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"There are lots of reasons to be naked," says Bert Bik of Totally Naked Toronto Men Enjoying Nudity (TNT!MEN). "The best reason is that it's fun."

Worldwide, people of all ages, social strata, and sexual orientations are expected to turn up in record numbers this summer at nude or clothing-optional beaches, hot springs, swimming holes, campgrounds, resorts, and events as diverse as Christian Nudist Convocations and phases of the World Naked Bike Ride. According to the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR), clothes-free recreational activities are a growth industry, generating $440 million last year in the U.S. alone.

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There are no statistics indicating how much of that figure represents gay expenditure, but anecdotal evidence suggests that social nudity among gay men is gaining ground. Clubs such as Dallas Area Male Naturists (DAMN) or the Buck Naked Boys Club of Edmonton, Alberta, maintain busy schedules. Hundreds of participants show up for annual gatherings sponsored by International Men Enjoying Naturism (IMEN), Gay Naturists International (GNI), and similar groups. Nude swimming and sunning have become normal features of gay accommodations. GNI's nude Caribbean cruises tend to sell out.

"We're seeing an explosion of growth in places where we've never seen naturist clubs before," says GNI board member Seth Paronick. His organization has more than 60 affiliates in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, and lists more than 180 gay naturist clubs worldwide. GNI networks with like-minded groups as far afield as Hong Kong; the organization has recently assisted a fledgling gay naturist effort in South Africa.

Clothing-optional gay resorts, guest houses, and retreats have proliferated in recent years. In the Eastern U.S., the largest concentration of such establishments is in South Florida, chiefly around Key West, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale. In the West, the largest cluster is in Palm Springs and surrounding communities, especially the Warm Sands neighborhood in Palm Springs proper. Many of these operations are clothing-optional in pool and sundeck areas only; some permit nudity throughout the premises.

About three dozen North American gay campgrounds and reserves now allow nudity, from Jungle Secret Oasis near Puerto Vallarta to Camping de la Fierté near Montreal. Among the oldest is Timberfell Lodge in Greeneville, Tennessee.

Liberation and laundry

Although the distinction between nudism and naturism is fluid, the terms aren't fully interchangeable. "Nudism" refers to the act of going without clothes in private or in public; "naturism" suggests a philosophy of health, fitness, and environmental propriety. Emphasizing nudity as a natural state, some prefer the term "naturalism."

However they choose to classify themselves, gay men present various reasons for embracing social nudity. For arts administrator Bob R., a gay member of the Naturist Society, "Being naked in nature with other people is a marvelously freeing experience." For Seth Paronick, "There's a sense of personal liberation, a feeling of body acceptance, less pretentiousness -- and less laundry."

"Our guests form enduring relationships," says Ron Butzlaff, who with his partner runs Gargoyle House, a men's naturist retreat in Vermont. "Social nudity encourages bonding. People come here repeatedly to be with their friends."

"Outdoors, in a natural setting," adds Derek Harrison, a retired social worker who divides his time between Massachusetts and Florida, "being naked -- getting rid of barriers -- makes me feel more at one with my surroundings. In social situations, when everyone's nude there's no consciousness of who's cool or has better clothes. Everybody's more relaxed. It's also very erotic."

Sexual possibilities arise whenever gay men gather, nude or clothed. For naturists, spontaneous erections are a non-issue ("You pretend it isn't there until it isn't there," says Bob R.). But exhibitionistic weenie-wagging is as unacceptable at most naked events as blatant gawking, or photographing people without their consent. Some gay naturist groups acknowledge the sexual side of their social interactions by designating separate times or places for play. While GNI stresses that "GNI-affiliated clubs promote non-sexual events," policy on sexual behavior is left up to individual clubs.

GNI's affiliates must adhere to the organization's policy statement on sexuality: "GNI acknowledges that sex is natural, but sex is not equated with naturism. GNI respects all of its members for their individuality, whether or not they choose to express their sexuality, and shall endeavor to respect individual sensibilities as may be appropriate, and encourages its members to do the same."

Accordingly, naturist attitudes toward sexuality vary, along with rules to curtail or facilitate sexual activity. Few North American gay nudist venues are as sexually open as l'Impacte, the Parisian gay bar and sex club, where nudity is de rigueur, but some have a bathhouse atmosphere. Many proprietors ask that sex be confined to private areas, though some allow casual sex in the open. "We have no rules," says the co-owner of one gay male hideaway, "except maybe, 'Don't fuck on the pool table.'"

