Your point is well taken Rob. If some encourages society to be more at ease with nudity that is a good thing. And it seems the body painting event you mentioned probably does that and it seems it is prioritising the body being basically naked, but colourful. The dressing up but exposing parades I am not so sure about. Partly as there is still a a great need to be clothed, so it becomes a little more like flashing than being naked. Partly because of the sort of clothing - feathers and leathers seems a good way of putting it. Partly because of the sexualisation, it may be taking sexual nudity from the bedroom and into public but it is still firmly saying "nudity=sex" and it could have a knock on effect of making people more mistrusting of naturism and more like to consider other outdoor activities being sexual - leading to dune activity for a start. When we created the beach listings we came across various reports of not just sex but prostitution within dune areas, and it is tragic that this does not just place naturism with a bad reputation, but can lead to nudity bans and also discourage many average people from becoming naturists or using these beaches. So in my mind - yes nudity in parades is a good thing as long as it encourages the idea that nudity is not always sexual.
I think Marc shares a valid point - which I sort of touched on yesterday. That some of these parades are "protected" by being part of a cause. If for example the march was LGBQT it means that many people will not kick up a big fuss for fear of appearing anti-LGBQT. Personally if I was LGBQT I would still see a parade of adults in sexualised gear as damaging to my cause, and maybe many LGQBT people do think that. I would imagine that the idea is started off by people who are actually looking to be exhibitionists and get kicks and shock people, and then others get involved in a want to appear supportive of the cause and not appear fuddy-duddy, and spend little time considering that actually it probably does more harm than good.
Naturism isn't a cause. So it is much harder to lobby. But why isn't it? I remember a few years back talk from our national body about trying to get naturism protected like a religion. I have considered this quite a lot and I have tried to express this before in various articles and will try again here to capture my thought succinctly. Although naturism is a philosophy and a way of life for many people, and is supported by a minority of the public, we are not seen as a group that needs protecting. Why? I think it is because at heart naturism is not a minority life choice, it is a majority life choice that we are all born in to, can all enjoy and should all take part in, and in some ways we all do. Basically naturism is a majority life choice that is only supported by a minority of people on a universal level. Old, young, rich, poor, any sexuality, any race, any religion can basically enjoy naturism - and so it is very hard to lobby for something that can easily be enjoyed by everyone and that everyone has within them. It is great fun, and healthy, and incredibly rewarding and therapeutic but no one is really victimised to not be able to strip off at a beach and no recognised minority is being harmed if people say "No to Naturism."
So what happens - promoting heads in other direction. We talk about the body confidence issues at great length - and use it primarily as a way of encouraging women. Come on girls you will feel much better about your breasts if you show them to the world. Yes it is true, but it still sound a bit exhibitionist to the average person. Is someone who sells sex videos on Patreon also showing body confidence as far as many people are concerned? And don't the women only swim sessions just get people worrying about the need to keep men away?
Maybe we push towards the party generation, 20-30s drinking and discos, yes this can include appearing to lobby for LGBQT naturists, but it is still welcoming to everyone of that age group so it still doesn't protect naturism - and once again we can end up making some people worry about naturism. Youngsters, nudity, alcohol, music, night time and dancing - most people are going to believe it cannot possibly be non-sexual. So how in the world can we get people to believe naturists have rights worth marching for. WNBRs are not about naturism. Charity walks and runs are not about naturism - stripping off to save tigers or to fight cancer - is great fun and very worthy - and to tie in with Rob it will help encourage people to be more relaxed about nudity but it still doesn't fight the cause of naturism.
