:51can go there and be totally naked the whole time. Anything goes that is
- 24:53not a thing that they choose to police there, which attracts a lot of
- 24:56people to it. They want to have that experience sort of a thing that
- 25:00has happened that is sort of nudist adjacent but is relevant. I mean,
- 25:06it sounds like a fun event, but it also just sounds like there's a
- 25:08lot of dusty buttholes. I take it you have not been. I have
- 25:15not been. I'm being silly I hear it's a wonderful event. I just
- 25:18have not ever been, and what I see does not make it appealing to
- 25:22me. I have been once. I don't want to poo poo anyone's time
- 25:25out there. Well, I will say, is they have this policy of
- 25:27leave no trace, an insufficient amount of people actually respect that rule. I
- 25:33think there is a huge amount of cleanup that ends up needing to be done,
- 25:37and I think that is probably aggressively damaging too many of the ecosystems that
- 25:41do exist in a place like a desert, which is not a barren wasteland
- 25:44but does have a lot of life going on there. Yes, and so
- 25:47I think that it is not as green as it would like to be or
- 25:52has been able to be. And so that's a thing that I think it
- 25:56ends up feeling really wasteful. Like there are people who will I'm given to
- 25:59understand. I haven't looked into this myself, but I've heard on other podcasts
- 26:03people talking about like flying private jets until like a nearby air like airstrip that's
- 26:07really close to it. Sure, So like that's pretty defeating of anything that
- 26:11might have something to do with being green or being natural or anything like that,
- 26:15and then you have to obviously ship a just mountain of resources out there,
- 26:19Like if you're trying to feed seventy thousand people for a week and like
- 26:22have bathrooms for sanitation for seventy thousand people, and they're running generators and stuff
- 26:27like it is it is a huge event. That being said, the art
- 26:32out there amazing. I mean, you almost will not find cooler art anywhere.
- 26:37People spend years putting these things together and then they'll go out in this
- 26:40big, you know, sort of harrash celebration where oftentimes they'll set it on
- 26:42fire toward the end. Yeah, sometimes it'll make it back, but anyway,
- 26:47it's the art is incredible, the costumes are incredible, and yeah,
- 26:51the experience that I had when I was out there was that the angle,
- 26:53the nudest part of it, you get over really quickly, and it's not
- 26:57even complete nudest, like it's only you know, a chunk of the population
- 27:02that are practicing some amount of nudism, and it stops being novel really really
- 27:07fast. Like it's just like, oh, well, there's more boobs,
- 27:12there's more buds, there's more wieners. I think that makes sense. I
- 27:15think that it's that whole thing where like art and creativity and like the general
- 27:19sentiment is is really wonderful and really fun and late stage capitalism tends to ruin
- 27:25it. There you go, well said, speaking of late stage capitalism,
- 27:30here's an ad. We're back. We would like to talk about, I
- 27:40think, understanding nudism here and why people do it. So sort of looking
- 27:44at this from a behavioral lens, if you will, nudism does the opposite
- 27:48of what you think it might do. I think people tend to assume that
- 27:52it is a sexual thing. It creates kind of just like a bunch of
- 27:55it, like a horning community, and it doesn't do that. Many people
- 27:56who have joined the nudist movement have does so because of the psychological flexibility that
- 28:02they experience when they relinquish their clothes in social settings. They can get some
- 28:04kind of relief and some new experiences as a result of this. From a
- 28:07psychological standpoint, and most people will report a great deal of fear, as
- 28:11you might imagine, for the first few moments, but when they try it,
- 28:15by the end of the first hour, they report that they're usually pretty
- 28:18comfortable, and the extent to which they notice there's or others. Nudity rapidly
- 28:22disappears and stops becoming something that is prevalent for them or even noticeable. Right.
- 28:27So, ironically, wearing no clothing seems to make people less self conscious
- 28:33and concerned about body image, and in part because seeing other people helps everyone
- 28:37see the natural variation that can exist in everyone's bodies. People have asymmetrical features,
- 28:41scars, extra weight, wrinkles, small bits, large bits, uniquely
- 28:45shaped bits, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and no two people look alike.
