Quotes on Naturism
Posted: Fri May 31, 2024 12:18 am
Quotes
“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
—Genesis 2:25 (The Bible)
”And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?”
—1 Samuel 19:24 (The Bible)
”At the same time spake the Lord by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia...”
—Isaiah 20:2-3 (The Bible)
”Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea.”
—John 21:7 (The Bible)
”And said: Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord.”
—Job 1:21 (The Bible)
”Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”
—Jesus, Matthew 6:25 (The Bible)
“Why should I be ashamed to show what God was not ashamed to create?”
—St. Augustine (Church Father)
”Certainly, feet are manlier nude than in shoes.”
—Tertullian (Church Father)
”Naked, follow naked Jesus.”
—St. Jerome (Church Father)
"They were nude but they were not ashamed.”Furthermore, because God created it, "The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendor and its beauty."
-Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (later to become Pope John Paul II)
"Many details in their way of life indicate that nakedness cannot be simply and unambiguously identified with shamelessness. On the contrary, for some primitive peoples, the
concealment of parts of the body previously exposed is a manifestation of shamelessness."
"Nakedness assists the adaptation of the organism to climatic conditions and no other intention can easily be found in it, whereas other motives can easily be assigned to
concealment of those parts of the body which distinguish male and female. We find that dress may serve not only to conceal but in one way or another to draw attention to
these parts of the body. Sexual modesty cannot then in any simple way be identified with the use of clothing, nor shamelessness with the absence of clothing and total or
partial nakedness. "
"There are circumstances in which nakedness is not immodest. If someone takes advantage of such an occasion to treat the person as an object of enjoyment, (even if his
action is purely internal) it is only he who is guilty of shamelessness (immodesty of feeling), not the other."
"There are certain objective situations in which even total nudity of the body is not immodest, since the proper function of nakedness in this context is not to provoke a reaction to the person as an object for enjoyment, and in just the same way the functions of particular forms of attire may vary. Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness. Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person when its aim is to arouse concupiscence, as a result of which the person is put in the position of an object for enjoyment.”
--Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (later to become Pope John Paul II, From “Love and Responsibility”1981)
“What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot grasp the fact that a human foot is more noble than the shoe and the human skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed.”
—Michelangelo (Artist)
”Prohibition...goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
—Abraham Lincoln (16th President of the United States of America)
”Modesty died when clothes were born.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens - Author)
”The convention mis-called “modesty”has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anyone's whim—anyone's diseased caprice.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens - Author)
”Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity—these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens - Author)
“Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed—naked and pure-minded. And no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty in the soiled mind, there was no other way to get it.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens - Author)
”Not all the Greek runners in the original Olympics were totally naked. Some wore shoes.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens – Author)
"After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens – Author )
"We was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us,"
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens – Author From "Huck Finn")
“We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.”
—George Bernard Shaw (Playwright)
”If people were meant to be nude, they would have been born this way.”
—Oscar Wilde (Author)
”Truth is, most of us contain a splashing, giggling, squealing child who knows without thinking that bare skin and water go together as wings go with air, roots with earth, and the phoenix with incendiary sun.”
—Janet Lembke (Author)
”Conventionality is not morality.”
—Charlotte Bronte (Novelist and Poet)
”Craftiness must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked.”
—English Proverb
”It is so basic. A human being is an innocent part of nature. Our civilization has distorted this universal quality that allows us to feel at home in our skin. Other animals have coats that they accept, but the human race has yet to come to terms with being nude.”
—Ruth Bernhard (Photographer)
”How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?”
—Katherine Mansfield (Author)
”There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.”
—H.L. Mencken (Journalist and Satirist)
”One of the greatest dangers for German culture and morality is the so-called nudity movement. Greatly as it is to be welcomed in the interest of public health, that ever
wider circles, especially of the metropolitan population, are striving to make the healing power of sun and air and water serviceable to their body, as greatly must the so-called
nudity movement be disapproved of as a cultural error. Among women the nudity kills natural modesty; it takes from men their respect for women and thereby destroys the
prerequisite for any genuine culture. It is therefore expected of all police authorities that, in support of the spiritual powers developed through the national movement, they
take all police measures to destroy the so-called nude culture.”
—Hermann Goering: (Nazi Leader) 1933 Nazi edict
”I like it here. When I go to the other swimming pools they all look at my legs. When I come here they look at me.”
—Twelve-year-old girl with cerebral palsy at a nude swim
”Is not nakedness the indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is—nor what faith or art or health really is.”
—Walt Whitman (Author)
”Warning: Clothing has been shown to cause extreme psychological dependence. Wear it at your own risk.”
—Ben Thornton (?)
”I am not a naturist, a nudist, a streaker, nor an exhibitionist. Labels are for clothes. My unclothed appearance is also not motivated sexually nor out of any gratuitous need to seek attention. I believe that while society continues to have a fundamentally negative relationship with the human body and appearance, we can never be a free or mature society. It's the 21st century. Time to evolve.”
—Russell Higgs (Activist)
”And the weaver said, "Speak to us of Clothes."
And he answered:
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,
For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
Some of you say, "It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear."
But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.
And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.
Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Clothes are not an expression of who you are, but of where you are.”
—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
”Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity.”
—Dr. Lee Salk (Child Psychologist and Author)
”The main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity. If people can't face up to the fact of other people being naked, or whatever they want to do, then we're never going to get anywhere. People have got to become aware that it's none of their business and that being nude is not obscene. Being ourselves is what's important. If everyone practised being themselves instead of pretending to be what they aren't, there would be peace.”
—John Lennon (Musician)
”I come from a country where you don't wear clothes most of the year. Nudity is the most natural state.”
—Elle MacPherson (Actress)
”Sometimes I like to run naked in the moonlight and the wind, on a little trail behind our house, when the honeysuckle blooms. It's a feeling of freedom, so close to God and nature.”
—Dolly Parton (Singer/Actress)
”"My girlfriend and I wondered why the boys had their clothes on," Amy remembers, "so we swam way out in the ocean and stayed there. Later we learned it was not a nude beach. But no big deal. It was a liberating experience. It felt unbelievably crazy to take off all my clothes and play in the sun. I've not had that much fun in so long.... ”
—Amy Grant (Christian Singer)
”There's something therapeutic about nudity. Clothing is one of the external things about a character. Take away the Gucci or Levis and we're all the same.”
—Kevin Bacon (Actor)
”I grew up walking around naked in my house. My mom was like that, and my sisters.”
—Jennifer Lopez (Actress)
”I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful, and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.”
—Shelley Winters (Actress)
”The best dress for walking is nakedness.”
—Colin Fletcher (Backpacking Naturalist)
”To be offended by the visual appearance of another person is prejudice, akin to racism. The right to exist, uncovered, should hold precedence over the right not to view this, for the objection is irrational.”
—Terri Webb (Activist)
“The Puritan often will brood
On how horrid it is to be nude;
The absence of clothing
He views with such loathing
That the naked truth strikes him as lewd.”
—D.R. Benson (?)
”The best thing to do would be to designate everywhere as clothing optional, and we could leave little fenced in areas for the prudes to prance around in. Call them “Prudist Camps.”They could peer out of their fences and indulge in their offensive “I'm offended” behavior whenever they saw a natural person walk by, without bothering the rest of us.”
—Anonymous
”Don't arrest me. I was born this way.”
—“Naked Mile”runner
”If possible, compute in the nude.”
—”Static Electricity Is A Killer,”Supercharging MS-DOS, Microsoft Press
”If I could, I'd live in the nude, like Eve in paradise.”
—Colombian singer Shakira
”We're the only species on the planet that can't walk around the way we were created.”
—John Moyer, participant in the World Naked Bike Ride
”Why would you wear a bathing suit? Does it keep you dry? Does it keep you warm? It’s no kind of protection from sand. I can look at anyone and know what they look like under their clothes.”
—Stéphane Duschênes, President of the Federation of Canadian Naturists
”Nudism is not a spectator sport. We all have the equipment and everyone can play."
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”Let us proclaim the truth of our bodily dignity by refusing to satisfy the jealousy of the evil one, hiding our bodies as if they were something shameful. God created us to glorify Him. He created us unclothed. Let us glorify Him then, by our nakedness, seeing therein His glory and our true nobility.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”[M]y children are being brought up in such a way that they don't bat an eye at looking at anybody's nakedness. They look at the so-called private parts the same way they look at an elbow or an ear. I think that's entirely psychologically healthy. When they look at a person, they see the whole person, not the parts, like ordinary society does.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”If being nude feels so free, then clothing must be a prison.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”God did not give women breasts to lure men to lust, but to nurse babies. Why should we Christians let Playboy tell us how to regard breasts? Is Playboy our master and Lord? Instead of thinking of breasts as an erotic symbol, we ought to see them for what they really are – symbols of tenderness, nurturing, motherhood.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”People look more beautiful, God-like and dignified to me when they are naked... Nothing is more beautiful, therefore, than a naked person. If we don’t see it that way, then we do not have God’s perspective.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”Jesus did not prescribe a dress code; He taught that we should be pure in heart.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”What boys really need are real bodies. They need to go to nudist parks and see middle-aged women who more closely resemble duffle bags than Playboy centerfolds. They need to know such real women personally and appreciate them for deeper reasons than how closely they conform to the Playboy lie... But since our culture foolishly fails to foster such wholesome customs, boys fall into the pornography trap. Not only does porn objectify females and ingrain in boys' psyches an unrealistic ideal, but since its nature is erotic, by association, it acculturates boys to identify nudity with sex. By nature, there is no such identification. Warped culture creates it artificially.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”If women don't want to be ogled, they should just get naked; nothing can possibly deflate voyeurism better... Once the element of “tease”is gone, the voyeur must turn elsewhere.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
“It seems almost inherent in human beings that when you are thriving for a certain level of spirituality, you tend to reject clothes, and the implied need to hide yourself.”
