Author: Brian Hoffman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814790542
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Get Book Here
Book Description
In 1929, a small group of men and women threw off their clothes and began to exercise in a New York City gymnasium, marking the start of the American nudist movement. While countless Americans had long enjoyed the pleasures of skinny dipping or nude sunbathing, nudists were the first to organize a movement around the idea that exposing the body corrected the ills of modern society and produced profound benefits for the body as well as the mind. Despite hostility and skepticism, American nudists enlisted the support of health enthusiasts, homemakers, sex radicals, and even ministers, and in the process, redefined what could be seen, experienced, and consumed in twentieth-century America. Naked gives a vibrant, detailed account of the American nudist movement and the larger cultural phenomenon of public nudity in the United States. Brian S. Hoffman reflects on the idea of nakedness itself in the context of a culture that wrestles with an inherent sense of shame and conflicting moral attitudes about the body. In exploring the social and legal history of nudism, Hoffman reveals how anxieties about gender, race, sexuality, and age inform our conceptions of nakedness. The book traces the debates about distinguishing deviant sexualities from morally acceptable display, the legal processes that helped bring about the dramatic changes in sexuality in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the explosion in eroticism that has increasingly defined the modern American consumer economy. Drawing on a colorful collection of nudist materials, films, and magazines, Naked exposes the social, cultural, and moral assumptions about nakedness and the body normally hidden from view and behind closed doors.
Author: Larry Darter
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781461116387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 58
Get Book Here
Book Description
An objective, straightforward explanation of what American nudist culture is really about. Whether a person is just curious about what actually goes on inside nudist clubs and resorts or someone thinking about trying Nudism that needs more information before taking the plunge, the book answers many common questions and dispels many of the myths surrounding the nudist lifestyle. Are nudists actually the eccentric weirdos, perverts and hedonists that many Americans believe them to be? What kind of people become nudists and why do they choose the nude lifestyle? This objective, straightforward look at American nudist culture answers these questions and more. The book aims to foster better understanding of one of the most misunderstood and unfairly maligned cultures in American society by answering common questions and dispelling some of the persistent myths that surround the nudist and naturist lifestyle.
Author: Sarah Schrank
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812251423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Get Book Here
Book Description
From Naked Juice® to nude yoga, contemporary society is steeped in language that draws a connection from nudity to nature, wellness, and liberation. This branding promotes a "free and natural" lifestyle to mostly white and middle-class Americans intent on protecting their own bodies—and those of society at large—from overwork, environmental toxins, illness, conformity to body standards, and the hyper-sexualization of the consumer economy. How did the naked body come to be associated with "naturalness," and how has this notion influenced American culture? Free and Natural explores the cultural history of nudity and its impact on ideas about the body and the environment from the early twentieth century to the present. Sarah Schrank traces the history of nudity, especially public nudity, across the unusual eras and locations where it thrived—including the California desert, Depression-era collectives, and 1950s suburban nudist communities—as well as the more predictable beaches and resorts. She also highlights the many tensions it produced. For example, the blurry line between wholesome nudity and sexuality became impossible to sustain when confronted by the cultural challenges of the sexual revolution. Many longtime free and natural lifestyle enthusiasts, fatigued by decades of legal battles, retreated to private homes and resorts while the politics of gay rights, sexual liberation, environmentalism, and racial equality of the 1970s inspired a new generation of radical advocates of public nudity. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, Schrank demonstrates, a free and natural lifestyle that started with antimaterialist, back-to-the-land rural retreats had evolved into a billion-dollar wellness marketplace where "Naked™" sells endless products promising natural health, sexual fulfilment, organic food, and hip authenticity. Free and Natural provides an in-depth account of how our bodies have become tethered so closely to modern ideas about nature and identity and yet have been consistently subjected to the excesses of capitalism.
Author: Philip Carr-Gomm
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861897294
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book Here
Book Description
As one common story goes, Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, had no idea that there was any shame in their lack of clothes; they were perfectly confident in their birthday suits among the animals of the Garden of Eden. All was well until that day when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and went scrambling for fig leaves to cover their bodies. Since then, lucrative businesses have arisen to provide many stylish ways to cover our nakedness, for the naked human body now evokes powerful and often contradictory ideas—it thrills and revolts us, signifies innocence and sexual experience, and often marks the difference between nature and society. In A Brief History of Nakedness psychologist Philip Carr-Gomm traces our inescapable preoccupation with nudity. Rather than studying the history of the nude in art or detailing the ways in which the naked body has been denigrated in the media, A Brief History of Nakedness reveals the ways in which religious teachers, politicians, protesters, and cultural icons have used nudity to enlighten or empower themselves as well as entertain us. Among his many examples, Carr-Gomm discusses how advertisers and the media employ images of bare skin—or even simply the word “naked”—to garner our attention, how mystics have used nudity to get closer to God, and how political protesters have discovered that baring all is one of the most effective ways to gain publicity for their cause. Carr-Gomm investigates how this use of something as natural as nakedness actually gets under our skin and evokes complicated and complex emotional responses. From the naked sages of India to modern-day witches and Christian nudists, from Lady Godiva to Lady Gaga, A Brief History of Nakedness surveys the touching, sometimes tragic and often bizarre story of our relationships with our naked bodies.