- 28:49So the idea of quote unquote normal and an idealized body type rapidly fades
- 28:56away. I mean, once you can kind of see that there is no
- 28:59standard, you start kind of realizing that, Ah, now I've been comparing
- 29:03myself to other people that don't have the same situations that I do, and
- 29:07to people who don't represent how most people look, which is to say,
- 29:11like you'll you'll go to news clubs and you'll see people who are very fit,
- 29:14who are in very athletic shape, but you know they're going to have
- 29:17a body that looks a particular way, and maybe it doesn't look like Chris
- 29:21Evans or you know, a model or something like that they just happen to
- 29:23be sort of thin and have low weight, but maybe they have weird hands,
- 29:27or they've got this weird scar or this weird wrinkle, and it almost
- 29:30doesn't matter, Like it doesn't matter whether or not they have flaws. The
- 29:33point is basically that people you just start seeing them as people and not what
- 29:37they've sort of chosen to wear. Right, And so one reason people find
- 29:40comfort and nudism is it allows them to let go of all the discomfort they
- 29:44have about their own body that they care around with them all day. They're
- 29:47thinking, how do I look in this outfit? How do people do I
- 29:49look fat? Do people see me as fat? Do they see my fat?
- 29:52And if you're nude, then like yeah, they definitely, they definitely
- 29:56see me, and I see them, and we all see each other.
- 29:59And that actually brings a high level of comfort to people because that stuff is
- 30:03just something you can't spend any time on anymore. It's just out in the
- 30:07open. Absolutely. So the unspoken rule about nudism, particularly it established resorts,
- 30:11clubs and beaches, is that it's a safe space. And I really
- 30:15like that and not like the kind of safe space that like you hear bloomers
- 30:19talking about like, oh, they're like not ironically like, it's actually like
- 30:23a really comfortable safe space. People who make others uncomfortable by leering, coming
- 30:27on to others, are generally being weird, are promptly asked to leave,
- 30:30and so this becomes a place where sexual predation and even general attracting, This
- 30:36sizing up becomes less common than a store or possibly even a church. It's
- 30:40like a really comfortable place where everybody can be themselves and have to worry about
- 30:44being hit on or being a target if you will. And the lack of
- 30:47clothes means everyone must accept their own vulnerabilities and protect one another. And there's
- 30:52a large kind of safe community around that. Yeah. Another reason that people
- 30:56come to nudism is a feeling of freedom, in the sense of being natural
- 31:00in nature, and many of these clubs often feature green outdoor spaces beaches,
- 31:03pools, trees, hiking, and things of that nature. Being naked in
- 31:07these spaces often they report feeling natural, feeling good, feeling sort of a
- 31:11part of it. They report feeling better what the water touching all of their
- 31:15skin, unencumbered by clothes of any sort. Let's acknowledge that people might be
- 31:19thinking, well, if you're walking, if you're hiking naked, like,
- 31:22your feet aren't going to get torn up. These are practical, intelligent humans.
- 31:26They wear shoes when they're hiking. They're dressed practically as needed, so
- 31:30like there might be circumstances they wear clothes because it's cold. They might be
- 31:34circumstances where they're covering themselves up to get the sun off of their skin.
- 31:38There are definitely be circumstances where they're hiking and they wear shoes to protect their
- 31:41feet. So it's not that they completely issue all clothes all the time.
- 31:45They are practical, normal decisions that people make. Well, right, clothes
- 31:48become less of a social norm and more of like a tool. Yes,
- 31:52that's exactly right, as a very good way putting it. That's the way
- 31:56that I would see that, right, Like okay, Like if it's cold,
- 31:59yeah I need more layers because I am a furless mammal. Yeah.
- 32:01Or if I'm going to go walking on like sharp rocks or climbing that I
- 32:05probably need something with traction and my bare feet don't do that just yet right
- 32:08now. Another thing people love about the naturist way of life is that they
- 32:12feel it creates a more equitable social hierarchy, which is to say, clothing
- 32:15is often used to establish a social standing. Expensive watches, expensive clothes,
- 32:20suits, tailored garments, or loose faded shirts communicate a message about someone that
- 32:24establishes their relative worth or like kind of their caste or class. This is
- 32:29abandoned when clothes are left in the locker, and even wealthy people enjoy this
- 32:32lack of status symbolism and simply enjoy their friends. I mean, it takes
- 32:36away the hierarchies that exist that kind of separate people from different classes of people
- 32:40and makes it so that we're all on level playing fields exactly right. And
- 32:45similarly, people who are actually more likely to size each other up sexually and
- 32:49otherwise when wearing clothes. But when people are used to being naked around one
- 32:52another, they tend to really look each other in the eye and listen when
- 32:55the other person is talking. And again, like there's this element of when
- 33:00we see each other and way like you can sort of see the outline of
- 33:04someone else's body, maybe you might think for a second, you know,
- 33:07you notice that some of the skin is revealing or it's not. You see
- 33:09some tattoo, poking out, or you like, maybe wonder what that looks
- 33:13like, or maybe you want maybe you're one of those people who just wonders
- 33:15what everyone looks like when they're naked, whatever the point is, when they're
- 33:20not, then you don't have that as a mystery anymore. It's not tantalizing,
- 33:23it's not meant to try and invite leering and daydreaming and wondering. It's
- 33:29like it's all out in the open, and so people actually stop gazing at
- 33:31it, and they look each other in the face and have a conversation.