—Jim Dodge
”We had a sermon a while back from our pastor talking about how shaming someone is to go against everything Christian. Yet children are natural nudists. The only way to keep them dressed is to teach them shame. “Don’t pull up your dress--someone will see your panties.”“Don’t go outside naked--someone will see your penis.”This occurs again and again until there is a wall of shame. Is nudity a dangerous path? I believe shame is far worse.”
—“Jon”quoted in Naturist Life International
”There is no more meaningful time to be naked than when praying to God, since a state of nudity so very well depicts our true relationship with our creator. We kneel before Him, having nothing but the unclothed body that He fashioned for us. We are always naked in the eyes of God; not only our body, but our every thought, desire and deed lie exposed. I often pray in the nude simply because it seems so fitting.”
—Fr. Kenneth Delano
”The truest you can be is taking off those clothes.”
—Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology, UC Berkeley
”Those who have never worked nude outdoors just can't imagine how much better a breeze feels on their skin than an item of sweaty clothing.”
—Ben Miller (?)
”I love being naked. I do everything in the nude, even the gardening! We're Cuban, and it's a hot island. Why not go nude?”
—Eva Mendes (Actress)
”Nobody ever wears a bathing suit at Ragged Island... It’s a rule of the Island. We think bathing dress of any sort is indecent, and so do the waves and so do the seagulls and so does the wind.”
—Vincent Sheean, The Indigo Burning
”The demand that we always wear clothing while in society causes at least four kinds of alienation: it alienates us from ourselves, from others, from nature, and from the Divine.”
—Mark Storey
”The difference between nudists and clothed people is that nudists don’t mind if you are wearing clothes.”
—Anonymous
”Having shame for our nude bodies is an insult to the Creator.”
—Kindi Stone (adapted by Joseph Whipple)
”Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee; as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be to taste whole joys.”
—John Donne
”Being in the nude isn’t a disgrace unless you’re being promiscuous about it. After all, when God created Adam and Eve, they were stark naked. And in the Garden of Eden, God was probably naked as a jaybird too!”
—Bettie Page (Nude Model)
”If nudity offends you, you are disrespecting God’s greatest creation.”
—source unknown, found on Pepe-nudism.com
”The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.”
—Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
”His disciples said, “When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?”
Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid.”“[/b][/i][/size]
—Gospel of Thomas v. 37
”Being naked is a very honest thing. I cannot be responsible for the tainted thoughts of others. As long as I am honestly naked as God created me, whether in mixed company or not, I am being just me as I was created, nothing else. Being naked is being modest and humble. We are just ourselves and nothing more. It’s other people’s corrupt thinking that makes it more than it is.”
—Miriam
”Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.”
—Thomas Fuller
”Forcing Americans to always wear clothing while swimming or sunbathing even in designated or secluded areas is as bad as forcing women to always wear burkhas.”
—Corky Stanton
“Fig leaves belong on trees, not people”
—Corky Stanton
“I think the main reason some people find breast feeding offensive is the fact that it reminds us that breasts are a food source and not an object of male fantasy that is further facilitated by the legal system that says breasts cannot be seen unless they belong to a male.”
—Margaret Stone (Midwife)
”If you want to talk about open mindedness, take off your clothes.”
—Michael E. Maconnell (?)
”I refuse to compromise myself or my beliefs by giving in to America's secular ideas about bodily shame.”
—Bob Miller (CFI Member)
”Body shame, like prejudice, is not natural. It is learned from others and benefits no one.”
—Unknown
”Halfway measures, such as loincloths or fig leaves, remain more titillating than complete nudity.”
—Paul Ludwig (Author – Eros and Polis: Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory)
Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me . . . Nature was naked, and I was also . . . Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! – ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent.
--Walt Whitman, A Very Public Quaker
"WHY should one lock up a man or a woman who walked stark naked in the street? and why is no one shocked by absolutely nude statues, by pictures of the Madonna and of Jesus that may be seen in some churches?
It is probable that the human species lived long without being clothed.
People unacquainted with clothing have been found in more than one island and in the American continent.
The more civilized hide the organs of generation with leaves, woven rushes, feathers.
Whence comes this form of modesty? Is it the instinct for lighting desires by hiding what it gives pleasure to discover?
Is it really true that among slightly more civilized nations, such as the Jews and half-Jews, there have been entire sects who would not worship God save by stripping themselyes of all their clothes? Such were, it is said, the Adamites and the Abelians. They gathered quite naked to sing the praises of God: St. Epiphanius and St. Augustine say so. It is true that they were not contemporary, and that they were very far from these people's country. But at all events this madness is possible: it is not even more extraordinary, more mad than a hundred other madnesses which have been round the world one after the other.
We have said elsewhere that to-day even the Mohammedans still have saints who are madmen, and who go naked like monkeys. It is very possible that some fanatics thought it was better to present themselves to the Deity in the state in which He formed them, than in the disguise invented by man. It is possible that they showed everything out of piety. There are so few well-made persons of both sexes, that nakedness might have inspired chastity, or rather disgust, instead of increasing desire.
It is said particularly that the Abelians renounced marriage. If there were any fine lads and pretty lasses among them, they were at least comparable to St. Adhelme and to blessed Robert d'Arbrisselle, who slept with the prettiest persons, that their continence might triumph all the more.
But I avow that it would have been very comic to see a hundred Helens and Parises singing anthems, giving each other the kiss of peace, and making agapae.
All of which shows that there is no singularity, no extravagance, no superstition which has not passed through the heads of mankind. Happy the day when these superstitions do not trouble society and make of it a scene of disorder, hatred and fury! It is better without doubt to pray God stark naked, than to stain His altars and the public places with human blood."
--Voltaire - "Nakedness"
“We have engineered a great increase in the license which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown women to be." (Page 107)
--C.S. Lewis From “The Screwtape Letters” - Screwtape (senior demon- on pornography):
“half the people in heaven are nude”
“Long after that I saw people coming to meet us...Some were naked, some robed. But the naked ones did not seem less adorned, and the robes did not disguise in those who wore them the massive grandeur of muscle and the radiant smoothness of flesh.” (from Chapter III)
“I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye.” (from Chapter XII)
--C.S. Lewis – “The Great Divorce”
"Yet could it be possible, in the long run, to wear clothes without learning modesty, and through modesty lasciviousness?"
--C. S. Lewis in "Perelandra"
"The monkish hatred of the body which figures so prominently in the works of certain early devotional writers is wholly without support in the word of God. Common modesty is found in the sacred Scriptures, it is true, but never prudery or a false sense of shame. The New Testament accepts as a matter of course that in His incarnation our Lord took upon Him a real human body, and no effort is made to steer around the downright implications of such a fact. He lived in that body here among men and never once performed a non-sacred act. His presence in human flesh sweeps away forever the evil notion that there is about the human body something innately offensive to the Deity. God created our bodies and we do not offend Him by placing the responsibility were it belongs. He is not ashamed of the work of His own hands."
--A W Tozer in “The Pursuit of God”
"It is an interesting question how far people would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!"
--Henry David Thoreau, Journals
"A Sun-Bath--Nakedness" in "Specimen Days" – “Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me… Nature was naked, and I was also…Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! --ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectibility that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent.
Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating exctasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is--nor what faith or art or health really is."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts – “Finery is no less alien to virtue...., which is the strength and vigor of the soul. The good man is an athelete who enjoys competing in the nude."
--Walt Whitman,
"Clothes therefore, must be the insignia of the superiority of man over all other animals, for surely there could be no other reason for wearing the hideous things."
--Edgar Rice Burroughs, From Tarzan of the Apes
"I rise early almost every morning and sit in my chamber, without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing."
--Ben Franklin writing to the French physician, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg
"Say did you read in the papers about a bunch of women up in British Columbia as a protest against high taxes, sit out in the open naked, and they wouldn't put their clothes on? The authorities finally turned a sprayer that you use on trees, on 'em. That may lead into quite a thing. Woman comes into the tax office nude, saying I won't pay. Well, they can't search her and get anything. It sounds great. How far is it to British Columbia?"
--Will Rogers, April 5, 1931
"God does not COMMAND us to be clothed. He ALLOWS us to be clothed."
--Dr. R.C. Sproul, from “The Shattered Image”
"Jesus provides the covering for our nakedness... so that once we are covered the righteousness of Christ, we can be naked in the presence of God and not be shamed. We can stop running. We can stop hiding. Because we have been adorned with a gown of perfect righteousness, if we trust in Him."
--Dr. R.C. Sproul, from “Covering the Shame/The holiness of God”
"...Nowhere, he thought with satisfaction, could there be a group of young ladies that wasted less time upon frivol and froth. No fluffy-duff primping, no feather, no fuss. They were simply themselves and chose not to disguise it."
--Dr. Seuss`s "The Seven Lady Godivas"
"You are the garment which covers our nakedness, and in our hunger, you are a satisfying food, for you are sweetness and in you there is no taste of bitterness, O triune God!"
