Maybe it's because I'm a father of a teenager that I deeply know the
mind's attitude of the teenagers who live in a nudist environment
during the summer. I'm grateful to nature powers for the gift of not
living chained to any social taboo, and the chance to teach my
children to love wild nature, starting with their own body and mind.
The teenagers of this environments are 12, 13, 14... until 17 years
old. In these places that people call «naturist», nudeness is not
tied to eroticism, but rooted in a natural, familiar and friendly,
sense. These characteristic produces a feeling of calm and normality.
Adults and children are usually always naked, however sometimes
teenagers put a swimsuit on, or take a swimsuit off, when they want.
They like often change their image, and by their view, clothing is
not a way of hiding their bodies but a tool that they use to adapt
their image to what they feel in every moment. They usually strip to
swim, play with the waves, sunbath, walk along the beach, but they
put their swimsuit on when they want to play volleyball.
Campings make possible a deep friendship between young ones of
different cultures, languages, styles... Girls and boys, Catalan,
Navarrese, German, French, Dutch... spend hours laying on the sand,
in the nude, without swimsuits. They usually speak for hours in
english about many different matters, about the usual issues they are
interested in. They spontaneously share knowledges, exchange cultural
characteristics, laugh, enjoy... These moments show us how people are
equal wherever we are, whatever our cultural environment is.
Everybody tries to survive, fit, be accepted , accept the others,
share, know, expand cultural horizons. I realize that despite the
violent pulses in the human hearts, and despite the social
strengths... deep in the heart of human being, kindness exists, and
in the natural environments, all of a sudden, it appears. Kindness is
a reality that stands inside all the human hearts when we are born
and when we grow; however, as time goes by, prejudices, bias and
ambition... stifle it.
There is one difference between the teenagers of free-clothes areas
and teenagers of traditional and conservative campings; this
difference is the obsession with the body, and specially the
obsession with the hidden parts of the body that many teenagers of
traditional areas feel when they meet young ones. However, the
teenagers of nude areas assume the body with calm, they don't feel
the necessity of watching the parts of the body that in the daily
life of the society, people hide. When the young ones are used to
coexist in the nude, I realise that the relationship between boys and
girls in the daily society is more egalitarian, they are free from
the inner strength of discovering the hidden shapes of the bodies
they wish; and I'm talking not only about their life in the nude
areas but also about their posterior life in their usual towns.
Sometimes, the romantic love appears (the tipical summer love), and
even though they live in the nude, they don't mainly fix on the topic
hidden body areas, but in the color of the eyes, the beauty of a
smile, the deepness of a glance, the voice, the way of being, the
sweetness of a face... I talked away a long time to some of them
about this matter, and instead of being fixed on the parts of the
body that are usually hidden, they feel them assumed as any other
part of the body. There's no obsession, there's only normality.
And they speak so long in english that they feel as if they had been
in an english summer camp. At the end of the summer, they exchange
their instagrams, their whattsapp, and henceforth they keep talking
in the distance during the school year, despite the fact they are
thousands miles far away.
The following summer, they meet again; they are older, but they do
the same than the precedent summer: blue paradise of golden sea,
coppery or brown free skins in the nature, cheerfulness shouting,
smiles, beach parties, volleyball, dancing on the sand during the
full moon nights, respectful community spirit, parties without
strange substances nor stunning drinks, welcoming attitude towards
newly arrived, farewell towards those who depart, interest in the
culture of the country, beauty, freedom, sanity... and the skills,
traits and normality of their awkward age.
Sometimes, in the beach, some strange men appear as if they were
ghosts; they are the classic «voyeurs», who arrive to the beach
rigid and expressionless. They walk outlandish and extravagant,
everybody notices their aims. They are usually harmless, but they
make themselves ridiculous. They are victims of their poor education;
they are collateral damages produced by the puritanical society that
condemns and hides the nude body instead of assuming its natural value.
Fortunately, they are sporadic, an anecdotal minority.