- 33:35And so they they're listening when other people are talking, they're looking at each
- 33:38other, they're in you know, there's there's a social bonding, and nudism
- 33:42promotes the sense of social bonding where people can feel closer to one another because
- 33:45the mystery and tantalizing hint of sexuality that is created by fashion is completely absent
- 33:51in those conversations. And they are simply are as they are presented, nothing
- 33:55more, nothing less. They're just humans. They're just humans and their human
- 33:59skin and their human bodies being human beings. That's such a nice thought.
- 34:01I love that right now. People all have also noted benefits of nudism and
- 34:07kind of these communities, and we're going to talk about a few of these.
- 34:09One of the benefits is that people talk about not having to do laundry
- 34:13very often saves time, saves water. I love that. And they're also
- 34:15not spending time choosing an outfit because there's no social kind of like standard for
- 34:21what that is, so they don't have to worry about that nearly as much.
- 34:23They're also not packing very much because they're not planning to wear clothes,
- 34:27so suitcase space is left for other things, or maybe not brought at all.
- 34:30They just bring a backpack with like the hygienic stuff. Sure. And
- 34:35then one thing they also report is being able to get a more even tan
- 34:37because you're not going to have tan lines from clothes. I love that.
- 34:40I mean, tan lines are fine, so but that is nice. That's
- 34:44a funny thought to be like, Yeah, I guess no tan lines,
- 34:46no worried about that. If that's something you can you're concerned about. Yeah,
- 34:49you sleep at a more comfortable temperature, so you don't have to like
- 34:52regulate quite as much because you don't have additional layers that you weren't really prepared
- 34:55for. And there's no hassle with uncomfortable clothing. And we just as I'm
- 35:00saying this, I know that I personally adjust my clothing all day. Yeah,
- 35:04just I think people naturally do that. You probably do too, and
- 35:07I've probably now bringing this up have made you acutely aware of the clothing that
- 35:09you're wearing right now in this moment, and it makes you want to adjust,
- 35:13because that's what happens when we do this right. It's the don't think
- 35:15of the pink elephant situation. Absolutely, that's a nice benefit to think about.
- 35:17It is like there's not really a lot of adjustment that you have to
- 35:21do. I was thinking as you were saying that, like, I know
- 35:22that I've adjusted my clothing several times while sitting here talking, just you know,
- 35:28tugging my sleeve that way, you know, just pulling it down this
- 35:30way, or you know whatever, making it feel like it fits a little
- 35:32more comfortably, and that that was something that you just wouldn't be doing at
- 35:37all if you don't have to worry about the clothing sort of bins or bunches
- 35:40or like you get itchy or something, an itch that's hard to scratch because
- 35:44you can't really reach it because that's underneath so many layers or in a place
- 35:46that's hard to get to, and so there is this just general level of
- 35:51heightened comfort that can come with that. You know. I was just thinking
- 35:53we had a missed opportunity here. We could have done this entire episode top
- 35:58less, and we chose not to. That would really have been the selling
- 36:02point for getting people on the Patreon where we do release videos. Yes,
- 36:07yes, yes, yes we do it. You could have seen us both
- 36:09outless, but we opted not to this time. So maybe next time,
- 36:13maybe on the nostalgia episode five years from now, Yes, when we look
- 36:17much better, give us give us five years to get really really confident it's
- 36:24gonna be great. Well, they'll ripen into perfection at that point anyway.
- 36:30But I think, honestly, there's there was this element of it as I
- 36:31was reading what they what they were saying now on these websites and stuff,
- 36:35that I feel like, I just want to really make sure I get across
- 36:37in these nudist clubs, because, as I said, it's really not about
- 36:40sex. There is some level of intersectionality there where there are a lot of
- 36:44people who are very free and open about their sexuality. And so they'll often
- 36:49also join these clubs where there's a lot of sex that does happen, and
- 36:52because clothes just get in the way of that, they also tend to be
- 36:54naked a lot of the time. So it's not that there's no overlap.