--Catherine of Siena (St. Catherine)
"Nudity is undignified and an error of taste."
--Adolf Hitler
"Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity."
--Dr. Lee Salk, Psychiatrist
"A child who has never been allowed to see his parents and brothers and sisters naked sees nudity as something shocking."
--Dr. Helga Fleischhauer-Hardt
"...with very young children accustomed from the beginning to nudity in themselves and their parents, a great deal is taken for granted, and it doesn't seem to be much of an issue to them. What nudity does is make it easy for children to become absolutely certain about just how men and women are made. This knowledge is of great importance in assuring the child of his or her own correct gender. The differences in body states and sizes - and in body organs - can then be taken for granted and will provide an accurate image of how they themselves, or the opposite sex, will look when grown up. Children whose parents feel at ease in such natural events as stepping out of the shower, toweling, and walking back to their room to dress are fortunate."
--Mary S. Calderone, M.D. - "The Family Book About Sexuality"
"Your naturally occurring nudity is not a problem -- as long as you, your husband and child are comfortable with it. In fact, it may easily convey an attitude that reduces shame and increases comfort in your son's perception of his own body. A healthy relationship to our bodies begins with liking ourselves and acquiring knowledge about how our bodies work. A natural acceptance, conveyed to our children, can promote their own positive self-image and contributes to self-esteem and the development of healthy adult sexuality. "
Gayl Peterson, MSSW, PhD. Family therapist specializing in prenatal and family development writing in iVillage. http://www.parentsplace.com/features/se ... 42,00.html
Nudity: Inappropriate in front of the kids?
“Meanwhile, the boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger”
--Dr. James Dobson, from “Can Homosexuality Be Treated and Prevented?”
http://www.safamily.co.za/index.php?sho ... l[_id]=284
"Complete nudity in itself is not erotic. It becomes so only when preceded by or contrasted to a state of dress. In this limited context then, all clothes become somewhat immoral, if we define immorality as inciting sexual interest. Habitual nakedness may indeed be capable of elevating man to a higher mental plane..."
--Dr. Marilyn J. Horn, from “The Second Skin: An Interdisciplinary Study of Clothing”
"The difference between [bathing in even minimal clothing and] bathing in the nude can only be compared to the difference between a partial and total solar eclipse. The phenomena in each case belong to two distinct categories." He was struck by the sudden and painless removal of the body taboo and the emotional and physical impact of naked bathing and swimming.
While in nudist groups there are the usual restrictions that control our actions--courteous actions, good manners, and high moral standards--that we have in society as a whole, I find that at a nudist camp I feel more natural, less restricted. The pressures of everyday life are gone.... There is nothing like getting back to nature. Our family consists of four daughters, and although we did go nude at times in our home, I feel they have a better attitude toward sex through their experiences at nudist camps, where they learn that there is nothing wrong with the human body, and that the over-all emphasis on sex in our society is foolish and emotional.
--Dr. Howard Crosby Warren, chairman of the department of psychology at Princeton University -
"Sure, some people might believe they are offended by nude bathers, but, if you never encounter anything that offends you in your community, you are not living in a free society."
--Corky Stanton
"I believe that people have the right to their own beliefs. I do not feel people have got the right to stop me from expressing my beliefs by picking up the phone, calling the police and having me put in prison."
--Steve Gough, he intends to walk from Land's End to John O'Groats (the length of the British Isles) naked.
“I wish we were all naked all the time, ... I have always believed it is what's underneath that counts. If we were all forced to be naked, perhaps we would start to see that a little bit more. “
--Celine Dion, (in the U.K. Sun)
"I enjoy nakedness. I am a bit of a naturist at heart."
--Robbie Williams
"I didn't grow up with a mother telling me what was under my clothes was bad or evil."
--Charlize Theron
"I was born naked and I'm going to die naked so I don’t see anything wrong with it."
--Justin Timberlake - wants to strip off on a nudist beach after spotting one in France.
"At my house in Hokendauqua, I can walk around naked in the back yard -- and have."
--Matt Millen, Raiders Football Player
"Don't let those who have body negative values define what is and what is not acceptable. Seize your freedom and restore your dignity!"
--BodyFreedom.org
"The best thing to do would be to designate everywhere as clothing optional, and we could leave little fenced-in areas for the prudes to prance around in. Call them "Prudist Camps". They could peer out of their fences and indulge in their offensive "I'm offended" behavior whenever they saw a natural person walk by, without bothering the rest of us."
--Anonymous
“I refuse to compromise myself or my beliefs by giving in to America's secular ideas about bodily shame.”
--Bob Miller (INA Member)
Body shame, like prejudice, is not natural. It is learned from others and benefits no one.
"Gymnophobia"-- (gymnos being the Greek word for "nude") The fear of being (or seeing others) naked. A gymnophobic person usually wants to force all others to a clothes compulsive lifestyle.
"I'd go somewhere where no one spoke. I would take a stack of books up to my hips, and I'd read nonstop. And I'd be reading naked."
--Linda Hamilton (actress), on what she'd do with a day to herself.
Bathing led to nudity. Nudity led to promiscuity. So believed the colonial lawmakers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Philadelphia was especially strict in those early years. You could be jailed there bathing more than once a month. Forcing others to wear clothes because we cannot control our own lust, is abuse of others.
"I don't want to facilitate the power structure with my conformity,"
--THE NAKED GUY, Andrew Martinez
Is it normal for us keep to our bodies covered in cloth 100% of the time? For some people, walking from the bathroom to the bedroom with no towel handy will cause them extreme panic and stress. Is this healthy? Being naked should just be another form of dress, nothing more, nothing less.
Television nudity is accepted in Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia. Why not the United States?
Protect children from the tyranny of government intrusion into every aspect of their lives rather than the possibility that they might (shock, horror) see a image of a nude person.
"We find that relaxing with clothes off at Elysium Fields is a great tension reliever, for ourselves and our kids too."
--Lynn Redgrave, actress
Why would anyone want to teach their children their bodies are disgusting, unacceptable and offensive to even look at? Why would anyone want to teach their children self shame, self disgust and to despise their body or any one else's body? Why would anyone set a bad example to their children by having a prejudicial bigotry against another group of people?
"Some day people will grow up and realize that the only thing vile about human bodies is the small minds some people have developed within them."
--Dick Hein
Despite its puritan roots, the U.S. has a long history of skinny-dipping. Social nudity is celebrated in the writings of Walt Whitman and the landscape paintings of Thomas Eakins. Benjamin Franklin took a daily naked "air bath," while presidents John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson enjoyed a refreshing nude dip. According to National Geographic Magazine, John Quincy Adams (1825-29), the sixth President, customarily took a nude early morning swim in the Potomac River. See National Geographic
A Nudist is simply a human being without 'Artificial Additives'!
"On the fourth day of telecommuting, I realized that clothes are totally unnecessary."
--Dilbert
Because naturists don't think of sex when they undress, because naturists don't think of sex when they are engaged in wholesome family activities. Because naturists don't grab a towel for cover, after taking a shower in fear of having others view them in a 'sex-obsessed' manner? Who are the perverts then?
"Clothes make the man, but nakedness makes the human being."
--Kevin Kearney
"I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun's shining. It's a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on."
-P.J. Harvey, singer.
Walk Nude, and people won't need to undress you with their eyes.
"Are we so narrow minded that we show war, murder, rape, etc. on TV, but we do not allow to show one of the most wonderful creations (the human body) in its natural form."
--Mario Roman
"Nudity is a state of fact; lewdity, to coin a phrase, is a state of mind."
--Paul Outerbridge, Jr. (photographer)
If we aren't concerned about children seeing adult facial hair, then why are some concerned about children seeing adult pubic hair?
Have you ever noticed how a little child can run naked through a room full of strangers without embarrassment? Just as Adam and Eve were not embarrassed in their innocence. But after Adam and Eve sinned, shame and awkwardness followed, creating barriers between themselves and God. Ideally we have no barriers, feeling no embarrassment between each other or God. But, like Adam and Eve, we put on fig leaves (barriers) because we have areas we don't want anyone or God to know about. Then we hide, just as Adam and Eve hid from God. Jesus died for our sins so there is no longer any barriers we need to have. Jesus told us to be like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
How is it possible for the human body, which was created in the image of god, to be offensive to anybody? Satan would love to see God's greatest creation be considered offensive.
When wearing only a smile - be sure to smile a lot.
HUMANITY AT PRESENT IS ILLEGAL. YOUR HUMAN BODY IS NOT ALLOWED. IT IS SUPPRESSED BECAUSE YOU ARE ILLEGAL - STOP THE OPPRESSION AND LEGALIZE YOURSELF. IN REALITY, BEING HUMAN IS NOT A CRIME. From: The Freedom to be Yourself
"The human body: Legalize it"
“An assignee is clothed with the rights of his principal.”
--Legal Maxim
"With the recent extreme heat in the United States this summer (1995), I wonder how many of those deaths might have been avoided by being nude?"
"If everyone were nude, there would be no war..."
"It will be great to one day see beaches everywhere with that great little slogan: Beyond this point you may encounter nude sunbathers."
--Roslyn Scheer, New Executive Director, AANR
"If it`s so dirty to be naked, why do we get naked to get clean?"
