We recently went on a cruise aboard a Thames Barge as part of a BN day out. I was the ' official photographer' and had loads of volunteers who all agreed that we could send their pictures to the press. I contacted a number of regional newspapers who all printed an excellent article the next day (no innuendo or puns). The day afterwards the reporter called me and we chatted for about 30 minutes on the benefits of naturism. That was used for yet another good, positive article. So what about the photographs? They were used but pixelated so heavily they looked really poor. The original and newspaper versions are here for you to make up your mind. And here's a link to the articles.
https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/20219354.naturist-tells-positives-group-maldon-boat-trip/
https://www.clactonandfrintongazette.co.uk/news/20215440.british-naturism-members-enjoy-naked-boat-trip-maldon/

Thanks for introducing this topic Andy and Patti. I have tweaked the title a little to lead us into a discussion of such matters.

Before we get going I would like to remind people of this topic : https://www.anaturistworld.com/forums/topic/84/do-naturist-websites-that-don-t-show-breasts-genitals-do-harm that covers the fact that some naturist websites are little better than the non-naturist media - but hopefully are a little more creative and tasteful that then image above. It can be understandable to use "Calendar Girl" style photographs to get by social media and published media issues but employing the same techniques on actual naturist websites and naturist magazines is confusing to say the least. As naturist we know that there is no difference between showing our breasts and genitals or elbows and knees - but those new to naturism could be forgiven in considering that there are parts of the body that remain titillating in a naturist environment and consider the life choice to be one of exhibitionism and voyeurism.  

First of all I would like to say that this sort of treatment of the human body is actually really offensive. The subconscious notion that we should like to obliterate ourselves in imagery is like an emotional form of self harm. And I do wonder when I look around me in the street and see the level of damage people seem to be willing to inflict on themselves, their bodies, their health...how much are they being encourage to pixelate themselves in one form or another. Are we being encouraged to respect ourselves and each other - if pixelating was a real world option would some people happily do it to themselves?

There are various ways media and social media handle this sort of censorship. It seems to be getting increasingly common to see monkey faces stuck over peoples "naughty bit." Cropping an image to below the waist can help with men, but not so much with women. Although it appears that the male nipple is joining the ranks of "naughty" in some social media - as topless equality takes a reverse step in logic. It has got to a point that almost any image that shows any skin at all seems to be breaking the rules of some social media and I have had various top halves of my back removed simply because it is obvious that I am naked - despite not even showing my buttocks let alone the horrifying nipples and genitals. 

Even drawings and art are becoming seen as offensive - and we have had the art of RnR's blogs removed as against the rules of decency - yet could they be any more innocent in nature? 

But what does it all really mean? Well it does absolutely nothing to help people with body awareness and confidence. First we need to see that people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes - that is a great lesson learnt from naturism - and missed out of in this sort of censorship. Second we know that certain bodies are not censored - those celebrities caught naked on beaches and photo shoots of models in various degrees of taste depending on the media involved. So are we teaching people that it is OK to see "perfect" examples of humanity naked but others need censoring - and the message is "that mean you" - finger points out at every reader in the land. It reminds me of the news item about one of the WNBR when an interviewer says that it is always the wrong people with the wrong bodies that choose to go on these rides. 

Would it be better if the image just wasn't there at all? Possibly so, but images attract attention. We have shared some news items in the Naturism in the News section - and we are always looking for new examples. And we have had complaints in the past about the pixilation - as if somehow we are to blame. What is interesting is to see how silly the world is away from ANW. 

The sad thing is - I don't think the average reader would care or be offended. We really are not that immature. When I was younger nudity was not seen as such a threat by society and it probably still isn't. The real issue is with the media themselves and their want to not offend a single person - but don't they offend naturists, those in the pictures, and those that see an importance of body awareness? Don't they offend the emotional intelligence of their readers? So really they are only afraid of offending a certain aspect of society. And it is this minority that are pandered to at every turn - the minority that have complained and worried society into a fear of its own shadow (and its natural body). They are a minority - but - if the media keeps pandering to them they will become a majority - because if people get told something is so often enough they will decide that is the way it should be - they will force their own natural opinions to change until eventually they convince themselves that that is the way they have always thought. The media will pixelate the minds of society until they think with blurred visions. 