- 36:59There are overlap, But the nudist clubs themselves are not set up generally to
- 37:04be about sex, and if they are about sex, that's usually pretty explicitly
- 37:07stated, right, And we'll get to some I think some other interesting features
- 37:10of these that are sort of the faques the questions you probably have that I
- 37:15had at least I was doing this research. But the other thing that I
- 37:17think I want to communicate is just how different of an experience it is socially,
- 37:22behaviorally, and psychologically when you and everyone around you are in the nude
- 37:28and as we're communicating in here, there's this like status starts to go away,
- 37:31body type starts to go away, bias about your own body starts to
- 37:37go away. There's a certain level that people experience where it's like, because
- 37:40they're all vulnerable and they're all on an even playing field, that also helps
- 37:45them have conversations with each other that are sort of feel real one to one
- 37:49conversations where they're listening to each other and talking to each other and like,
- 37:52and they're there to like just be with one another. They're not coming at
- 37:55this from this various formal perspective of like what do I do? And what
- 38:00do you do? And how much do you make? And how expensive are
- 38:01my clothes? And how do I look in my clothes? And all of
- 38:05that. That stuff has gone and people experience having these much more real conversations
- 38:09that it invites a level of kindness and openness and warmness to one another and
- 38:15treating each other with respect and dignity and without judgment. It makes a lot
- 38:19of sense when you think about fashion can serve a lot of practical purposes,
- 38:22and in these particular spaces, what it kind of highlights is that one of
- 38:28the things that fashion can also do is severely, severely disrupt our ability to
- 38:32engage with one another meaningfully. It's just putting up a wall between us and
- 38:36the next person that we just wear around with us, you know, sometimes
- 38:38many walls and many layers and many colors, and like, you know,
- 38:43I think a lot of people get a lot of joy from fashion. And
- 38:45it's not to say that there is no space for fashion and clothing, but
- 38:47there is I think something to be said about this, and I feel like
- 38:52there's a lot to sort of unpack here in the interesting Tidbits section that I
- 38:55always like to include, and we do our notes, but I feel like
- 38:58in my heart I would say, like, in my heart, I'm a
- 39:00nudist. Yeah, I think I'm a naturist. I definitely have way too
- 39:05much fear about that to feel comfortable wanting to join. I would like to
- 39:08believe that someday I would be able to do this. Yes, same,
- 39:12I definitely am not there yet, but I think, you know, if
- 39:15I were to just take the leap right now and say I'm gonna go to
- 39:16one of these resorts and check it out, I'd probably by the end of
- 39:20that visit, i'd be like, Yep, I'm a member. Now I'm
- 39:22joining this thing. Sure, And it's really just about taking some action toward
- 39:25it. I think for me, it's just I would need more tattoos,
- 39:29Like I feel like if I had more tattoos that looked like I was wearing
- 39:30clothes, I'd probably feel more comfortable. But I also have to recognize it,
- 39:34like I have like a negative level of melt into my skin, and
- 39:37so like, I absorb so much sunlight right, sunburned so bad. That's
- 39:43a real problem for me. So like, I've got there's a lot that
- 39:45I've got to kind of sort out before i end up at a as a
- 39:47naturist. But yeah, I like the idea. The idea seems really wholesome
- 39:52and nice. Shin gets sunburned from the ambient lights scattered from the sun in
- 39:57a room where the blinds are drawn. My dude, you I have been
- 40:04sunburned within fifteen minutes in Florida. It's real bad. All right, Well,
- 40:08we've we've gotten a little bit off track, so we'll let the advertisers
- 40:13maybe sell you some lotion or sunscreen or something, and we'll come back to
- 40:16talk about the interesting tidbits available in nudism. I hope that sunscreen commercial comes
- 40:22up. We're back. Let's answer some of those questions that you probably have.