--Bryan Maloney
"42 men were prosecuted at Atlantic City NJ in 1935 for appearing in public wearing bathing suits without tops. How many more years do we have to go for top-free equality?"
--David Engman
"There seems, by the way, to be nothing pending in the Christian Coalition`s political wish list about sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, or clothing the naked, unless, of course, the naked got that way for fun."
--Tom Teepen, Cox News Service
"It continues to baffle me why there is no attempt to censor television`s continual portrayal of homicide as a means of conflict resolution, while at the same time regarding an unclothed human body as a problem."
--Charlie Metcalf
"The Church says: The body is a sin. Science says: The body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The body says: “I am a fiesta."
--Eduardo Galeano, Windows on the World
"The facts appear to prove that the feeling of shame, far from being the cause of man's covering his body, is. on the contrary, a result of this custom; and that the covering, if not used as a protection from the climate, owes its origin, at least, in a great many cases, to the desire of men and women to make themselves mutually attractive."
--Edward Westermarck in the “History of Human Marriage” (London, 1901)
"There is the evidence of competent observers to show that members of a tribe accustomed to nudity, when made to assume clothing for the first time, exhibit as much confusion as would a European compelled to strip in public. This fact, considered together with what has been said above, compels the conclusion that modesty is a feeling merely of acute self-consciousness due to appearing unusual and is the result of clothing rather than the cause."
--Thomas Athol Joyce, M. A., O. B. E., Department of Ethnography. British Museum, in Encyclopedia Britannica
"Nothing is so immodest as modesty."
--The late Frances Newman
"Modesty begins when the last rag has left the human body."
--Poultney Bigelow, historian and author
"As a near-artist, I can conceive of nothing that would make for avoidance of pot-bellies and other acquired deformities as nudity would. As a physician, I can conceive of nothing that would so improve posture."
--Dr. Robert L. Dickinson, New York City
"Those who are too steeped in the Victorian attitude toward the human body and its functions are right to leave nudity alone. It is my personal belief, however, that the world would be morally cleaner and more sane if all children from the earliest years up were made accustomed to the practice of nudity by the sexes in common."
--Prof. Lewis M. Terman, Stanford University, California
"The practice of nudism has to my mind certain mental as well as physical advantages. First of all, it removes idle and suggestive curiosity ... Only the partly clothed figure of the opposite sex is sexually attractive ... One of the greatest achievements will be on the moral plane. Our greatest incentive to crime and malpractices of all sorts is the urge to do the forbidden thing. Wrongly motivated curiosity has been an enormous factor in the process of sexual wrong-doing. If we can cultivate both a reverence for the marvel of the human body and an increasing understanding of its place and function, education will do much to minimize sinful acts."
--Prof. Christian A. Ruckmick, State University of Iowa
"All my life I have been in rebellion against clothes. What good are they? Why should we continue such a fearful burden of expense, such a cause of endless annoyance and disease! The prurient mind is the sensual mind. Clothing tends to make men bad."
--Ernest Thompson Seton
"Clothes are one of the most fruitful sources of the sex obsessions that possess us. I wish the day might come when we might strip every stitch from our bodies anywhere at any time without-shame."
--Judge Ben B. Lindsey
"The practice of nudity is undoubtedly of esthetic value, since the human form, in its more perfect types, is an object of beauty. We have long recognized this fact by displaying the nude body in painting and sculpture. But neither a painting nor a statue can equal the beauty of the human figure itself. Furthermore, the human body in action, as in a graceful dance, or in athletic exercise, brings additional elements of esthetic enjoyment to the spectator. It is true that nudity may frequently accentuate bodily defects; but I am inclined to believe that, except in cases of glaring malformations or injuries, the general effect of an ugly body is no more displeasing when nude than when draped."
--Dr. Edward Crosby Warren, Princeton University
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--Adam Clarke (1760 or 1762–1832, British Methodist theologian and Biblical scholar) wrote a commentary on the whole Bible commonly known as Clarke’s Commentary. The reign of Queen Victoria was from 1837 to 1901 and is commonly known as the Victorian Era, though some scholars date that era from the passage of the reform act in 1832. In either case Clarke was pre-Victorian.
The Victorian Era gives the queen’s name to the the whole matter of “Victorian Morals”, and for the matter at hand, the repressive attitude toward nudity and the idea of shame associated with the human body as created by God in his very image.
In light of the forgoing it is most interesting to note Clarke’s comments on the significance of Genesis 3:7 about the immediate effect of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit.
Gen 3:7 (KJV)And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
If we focus on just the nakedness issue, Clarke’s Commentary has the following to say about this part of the verse. (Emphasis added by formatting)In his commentary on Genesis 3:7 Part of what Adam Clarke wrote:
Let us now examine the effects.
1. Their eyes were opened, and they saw they were naked. They saw what they never saw before,
-- that they were stripped of their excellence;
-- that they had lost their innocence; and
-- that they had fallen into a state of indigence and danger.
2. Though their eyes were opened to see their nakedness, yet their mind was clouded, and their judgment confused.
They seem to
-- have lost all just notions of honour and dishonour,
-- of what was shameful and what was praise-worthy.
It was
-- dishonourable and shameful to break the commandment of God;
-- but it was neither! ........ to go naked, when clothing was not necessary !Now I suppose that some would be inclined to say "well it wasn't, but it is now",
But what Clarke wrote is the very basis of the argument for the acceptability of nudity today. It is the responsibility of the anti-nudity Christians to prove the necessity. Without necessity, then Clark's assertion stands.
The more common view is that until they ate the fruit, Adam and Eve weren't ashamed because they were too naive to know that they should be. The bold type above shows that Clarke was of the opinion that the eating of the fruit caused them to lose "just notions .... of what was shameful" as opposed to having discovered what was shameful as a result of eating the fruit.
Further reading in Clarke's commentary on this verse shows that Clark is of the opinion that their understanding was diminished by the eating of the fruit rather than increased. I find it most interesting that this was a scholarly view and understanding of the Biblical text prior to 1832, yet this seems to be missed by most Bible believers despite the stature of Clarke as a biblical scholar and the wide spread use of his commentary which is viewed as a standard among works of theology.
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"People who wear little or nothing in the hot summer are “less-ons”. Everyone else are “more-ons”.’
--Unknown
“It probably started when I was doing my garden the first time. I’d be out there, and it would be scorching hot, so I would take off all of my clothes and garden. And then I would jump in the pool and swim—and I always get in the pool naked, because why would you want to put on a bathing suit? But I’m not a nudist at all. I’m shy. I’ve never done nudity in a film, ever. I don’t want anybody to take a picture of me naked. But in my own home, in my garden, [nudity]’s OK.”
--Alicia Silverstone talking to Health magazine about activities she enjoys while nude
“It would be better still to have no clothing at all, but this our civilization would not permit.”
Alexander Graham Bell, In its July 4 and July 28, 1901, issues, The Post reported the remarks of inventor Alexander Graham Bell on the subject of cooling off. Bell predicted a future when people could control household temperature in summer and winter alike. For summer, he suggested that a system of metal coils containing a liquefied gas was probably the best way to go. Bell also commented in the July 4 Post about the confining Victorian-style clothes of his day. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local- ... ory_f.html
“It is clear from Clement that in Alexandria at the end of the second century — contemporaneous with Irenaeus and Tertullian — mixed bathing by all classes was not only customary but also a popular activity in which Christian men and women engaged."
--Roy Bowen Ward, author of “Women in Roman Baths” (published in the Harvard Theological Review), concurs:
“I start by sitting down with the team and discussing ideas first. We're all very close and we sit down and we're open and we talk and I normally, you know, get naked and make clothes on myself. That's pretty much how it works.”
--Pat Robertson: A Little Nudity on TV Can Be OK
"The human body is not essentially nasty."
Pat Robertson, who has surprised some people by being more broad-minded about marijuana and the transgendered than you might have expected, isn't necessarily offended by a little nudity on TV:
If you're not able to watch the clip, it consists of Robertson responding to this question from a 700 Club viewer:
I have recently discovered that my pastor and his wife watch a show on cable TV that contains nudity. Even secular critics have called it pornographic. I have been unable to return to their Bible study since hearing this. Am I overeacting? https://reason.com/2014/02/07/pat-rober ... on-tv-can/
Robertson's reaction:
Yes, I think you are. You know, listen: The human body is not essentially nasty. I mean, God made us without clothes. And you look at that famous statue of David that's considered one of the masterpieces of the Renaissance, and here's David, and he doesn't have any clothes on at all. You've got the Venus de Milo and some of those others…the Sistine Chapel, Adam has got no clothes on, and that's the famous artwork of God touching Adam….
The body is not essentially pornographic, and I think to make it so is a mistake. It's what's in your mind. I don't know what your pastor's watching, what show it is. Maybe it's got some redeeming qualities. But I sure wouldn't turn him off just because he's watching a few clips of nudity on TV. I don't know what show you're talking about, some of them are real nasty…
CO-HOST: It depends on how pornographic it is.
ROBERTSON: Exactly. It's just that the human form per se isn't necessarily dirty. It's what our minds make it.
In 1985, by contrast, Robertson warned that "We're not too far away from full frontal nudity and sex acts on television." I suspect he still objects to televised "sex acts," but he seems to have come around on the nudity question.
--[Via Pat Roberton's Vault, which notes that Robertson also introduced a recent story with the line "You probably saw the blockbuster cable series Breaking Bad."]
Victoria Beckham revealing how she designs clothes in the nude.
