~ "Nudes Media - Nudes In The News" ~

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Dare To Bare In The Open Air
Nudist tourism is putting on a layer of opulence

Jayne Clark - USA Today & The Province - May 22, 2005

The once bare-bones ambience of the archetypal nudist camp is turning posh as owners add amenities from full-service spas to high-speed Internet. But there's still no need to dress for dinner.

 

In fact, much of the industry has cast off the term "camp" in favor of "resort" in the conviction that it better reflects the growing number of upscale venues.

"The bar has been raised," says Nancy Tiemann, owner of Bare Necessities, an Austin travel agency that specializes in nude travel.

 

Driving the trend is the growing number of mainstream vacationers who don't necessarily identify themselves as nudists but nevertheless are willing to shed their inhibitions at a nudist resort. At the same time, they're not willing to sacrifice a certain level of service and comfort.

 

"We addressed a market segment that has heretofore not been addressed," says Stephen Payne, founder of Desert Shadows Inn Resort & Villas in Palm Springs, Calif., where rooms start at about $200 US a night. "These people don't belong to any nudist organization. They're not pitching tents. They visit us just like they would any other resort."

 

Among other upscale developments in naked travel:

 

- The year-old Caliente Resort and Spa north of Tampa sports a clubhouse with spa and meeting facilities and five dining venues.

 

- Bare Necessities Tour & Travel has sold out summer nude European cruises with fares ranging from $2,295 to $6,595. A Caribbean cruise in February already is 80-per-cent sold out.

 

- At Paradise Lakes Resort near Tampa, the latest additions to the 510 housing units, starting at $250,000, have sold out before building began.

 

© The Vancouver Province 2005

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Now for some good nudes to pass along

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - (The Province)
 
KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- In an effort to better educate the public about the benefits of nude recreation, the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR), has redesigned its website www.aanr.com
 
The site, which has received more than 250,000 visits per month during peak season, provides visitors an inside glimpse into the nudist experience with information and steps for experiencing the benefits of nudism. It also serves as a resource for AANR members, clubs and resorts.
 
The site was redesigned to be a complete resource for members, potential members, journalists and government officials. The site's new main components include:
 
- The Experience: This page provides background on how to enjoy nude recreation.
 
- Frequently Asked Questions answers basic queries about AANR and the nude lifetstyle.
 
- Family Values explains the benefits of family nude recreation.
 
- Cyber-Bulletin: AANR's official online newsletter.
 
The site also includes an online store, member services, club services, a site index, search function, events calendar, information for AANR regions and clubs and information on how to become a member.
 
AANR says its mission is to promote, enhance and protect in appropriate settings, nude recreation and nude living in the Americas.

© The Vancouver Province 2005

In the trees above Mountain Highway is a colony of people who love to feel the open wind on their back.

And by that I mean backside.
But it’s not just the fresh mountain air they adore.  These people are seeking a natural experience of another kind – a clothing-optional one that allows them to interact with others who are likewise wearing nothing but a smile.

 

North Vancouver resident Tom Dunn, 54, is one of those people.
Dunn is a member of Van Tan Nudist Club, one of Canada’s oldest nudist resorts, founded in 1939 by Ray Connett, also known as The Father of Canadian Nudism.

 

Dunn has been a member of Van Tan on and off since 1976.  It was after college that Dunn started to become intrigued by nudism.  Like a lot of young people he questioned some of the value systems of the time.  Even clothes came under scrutiny, as he began to think of them “as something one shouldn’t necessarily have to wear all the time.”

 

Though he was liberal, Dunn – a retail supervisor at the time – was no hippie.  He wore a suit to work and had short hair.  What drew the young, married man to nudism in 1976, at age 25, was the “freedom.”

 

His foray into the lifestyle began with visits to Vancouver's Wreck Beach, but eventually he began to feel there was something missing and loathed the fact that they did not provide that much privacy from gawkers.