- 40:32Yes, was the website or the association, the American Association of Nude
- 40:37Recreation. Yes, the American Association of Nude Recreation. So they were super
- 40:40helpful and kind of giving you, giving us some insight on on this kind
- 40:45of culture. And there are a couple of things that we want to talk
- 40:46about. First, folks that are part of this kind of community prefer the
- 40:51term naturist, but nudist is okay, And they tend to avoid the term
- 40:53lifestyle as that's been co opted by swingers as a specific keyword for that particular
- 41:00group and those proclivities. Yes, they also tend to prefer club or community
- 41:06as opposed to colony. They like to say colonies are for ants, and
- 41:08so that they are intet a club, where's book library for ants. There's
- 41:14kind of a stigma about this being a bunch of old people sitting around,
- 41:17and there is some truth to that. It's mostly people older than forty,
- 41:22but it's largely because people hang ups that people have in their youth, as
- 41:24well as a fear of exploitation that some have athough there's really no evidence that
- 41:29this ever occurs, but there are plenty of young people who do it as
- 41:32well who join these clubs, But it does tend to be people who skew
- 41:36a little bit over the forty mark. There are some communities that are entirely
- 41:39nude and even have nude grocery stores and other workplaces. The idea of that
- 41:44is super fascinating to me. Yeah, and most nudists still have sex,
- 41:47but in private, and most toilets are also still private. Yeah, most
- 41:52nudists, if they are like really in that community and they spend most of
- 41:54their time there, they'll call people who wear clothes textiles. It's kind of
- 42:00like how the Vetan community calls a lot of people to eat meat murderers.
- 42:02Yeah, it's like they say, you know, say, it's a very
- 42:05like funny thing to me, like, oh, a bunch of textiles.
- 42:07Public nunity is illegal in most countries in the world except for Spain, Denmark,
- 42:10Netherlands, France, Germany and Norway. Yea, and most nudist clubs,
- 42:15you are expected to bring a personal towel around with you for sitting on
- 42:17things. This is something I found a lot of thinking, like, if
- 42:21you're sharing a lot of butt space with people, it's considered common courtesy to
- 42:25just have a little hand towel with you. They did make the joke.
- 42:29They're like, if you're leaving skid marks by simply sitting on a chair,
- 42:31you are not wiping properly. But nevertheless, it's appropriate for you to be
- 42:35bringing a towel around so people at least feel like they're not swapping so much
- 42:38stuff in those spaces. Never thought that we would say the term sharing butt
- 42:43space on the show, but here we are. We have arrived at episode
- 42:46three twenty four. It took three hundred and twenty four episodes to say sharing
- 42:50butt space. So thank you for that, Abraham, You've made my entire
- 42:54life. You welcome. Most nudist hide the fact that they are nudists when
- 42:57they are outside of their nude communities, including on social media. They tend
- 43:00to not advertise that so much. The I can be really stigmatizing. Men
- 43:05and women might have two different issues that people might think about, like what
- 43:08if you're a nudist and you're a woman in your cycle begins or you're menstruating.
- 43:12What about men who if they get an erection? So I was able
- 43:15to find some information on this. Obviously, those are very private things that
- 43:19most people handle covered by clothes. Menstruating women are likely to simply wear a
- 43:22tampon and just keep doing the nude lick. There's a certain amount of just
- 43:27what has been built into those cultures and acceptance that women's bodies do something a
- 43:30little bit differently and that they have to deal with that in a particular way,
- 43:32and everyone's just kind of cool with it. They're like, yeah,
- 43:35well, that's the thing that happens. Men getting an erection is something most
- 43:37people wouldn't think much about. It would be considered inappropriate to acknowledge or talk
- 43:42about it. Again, it's not about sexually, you're not pointing out sexual
- 43:45bits of things that people have going on. If they started doing something about
- 43:49it, then they'd probably be asked to leave. Typically, it's just like
- 43:52there's a thing that happens. Most people ignore it and just go about their
- 43:57day unless the person who has the directions it's being weird and then they're pushed
- 44:01out. Yeah that makes sense because again, this is not about sex and
- 44:05it's not about predation. So like you got to make sure that it's a
- 44:07safe space. And if I start talking about my direction in multiple places,
- 44:10I mean, and arguably that's kind of a social norm anywhere, right True,
- 44:15there's very few situations where talking about my direction would be like considered socially
- 44:17appropriate right now. Nudist clubs often prefer couples and may not allow single people
- 44:22to enter. I would imagine this is going to be me arm chairing for
- 44:25a second, I would imagine because sometimes there are single folks that show up
- 44:30thinking that it's like a dating club. Yeah, I think that's part of
- 44:32it. I have heard that a lot of them tend to skew. If
- 44:37they're going to allow single people and it's only women, they tend to go
- 44:39ratio there of like more women than men, and mostly to avoid it being
- 44:46I guess, creating an asymmetry where there's a different power dynamic there that could
- 44:51exist, particularly sexually, and they don't want women to feel like they're sort
- 44:54of being stalked, you know, like a herd of gazelle or something.
- 44:58Yeah, I think it's reasonable. Yeah, to allow them sort of to
- 45:00either be on equal footing with or out number has been sort of the plan.