“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
—Genesis 2:25 (The Bible)
”And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?”
—1 Samuel 19:24 (The Bible)
”At the same time spake the Lord by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia...”
—Isaiah 20:2-3 (The Bible)
”Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea.”
—John 21:7 (The Bible)
”And said: Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord.”
—Job 1:21 (The Bible)
”Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”
—Jesus, Matthew 6:25 (The Bible)
“Why should I be ashamed to show what God was not ashamed to create?”
—St. Augustine (Church Father)
”Certainly, feet are manlier nude than in shoes.”
—Tertullian (Church Father)
”Naked, follow naked Jesus.”
—St. Jerome (Church Father)
"They were nude but they were not ashamed.”Furthermore, because God created it, "The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendor and its beauty."
-Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (later to become Pope John Paul II)
"Many details in their way of life indicate that nakedness cannot be simply and unambiguously identified with shamelessness. On the contrary, for some primitive peoples, the
concealment of parts of the body previously exposed is a manifestation of shamelessness."
"Nakedness assists the adaptation of the organism to climatic conditions and no other intention can easily be found in it, whereas other motives can easily be assigned to
concealment of those parts of the body which distinguish male and female. We find that dress may serve not only to conceal but in one way or another to draw attention to
these parts of the body. Sexual modesty cannot then in any simple way be identified with the use of clothing, nor shamelessness with the absence of clothing and total or
partial nakedness. "
"There are circumstances in which nakedness is not immodest. If someone takes advantage of such an occasion to treat the person as an object of enjoyment, (even if his
action is purely internal) it is only he who is guilty of shamelessness (immodesty of feeling), not the other."
"There are certain objective situations in which even total nudity of the body is not immodest, since the proper function of nakedness in this context is not to provoke a reaction to the person as an object for enjoyment, and in just the same way the functions of particular forms of attire may vary. Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness. Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person when its aim is to arouse concupiscence, as a result of which the person is put in the position of an object for enjoyment.”
--Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (later to become Pope John Paul II, From “Love and Responsibility”1981)
“What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot grasp the fact that a human foot is more noble than the shoe and the human skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed.”
—Michelangelo (Artist)
”Prohibition...goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
—Abraham Lincoln (16th President of the United States of America)
”Modesty died when clothes were born.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens - Author)
”The convention mis-called “modesty”has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anyone's whim—anyone's diseased caprice.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens - Author)
”Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity—these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens - Author)
“Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed—naked and pure-minded. And no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty in the soiled mind, there was no other way to get it.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens - Author)
”Not all the Greek runners in the original Olympics were totally naked. Some wore shoes.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens – Author)
"After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun.”
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens – Author )
"We was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us,"
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens – Author From "Huck Finn")
“We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.”
—George Bernard Shaw (Playwright)
”If people were meant to be nude, they would have been born this way.”
—Oscar Wilde (Author)
”Truth is, most of us contain a splashing, giggling, squealing child who knows without thinking that bare skin and water go together as wings go with air, roots with earth, and the phoenix with incendiary sun.”
—Janet Lembke (Author)
”Conventionality is not morality.”
—Charlotte Bronte (Novelist and Poet)
”Craftiness must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked.”
—English Proverb
”It is so basic. A human being is an innocent part of nature. Our civilization has distorted this universal quality that allows us to feel at home in our skin. Other animals have coats that they accept, but the human race has yet to come to terms with being nude.”
—Ruth Bernhard (Photographer)
”How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?”
—Katherine Mansfield (Author)
”There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.”
—H.L. Mencken (Journalist and Satirist)
”One of the greatest dangers for German culture and morality is the so-called nudity movement. Greatly as it is to be welcomed in the interest of public health, that ever
wider circles, especially of the metropolitan population, are striving to make the healing power of sun and air and water serviceable to their body, as greatly must the so-called
nudity movement be disapproved of as a cultural error. Among women the nudity kills natural modesty; it takes from men their respect for women and thereby destroys the
prerequisite for any genuine culture. It is therefore expected of all police authorities that, in support of the spiritual powers developed through the national movement, they
take all police measures to destroy the so-called nude culture.”
—Hermann Goering: (Nazi Leader) 1933 Nazi edict
”I like it here. When I go to the other swimming pools they all look at my legs. When I come here they look at me.”
—Twelve-year-old girl with cerebral palsy at a nude swim
”Is not nakedness the indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is—nor what faith or art or health really is.”
—Walt Whitman (Author)
”Warning: Clothing has been shown to cause extreme psychological dependence. Wear it at your own risk.”
—Ben Thornton (?)
”I am not a naturist, a nudist, a streaker, nor an exhibitionist. Labels are for clothes. My unclothed appearance is also not motivated sexually nor out of any gratuitous need to seek attention. I believe that while society continues to have a fundamentally negative relationship with the human body and appearance, we can never be a free or mature society. It's the 21st century. Time to evolve.”
—Russell Higgs (Activist)
”And the weaver said, "Speak to us of Clothes."
And he answered:
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,
For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
Some of you say, "It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear."
But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.
And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.
Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Clothes are not an expression of who you are, but of where you are.”
—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
”Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity.”
—Dr. Lee Salk (Child Psychologist and Author)
”The main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity. If people can't face up to the fact of other people being naked, or whatever they want to do, then we're never going to get anywhere. People have got to become aware that it's none of their business and that being nude is not obscene. Being ourselves is what's important. If everyone practised being themselves instead of pretending to be what they aren't, there would be peace.”
—John Lennon (Musician)
”I come from a country where you don't wear clothes most of the year. Nudity is the most natural state.”
—Elle MacPherson (Actress)
”Sometimes I like to run naked in the moonlight and the wind, on a little trail behind our house, when the honeysuckle blooms. It's a feeling of freedom, so close to God and nature.”
—Dolly Parton (Singer/Actress)
”"My girlfriend and I wondered why the boys had their clothes on," Amy remembers, "so we swam way out in the ocean and stayed there. Later we learned it was not a nude beach. But no big deal. It was a liberating experience. It felt unbelievably crazy to take off all my clothes and play in the sun. I've not had that much fun in so long.... ”
—Amy Grant (Christian Singer)
”There's something therapeutic about nudity. Clothing is one of the external things about a character. Take away the Gucci or Levis and we're all the same.”
—Kevin Bacon (Actor)
”I grew up walking around naked in my house. My mom was like that, and my sisters.”
—Jennifer Lopez (Actress)
”I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful, and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.”
—Shelley Winters (Actress)
”The best dress for walking is nakedness.”
—Colin Fletcher (Backpacking Naturalist)
”To be offended by the visual appearance of another person is prejudice, akin to racism. The right to exist, uncovered, should hold precedence over the right not to view this, for the objection is irrational.”
—Terri Webb (Activist)
“The Puritan often will brood
On how horrid it is to be nude;
The absence of clothing
He views with such loathing
That the naked truth strikes him as lewd.”
—D.R. Benson (?)
”The best thing to do would be to designate everywhere as clothing optional, and we could leave little fenced in areas for the prudes to prance around in. Call them “Prudist Camps.”They could peer out of their fences and indulge in their offensive “I'm offended” behavior whenever they saw a natural person walk by, without bothering the rest of us.”
—Anonymous
”Don't arrest me. I was born this way.”
—“Naked Mile”runner
”If possible, compute in the nude.”
—”Static Electricity Is A Killer,”Supercharging MS-DOS, Microsoft Press
”If I could, I'd live in the nude, like Eve in paradise.”
—Colombian singer Shakira
”We're the only species on the planet that can't walk around the way we were created.”
—John Moyer, participant in the World Naked Bike Ride
”Why would you wear a bathing suit? Does it keep you dry? Does it keep you warm? It’s no kind of protection from sand. I can look at anyone and know what they look like under their clothes.”
—Stéphane Duschênes, President of the Federation of Canadian Naturists
”Nudism is not a spectator sport. We all have the equipment and everyone can play."
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”Let us proclaim the truth of our bodily dignity by refusing to satisfy the jealousy of the evil one, hiding our bodies as if they were something shameful. God created us to glorify Him. He created us unclothed. Let us glorify Him then, by our nakedness, seeing therein His glory and our true nobility.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”[M]y children are being brought up in such a way that they don't bat an eye at looking at anybody's nakedness. They look at the so-called private parts the same way they look at an elbow or an ear. I think that's entirely psychologically healthy. When they look at a person, they see the whole person, not the parts, like ordinary society does.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”If being nude feels so free, then clothing must be a prison.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”God did not give women breasts to lure men to lust, but to nurse babies. Why should we Christians let Playboy tell us how to regard breasts? Is Playboy our master and Lord? Instead of thinking of breasts as an erotic symbol, we ought to see them for what they really are – symbols of tenderness, nurturing, motherhood.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”People look more beautiful, God-like and dignified to me when they are naked... Nothing is more beautiful, therefore, than a naked person. If we don’t see it that way, then we do not have God’s perspective.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”Jesus did not prescribe a dress code; He taught that we should be pure in heart.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”What boys really need are real bodies. They need to go to nudist parks and see middle-aged women who more closely resemble duffle bags than Playboy centerfolds. They need to know such real women personally and appreciate them for deeper reasons than how closely they conform to the Playboy lie... But since our culture foolishly fails to foster such wholesome customs, boys fall into the pornography trap. Not only does porn objectify females and ingrain in boys' psyches an unrealistic ideal, but since its nature is erotic, by association, it acculturates boys to identify nudity with sex. By nature, there is no such identification. Warped culture creates it artificially.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
”If women don't want to be ogled, they should just get naked; nothing can possibly deflate voyeurism better... Once the element of “tease”is gone, the voyeur must turn elsewhere.”
