nudism

nudism or naturism, practice of going without clothing in social settings, generally in mixed gender groups and for purposes of good health or personal comfort. Governed by a strict set of rules, the practice of nudism is purposely nonerotic and nonsexual. As a social and philosophical movement, nudism began in Germany in the early 20th cent. and spread throughout Europe between the two World Wars. It originated as a protest against strict Victorian codes of behavior and sought to alleviate the ignorance and shame caused by hiding the human body. Nudism also represented a challenge to the traditional dichotomy that celebrates nudity in artistic representation but condemns it as a practice in everyday life. Stressing nudism's supposed benefits to physical health and mental well-being, contemporary adherents of the movement maintain that its practice aids both exercise and relaxation while promoting stress relief, positive body image, and increased self-esteem.

In the United States, nudism as an organized movement began in 1929 with an upstate New York picnic organized by German immigrant Kurt Barthel and achieved some popularity in North America during the 1930s. Today nudism, which commonly includes sunbathing, swimming, sports, and other social activities, is usually practiced at clubs, camps, and parks and on special nude beaches. The Denmark-based International Naturist Federation, which has a membership of almost 500,000 in more than 60 countries, is devoted to worldwide nudist activities. The largest North American advocacy group, with a membership of nearly 50,000, is the Florida-based American Association for Nude Recreation, founded in 1931 and until 1995 known as the American Sunbathing Association.

nudism Being nude, not to be confused with naked, is to be without one's clothes. Nudism has a number of connotations: it can mean an individual's intolerance to clothes; it can refer to a cult of nudists or naturists, who believe that society should discard its clothes; or it might be the visual representation of a nude in the form of a painting or a sculpture. More often than not ‘the nude’ is placed in a public setting.

There are various current theories that try to decode what nudism actually represents. The ‘back-to-nature’ philosophy is perhaps a rebellion against Victorian modesty. In psychiatry, a male's need for exhibitionism could be seen as a reaction against castration anxiety. And, in socio-sexual power play, a female's wish to display her body might be a means of demonstrating her ability to attract men. One could argue that the first nudes were Adam and Eve, who, knowing themselves to be naked, hid themselves with fig leaves.

Twentieth-century discourse surrounding ideas of the nude and the naked examined the complex relations between the spectator and the nude. Art historians and writers have tried to unravel the complex nature of nudism. Historically, the nudism represented visually by artists has nearly always been the female nude. Kenneth Clark's The Nude (1956) is a testament to a traditional and chronological approach to looking at male and female nudes, from the Greeks to the modern day. The nude, for Clark, is a symbol of truth and perfection. He writes: ‘we remember that the nude is after all, the most serious of all subjects in art.’ This is one approach. Clark unfailingly assumes a binary position, that of female nude and male spectator. And he asserts that the naked is, in fact, inferior to the nude: ‘To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes and the word implies some of the embarrassment which most of us feel in that condition. The word nude, on the other hand, carries in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone.’

Conversely, art historian T. J. Clark's reading of Manet's painting of a reclining female nude (a prostitute), entitled Olympia (1865), states that nakedness represents material culture and social class; whereas, nudity on the other hand, is a set of beliefs that the body is ours. Manet represented a turning point in modern art, for the traditional female ideal was broken and Olympia was the realism of the naked avant-garde. Kenneth Clark in contrast, maintains that to be naked is simply to be without clothes, whereas the nude is a form of art.

Helen Cixous talks at length of self-reappropriation and the traditional historic male culture:
‘I found myself in a classic situation of women who at one time or another, feel that it is not they who have produced culture … Culture was there, but it was a barrier forbidding me to enter, whereas of course, from the depths of my body, I had a desire for the objects of culture. I therefore found myself obliged to steal them … but it is always there in a displaced, diverted, reversed way. (Entretien avec Francoise van Rossum-Guyon, 1977.)


In his book Ways of Seeing (1972), the writer and commentator John Berger, alongside others, explored the roles of the voyeur and the nude. Berger offers a way forward in culturally redefining the roles that men and women assume. He acknowledges at the outset that the social presence of a woman is different from that of a man. The ‘promised power’ Berger talks of refers to the man's moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, and sexual standing in the world. It is always external to him. In opposition to this, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, which unwittingly defines what can and cannot be done to her. She is constantly being surveyed both by men and by herself.

Susan Suleiman's The Female Body (1986) maintains that women have for centuries been the objects of male theorizing, ‘male desires, male fears and male representations’. Consequently, they had to discover and ‘reappropriate themselves as subjects’)

This ongoing debate concerning the nude and the naked has been taken up by a number of feminist writers (both male and female) for whom the traditional reading of a nude female by a male viewer has been re-evaluated. It is no longer merely a question of accepting the non-gendered understanding of a female without clothes on.

Anne Abichou

Bibliography

Berger, J. (1972). Ways of Seeing. BBC and Penguin, Harmondsworth and London.
Cixous, H. (1977). Entretien avec Francoise van Rossum-Guyon. Revenue des Sciences Humaines, 44 (168), 479–93.
Clark, K. (1956). The nude: a study of ideal art. John Murray , London.
Clark, T. J. (1984). Painting of modern life: Paris in the art of Manet and his followers. Thames and Hudson, London.
Suleiman, S. R. (ed.) (1986) The female body in Western culture — contemporary perspectives. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London.

na·tur·ism / ˈnāchəˌrizəm/ • n. 1. the practice of wearing no clothes in a vacation camp or for other leisure activities; nudism. 2. the worship of nature or natural objects. DERIVATIVES: na·tur·ist n. & adj.