- 45:02A lot of them follow, not exclusively, but that is a place
- 45:07and some of them. One thing you might also worry about is eating in
- 45:09the nude, because these are clubs where people spend a lot of their time,
- 45:13sometimes almost all of their time. They do eat in the nude in
- 45:16public. It's actually fairly common. I actually saw some pictures of this when
- 45:20I was looking around trying to find the information, and people are looking very
- 45:23happy with a plate on their lap and just enjoying whatever food they're having with
- 45:28no other clothes on. I love that although clothing is now allowed, sexy
- 45:32clothing might not be. So no lingerie in some of these places. Yeah,
- 45:37there was a time when there was no clothing allowed at all, but
- 45:38they really try to make it not again have beat sort of sexually PDA.
- 45:44So public displays of affection are strictly prohibited, and most are all of these
- 45:49clubs. Again that's not about sex thing, and so they really don't like
- 45:52people doing anything romantic out in public. Right, kids maybe welcome, depending
- 45:55on laws and ordinances. So that's really dependent on states and and you know
- 46:00maybe even counties and cities and stuff like that and different legal protections and whatnot.
- 46:05There was a couple I read about who is basically raising their kids in
- 46:07a nudist club, and that was that was actually fairly common there. There
- 46:10was a lot of kids who are there yea in other countries. And again
- 46:14it's they when they stopped treating our bodies if it's there's something wrong with them
- 46:17and they need to be hidden and they need to be obscure, they stopped
- 46:20treating them as if they're sexual objects. Then it doesn't really matter anymore,
- 46:23you know, Right, the kids don't see it, it's anything weird,
- 46:27and adults don't see anything weird, and it just becomes like people are just
- 46:30people in their bodies, but there are circumstances under which they might try and
- 46:34avoid that, and so it just depends on where you're at and what the
- 46:37rules are. Right, there are over two hundred and sixty clothing optional resorts
- 46:42in the US. Clothing optional is a key term you'll often here to describe
- 46:45a place that encourages a nudist or naturalist way of going about the club.
- 46:52But it's more than one per state, and matter of fact, that is
- 46:53more than two per state. That is more than two per state, So
- 46:55you go find the nearest one near you. Also too, I just did
- 46:59a quick search. There are some that are LGBTQ plus friendly. So there
- 47:05are some that are like ranked and described in a lot of those communities.
- 47:07So like that, if that's something that you're interested in and you don't fall
- 47:12on that gender binary, there are these clubs that exist for you as well.
- 47:16So I was like, I was curious about that as we were kind
- 47:19of going through this. Yeah, the thing is too, and I think
- 47:21it's important, Like by just the very nature of being naked around other naked
- 47:24people, you're going to notice each other stuff. But if you're staring,
- 47:27it's inappropriate. So that's kind of a big thing. It's like you're gonna
- 47:30notice it, just like you would notice somebody's shoes or clothes or whatever.
- 47:32You're going to notice the types of things. But if you're staring, then
- 47:36it becomes a problem. Yep. Absolutely, So that's kind of what we
- 47:38have to say about nudists, naturists, those who choose to not wear clothes.
- 47:45And I think just one of the big things I'd say is this is
- 47:46not a place where people go to photograph one another exploit each other sexually.