—Jim C. Cunningham (Catholic Nudist and Author)
“It seems almost inherent in human beings that when you are thriving for a certain level of spirituality, you tend to reject clothes, and the implied need to hide yourself.”
—Jim Dodge
”We had a sermon a while back from our pastor talking about how shaming someone is to go against everything Christian. Yet children are natural nudists. The only way to keep them dressed is to teach them shame. “Don’t pull up your dress--someone will see your panties.”“Don’t go outside naked--someone will see your penis.”This occurs again and again until there is a wall of shame. Is nudity a dangerous path? I believe shame is far worse.”
—“Jon”quoted in Naturist Life International
”There is no more meaningful time to be naked than when praying to God, since a state of nudity so very well depicts our true relationship with our creator. We kneel before Him, having nothing but the unclothed body that He fashioned for us. We are always naked in the eyes of God; not only our body, but our every thought, desire and deed lie exposed. I often pray in the nude simply because it seems so fitting.”
—Fr. Kenneth Delano
”The truest you can be is taking off those clothes.”
—Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology, UC Berkeley
”Those who have never worked nude outdoors just can't imagine how much better a breeze feels on their skin than an item of sweaty clothing.”
—Ben Miller (?)
”I love being naked. I do everything in the nude, even the gardening! We're Cuban, and it's a hot island. Why not go nude?”
—Eva Mendes (Actress)
”Nobody ever wears a bathing suit at Ragged Island... It’s a rule of the Island. We think bathing dress of any sort is indecent, and so do the waves and so do the seagulls and so does the wind.”
—Vincent Sheean, The Indigo Burning
”The demand that we always wear clothing while in society causes at least four kinds of alienation: it alienates us from ourselves, from others, from nature, and from the Divine.”
—Mark Storey
”The difference between nudists and clothed people is that nudists don’t mind if you are wearing clothes.”
—Anonymous
”Having shame for our nude bodies is an insult to the Creator.”
—Kindi Stone (adapted by Joseph Whipple)
”Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee; as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be to taste whole joys.”
—John Donne
”Being in the nude isn’t a disgrace unless you’re being promiscuous about it. After all, when God created Adam and Eve, they were stark naked. And in the Garden of Eden, God was probably naked as a jaybird too!”
—Bettie Page (Nude Model)
”If nudity offends you, you are disrespecting God’s greatest creation.”
—source unknown, found on Pepe-nudism.com
”The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.”
—Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
”His disciples said, “When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?”
Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid.”“[/b][/i][/size]
—Gospel of Thomas v. 37
”Being naked is a very honest thing. I cannot be responsible for the tainted thoughts of others. As long as I am honestly naked as God created me, whether in mixed company or not, I am being just me as I was created, nothing else. Being naked is being modest and humble. We are just ourselves and nothing more. It’s other people’s corrupt thinking that makes it more than it is.”
—Miriam
”Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.”
—Thomas Fuller
”Forcing Americans to always wear clothing while swimming or sunbathing even in designated or secluded areas is as bad as forcing women to always wear burkhas.”
—Corky Stanton
“Fig leaves belong on trees, not people”
—Corky Stanton
“I think the main reason some people find breast feeding offensive is the fact that it reminds us that breasts are a food source and not an object of male fantasy that is further facilitated by the legal system that says breasts cannot be seen unless they belong to a male.”
—Margaret Stone (Midwife)
”If you want to talk about open mindedness, take off your clothes.”
—Michael E. Maconnell (?)
”I refuse to compromise myself or my beliefs by giving in to America's secular ideas about bodily shame.”
—Bob Miller (CFI Member)
”Body shame, like prejudice, is not natural. It is learned from others and benefits no one.”
—Unknown
”Halfway measures, such as loincloths or fig leaves, remain more titillating than complete nudity.”
—Paul Ludwig (Author – Eros and Polis: Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory)
Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me . . . Nature was naked, and I was also . . . Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! – ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent.
--Walt Whitman, A Very Public Quaker
"WHY should one lock up a man or a woman who walked stark naked in the street? and why is no one shocked by absolutely nude statues, by pictures of the Madonna and of Jesus that may be seen in some churches?
It is probable that the human species lived long without being clothed.
People unacquainted with clothing have been found in more than one island and in the American continent.
The more civilized hide the organs of generation with leaves, woven rushes, feathers.
Whence comes this form of modesty? Is it the instinct for lighting desires by hiding what it gives pleasure to discover?
Is it really true that among slightly more civilized nations, such as the Jews and half-Jews, there have been entire sects who would not worship God save by stripping themselyes of all their clothes? Such were, it is said, the Adamites and the Abelians. They gathered quite naked to sing the praises of God: St. Epiphanius and St. Augustine say so. It is true that they were not contemporary, and that they were very far from these people's country. But at all events this madness is possible: it is not even more extraordinary, more mad than a hundred other madnesses which have been round the world one after the other.
We have said elsewhere that to-day even the Mohammedans still have saints who are madmen, and who go naked like monkeys. It is very possible that some fanatics thought it was better to present themselves to the Deity in the state in which He formed them, than in the disguise invented by man. It is possible that they showed everything out of piety. There are so few well-made persons of both sexes, that nakedness might have inspired chastity, or rather disgust, instead of increasing desire.
It is said particularly that the Abelians renounced marriage. If there were any fine lads and pretty lasses among them, they were at least comparable to St. Adhelme and to blessed Robert d'Arbrisselle, who slept with the prettiest persons, that their continence might triumph all the more.
But I avow that it would have been very comic to see a hundred Helens and Parises singing anthems, giving each other the kiss of peace, and making agapae.
All of which shows that there is no singularity, no extravagance, no superstition which has not passed through the heads of mankind. Happy the day when these superstitions do not trouble society and make of it a scene of disorder, hatred and fury! It is better without doubt to pray God stark naked, than to stain His altars and the public places with human blood."
--Voltaire - "Nakedness"
“We have engineered a great increase in the license which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown women to be." (Page 107)
--C.S. Lewis From “The Screwtape Letters” - Screwtape (senior demon- on pornography):
“half the people in heaven are nude”
“Long after that I saw people coming to meet us...Some were naked, some robed. But the naked ones did not seem less adorned, and the robes did not disguise in those who wore them the massive grandeur of muscle and the radiant smoothness of flesh.” (from Chapter III)
“I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye.” (from Chapter XII)
--C.S. Lewis – “The Great Divorce”
"Yet could it be possible, in the long run, to wear clothes without learning modesty, and through modesty lasciviousness?"
--C. S. Lewis in "Perelandra"
"The monkish hatred of the body which figures so prominently in the works of certain early devotional writers is wholly without support in the word of God. Common modesty is found in the sacred Scriptures, it is true, but never prudery or a false sense of shame. The New Testament accepts as a matter of course that in His incarnation our Lord took upon Him a real human body, and no effort is made to steer around the downright implications of such a fact. He lived in that body here among men and never once performed a non-sacred act. His presence in human flesh sweeps away forever the evil notion that there is about the human body something innately offensive to the Deity. God created our bodies and we do not offend Him by placing the responsibility were it belongs. He is not ashamed of the work of His own hands."
--A W Tozer in “The Pursuit of God”
"It is an interesting question how far people would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!"
--Henry David Thoreau, Journals
"A Sun-Bath--Nakedness" in "Specimen Days" – “Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me… Nature was naked, and I was also…Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! --ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectibility that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent.
Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating exctasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is--nor what faith or art or health really is."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts – “Finery is no less alien to virtue...., which is the strength and vigor of the soul. The good man is an athelete who enjoys competing in the nude."
--Walt Whitman,
"Clothes therefore, must be the insignia of the superiority of man over all other animals, for surely there could be no other reason for wearing the hideous things."
--Edgar Rice Burroughs, From Tarzan of the Apes
"I rise early almost every morning and sit in my chamber, without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing."
--Ben Franklin writing to the French physician, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg
"Say did you read in the papers about a bunch of women up in British Columbia as a protest against high taxes, sit out in the open naked, and they wouldn't put their clothes on? The authorities finally turned a sprayer that you use on trees, on 'em. That may lead into quite a thing. Woman comes into the tax office nude, saying I won't pay. Well, they can't search her and get anything. It sounds great. How far is it to British Columbia?"
--Will Rogers, April 5, 1931
"God does not COMMAND us to be clothed. He ALLOWS us to be clothed."
--Dr. R.C. Sproul, from “The Shattered Image”
"Jesus provides the covering for our nakedness... so that once we are covered the righteousness of Christ, we can be naked in the presence of God and not be shamed. We can stop running. We can stop hiding. Because we have been adorned with a gown of perfect righteousness, if we trust in Him."
--Dr. R.C. Sproul, from “Covering the Shame/The holiness of God”
"...Nowhere, he thought with satisfaction, could there be a group of young ladies that wasted less time upon frivol and froth. No fluffy-duff primping, no feather, no fuss. They were simply themselves and chose not to disguise it."
--Dr. Seuss`s "The Seven Lady Godivas"
"You are the garment which covers our nakedness, and in our hunger, you are a satisfying food, for you are sweetness and in you there is no taste of bitterness, O triune God!"