Author: Annebella Pollen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781733622066
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
This richly illustrated volume examines the idiosyncraticphenomenon of social nudism in mid-20th-century Britain, anisland nation fabled for its lack of sunshine and its reservedsocial attitudes.Structured across three interrelated phases, readers firstencounter the movement at its genesis in the 1920s,when nudism was synonymous with vegetarianism,intellectualism and utopianism. That nascent cultureproliferated in the postwar era, with a widening landscapeof amateur clubs and governing organizations alongsidehigh circulation publications and censorship-challengingphotographers. Finally, Annebella Pollen examines themovement's redefinition as naturism, its cultural battles andits struggle to survive amid shifts in sexual liberation in thepermissive 1960s.Unadorned bodies were the central campaigning tool ofBritish naturism's photographic propaganda. They drewattention to the cause and drove publication sales but theyalso attracted regular public opprobrium. Naturism's shiftingvisual culture thus provides a microcosmic view of Britishmoral, legal and aesthetic transformations in a period of rapidsocial change, revealing evolving perspectives on health andsex, gender and ethnicity, pleasure and power.
Author: Mark Haskell Smith
Publisher: Nero
ISBN: 9781863957342
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
'We are safely away and you can now enjoy a ... ' There was a pause, as if the Cruise Director was having trouble choosing what, exactly, he should call what was about to happen. Finally he said, ' ... a carefree environment.' Folk have been naked in public for centuries. But being a nudist is more complicated than simply stripping off. In Naked at Lunch, Mark Haskell Smith uncovers nudism's fascinating history - and gets involved, baring all himself. He visits a Spanish town where clothing is optional, and travels to the largest nudist resort in the world: a hedonist's paradise in the south of France. From clothes-free hiking in the Austrian Alps to a Caribbean cruise on the 'Big Nude Boat', Haskell Smith takes us on an entertaining frolic through the good, the bad, and the just plain naked.
Author: Stephen L. Harp
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807155276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Get Book Here
Book Description
Each year in France approximately 1.5 million people practice naturisme or "naturism," an activity more commonly referred to as "nudism." Because of France's unique tolerance for public nudity, the country also hosts hundreds of thousands of nudists from other European nations, an influx that has contributed to the most extensive infrastructure for nude tourism in the world. In Au Naturel, historian Stephen L. Harp explores how the evolution of European tourism encouraged public nudity in France, connecting this cultural shift with important changes in both individual behaviors and collective understandings of the body, morality, and sexuality. Harp's study, the first in-depth historical analysis of nudism in France, challenges widespread assumptions that "sexual liberation" freed people from "repression," a process ostensibly reflected in the growing number of people practicing public nudity. Instead, he contends, naturism gained social acceptance because of the bodily control required to participate in it. New social codes emerged governing appropriate nudist behavior, including where one might look, how to avoid sexual excitation, what to wear when cold, and whether even the most modest displays of affection -- -including hand-holding and pecks on the cheek -- were permissible between couples. Beginning his study in 1927 -- when naturist doctors first advocated nudism in France as part of "air, water, and sun cures" -- Harp focuses on the country's three earliest and largest nudist centers: the Île du Levant in the Var, Montalivet in the Gironde, and the Cap d'Agde in Hérault. These places emerged as thriving tourist destinations, Harp shows, because the municipalities -- by paradoxically reinterpreting inde-cency as a way to foster European tourism to France -- worked to make public nudity more acceptable. Using the French naturist movement as a lens for examining the evolving notions of the body and sexuality in twentieth-century Europe, Harp reveals how local practices served as agents of national change.
Author: Liz Egger
Publisher: Wyeland Publishing
ISBN: 9780956231321
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Complete Guide to Nudism, Naturism & Nudists tells you everything you need to know about nudism and nudists. It's crammed full of the information, facts, experiences and insider tips that you'll find invaluable if you want to discover this exotic, fashionable and fast-growing lifestyle including: * What genuine nudism is. And what it most definitely is not! * Why you should become a nudist. How even occasional naturism enhances your health and how wearing clothing can seriously damage it! * How to become a nudist. A step-by-step guide, including all the contact details you'll need. * Where to go nudist. Explore the exciting nudist world of exotic beaches, luxurious resorts, fabulous cruises and international friendship. * Full information on important topics such as nudism for singles, couples and families with children, nudism and the law, nudism and health, nudist etiquette, nudism and religion, nudist vacations and travel. And much, much more besides! Whether you're an experienced nudist, a nudist "wannabe" looking for guidance, a holiday-maker looking for a vacation with a difference, a student of alternative lifestyles and therapies, a casual browser after a fascinating read or just someone trying to keep abreast of the latest trends in a fast moving world, this book is for you. So kick off your shoes, take the 'phone off the hook, and prepare to explore the amazing world of international nudism. OH. One last thing. Better turn up the heating. You might not want to put your shoes or much else back on again!"
Author: John Alexander Williams
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804700153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Get Book Here
Book Description
Turning to Nature in Germany traces the history of organized hiking, nudism, and conservation in the earlier twentieth century, showing how hundreds of thousands of Germans sought to find solutions to the nation's crises in nature
Author: Karl Eric Toepfer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520206632
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Get Book Here
Book Description
"A massive achievement. . . . Toepfer respects the body, wants to understand movement as the primary medium of ideas, and gives women the central role they actually played in this aesthetic and intellectual discourse."Marcia B. Siegel, author of The Shapes of Change"