- 47:51It's not a bunch of horny guys or pedophiles. It's really just a mix
- 47:53of people who are just being people without clothes. One of the things also
- 47:57point out is sexual exploitation happens in places where people are always wearing clothes,
- 48:00right, It's not like clothes wearing as any in any way helped guard against
- 48:05any kind of exploitation happening. So giving basically zero rates of problematic sexual behavior
- 48:10and nudist groups it's possible that part of the reason for inappropriate sexual behavior is
- 48:15the modesty, the quote unquote modesty of requiring clothing all the time. Just
- 48:20sort of food for thought there, And I think it's worth when we talk
- 48:22about sort of clothing and fashion down the road what it creates. But like
- 48:25it's possible that this creating this tantalizing sort of sex appeal of clothing that is
- 48:32meant to hide an obscure and tease or whether you know whatever it's meant to
- 48:37do, like just obscure in general, and create this image of what might
- 48:40be underneath for those people. Maybe that's that helps foster that. But I
- 48:45think just to say that, like, wearing clothes is definitely not stopping sexual
- 48:49exploitation from happening. It's not stopping people from you know, behaving inappropriately sexually
- 48:52toward one another out in public spaces and in these nudist clubs. That's not
- 48:57happening, right, And again they do have some rules about that, but
- 49:00I think that it also like it seems to naturally incentivize against that type of
- 49:05behavior anyway. So just something to think about there, right, And I
- 49:07think another take on point too is it's at the end of the day,
- 49:10we all have naked bodies, and that's really all this is about. Is
- 49:14people have naked bodies, and they want to have a comfortable space to be
- 49:17able to live without clothing and to be able to not necessarily expose themselves but
- 49:22just have to not worry about the things that kind of have those social norms
- 49:27that are created around modesty and clothing and all that. So we all have
- 49:30one just get over it. Everybody's naked, yeah, and body image and
- 49:34all kinds of stuff. So right, I think that probably, I mean,
- 49:37I would say, like, you know, go out and check one
- 49:38of these places out if you're interested in joining. They probably don't want like
- 49:43a ton of people trying to sign up for these just because I think it
- 49:45creates the opportunity for people to start being weird in those spaces, and they
- 49:50kind of want to probably control and filter what like who are becoming members and
- 49:54why they're becoming members and that sort of thing. But generally speaking, I
- 49:58think they would mostly welcome a lot of members as long as people are doing
- 50:00it in earnest, like they want to be a part of that culture and
- 50:05not because they're doing they're trying to be weird, and again they will kick
- 50:07you out if you're being weird. So I don't think of these as places
- 50:10to go be weird and objectify other people. Think this is a place to
- 50:14go for yourself where you then get to enjoy the freedom that comes with a
- 50:17naturist way of life. Yeah, these aren't humans views, Yes, very
- 50:22much. So that's what airports are for. Yeah, or malls? All
- 50:27right? Anything else you have to add in our discussion about nudism before we
- 50:31transition to our next topic for the day. No, I think that covers
- 50:36it perfect, all right. Well, what we like to do, and
- 50:38if you've been listening to us for a while, you already know this.
- 50:40But we find something during the week that we are in the preceding weeks or
- 50:45months that we have enjoyed, and that we say, well, you know
- 50:47what, I would like to recommend other people check this thing out too,
- 50:51and just just maybe they'll find joy in it also, or maybe they'll already
- 50:53found joy in and they just like to hear someone validating that experience. Either
- 50:57way, we call that recommendations. And before we do that, I'd like
- 51:00to tell you that if you've liked today's discussion, you'd like to support the
- 51:02show, you can join us on Patreon. If you do that, then
- 51:06you get a bunch of access to other things, such as behind the scenes
- 51:08episodes, videos of us wearing clothes unfortunately, yeah, notes, all kinds
- 51:15of stuff. You get early access to episodes, add free episodes, that
- 51:19sort of thing, so you can you can join us on Patreon to get
- 51:21those benefits. Trying to get a bunch of people to sign up so we
- 51:22can do sort of an online hangout with y'all if we can get up to
- 51:27fifteen patren supporters. In addition to that, you can leave us a rating
- 51:30and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe so we show up every day
- 51:34every Wednesday in your feed. You can go over to our merch store.
- 51:37We've got water bottles, coffee, mugs, sweaters, shirts, all kinds
- 51:42of things patches, I think go over there, So go check out o
- 51:44our merg store. And so anyway, the people who and another benefit you
- 51:47get to join us on Patreon is that I'm going to shout out your name
- 51:51for being awesome and the people who have already supported us. So that list
- 51:53of awesome people includes Mike m Megan Leila, Mike t, Justin, Kim,
- 51:59Joshua, Ad, Stephanie, Olivia and Brian. Thank you all very
- 52:01much for being our Patreon people. I love y'all. You're our audience and
- 52:07we love you all. In addition, I like to make sure I say
- 52:09thank you to my team who helped make this happen. Writing and fact checking