At times, some integrist ideologist turns up with his inflexible
rules about nudenees in FKK areas.The other day, I saw one of them He
wore a cowboy hat, and he was upset because some teenagers had put
their swimsuits on to play volleyball. He thought that those young
ones had broken the enforced nudity of the naturist areas. «That's
not right here!» he said, and I realised that everywhere the
integrist people work in the same way. The integrist people assume
nudeness as an enforced uniform instead of embracing freedom as the
sign of any kind person. We have been evolving from a hard repression
that banned the beautiful picture of the nude human body towards a
freedom that we love and embrace. That old repression sentenced many
generations to live in the dark of the traditional morality.
According the integrist people, it seems that we have to accept the
imposition of the nudeness, as if it was the victory over the old
prohibition. The victory is not the imposition but the freedom; the
freedom to choose, the freedom of speech, the freedom of deciding our
own image. In a free society, nudeness will be chosen the most of the
times, we don't need impositions. The aim that can't survive without
impositions doesn't deserve to exist. The teenagers wear in their
souls the spirit of the freedom; they don't fear nudeness and they
don't fear freedom to choose in every moment.
In the society, the members of some families, or some groups of
friends, don't think always the same about being naked at the beach;
some of them like being nake, other ones prefer wearing a swimsuit.
According some integrist people they should be separated and
segregated even in the natural public areas, as if they belonged to
different worlds. Will a group of teenagers destroy the naturist
movement just because they prefer wearing swimsuit when they play
volleyball?
The integrist people of any ideology (political, religious,
social...) prefer the quantitative growth of their group to the
growth of the freedom's level in the society. They dream about
uniforms and homogeneous groups, without shades, hues or tints. They
are intolerants for fear that everybody freely choose their
aesthetics, ideas, believes, strategies... They are afraid for the
extinction of the orthodoxy of their group. They need the orthodoxy
to feel safe, because they feel that freedom it's not good enough to
get their safety. Even though sometimes they think themselves
pacifist, they are an army; even though they say they fight to get
freedom, they are intolerant; and even though sometimes they say thet
are naked, they wear uniform. Fortunately, all the aims that want to
be fair and healthy breathe freedom, and integrist people are a
minority. Diversity is the favourite trait of the human being,
because it stems from his or her freedom, and because it also
produces a new and posterior freedom. Diversity comes from freedom
and produces freedom, yet the strongest chains are not the chains of
integrist people but the chains forged by the tradition, the
morality, the old religions, the poor education... One day people
will be free at least.
Nudeness is the most beautiful dress; the natural dress of the human
body. The view of the human body (of the human bodies in a natural
landscape) gets to improve the human mind and its growing. The
natural views, the views that all we have saved inside our brain,
make us feel that we are at home, we are in our homeland, in our
landscape, in our healthy environment. The natural views adapt us to
our adult life, to our necessities and our maturity. On the contrary,
the prohibition of that views, cuts the developing of our mind, and
produces tense and repressed people, even though they don't know they
are repressed, tense or nervous. What do we prefer? A teenager that
has been knowing and assuming the human body as a natural and good
reality in a familiar environment during his or her growing from the
born to the adult life? Or a teenager with a part of the body of his
or her own species banned and condemned, and continuously tied to the
eroticism, as if his or her own body was a fetish? This prohibition
developes a dark attraction. Forbid someone something and he or she
will be for ever tied to the banned thing. The prohibition of a thing
is like pointing out that thing to someone, and if that thing is a
human and natural thing, the prohibition turns that thing into a dark
mistery when in fact that thing is just a natural reality.
The attraction that society feels towards the banned body is
exploited by some unhealthy industries and by the marketing, so... it
is also a tool of manipulation and a dark shadow that works against
the equality between men and women.
Maybe it's because of all this realities, that human kind (slowly but
surely) is releasing from the group's morality. As years go by,
nudeness is accepted as a non sexual reality; at least, no more
sexual than any other reality of the life. The best ideology is the
freedom; the freedom to decide our own image, and to live as
everybody feels. The will of liberty will never vanish. The wish of
liberty will be always beside any fair and victorious fight.