 

It was an advertisement in the North Shore News for a Van Tan Nudist club that inspired his first visit, Dunn says.

 

He went up to the club and introduced himself and inquired about membership.  Despite Dunn’s enthusiasm, his then wife was not thrilled about the idea of joining a nudist club.

 

This made joining a challenge, as most clubs prefer that “couples” join to keep the female to male ratio balanced.  There was also a desire to not cause friction in Dunn’s marriage.  Before he could join, Van Tan members interviewed his wife to make sure she was OK with her husband joining.

 

The idea is not to create a setting where single people go to meet other singles.

 

“I think they feel that single people joining would think it is an experience to allow them to find people of the opposite sex that are open to the idea (of sex),” Dunn says.

 

This would mean there would be far more male applicants than female.  “There would be a large gender imbalance,” Dunn explains.  “Lots of clubs try and promote gender equality if they can.  Being naked in a nudist environment and being naked with my partner are two different things.”

 

The atmosphere is actually non-sexual and “a little bit of clothing” can be far more alluring, says Dunn - a stout man with a moustache and glasses.

 

In a nudist club, members are careful not to look at anyone in a way that could be construed as sexist, patronizing, or downgrading, because that kind of thing can get people kicked out, explains James Woycke, a history professor at the University of Western Ontario.  Woycke, spent more than a decade researching the history of Canadian nudism from Newfoundland to Vancouver and the United States and last spring published a book on the subject.

 

The ambience is more like a locker room, he says.  The commercial approach of our culture to the body, precipitated by Playboy magazine, is what creates the sexualization of nudity, Woycke said in an interview with the News.

 

People are conditioned to think of the body as an object and nudity is deemed as degrading, Woycke says.  “It’s not respectable, and so all of those attitudes and perceptions influence the way people who aren’t involved might think about this.”  Woycke knows all about Van Tan and its founder Connett, who was raised on a farm in Saskatchewan.  After Connett married his wife Mildred, the pair eventually moved to Vancouver, Woycke says.  From time to time, the couple would go down to Bellingham to shop.  On one of those trips Connett saw nudist magazines for the first time.

 

“So he bought one and he became intrigued by the philosophy and started to follow it regularly,” the professor explains.

 

Eventually Connett became aware of the global nudist following through British and American magazines.  It was particularly strong to Germany where nudism began as a self-help reform movement in reaction to industrialization and urbanization during the 19th century.

 

At that time an informal coalition of natural lifestyle reform movements took shape, combining clothing reform, vegetarianism, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, and naturopathy.  Woycke explains in his writings.

 

Since the early clubs were experiments in natural living, they imposed the full natural regimen on all guests: nudity rain or shine, abstinence, vegetarianism, and mandatory calisthenics.  Many guests decided that the practice was not as attractive as the theory, but while some of them deserted the cause completely, the social nudity lingered on.

 

When people removed their cultural body armour they felt freer and less stressed than during their everyday lives.  This relaxed social ambience became the hallmark of 20th-century social nudism, Woycke writes.

 

Connett stumbled upon his Van Tan cohorts through an ad in The Province, which referred to one of the English nudist associations.  One had to know something about nudism to recognize the ad.  Eventually the crew founded the site on the lower slopes of Grouse Mountain with a picturesque view of Burrard Inlet and Greater Vancouver.  The roughly 7.5-acre site is l.8 kilometres (1.1 miles) along a private road extending from the top of Mountain Highway above Lynn Valley.  This park-like setting was secluded enough to facilitate the club.

 

Today, Van Tan has a wood-fired sauna, a barbecue, facilities for volley ball, badminton, horseshoes, shuffleboard, croquet, children’s play equipment, and lawns for sunning, and lots of trees for shades.

 

The club is a member-owned club with a policy of keeping the fees as low as possible.  This means the roughly 70 members do the majority of the routine maintenance and club improvements.  In addition to the annual $150 in fees, members agree to contribute work to the club, which is always accepting new members.  Currently most of the members are in their late 40s, Dunn says.

