AT&T has been airing a series of commercials in recent weeks that describe the terrible consequences of not having good phone connections in faraway places.

One of the more memorable commercials involves a young prudish American family that stumbles upon a certain beach in Spain...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ1bW1vEUBU

Unfortunately, too many people don't know why "everybody's naked" at many beaches in Europe.

Boyd, in our chat Monday, I proposed taking advantage of laws in some states that allow beach nudity for children up to age 10 or 11. Specifically, I suggested that 10 or 20 nudist families visit a TEXTILE beach and allow their pre-teen kids to play nude on the beach all day.

You said, quite rightly, that we could provoke a backlash if we pushed it that far. But I can't say that this makes a case for letting the most covered-up child on the beach determine what our kids wear at the beach.

Isn't there some way we can push the culture forward a bit without raising tempers to the boiling point?

In your case you mentioned that your young daughter wore only bottoms. As conservative as that sounds, I was shocked to learn that she was apparently alone in her top freedom. Top-free preteen girls were a more common sight in the 1960's. And certainly boys were free to wear brief form-fitting shorts (Speedo type) without being stigmatized for this.

In summary, we don't have any right to complain about the direction culture is going if we don't take some measures to get our ideas out into the public arena.

I love your enthusiasm, but keep in mind, some of us have five year old girls in their care. All it takes is some serious false accusations and some jail time to lose our jobs, our homes and our children to social services. By the time we clear this issue up, we will have lost more than what we have gained.

However, we do some of our work in areas like this. I can fully understand your logic, and we did not make any attempt to change her appearance, nor did anyone say anything about it. It was an observation that caught me by surprise.

We have to work from the top down from the inside out.

Of course, you are talking about a group effort, but not without serious backup like AANR and other strong clubs to support.

With our focus here on Christians, we may want to work from this direction. There are groups out there that likes to challenge the establishment with their bodies on site.

However, we can continue our work here, discuss ideas here and see what can be done.



Boyd "Live Nude and Prosper" Allen

"May the Lord protect our nudity from the sight of those who will not benefit, and may he allow us to be seen by those who will."

CNC

Boyd,

In my latest post I did not suggest that you put your child on the beach nude. We were just talking about not wearing a top.

You and your wife decided that doing without a top was fine for a five-year-old and heaven knows I agree with you. For that matter, most people on the beach would probably not care how other families dress their five year old.

No laws would be broken and you would not go to jail and I doubt seriously that any rumors would start. If there were a rumor, what would it be? A preschool girl without a top? There would be far more people laughing at the one who tried to start such a ludicrous rumor than those who would take it seriously.

I was suggesting that you bring other families with you to that beach and if they were willing, their kids could do without tops. And for that matter, it's time that preschool boys go back to the briefs that used to prevail in the 60's. As kids get older they may insist on choosing their own beach clothes, but for preschoolers, parents still have a lot more say-so.

Yeah, we can do that. We just don't go to the beach very much. In fact, that was the first time we went to the beach since she was born. So you can see how often we do that. Hopefully, we'll do more next year and maybe allow her the extra exposure time. She never felt a bit self conscious about it.

My wife is not the type of person who pushes ideas in public that are taboo otherwise.

Boyd

I live 300 miles from the ocean so my childhood swims were at the pool where we had membership. A trip to the ocean was a BIG deal, maybe every other year if we were lucky.

Ancient history, but tops were not universal for girls up to age 12 at that pool we went to. And boys kept things very brief. And this was the most conservative part of the USA!!! I don't know why we kids bothered to wear anything at all we wore so little.

If you go to the public textile beach eventually when little Miss M. hits the age of self-awareness, it may be helpful to have other families along who feel the same way about tops as you do for mutual support. Besides, as kids get to 8 or 9 they would enjoy having friends tag along too. For now, it's great that she isn't doing too much comparison with other girls; she's just out there having fun. That's a great state of mind to have, regardless of age!

Just an aside, your entire family, is very fair-skinned (like you didn't know) so I hope you folks take it easy in the sun when you return to the beach. I'm a bit darker, but I have to watch it too.