--Catherine of Siena (St. Catherine)
"Nudity is undignified and an error of taste."
--Adolf Hitler
"Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity."
--Dr. Lee Salk, Psychiatrist
"A child who has never been allowed to see his parents and brothers and sisters naked sees nudity as something shocking."
--Dr. Helga Fleischhauer-Hardt
"...with very young children accustomed from the beginning to nudity in themselves and their parents, a great deal is taken for granted, and it doesn't seem to be much of an issue to them. What nudity does is make it easy for children to become absolutely certain about just how men and women are made. This knowledge is of great importance in assuring the child of his or her own correct gender. The differences in body states and sizes - and in body organs - can then be taken for granted and will provide an accurate image of how they themselves, or the opposite sex, will look when grown up. Children whose parents feel at ease in such natural events as stepping out of the shower, toweling, and walking back to their room to dress are fortunate."
--Mary S. Calderone, M.D. - "The Family Book About Sexuality"
"Your naturally occurring nudity is not a problem -- as long as you, your husband and child are comfortable with it. In fact, it may easily convey an attitude that reduces shame and increases comfort in your son's perception of his own body. A healthy relationship to our bodies begins with liking ourselves and acquiring knowledge about how our bodies work. A natural acceptance, conveyed to our children, can promote their own positive self-image and contributes to self-esteem and the development of healthy adult sexuality. "
Gayl Peterson, MSSW, PhD. Family therapist specializing in prenatal and family development writing in iVillage. http://www.parentsplace.com/features/se ... 42,00.html
Nudity: Inappropriate in front of the kids?
“Meanwhile, the boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger”
--Dr. James Dobson, from “Can Homosexuality Be Treated and Prevented?”
http://www.safamily.co.za/index.php?sho ... l[_id]=284
"Complete nudity in itself is not erotic. It becomes so only when preceded by or contrasted to a state of dress. In this limited context then, all clothes become somewhat immoral, if we define immorality as inciting sexual interest. Habitual nakedness may indeed be capable of elevating man to a higher mental plane..."
--Dr. Marilyn J. Horn, from “The Second Skin: An Interdisciplinary Study of Clothing”
"The difference between [bathing in even minimal clothing and] bathing in the nude can only be compared to the difference between a partial and total solar eclipse. The phenomena in each case belong to two distinct categories." He was struck by the sudden and painless removal of the body taboo and the emotional and physical impact of naked bathing and swimming.
While in nudist groups there are the usual restrictions that control our actions--courteous actions, good manners, and high moral standards--that we have in society as a whole, I find that at a nudist camp I feel more natural, less restricted. The pressures of everyday life are gone.... There is nothing like getting back to nature. Our family consists of four daughters, and although we did go nude at times in our home, I feel they have a better attitude toward sex through their experiences at nudist camps, where they learn that there is nothing wrong with the human body, and that the over-all emphasis on sex in our society is foolish and emotional.
--Dr. Howard Crosby Warren, chairman of the department of psychology at Princeton University -
"Sure, some people might believe they are offended by nude bathers, but, if you never encounter anything that offends you in your community, you are not living in a free society."
--Corky Stanton
"I believe that people have the right to their own beliefs. I do not feel people have got the right to stop me from expressing my beliefs by picking up the phone, calling the police and having me put in prison."
--Steve Gough, he intends to walk from Land's End to John O'Groats (the length of the British Isles) naked.
“I wish we were all naked all the time, ... I have always believed it is what's underneath that counts. If we were all forced to be naked, perhaps we would start to see that a little bit more. “
--Celine Dion, (in the U.K. Sun)
"I enjoy nakedness. I am a bit of a naturist at heart."
--Robbie Williams
"I didn't grow up with a mother telling me what was under my clothes was bad or evil."
--Charlize Theron
"I was born naked and I'm going to die naked so I don’t see anything wrong with it."
--Justin Timberlake - wants to strip off on a nudist beach after spotting one in France.
"At my house in Hokendauqua, I can walk around naked in the back yard -- and have."
--Matt Millen, Raiders Football Player
"Don't let those who have body negative values define what is and what is not acceptable. Seize your freedom and restore your dignity!"
--BodyFreedom.org
"The best thing to do would be to designate everywhere as clothing optional, and we could leave little fenced-in areas for the prudes to prance around in. Call them "Prudist Camps". They could peer out of their fences and indulge in their offensive "I'm offended" behavior whenever they saw a natural person walk by, without bothering the rest of us."
--Anonymous
“I refuse to compromise myself or my beliefs by giving in to America's secular ideas about bodily shame.”
--Bob Miller (INA Member)
Body shame, like prejudice, is not natural. It is learned from others and benefits no one.
"Gymnophobia"-- (gymnos being the Greek word for "nude") The fear of being (or seeing others) naked. A gymnophobic person usually wants to force all others to a clothes compulsive lifestyle.
"I'd go somewhere where no one spoke. I would take a stack of books up to my hips, and I'd read nonstop. And I'd be reading naked."
--Linda Hamilton (actress), on what she'd do with a day to herself.
Bathing led to nudity. Nudity led to promiscuity. So believed the colonial lawmakers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Philadelphia was especially strict in those early years. You could be jailed there bathing more than once a month. Forcing others to wear clothes because we cannot control our own lust, is abuse of others.
"I don't want to facilitate the power structure with my conformity,"
--THE NAKED GUY, Andrew Martinez
Is it normal for us keep to our bodies covered in cloth 100% of the time? For some people, walking from the bathroom to the bedroom with no towel handy will cause them extreme panic and stress. Is this healthy? Being naked should just be another form of dress, nothing more, nothing less.
Television nudity is accepted in Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia. Why not the United States?
Protect children from the tyranny of government intrusion into every aspect of their lives rather than the possibility that they might (shock, horror) see a image of a nude person.
"We find that relaxing with clothes off at Elysium Fields is a great tension reliever, for ourselves and our kids too."
--Lynn Redgrave, actress
Why would anyone want to teach their children their bodies are disgusting, unacceptable and offensive to even look at? Why would anyone want to teach their children self shame, self disgust and to despise their body or any one else's body? Why would anyone set a bad example to their children by having a prejudicial bigotry against another group of people?
"Some day people will grow up and realize that the only thing vile about human bodies is the small minds some people have developed within them."
--Dick Hein
Despite its puritan roots, the U.S. has a long history of skinny-dipping. Social nudity is celebrated in the writings of Walt Whitman and the landscape paintings of Thomas Eakins. Benjamin Franklin took a daily naked "air bath," while presidents John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson enjoyed a refreshing nude dip. According to National Geographic Magazine, John Quincy Adams (1825-29), the sixth President, customarily took a nude early morning swim in the Potomac River. See National Geographic
A Nudist is simply a human being without 'Artificial Additives'!
"On the fourth day of telecommuting, I realized that clothes are totally unnecessary."
--Dilbert
Because naturists don't think of sex when they undress, because naturists don't think of sex when they are engaged in wholesome family activities. Because naturists don't grab a towel for cover, after taking a shower in fear of having others view them in a 'sex-obsessed' manner? Who are the perverts then?
"Clothes make the man, but nakedness makes the human being."
--Kevin Kearney
"I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun's shining. It's a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on."
-P.J. Harvey, singer.
Walk Nude, and people won't need to undress you with their eyes.
"Are we so narrow minded that we show war, murder, rape, etc. on TV, but we do not allow to show one of the most wonderful creations (the human body) in its natural form."
--Mario Roman
"Nudity is a state of fact; lewdity, to coin a phrase, is a state of mind."
--Paul Outerbridge, Jr. (photographer)
If we aren't concerned about children seeing adult facial hair, then why are some concerned about children seeing adult pubic hair?
Have you ever noticed how a little child can run naked through a room full of strangers without embarrassment? Just as Adam and Eve were not embarrassed in their innocence. But after Adam and Eve sinned, shame and awkwardness followed, creating barriers between themselves and God. Ideally we have no barriers, feeling no embarrassment between each other or God. But, like Adam and Eve, we put on fig leaves (barriers) because we have areas we don't want anyone or God to know about. Then we hide, just as Adam and Eve hid from God. Jesus died for our sins so there is no longer any barriers we need to have. Jesus told us to be like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
How is it possible for the human body, which was created in the image of god, to be offensive to anybody? Satan would love to see God's greatest creation be considered offensive.
When wearing only a smile - be sure to smile a lot.
HUMANITY AT PRESENT IS ILLEGAL. YOUR HUMAN BODY IS NOT ALLOWED. IT IS SUPPRESSED BECAUSE YOU ARE ILLEGAL - STOP THE OPPRESSION AND LEGALIZE YOURSELF. IN REALITY, BEING HUMAN IS NOT A CRIME. From: The Freedom to be Yourself
"The human body: Legalize it"
“An assignee is clothed with the rights of his principal.”
--Legal Maxim
"With the recent extreme heat in the United States this summer (1995), I wonder how many of those deaths might have been avoided by being nude?"
"If everyone were nude, there would be no war..."
"It will be great to one day see beaches everywhere with that great little slogan: Beyond this point you may encounter nude sunbathers."
--Roslyn Scheer, New Executive Director, AANR
"If it`s so dirty to be naked, why do we get naked to get clean?"
--Bryan Maloney
"42 men were prosecuted at Atlantic City NJ in 1935 for appearing in public wearing bathing suits without tops. How many more years do we have to go for top-free equality?"
