Magazine Article	Articles Archive

In ancient Greece city-states, especially Sparta, public nudity was commonplace. At the Pan-Hellenic games and the original Olympic competitions, athletes wore only a veneer of oil. The word gymnasium, derived from the Greek gymnos, means a place to exercise naked.

The rise of Christianity brought erotophobia and gymnophobia -- fear of nakedness -- into the pagan world. By the Middle Ages, many theologians and mystics believed that since genitalia were superfluous before the Fall of Man, Adam must have been slapped with a punitive penis after he'd transgressed. The 13th-century Cistercian nun Mechthild of Magdeburg claimed the First Man was "ignominiously altered in body" when he ate the forbidden fruit.

<

View our poll archive

P>

Although Renaissance humanism brought saner attitudes toward human anatomy, Church zealots of the Counter-Reformation hid classical statues' genitalia under fig leaves, and ordered the nudes of Michelangelo's Last Judgment covered up.

Despite a legacy of Puritan repression, same-sex groups swam nude throughout the newborn U.S.A. in the 18th and 19th centuries. Benjamin Franklin took a daily "air bath." Thoreau strolled naked around Walden Pond. Walt Whitman celebrated being "undisguised and naked." Artist/educator Thomas Eakins based his iconic painting The Swimming Hole (1884-'85) on nude outings he enjoyed with his students.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, German Freikörperkultur (FKK) -- free body culture -- arose in Essen in 1898 and was popularized by the Wandervogel youth movement. A nudist park appeared near Hamburg in 1903.

The U.S. nudist movement was a German import. Its first milestone was a nude Labor Day picnic organized by German immigrant Kurt Barthel on the banks of the Hudson in 1929.

At the beginning, American nudism was conservative, abstemious, and grounded in Christianity. In the forefront was Rev. Isley Boone, head of the American League for Physical Culture, later the American Sunbathing Association. An enforced air of respectability counteracted public perceptions of social nudity as salacious or outré, and refuted condemnation by such figures as Pope Pius XI, who called nudism "paganly immodest."

The Naturist Society (TNS), based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, emerged in 1980 from founder Lee Baxandall's involvement in the countercultural Free Beach movement during the 1960s. Gay and Lesbian Naturists (GLN), the Naturist Society's first gay special interest group (SIG), was founded in 1983 in New York by Murray Kaufman. At about the same time, such groups as San Francisco Kindred Nudists (SKINS) and Los Angeles Nude Guys (LANG) began to spring up. The first gay naturist gathering was in 1985 at Summit Lodge in Rockbridge, Ohio, under the auspices of GLN.

Today gay naturists form a subset of a diverse international naturist community spanning the political spectrum. Salt Lake City has room for both Utah Male Naturists (UMEN) and the LDS Skinny-Dipper Connection, a resource for naturist Mormons. In the vicinity of Palm Springs, famed for clothing-optional gay playgrounds, straight venues include Living Waters Spa, a Christian naturist retreat.

•••
Enjoy all our (un)coverage of nudism:

Gay and Naked

Swimming and Sunning Naked-- Gay Beaches Worldwide

Surfing Naked-- Nudism Sites Online

•••