I would love to hear what others think about the habit of pixelating and hiding the human body in the media - and why if it is so important do we still see nudity and sex advertising everything no matter how unattractive the actual product is?

One last thought - in last months H&E there was a whole page put over to various image examples of people on Instagram who are getting around the nudity policy - by either cropping, facing away from the camera or holding things over their breasts and genitals. Why a full page in H&E promoting Instagram usage? - it is described as a "Regular" I do hope this is not the case. It seems completely pointless to me as a reader. We know that Meta dislike nudity and their attitude is getting worse - we know that if you take shoulder shots and cover up your breasts and have photos that only show bottoms at a distance then your imagery is acceptable so why is that worthy of a page in a naturist magazine? It is beyond me. Really why encourage people who are holding a magazine in their hand that has primarily a mature and sensible attitude towards nudity to put down that magazine and head to a massive internet giant like Meta that has such backward and fearful attitudes towards nudity? I guess the plan is to encourage more followers of the H&E Instagram account and raise its profile there but it does seem a little back to front in logic. 

We do have to work with censorship in the media but if it continues to become the expected norm naturism will be pixelated out of existence in the brain washed media fed minds of the not too distant future. Almost every issue naturism currently faces - problems encouraging families, problems encouraging women, protests and attacks at events and bike rides, connections with sexual sharing and perversion, fears of people stealing your photos or sneaking images of you from the dunes, ...let alone the idea that the human body simply needs covering - are all being fuelled by the media and social media - it is only going to get worse as the media gets more and more needy about taking a stance on protecting those that fear nudity and attempting to deal with the over abuse of sexual activity on the internet.

The attitude about nudity is the result of years of indoctrination regarding nudity as a sexual state. For a majority of people, being naked means being an exhibitionist at best, a sexual deviant at worst. I believe the real deviants are those people who only see nudity as sexual. Mankind has lived hundreds of thousands of years naked and our body is meant to be exposed to air and sun.

Pixelization is the result of seeing "sexual organs" as only sexual. Private parts are meant to be private, no? Well, only if you call them private. I can probably do more harm with my bare hands that with my bare cheast or penis, no? If we need to pixelize all that offence people, then pixelize women hair for muslims, weapons that can kill people and cats because I'm allergic to them. This is totally ridiculous and only obeys ridiculous rules, made to be able " to live as a society", as I'm told often.

But before pixelizing breasts, penises and vulvas, shan't we ask ourselves who offences who and stop seeing our body as something that should be hidden for obscure reasons. The day we will see ourselves as human beings and not as sexual beings, we will be able to see naked people as they just are, naked innocent people.

Using Pixels to cover body parts in the media, is adolescent, riddiculus, and pandering to the minority. It employs for want of a better words "School Boy, play ground mentality." And yet, it is very effective!

We live in a world of control, ruled over, by the majority, and it is not just nudity that is targetted, so is race, creed, colour and sexuality. We are told, we are a tolerant society that accepts and yearns for diversity, we don't. It is a scam, a white wash, and a very bad case of the "Emperors new clothes." 

We have replaced God with Money, although religions has paved the way to a large degree. In the UK, a country once ruled over by lords, who dominated the surfs and heathens, we used the term "Feudalism." to explain the sytem of country wide management, it was replaced with the so called "Democracy" which is indeed the Emperors clothing. Today we live in a sociecty where some people, are great deal more equal than others, and we have set up a system of censorship, based on Feudalism with a few extra added tweaks. It is called Capitalism!

Capitalism works well, because it is based on sleight of hand, we all have been indocrinated to believe we can be anything, and grow wealthy, a good example of which, would be the so called "Amerian dream" It is a fools errand, some of us are allowed to grow and prosper, and the rest of us, who believe we are doing well, are actually without knowing being held back. We can never achieve what we have been taught we can, and that is because, those who have most of the money, demand control, from those of us who have less. This is not a political statement, it is simply the observation of those of us, who can think with and open mind, and take note of the world we live in.