 

Though club members aren’t required to wear or not wear clothes, there is some basic etiquette that every nudist worth their salt will follow.

 

Club members must carry a towel at all times.  This has several purposes; firstly they are to be used for seating, and they come in handy should men find that anything unexpectedly arises.

 

Another unspoken rule is that members do not dwell on the physical appearance of others.

 

“It is considered quite impolite to make comments regarding perfections or imperfections,” Dunn says.

 

For most people the first experience at the club is usually the most difficult, Dunn says, and some never recover from being uncovered in public.

 

While most people’s idea of a good time doesn’t involve sitting around the barbecue pit, trying to avoid sparks from hitting their reproductive organs while they mingle with friends, for Dunn there is no other way to live.

 

“I tended to enjoy the time where I didn’t have to wear clothing, particularly when it was really hot out,” he says.  “Also the social interactions, I enjoyed as well.  It seems to me that at times I met people that I thought were maybe a little bit more honest because I found in the past that there are some people whose lives are structured around the facade that they build.  Some of that facade is the clothing that they wear, as well as what kind of personality that they have.  It seemed to me that the people that I met through the nudist movement were a little more open and like-minded.”

 

'I Walk Around Naked All The Time'
Alanis reveals her love for nudity, potlucks and boyfriend Ryan Reynolds

Alanis Morissette is in love, happy to share a life with her boyfriend and optimistic about her upcoming CD that she labels as more "couple-oriented" in tone, reports Organic Style magazine.

Oh yeah, she likes to walk around the house naked.

"I walk around naked all the time," the Ottawa singer says in the April issue of the magazine. "I'm a leave-the-bathroom-door-open nudist, which is sometimes disconcerting for my friends."

She said not even her parents hid their bodies. "We all walked around naked when it was appropriate, there wasn't a lot of shame to it."

The comment came after the magazine's contributing editor Jamie Diamond asked Morissette about her body and her battle with bulimia as a teenager.

"It totally blew my mind when she told me that," says Diamond.

"I was startled by it because there's a disconnect; you're ashamed of your body but (now) you're walking around naked."

Diamond said she found Morissette friendly and engaging during their two-hour chat last December at a tea shop in Los Angeles, where she sipped on herbal tea.

"She was low-key. I liked her and her sense of humour and her sarcasm."

In the interview, Morissette said "sarcasm helps" to balance things in life. "It's also a very stereotypically Canadian thing to make fun of yourself. It was my boyfriend's ability to laugh at himself that made me fall in love with him."

Morissette has dated Vancouver actor Ryan Reynolds (National Lampoon's Van Wilder) for more than two years. She said she has a close bond with Reynolds and he was unfazed when, in a spontaneous moment last year, she cut her hair short, by herself.

"He'd be in love with me even if I shaved my head," she said in the interview.

Diamond agrees the couple are soulmates.

"I think she's in love with Ryan and the whole damn album is about that (and) about not running away from relationships."

Diamond said the singer arrived at the tea shop -- a favourite hangout -- and talked about the potluck party she had at home the night before.

"I'm the queen of potluck dinners," Morissette, who'll host the Junos next month, told Diamond. "Alanis also has a tendency to bite her nails."

Morissette described her parents as being on the "periphery of hippiedom," although she doesn't totally embrace the hippie lifestyle.

"I've been careful not to present myself as Hemp Woman. I wear leather, my consciousness has a little way to go on that front,"she said.

She said she remembers the soothing hands of her mother, Georgia, comforting her as a child. "When I was sad as a kid I would ask my mom to rub cream on my hands. I liked the TLC of it."

As for global issues and embracing Zen philosophy, she said in the interview that she "gravitates toward women's causes and the environment, but my No. 1 cause is anything to do with becoming more whole as a human being."