- 52:14from Shane Jess and myself, audio production and editing from Justin, and our
- 52:17social media coordinator is Emo Wilson, who does a fantastic job. So if
- 52:22you go to social media and you like to talk to us about nudism and
- 52:24nude clubs and joining one and where you've been to a nude club, you
- 52:29can do that over on social media, and we're on all the social media
- 52:31platforms, the major ones that are not crazy. You can also email us
- 52:35directly info at WWDWWD podcast dot com, and we really love hearing from people
- 52:39like please reach out and talk to us about those things. But I think
- 52:44that is all I have until we get to some recommendations. Yeah, I
- 52:46think that sounds good. Perfect. Let's give one more swing to the advertisers
- 52:51and then we'll come back with the recommendations. We're back, so one more
- 53:01quick audio transition, and then we'll tell you some things that we think you
- 53:05should check out recommendations. You know, everybody knows that I listened to a
- 53:16ton of music. Like I mean, we both listened to a ton of
- 53:19music, but I tend to recommend a lot of music on here. You
- 53:21listen to more than I do. This is a fact. I listened to
- 53:22so much music. And this last Friday, at the time of this recording,
- 53:25this last Friday put out a bunch of like a bunch of bands put
- 53:29out a bunch of really great things. As a bonus recommendation, go listen
- 53:31to the new Chamber record if you like kind of like really intense tech metal
- 53:36stuff. I feel like you would like that in particular knowing knowing the bands
- 53:39that you've been in and stuff too. Yeah, But the one I want
- 53:43to recommend is my favorite that came out of these releases, and that's a
- 53:45songwriter named Ja Jail spelled j A y E j y l E. That's
- 53:51his stage name he goes. His real name is Evan Patterson. He was
- 53:53in Breather Resist and Young Widows and Black Cross. He was in a bunch
- 53:58of these bands out of Louisville. Well, Jjail put out his first full
- 54:01like not his first full length, but a full length called Don't Let Your
- 54:05Love Life Get You Down. And it is incredible. The best way to
- 54:08describe it is like really moody, really influenced by like goth folk if you're
- 54:14familiar with like that type of sound. It's real dark, it's real brooding.
- 54:17It's it sounds like it would be the soundtrack for True Detective. Okay,
- 54:22fun And this album is just incredible. It's just the guitar work on
- 54:25it, the musicianship on it is really really unique, really incredible, and
- 54:30I've been loving it so I haven't been able to stop listening to it since
- 54:31it came out. Oh, I am curious. I'm curious about this.
- 54:35Yes, you see who sold it? Well, I have my moments,
- 54:37I try, all right. I am recommending a TV show it is just
- 54:40came out with its second season recently. This is called Is It Cake?
- 54:45This is a Netflix sort of reality TV show, if you will. That
- 54:51is pits a bunch of bakers against each other to design cakes that look like
- 54:54everyday objects. So the first season they did like a cake that looked like
- 54:58a hamburger. Or that look like a bowling pin. But it's really amazing
- 55:02to see what people can do with cake decorating an art. And it's I
- 55:07mean, you legitimately can hardly tell sometimes at all, often never the difference
- 55:12between something that is a cake and something that is like a typewriter. Yeah,
- 55:16I don't know if they did a typewriter, but they did do books
- 55:19and stuff. They do an an incredible, incredible job. Someone didn't do
- 55:22a printer. Actually, I know they think about it so wild. It's
- 55:24wild, like you really you look at it and you're like, that's just
- 55:27that's just a printer, and then they cut into it with a knife and
- 55:30you're like, oh my god, it's a cake. It's really neat to
- 55:31see on the show. And anyway, so season two recently came out.
- 55:35It's a lot of fun. It's over on Netflix. So if you're if
- 55:37you're on Netflix, go check out Is It Cake? Season two and season
- 55:39one if you haven't seen it to watch them both. Yeah, it's so
- 55:43fun. It's it's such a fun like and it's it doesn't require you to
- 55:47like overthink it, like you just have fun with it. Yeah. Yeah,
- 55:52and it's it is a competition show, So there's like they sort of
- 55:53whittle down like people who get to stay and have to go out every every
- 55:58episode based primarily that are not a panel of judges can tell if they're from
- 56:01a pile of objects, the which one is cake? Right? Exact sort
- 56:06of the thing they put them on pedestals and they have to choose. So
- 56:07anyway, I think that's what we have to say about. Is it cake?
- 56:10And don't let your love life get you down? And nudists? Is
- 56:15there anything you like to add or anything I forgot before we say or goodbyes?
- 56:17Be excellent to each other, be excellent, walk around naked in your
- 56:22house or something and get used to it. Yeah, whatever you want to
- 56:24do. Check out the clubs if you're interested, or don't do any of
- 56:27those things. If you're not comfortable with it, do you do you?
- 56:29Yeah? I just wanted to to sort of share the words as we learned
- 56:31about this, but I think that's all I have. So I appreciate you
- 56:36so much for listening. Thank you for recording with me today. Shane.
- 56:37So this is Abraham and this is Shane. We're out see up. You've
- 56:43been listening to why we do what we Do. You can learn more about
- 56:45this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
- 56:52and we hope you have an awesome day.