"If you employ sufficient discretion, I don't care what goes on," says Michael Boyd, editor of Naked Places: A Guide for Gay Men to Nude Recreation and Travel. "It's too bad you can't count on people to be more discreet. If you look at the official attitudes of a lot of naturist organizations -- American especially -- they seem asexual or sex-negative, and I can understand why."

Clothes and the law

Some dedicated naturists who aren't opposed to sex play per se maintain that public sex invites law enforcement to crack down on clothing-optional areas, or to pass or tighten local anti-nudity laws. Cruising does take place in and near the gay sections of nudist areas from Rock River, Vermont, to San Diego's Black's Beach.

Some efforts to constrain nude activities -- and cruising -- involve steps such as the elimination of parking areas. Some are at least ostensibly based on environmental concerns. (The extent to which hypocrisy is involved is hard to sort out.) The dunes at Provincetown, once a sexual wonderland, became restricted within the past decade, when officials took steps to protect the nesting grounds of the piping plover. Conservationist approaches to keeping nude sunbathers and others out of wildlife habitats have been effective, resonating with naturists' green sensibilities.

Although there is no blanket federal law against nudity on U.S. National Park Service lands, the Cape Cod National Seashore (encompassing all the beaches on the Outer Cape from Chatham to Provincetown) has its own special federal statute forbidding nudity at such longtime clothing-optional zones as Truro's Long Nook and Provincetown's Herring Cove. The statute is, however, spottily enforced. Elsewhere, the doctrine of "concurrent jurisdiction" means that federal park rangers may enforce local anti-nudity laws or invite local authorities to do so. Much depends on the mores of neighboring communities.

"The attitudes of locals and local law enforcement are much more important than what's on the books," says Michael Boyd.

'Face the wall...'

In the U.S., conceptions of nudity have changed in recent decades, and dipped toward repression. From the 1890s until 1974, when YMCA swimming pools went coed, men and boys were required to swim at the Y without suits. Until the 1980s, group showers were almost universally required of high school gym classes. Today, American attitudes toward same-sex group nudity are beyond Victorian.

A 21st-century cultural religion of omnipresent sex abuse, with "predators" tumescing behind every tree, has transformed the United States into a nation of wary prudes. Contemporary teenagers' "body issues" are exacerbated by vigilant adults with good-touch-bad-touch social biases. Calling gym-class showers a "necessary evil," one online columnist at Lovetoknow.com advises high school students: "If you are unfortunate enough to have a common shower with no dividers or curtains, get the corner spot and face the wall as much as possible."

A major factor in neo-prudishness is, ironically, liberation. Post-Stonewall knowledge of an unavoidable gay presence has forced sports teams, high school gym classes, and patrons of public swimming pools to abandon the fiction that there was never any sexual tension in same-sex group nudity, especially in locker-room showers.

"The gays-in-the-military debate was one long riff on shower anxiety," wrote Gabriel Rotello in a 1996 issue of The Advocate. "Heterosexual males would be driven into murderous rage, we were told, at the possibility of being looked on 'that way' by queers. Nobody ever talked about gay people's shower anxiety -- the fear that one stray glance might get you killed."

During the early 1980s, when American erotophobia fused with fear of AIDS -- the "gay plague" -- the resulting intensification of homophobia sharpened fear of the queer eye -- and fear of being viewed as queer. "A typical contemporary teen's response to locker-room nudity is 'That's so gay!'" Seth Paronick points out. "Also, nudism is frozen in the public mind with baby boomers and their skinny-dipping counterculture, so younger people tend to associate group nakedness with somewhat embarrassing elders."

The appearance of naked teens in a Brattleboro, Vermont, parking lot in 2006-'07 was a localized pattern of rebellion, not a national trend.

Europeans more relaxed

Inhibitions rampant among American men aren't shared by most Europeans, who seem to be more at home in their bodies. In Germany alone, according to the Antwerp-based International Naturist Federation (INF), 11.8 million people -- one German in seven -- visit a nude beach at least once a year. Mixed nude sunbathing has been customary since the 1960s in German city parks such as Munich's Englischer Garten. This year, a German online travel agency introduced nude charter flights from Erfurt to Usedom, a naturist-friendly Baltic isle.

In France, the Atlantic seaside town Montalivet is the site of Centre Helio-Marin, the world's first nudist resort, established in 1950; the INF was founded there in 1953. On the Mediterranean, thousands flock to the Village Naturiste at Cap d'Agde, a sector where signs proclaim "Naturisme Obligatoire," and nude holidaymakers inhabit an otherwise conventional town. Popular gay nude beaches along the French Mediterranean coast include l'Espiguette, Marseillan Plage, and, on the Côte d'Azur between Nice and Monaco, a rocky stretch at Eze-sur-Mer.

