Swimming in… ze nude!

Once upon a time there was a baby that was born fully dressed…
If a fairytale would start like this, it would already look ridiculous right from the start, wouldn’t it?!

We naturally consider all people to be born naked. But from there on the story takes a different turn, where most of its variations end up in… clothing. And we would not let this go, even when a person has reached his own death. For example, you die in your favorite jeans and boots and they have to dress you up in “proper clothing” for your own funeral. To dress a person into different clothes than the ones he died in… if this is not a violation of privacy what else is?! And you can’t even complain about it!

If, regardless of anything, a man is born naked (with no exception ever) how difficult is it to conceive the idea to let a man go as he came?! And okaaay, use a simple white sheet in order to cover him as “he goes” just as you cover to pick up a baby when “it comes”.

Can I walk around naked now or is it too early in the text?!
 By the way I have many times given the thought of escorting my texts with one photo per text… Shall I start here?!

You are born as you should… in the nude, that is…
But from there on everyone pays good attention for you to remain dressed. Until you die?! No… even after that!!!

We think of Indiana Jones as a hero of the movies, and he is. But there have been archeologists with a life more exciting than one can imagine… One of them, that I admire greatly, was Heinrich Schliemann. After the discovery of the, until then mythical, Troy, Schliemann made Athens Greece his home. His house was at the center of the city (it still is there) and he chose to fill his garden with ancient statues of man. All of them would pose differently from each other, but all of them were fully… naked! So, one day as he woke up and looked into his garden, he saw to his amazement that all statues were now properly… dressed. Athenians were insulted from the nudeness of the statues and they decided to properly dress them over night.
One might argue that when this happened it was around 1890. Yes, but still, those statues were created in their… naked form more than two thousand years ago. The ancient civilizations of the West, which existed prior to the Dark Ages, had been more open and free about the… original appearance of man. And it is a, beyond doubt fact, that the establishment in political, social and military power of “the one and only religion” influenced by force the idea that the “body” is dirty and permanent while  the “spirit” is pure and internal (or it could be “purified” by punishment) as if body and spirit were two separate things.
And as it is well known, fear and ignorance is contagious, it can be spread and maintained. While bravery and knowledge take training and study, in order to be obtained… Fear and ignorance is contagious, it can be spread and maintained. While bravery and knowledge take training and study, in order to be obtained…
No typo here for reading it twice… Mark these words!

Original thinking
Original thinking occurs when one first takes a couple of steps back inside of him… Original thinking has also to do when you act as if  you don’t know, even if you know… When you retreat a bit, and listen.

When this is done correctly, you will seldom tell yourself “I have never thought of that before”. We lack in original thinking, when we have “…never thought of that”. Next to this is when we accept what we are being told, without taking a few steps back and reconsider…  Most people are ready to put up a fight in defending their opinion, but do nothing to find out how they did establish their opinion in the first place…

We say “nudist beach” and we think that there is a beach where people go swim in the nude and “naturally” we must categorize them and confine them. Because maybe some other people will see them and find out how a person really looks like!
Test question: Everybody knows that a person who swims in the nude is called a nudist. How do you call a person who swims in a bathing suit? You have three seconds… I give you another five…Beeeep! You’re out of time… The answer to that question escapes me, too. I have no idea how you call a person who undresses himself and then dresses himself in something else, in order to swim.
“Dressties” is one idea. My own contribution to the world’s lexicon!      But why is it that there isn’t a term for that? And why is it that there is a term for nudists. It is quite simple if you think about it, in an original way of thinking! The term nudist was invented by the “dressties” and it even sounds like an accusation of some sort…

The basic excuse of isolating nudism (you see? I’m using it too now!) is that a naked body is reference to sex. But is it? If you go to a nudist beach you will find out people that are: swimming, walking, standing, lying, reading, talking, playing… and they are from all ages and sizes, young, old, beautiful, ugly, funny, tall, fat, slim. Those sons of bitches even bring their own children at the beach… But if you take a closer look you will see that nobody is in any… sexual danger to each other. In fact you bump into them later on at the Super Market or a tavern and they are just as “you and me”. A nude body is a nude body and it can be many things besides sexy. How you carry yourself is more important. Sexual provocation is a matter of acting, just as sex is an act itself. And personally, I find a woman with a tiny bikini more sexually… promising than that same woman nude as she was born.

From my travels I am very well aware that this text is of no use at all to many cultures (like the Northern Europeans for instance) since nudity to them is the most normal thing and they do not act embarrassed in any way… But still, I had to write this, because neo-Puritanism is putting us on a back foot…

And that reminds me of my own little story on the matter… As a hotshot youth of the ‘70s I would mostly wear jeans and a loose white shirt, with all that big hippy theories in my head of changing the world… And I would feel free, think free, until the day I accidentally approached a river-pool where a group of hippies took a swim in the nude… They didn’t see me coming, but I saw them, I immediately panicked and did run away. I might have felt free, thought free, but I was at a loss when it came to act free. Once more the lesson was that what you feel is not necessarily what you are! I was so ashamed of myself for being ashamed, so disappointed in me I could not sleep all night for even a minute. Next day I went straight to the river-pool and, fortunately, the same company of people was there… In order to make sure that this time I would turn theory into praxis, I almost ripped my clothes off and jumped into the river… From that day on I never was ashamed again and this legacy of being ashamed of nudity that was passed down on me died forever in that one jump in the river. So, whenever I see someone for the first time I make sure to stand before him in the nude! And that’s a joke of course… but don’t trust me too much…

Time for my Japanese punch-line… Traditionally in Japan men and women would bath together without any shame…

Now I would like to defend nudity a step further your Honor…
Becauze in all my years of zwimming in ze nude I have never zeen a nudist go to a dressties beach and take a photo of zhem.
It iz alwayz ze ozher way round!

September 19, 2011