So how can we do it? Naturism is family friendly and has to be understood as that to be trusted and grow, yet it is much easier to allow a group of adults to parade through the street with their whips and leathers than it is to allow families to walk down the street to raise awareness of naturism. Safeguard the children! What about photography? Take the children from these parents! What if the children wish they hadn't done this when they grow up? We are in a catch 22 situation innocent nudity cannot be seen as innocent unless it is treated as innocent, but while it is not seen as innocent it can never be treated as innocent. The human race has prostituted its very existence and censored itself into a corner. Yes we can have cities declare topless equality, but while the breast remains a lusted after and obsessively craved for piece of flesh that equality is meaningless. While men still pay to see the sight of a woman's breast in a bar the average women is not going to feel comfortable taking advantage of such rules. While we still demand perfection in these breasts the average woman will not feel confident enough to take advantage of these rules. The likelihood is that most women who do this will be considered exhibitionists by other women, and as they are bound to attract a huge amount of male attention it is maybe not so surprising.
We have a huge hurdle to deal with when it comes to finding naturism as a welcome sight on public streets. The imbalance between naturism being unacceptable and sexualised and shocking nudity being acceptable sadly makes total sense despite being totally illogical within the society we have created to live in.
at May 9, 2025 10:58 AM BST 
I must admit, there is a part of me that would love to visit this Fantasy Fest with a microphone and interview these painted people, and ask. "Would you ever go to a nudist beach of club?"
I would then ask the onlookers "if they object to unpainted skin, but are happy seeing painted skin?" I feel I would get a great blog or podcast pout of it.
Yesterday on the activity feed Steve was writing about how some sharing on social media actually makes him feel sick. It isn't just about the fact that sexual sharing seems OK. it is also about how graphic it is and how far people are willing to go with the sexualised imagery and acts they share. We have been using various social media sites to promote naturism since 2016 and the things that people share never fail to surprise, shock and sicken us. Are we prudes? We don' think so, but in the everything goes world of social media it is very easy to be taken by surprise and be rather stunned and disgusted. What is really wrong is that these images come with no warning. They are simply part of the general sharing on these sites. Sites like Twitter and Me We where one minute you may be reading a posts about a film star, the next about coffee, then one about a politician and then suddenly there is an image with several men doing various things to one woman and it seems no more out of place than if she was sitting having tea and cake with her grandparents.
What about places like Facebook where nudity is banned? Yes it is a lot better but there is still private messaging, the rules don't seem to apply to "stories" people post either, and there are a surprising amount of sexual images and videos that get added to groups as people who post porn occasionally take over one group or another and the admin seem to have no control. But then there are also all the posts that bypass the rules. They don't show nudity, or show it with stickers over parts of the body, but still show sexualised sharing, show images that are very exhibitionist and attention seeking. And they get the attention too! Even in groups where everyone says they are naturists when a woman posts a photo of her self barely contained in her skimpy underwear sitting on a bed it receives lots of comments about how stunning and wonderful she is. What has this got to do with naturism?
Ironically some of these posts get accepted into "naturist groups" that do not accept ANW posts and you can look at examples of how safe our posts are here: https://anaturistworld.com/newsletter/anw-social-media-posts
So why is this? It isn't because they do not allow promos to naturist sites because the activity feeds are full of links to other sites, it seems for some reason there is a bias towards some promoting over others, and only the admin of these groups can explain why that may be. But it is frustrating when you see some of the posts they do allow, particularly when some are not naturist at all, but just selling a sexualised idea of women.
Incidentally, those of you who followed our issues last year with fellow naturists complaining that our posts were sexualised, against Facebook standards and misused children. Since we left a couple of the UK based groups where these complaints were coming from we have had no other issues with Facebook banning us from posting. Sad that this sort of behaviour goes on in naturism, as it is wrong for any naturist to suggest that another genuine naturist's posts are sexual in nature, but at least we have go out of the loop where we couldn't post from one month to the next.
On Facebook now we also see a high level of nudes of women with babies attached to them. The bending of the rules on breastfeeding has meant that this is used to get naked women on the site. The images seldom capture the true natural beauty of breastfeeding and turn it into a sexual expression, a quick look at the profiles of those who share these images and it is very easy to see that they are posting image after image of different "Playboy" style women doing this and the comments also capture something of the essence of the posts. Bare in mind that if we were to post an image with our sons as toddlers with us on the beach and not show anything against Facebook policy the image would not be allowed because of our babies are understood to be naked. Yet these nude women and their naked toddlers are accepted - and sometimes this children are very much toddlers and not babies.