--David Engman
"There seems, by the way, to be nothing pending in the Christian Coalition`s political wish list about sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, or clothing the naked, unless, of course, the naked got that way for fun."
--Tom Teepen, Cox News Service
"It continues to baffle me why there is no attempt to censor television`s continual portrayal of homicide as a means of conflict resolution, while at the same time regarding an unclothed human body as a problem."
--Charlie Metcalf
"The Church says: The body is a sin. Science says: The body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The body says: “I am a fiesta."
--Eduardo Galeano, Windows on the World
"The facts appear to prove that the feeling of shame, far from being the cause of man's covering his body, is. on the contrary, a result of this custom; and that the covering, if not used as a protection from the climate, owes its origin, at least, in a great many cases, to the desire of men and women to make themselves mutually attractive."
--Edward Westermarck in the “History of Human Marriage” (London, 1901)
"There is the evidence of competent observers to show that members of a tribe accustomed to nudity, when made to assume clothing for the first time, exhibit as much confusion as would a European compelled to strip in public. This fact, considered together with what has been said above, compels the conclusion that modesty is a feeling merely of acute self-consciousness due to appearing unusual and is the result of clothing rather than the cause."
--Thomas Athol Joyce, M. A., O. B. E., Department of Ethnography. British Museum, in Encyclopedia Britannica
"Nothing is so immodest as modesty."
--The late Frances Newman
"Modesty begins when the last rag has left the human body."
--Poultney Bigelow, historian and author
"As a near-artist, I can conceive of nothing that would make for avoidance of pot-bellies and other acquired deformities as nudity would. As a physician, I can conceive of nothing that would so improve posture."
--Dr. Robert L. Dickinson, New York City
"Those who are too steeped in the Victorian attitude toward the human body and its functions are right to leave nudity alone. It is my personal belief, however, that the world would be morally cleaner and more sane if all children from the earliest years up were made accustomed to the practice of nudity by the sexes in common."
--Prof. Lewis M. Terman, Stanford University, California
"The practice of nudism has to my mind certain mental as well as physical advantages. First of all, it removes idle and suggestive curiosity ... Only the partly clothed figure of the opposite sex is sexually attractive ... One of the greatest achievements will be on the moral plane. Our greatest incentive to crime and malpractices of all sorts is the urge to do the forbidden thing. Wrongly motivated curiosity has been an enormous factor in the process of sexual wrong-doing. If we can cultivate both a reverence for the marvel of the human body and an increasing understanding of its place and function, education will do much to minimize sinful acts."
--Prof. Christian A. Ruckmick, State University of Iowa
"All my life I have been in rebellion against clothes. What good are they? Why should we continue such a fearful burden of expense, such a cause of endless annoyance and disease! The prurient mind is the sensual mind. Clothing tends to make men bad."
--Ernest Thompson Seton
"Clothes are one of the most fruitful sources of the sex obsessions that possess us. I wish the day might come when we might strip every stitch from our bodies anywhere at any time without-shame."
--Judge Ben B. Lindsey
"The practice of nudity is undoubtedly of esthetic value, since the human form, in its more perfect types, is an object of beauty. We have long recognized this fact by displaying the nude body in painting and sculpture. But neither a painting nor a statue can equal the beauty of the human figure itself. Furthermore, the human body in action, as in a graceful dance, or in athletic exercise, brings additional elements of esthetic enjoyment to the spectator. It is true that nudity may frequently accentuate bodily defects; but I am inclined to believe that, except in cases of glaring malformations or injuries, the general effect of an ugly body is no more displeasing when nude than when draped."
--Dr. Edward Crosby Warren, Princeton University
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--Adam Clarke (1760 or 1762–1832, British Methodist theologian and Biblical scholar) wrote a commentary on the whole Bible commonly known as Clarke’s Commentary. The reign of Queen Victoria was from 1837 to 1901 and is commonly known as the Victorian Era, though some scholars date that era from the passage of the reform act in 1832. In either case Clarke was pre-Victorian.
The Victorian Era gives the queen’s name to the the whole matter of “Victorian Morals”, and for the matter at hand, the repressive attitude toward nudity and the idea of shame associated with the human body as created by God in his very image.
In light of the forgoing it is most interesting to note Clarke’s comments on the significance of Genesis 3:7 about the immediate effect of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit.
Gen 3:7 (KJV)And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
If we focus on just the nakedness issue, Clarke’s Commentary has the following to say about this part of the verse. (Emphasis added by formatting)In his commentary on Genesis 3:7 Part of what Adam Clarke wrote:
Let us now examine the effects.
1. Their eyes were opened, and they saw they were naked. They saw what they never saw before,
-- that they were stripped of their excellence;
-- that they had lost their innocence; and
-- that they had fallen into a state of indigence and danger.
2. Though their eyes were opened to see their nakedness, yet their mind was clouded, and their judgment confused.
They seem to
-- have lost all just notions of honour and dishonour,
-- of what was shameful and what was praise-worthy.
It was
-- dishonourable and shameful to break the commandment of God;
-- but it was neither! ........ to go naked, when clothing was not necessary !Now I suppose that some would be inclined to say "well it wasn't, but it is now",
But what Clarke wrote is the very basis of the argument for the acceptability of nudity today. It is the responsibility of the anti-nudity Christians to prove the necessity. Without necessity, then Clark's assertion stands.
The more common view is that until they ate the fruit, Adam and Eve weren't ashamed because they were too naive to know that they should be. The bold type above shows that Clarke was of the opinion that the eating of the fruit caused them to lose "just notions .... of what was shameful" as opposed to having discovered what was shameful as a result of eating the fruit.
Further reading in Clarke's commentary on this verse shows that Clark is of the opinion that their understanding was diminished by the eating of the fruit rather than increased. I find it most interesting that this was a scholarly view and understanding of the Biblical text prior to 1832, yet this seems to be missed by most Bible believers despite the stature of Clarke as a biblical scholar and the wide spread use of his commentary which is viewed as a standard among works of theology.
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"People who wear little or nothing in the hot summer are “less-ons”. Everyone else are “more-ons”.’
--Unknown
“It probably started when I was doing my garden the first time. I’d be out there, and it would be scorching hot, so I would take off all of my clothes and garden. And then I would jump in the pool and swim—and I always get in the pool naked, because why would you want to put on a bathing suit? But I’m not a nudist at all. I’m shy. I’ve never done nudity in a film, ever. I don’t want anybody to take a picture of me naked. But in my own home, in my garden, [nudity]’s OK.”
--Alicia Silverstone talking to Health magazine about activities she enjoys while nude
“It would be better still to have no clothing at all, but this our civilization would not permit.”
Alexander Graham Bell, In its July 4 and July 28, 1901, issues, The Post reported the remarks of inventor Alexander Graham Bell on the subject of cooling off. Bell predicted a future when people could control household temperature in summer and winter alike. For summer, he suggested that a system of metal coils containing a liquefied gas was probably the best way to go. Bell also commented in the July 4 Post about the confining Victorian-style clothes of his day. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local- ... ory_f.html
“It is clear from Clement that in Alexandria at the end of the second century — contemporaneous with Irenaeus and Tertullian — mixed bathing by all classes was not only customary but also a popular activity in which Christian men and women engaged."
--Roy Bowen Ward, author of “Women in Roman Baths” (published in the Harvard Theological Review), concurs:
“I start by sitting down with the team and discussing ideas first. We're all very close and we sit down and we're open and we talk and I normally, you know, get naked and make clothes on myself. That's pretty much how it works.”
--Pat Robertson: A Little Nudity on TV Can Be OK
"The human body is not essentially nasty."
Pat Robertson, who has surprised some people by being more broad-minded about marijuana and the transgendered than you might have expected, isn't necessarily offended by a little nudity on TV:
If you're not able to watch the clip, it consists of Robertson responding to this question from a 700 Club viewer:
I have recently discovered that my pastor and his wife watch a show on cable TV that contains nudity. Even secular critics have called it pornographic. I have been unable to return to their Bible study since hearing this. Am I overeacting? https://reason.com/2014/02/07/pat-rober ... on-tv-can/
Robertson's reaction:
Yes, I think you are. You know, listen: The human body is not essentially nasty. I mean, God made us without clothes. And you look at that famous statue of David that's considered one of the masterpieces of the Renaissance, and here's David, and he doesn't have any clothes on at all. You've got the Venus de Milo and some of those others…the Sistine Chapel, Adam has got no clothes on, and that's the famous artwork of God touching Adam….
The body is not essentially pornographic, and I think to make it so is a mistake. It's what's in your mind. I don't know what your pastor's watching, what show it is. Maybe it's got some redeeming qualities. But I sure wouldn't turn him off just because he's watching a few clips of nudity on TV. I don't know what show you're talking about, some of them are real nasty…
CO-HOST: It depends on how pornographic it is.
ROBERTSON: Exactly. It's just that the human form per se isn't necessarily dirty. It's what our minds make it.
In 1985, by contrast, Robertson warned that "We're not too far away from full frontal nudity and sex acts on television." I suspect he still objects to televised "sex acts," but he seems to have come around on the nudity question.
--[Via Pat Roberton's Vault, which notes that Robertson also introduced a recent story with the line "You probably saw the blockbuster cable series Breaking Bad."]
Victoria Beckham revealing how she designs clothes in the nude.