Free thinking people, who do not hate their body, and are open, honest, and accepting to others, are considered a threat to society, and the control of those pulling the strings. We look to our politicians for guidance, but even they have been bought and paid for, as they have been introduced to that lifestyle of the powerful, and none of them want that gravy train to end, and so they virtue signal to us all and convince us they are on our side, and all whilst bowing to their masters who fund them. There is a new form of Feudalism, and the new lords are the CEO's.

They preach that nudity is offensive, perverse and sexual, and yet they all own shares in Porn Hub, and own the servers that host the X rated sites. They own shares in Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple, and they are tapped into every kind of business, including media. All of the above companies use advertising to create profits, and all of those adverts, use subtle insults, to make people feel bad about their look, their body, their image, and it is all engineered with the use of psychologists. 

We are proflied on a minute by minute basis through the media, who have implanted cookies on every site, and the psychologists read your every movement to look for that weak spot to extort you. Hence, if you love your body, you become immune to their revenue making slurs. Nudity, is the cryptonite of media.

Pixilation is one of many tools used to hide the naked body, we are told it is so others are not offended, it is the biggest myth in naturisum, and one as we have seen, most naturists buy into.

H&E whilst a great magazine, has to play by the rules, their instagram feature page is riddiculus. "Look how people are getting around Meta." they boast, it is a fools game, what they should be saying, is "Look at how Meta controls people's behaviour." Why do they not do a feature on Twitter, you can actually get away with nudity there, although you have to hide the image behind a disclaimer, and will probably be shadow banned, which is where Twitter makes your posts appear to as few as possible.

Let's look at the truth of Social media and blow up another myth. Facebook does not ban nudity, it bans "Body positivity"
Confused yet? Yeah we thought you would be :)



This was clipped from Facebook, 10 minutes before we started to write this. NO PIXELS, NO BAN. 

Facebook or Mate as they are now, and all other social Media networks allow pictures of the World Naked Bike Ride. The reason, is it is too big to stop. Too many have taken part in the last ten years, and too many have watched it and applauded it, and Media cannot take the risk of offending them all and losing the revenue that comes from it.



This is OFFENSIVE and BANNED on social media, why? Is it the nudity, not really, it is because it shows, that you can live happy, naked, and feel good about yourself. If you love your body, and show others they can too, you WILL BE BANNED!
Body positivity, kills sales. We looked at Social Media today, and guess what we found?

We found this!



And this!



And also this!



Not a single pixel in sight.... How curious, because these are still up, un banned, and have been for a few months. These images are taken from a site, that is dedicated to Women, and their health and welfare, and the person who runs this page, is a writer, and activist... One we may add who writes for the right people and has a great deal of influence because of it. She has a lot of followers and a lot of women support her, and once again, the media need those supporters to keep their revenue streams flowing and so, her inages are not banned, where as an RnR cartoon which is completly innocent and in no way sexual or lewd, is banned straight away, because it sends the wrong message to a minority.

This has never been about Sex, or nudity, it is about preventing other people from loving the skin they are, and protecting the revenue streams going to share holders, and it is time that Naturists started to understand that. The RnR picture got banned not because it is offensive, it got banned because the people posting it had the word "Naturist" On their page title. 

Naturisum threatens captitalism, there are 3.7 million naturists in the UK currently (BN Stated fact) and those are just the ones we know about, so tell us how many are there really in the world? Possibly billions, and that is a very scary fact for share holders who use underhanded subtle insults to sell products, it is anumbers game. Pixelation is one of many ways to make an image look stupid. Using Monkey heads as they did in the same article reduces the naturists to a comedy skit. Look how stupid this picture is, the subliminal message given by the picture, see how riddiculous these people are. It is basic behavioural psychology used to influence the reader not to try it. It is a game of divide and conquor.

They have been very successful to date, even naturist fear Peadophiles and the general public, some much so, our national organisation instead of fighting for the rights of children, abandoned the large swim at Blackpool and Stoke because a small group of angry women complained. Most Naturist facilities are going "Adult Only" we are buying into a manufactured myth, just like the general public, and it has all been achieved because Pyschologists are profiling everyone.