One of the things that saddens me is the amount of sexualised jokes that are posted on naturist groups in social media. All these sexual innuendos simply add to the idea that naturism is itself sexual and not suitable for all. We know naturism is misunderstood and it frustrates us so why do naturist continue to post activity on social media that suggest naturism is sexualised? It may seem funny within naturism, but outside of naturism it is confirmation that we are all obsessed with genitals, breasts, and sex - and that is why we are naked.
Anyway, back to this topic. There is a growing double standard in social media where simple innocent, harmless nudity as captured in naturism is seen as wrong, even buttocks now have been banned from places like Facebook. And places like Twitter allow such a sexualised image of the human body that it is almost impossible to consider nudity as anything other than sexual within such sites.
Between the two "camps" naturism seems to be being stamped out more and more. There is simply no place for naturism in general social media any more, but there is lots of place for bad behaviour. And not just sexualised images but other bad behaviour too.
It seems to me that it all makes the role of ANW even more important than ever. As the internet rejects nudity and embraces sexual behaviour in equal measure we will see society have a greater difficulty in understanding that nudity can be harmless, healthy, innocent and positive. As this negative attitude increases a greater misunderstanding of naturism will grow, a higher misuse of naturism will grow and the more we will see naturism itself promote naturism as adult only and allow it to fall into the sexual trap.
Naturism used to be a way of escaping modern preoccupations and ideas and capture a more natural way of being. Naturism dictated a better way. Today if we are not careful it is the modern preoccupations, lead by social media behaviour that will dictate what naturism is. Ageless nature will be forgotten and "modern trending" will be the deciding factor. We are already seeing this happen in how naturism is promoted, who it is promoted to and the growing number of adult only events, swims, venues, charity walks, parties etc as well as the growth of gender obsession and segregation. We are turning naturism into something that is akin to the mindset of social media, instead of allowing the tradition nature and definition of naturism be the driving force to protect naturism and fight against social media nonsense.
What do you think?
Is that fact that sexual behaviour seems more acceptable on social media leading naturism into bad habits? What can we do about it? and Where does that leave ANW? Or does social media simply paint the worse picture of everything and naturism is safe and moving forward in a positive way?
at May 9, 2025 7:24 PM BST
I think there is a lot to unpack here Anna, because the way we see it, naturism is currently caught between opposing fires, and has become somewhat fractured with in fighting. One person’s definition of harmless, has become another’s definition of lude.
Like most things today, issues can be divided into camps, there are those like us on ANW who believe in the INF rules as laid down in the 1970’s, and then there are those who are modernists who want to shake things up, and change everything. We have seen a great deal of this over the years in what was once referred to as PC culture, and now has morphed into what would be considered woke.
There is no doubt that in the last few years there has been a deliberate push within naturism to sexualise it, and we are seeing that more and more, which is why we choose not to post our naturism anywhere else accept exclusively on ANW. In a nut shell, we do not want to be associated with those who post the sorts of sexualised content we see on a daily basis on other naturist sites.
Earlier in this thread we talked about the contradiction of social media, which we add is mainly USA based, and from years of watching and reading, we feel it is safe to say that the general consensus of the American public, tends to lean heavily towards the sexualisation of everything. The USA is massively influential, and sadly what happens there soon appears everywhere else, and sexualisation has spread. Like most things, sex has been monetised, (Only Fans) the result of which, has been that because it is now considered an income, it has been given the status of fake respectability, because in today’s world, everything is now for sale, and money is the new god to everyone.
