From what I've read, females tend to accept naturism less enthusiastically(sp), then males. But when you visit a beach, the swimwear for women is about as skimpy as you can get, while men's swimsuits are getting longer and longer. What's this all about? Greg P
I think it's that the males in general do not want to admit that they enjoy going nude out of fear that they will be branded....whatever they feel they will be branded with.
Have you heard someone say "Thats WAY more information than I wanted to hear", or somethign about "visual" information? Usually, that is the response we get when we say something simple like, "It's so hot, I could do with far less clothing".
It's the "accepted response" rather than what they really feel inside. I'm sure they heard it somewhere (like on some sappy sitcom) and thought it was a good response. In reality, I'm sure they would love to go nude for a while!
But that "image" thing.
Funny though, those same guys would love to see a bunch of naked women run through their office or work place, and have no problem with it.
What they say is that women are supposed to be naked for my entertainment and men shouldn't go naked because I don't want it for my entertainment.
Those same men will go to a naturist resort, not to get undressed themselves but to see other people get undressed. The women knows this and are afraid to go to naturist resorts out of fear of the potential men that may go there.
But these women are not afraid to go to the beaches because by now, they accept that as normal.
The guys however are afraid again that if they are wearing breifs smaller than a pair of Levi Jeans, they are somehow "gay" or have some strange ideas.
so they do something stupid like follow the "fear leader" rather than the leader of quality life. They live by fear and it seems the more fear you have, the greater the leader you are in stupid thinking.
I wonder how many guys really do like football? They do it because it is expected of them. They have no guts to stand up and say what they really like. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not going back to the 80's and the days of the "feely" guy. But I don't want to do something I don't like because I'm afraid of "what others might think" if I'm different.
When I was a teen (a LONG time ago), my mother insisted that I wear baggy pants because she didn't want me "showing my shape". Perhaps that's what the problem is. Men and boys are so afraid of others being able to tell how much or how little they have by the bulge or lack thereof that they wear something so big and baggy that they don't to worry about it. They have to be uncomfortable wearing something that holds 10 pounds of water, but they do anyway. Of course, even the everyday wear of teens is big and baggy.
I can relate to the loose pant thing. As a teen I was pretty selfcounsious about the bulge that my hormones caused more than anything. So while pants back then weren't that loose, I always wear my shirt outside my pants of cover things. So I can relate to this being an issue. I suspose that some woman have the same issues with breats sticking out .. but there isn't the showing a sexual excitement as with a guy. Even erect nipples can't be for a couple of reasons in woman.
Boyds post also makes a lot of sense. There is something about years of negative attitudes toward nudity and sexuality that make the acceptable comment to be how discusting it all is.
My God deleiver us from all that. But it will take more men and woman to stand up and talk straight before there is a major shift ... and I fear at the moment the loudest Christians are for making the situations worse not better.
...it that its not even Christian values that is creating this baggy pants issue. It's a fear of each other, fear of "what if", a fear of being treated as "gay". They cannot stand up for themselves.
The irony is that now they want to show off their underwear and act as if the same pants that is keeping them "covered" is about to fall off entirely. The don't want to wear "short" shorts to reveal too much, but they threaten to loose the whole thing.
You are right Boyd. Before we can hope to raise confident independent sons and daughters, comfortable in their own skin, you first have to teach a child to do what is right even when the crowd goes another direction.
Courage is a foundation of naturism and a lot of other good things.
We should not look at this new generation and merely shake our heads. These boys are going to need guidance with issues of self-image, peer pressure, nudity itself, paranoia about gays, new sexual feelings, and who knows what else.
Don't expect a child to adopt naturism without dealing with these issues first.
We cannot help every child, but if their parents bring them to a nudist venue, we have some hope of undoing the damage, if their parents will take hands-on with the rehabilitation of their kids to normal attitudes about their bodies.
And even if we are successful in helping just one or two children, the benefits to society could be enormous.
Not everyone will go to a naturist resort. I heard with my own ears, a girl of about age eleven invite a female classmate to go skinnydipping with her on a summer boating trip. For many, skinnydipping in a secluded setting is more of a baby-step than going to a nudist resort with dozens of people. This little girl also had good prospects for recruiting her friend because she had a long-standing relationship with the other girl. There was no worry about being mocked by such a trusted friend. Finally she did a good job selling it. Skinnydipping is fun, a little daring perhaps, but it feels better than wearing a bathing suit.
I have seen many parents post on nudist boards hoping to meet other naturist families so their children will have positive reinforcement of the family attitude about nudity.
It's the mixed messages everybody receives today regarding sexuality. On the one hand are the boundary-pushing images, advertisements, and discussions in movies, grocery-store mags, and other media that make nearly everything out to be about sex. (How many women's mags have you seen with "Mind-Blowing Sex" headlines yelling for attention?) On the other are the moralists, both religious and secular, howling that indiscriminate sex is perverted and will destroy society. (It is, and it might, but "bare" with me.)
A long time ago, someone or some group had the bright idea that if we only forced bodies, especially women's bodies, to be covered, it would cut down on sexual urges. But just as the naked body is always there under clothing, so are the sexual urges. And like a lot of other stuff in nature, if you put it under cover it tends to morph into something very nasty. (The Victorian age in England was as much known for sado-masochism and other, shall we say, non-standard sexual practices as for extreme prudery.) Still, the social pressures that enforced the Great Coverup are incredibly strong, nearly as strong as the urge to throw off restraints, both sexual ones and the ones we wear on our bodies. (A related topic is many Christians' reluctance to promote sexual education; but this conspiracy of silence is both ineffective and soul-damaging. More on that in another post.)
This has led to a false dilemma. On the one hand the media glorifies sex as an end in itself; on the other, authorities both civil and religious demand it to be kept under wraps. So men and women can do whatever they want--as long as it's in private. And nearly everybody now fears (or hopes) that simple nudity is a gateway to moral--read, sexual--perversion in the streets.
And this false dilemma results in women's fashions constantly approaching and receding from a thin flesh-colored line, defined more or less in indecency statutes around the country. The media's glorification of sex and visual images related to it means that women have every reason to advertise sexual availability and competence by "skirting" this thin line to reveal as much as they can--but societal restraints urge them not to cross it lest their names become Slut. Yet--as is also "well-known"--women are attracted to other things than a man's looks, so men's fashions don't need to reveal their bodies to signal sexual attractiveness. (Yeah, right! rolls eyes Most of the women I've known well enough to talk to about this say that they're as turned on by looking at the opposite gender as we are. How many sites are designed for women but devoted to nude males?)
What nearly everyone except us seems to forget is that, as Our Lord Jesus might have said, nothing (or virtually nothing) that goes into the eyes can make one unclean, but rather what comes out in our thoughts, our words, and our actions.