Throughout France and much of the rest of Europe -- with the notable exception of conservative, Catholic Italy -- women may sunbathe topless at public beaches. In Norway and Denmark, virtually all beaches are clothing-optional. In Sweden, with a modicum of tact, anyone can be naked in the woods or by almost any body of water; there are at least three gay nude beach areas in and around Stockholm. Croatia's economy depends on naked tourists. In Spain, naturism is widespread, with 40 nude beaches, some of them gay, in Catalonia alone. In 2003, photographer Spencer Tunick, who creates and documents installations made of crowds of nude people in major cities around the world, attracted 7,000 participants, the largest naked assembly of his career to date, in Barcelona.

Canada's attitude toward nudity echoes European tolerance, not the repressive mindset of its southern neighbor. A 1999 survey commissioned by the Canadian Federation of Naturists indicated that a fifth of the country's population is drawn to naturism, and that persons under 25 are likeliest to engage in naturist activities. Section 174 of the Canadian Criminal Code prohibits being "so clad as to offend against public decency or order" within public view, but court rulings have affirmed that the law does not apply to streaking, nude sunbathing, or swimming au naturel.

In the late '90s, various members of the predominantly gay Toronto naturist group TNT!MEN began marching nude in the annual Toronto Pride parade, Canada's largest event of its kind.

"In the beginning, the authorities didn't know what to do with us," says TNT co-founder Bert Bik. "Then they started giving us warnings."

Finally, in June 2000, in an apparent act of retaliation for TNT's then-recent court victory securing the right to hold nude dances, police arrested seven members of TNT!MEN's Pride contingent for disorderly conduct. The upshot of the arrests was a legal affirmation that if the marchers were wearing some item of clothing (shoes would do) and appearing at an event where attendees might expect to see nudity (i.e. the Toronto Pride parade), then marching naked was legal. Since then, Toronto Mayor David Miller, willingly photographed with unclothed TNT!MEN during Pride, has provided a vivid contrast to Boston Mayor Tom Menino, whose apoplectic reaction to a near-naked man on stilts at his city's 1996 pride march threatened to drive future Boston pride celebrations indoors.

A great equalizer

Even in the United States, however, prudishness isn't always the norm. Despite indefatigable sex panic, a 2006 Gallup poll indicated that 74 percent of Americans think nude sunbathing should be allowed at designated beaches. Committed gay and straight naturists have succeeded in creating and preserving fully legal nude beaches and swimming areas in several states, and fostered a climate where the existence of clothes-free recreation is increasingly tolerated -- especially in places where naturism is a tradition.

In Austin, Texas, MacGregor County Park at Lake Travis became so associated with hippie skinny-dippers that its popular designation, Hippie Hollow, has eclipsed its official name. Swimming nude within its boundaries is now legal for persons over 17. On San Francisco Bay, within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, a mostly gay crowd has staked out the nude section of Baker Beach. Naturists flock to Gunnison Beach, a clothing-optional expanse of New Jersey's Sandy Hook. In North Miami, about 1.3 million people show up each year at Haulover Park Beach, Florida's one officially sanctioned nude recreation area.

The Naturist Action Committee (NAC), the non-profit action arm of The Naturist Society, is currently poised -- along with the South Florida gay naturist group Wildfyre -- to oppose Florida House Bill 801, a right-wing initiative intended to make nudity within 1000 feet of a public park or beach a felony. Elsewhere, the organization is pressing for inclusion of clothing-optional beaches in Seattle waterfront development plans.

Iconic photos of Iraqi prisoners abused by U.S soldiers at Abu Ghraib reveal an American vision of the naked human body as an emblem of vulnerability, shame, and humiliation. The American jailers' contempt for Islamic traditions of modesty seems to rise out of a culture whose own perception of unclothed bodies is rife with prurient fear.

"Nudism is an equalizer between human beings," proclaims TNT!MEN at its website. Naturist organizations remind the world that the naked human body really stands for authenticity, openness, the natural world, and all that human beings hold in common.

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Enjoy all our (un)coverage of nudism:

As Nature Intended-- Nudism Through the Ages

Swimming and Sunning Naked-- Gay Beaches Worldwide

Surfing Naked-- Nudism Sites Online

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