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Scandinavian Naturists, Colorado streakers - and pumpkins
In the Summer 2008 issue of N Magazine, Bart Wijnberg, former President of the Dutch Naturist Federation, noted there were 160 designated nude beaches in the Netherlands.
Danish skinny-dippers: photo: VIEMOSE KÅRE
Recently, the Eastern High Court of Denmark confirmed a lower court decision that skinny-dipping is a legal right there. The decision comes after a couple put up a sign saying "Nudism forbidden" on a beach in front of their home. The local court decided in June of this year that naked sunbathing, which has been permitted in Denmark for over 30 years, is still allowed. The high court ordered the couple to pay court costs. Danish press article in English
On the other hand, streakers in Boulder, Colorado now are in danger of having to register as sex offenders if convicted of indecent exposure.
"The 10th year of the Naked Pumpkin Run started as usual - with laughter, beer and a whole lot of pumpkin carving. But the nude run, which has grown in recent years to include well over 100 people, ended with police citing 12 of the streakers for indecent exposure, a Class 1 misdemeanor. Police have warned runners in the past that the activity isn't legal, but this is the first time officers showed up en masse to enforce the law." Read more in Colorado Daily
Of course, not all naturists would equate a trip to a clothing-optional beach with streaking through city streets. Yet others would see the latter as just a bit of harmless fun, perhaps as a celebration of joy, just as with the "tradition" of nude runners at San Francisco's Bay to Breakers run, or on some college campuses.
We obviously have a long way to come toward public acceptance in the U.S., toward accepting the human body as the pinnacle of creation, or as a shell of corporal being in which we currently exist and operate.
A person might visit an art museum, and admire a nude sculpture by Praxiteles or Michelangelo, yet laugh or express disgust at an actual nude body.
In this context, streaking may have a certain shock value. Yet it may also be liberating, a stripping away of pretentions.
Nudity has multiple referents: Nazis strip Jews nude as an act of embarrassment in the concentration camps; hippies strip off their clothes during the Age of Aquarius in defiance of convention and a celebration of life; a Jain sky-clad monk in India walks naked as the ultimate expression of humility and spirituality.
Nudity may be a touchstone. Is it a degradation, or an acknowledgement of our common humanity? ...an affront to others, or an acceptance of self? ...carnal, or spiritual, or both? We naturists might perhaps agree with Michelangelo:
"What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?"
"My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness."
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It's said President J.Q. Adams was fond of going skinny-dipping in the Potomac early in the morning. Anne Royall, one of the first woman newspaper reporters, claimed that in order to get Adams to speak with her, she one day went to the Potomac and sat on Adam's clothes until he would consent to an interview. (cited in First Ladies by Betty Boyd Caroli, p. 313). While some have challenged the veracity of Royall's claim as to the circumstances of her interview, it suggests that Adams, as in the well-documented case of Benjamin Franklin, was indeed accustomed to nude swimming on public lands.