We still see sexualised content on Facebook, the difference is, it is monetised, and therefore revenue. Not a day passes where there is not some paid for post advertising explicit hook ups or sexual services, it is no different than the back pages of H&E. The hypocrisy of Facebook and other social media sites is astounding, at least Me We which we find distasteful, promotes that it is open to all, and does allow sexual content, so at least they are little more truthful, you know what to expect.
Having said all of this, we do feel that the majority of naturism is decent, which to a degree explains the rapid growth of ANW over the years, because it does attract a certain mind set of naturists, who like us, who have no wish to wade through the mire of X rated content to find what we see as, “proper naturism.”
There is also another aspect here that should be considered, and whilst trying to swerve around the politics, which is equally as divisive as nudity and sexualisation, we have to point out the current direction of the world today. To be quite frank, it does appear like the world is becoming more and more authoritarian, where governments and media want to harvest all our data. This has been getting increasingly worse for over a decade, and it has led to changed behaviour. The Gen X and Boomer generations tend to believe in privacy, whereas social media has fostered a culture of share everything, and Gen Z and the Millennials have embraced this with open arms. Today, your sexual behaviour is more and more a badge to where with pride, and flaunt to everyone, who you sleep with and what you do in your bed, is now something that can be shared along with your pictures of your meal on social media.
Sex sells, and now everything is for sale, hell, some girls are even auctioning off their virginity, or like Bonnie Blue, filming monetise documentaries about the 1000 stranger men they slept with in one day. Sadly, the younger generations have no issues talking about this, and boasting in conversations about it, and even we have seen some of that enter naturism. It may sound crazy, but in this world of accept everything, it appears a lot of the public finds it difficult to believe there is such a thing as none sexual nudity, the reason being, every aspect of their lives is invaded with sexual content.
At the moment, it does feel like we live in a world of “How it looks is far more important, than how it is.” There is no doubt a societal view of double standards at play here, as the new norm has become slander those who sleep with married people, whilst having an affair yourself at the same time. The way we see it, “Genuine” is a word at threat, as is “Honesty” as we now live within a society that is based on capital gains. Money is the most important aspect of life, and the more you have, the more you can exploit others.
Sadly, we are seeing that in aspects of naturism, which has its factions of exhibitionism. The other aspect we must also remember is that to be happy naked and body positive is the new freedom. Naturism will always get attacked, because we are happy within ourselves with the bodies we have, and that makes us impossible to control or manipulate. You can only manipulate someone who is embarrassed about being seen naked, so if you are asked if you are a naturist, and your response is yes, there is no reply to that, because others can see you are far more freer than they are, and for those with a mind to control others, that makes you immune to them.
ANW has a good future, simply because most naturists believe in what ANW is, and are happy to find a place of liked minded people, away from the sordid world of other sites and social interactions. It is why it will soon be five years old with continuous growth, it is a haven for the proud, none sexualised, free body culture people like everyone reading this this.
Two very good and complimentary points of view, Anna and RnR.
I have often wished I could go back 100 years or more to a time when these issues hadn’t surfaced. I believe there is a direct correlation between having a place in society and behaviour. When most people new where they were in society, they could get on with work and life. Take the hard working cockneys of yesteryear; they worked hard for 60 hours a week in not-so-good conditions. They didn’t complain too much. They socialised in their local pub and spent their holidays at the coast. They had strong family and community values.
Fast forward to present day and the picture is very different. We have influencers who make staggering amounts of money. And they are treated like rock stars. Unfortunately a seemingly large amount of people hang on to the influencers every word or action. They follow without question and want far more that they can currently have. They are out of position in society (in terms of their preceived social status) and it is reflected in their behaviours.
And that is where us naturists come under fire. Any minority is an easy target. So if an influencer can earn £25,000 per post out of sexualising naturism, they will; and so too will all the followers.
I think ANW is an excellent movement (for want of a better expression) for sensible, level-headed people who enjoy the freedom of nudity in nature. The number of stories, photos and experiences we all post, without fear of retribution, demonstrates this.
