The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines nudism as “the practice of not wearing any clothes because you believe this is more natural and healthy” [1]. In other words, there are two aspects of practicing nudism: health benefits and a return to some “natural” state (real or imagined). But there is also a broader view.
An article from 1934 entitled Revolutionary Nudism written by “an influential French individualist anarchist” Émile Armand [3] came to my attention by chance. To the above two aspects, which he calls “a purely therapeutic point of view” and the “gymnomystic” (“restoring humans to a primitive and “natural” state of innocence”), the author adds a third dimension, the revolutionary one. Émile Armand believed that nudism was “something else entirely than a hygienic fitness exercise or a “naturist” renewal” and saw it “among the most potent means of emancipation”.
Revolutionary aspect was understood “in a triple sense: affirmation, protest, liberation”. By “affirmation”, it was meant vindicating “the ability to live nude, to get naked, to walk around naked, to associate with nudists”, and thus “the right to the complete disposition of one’s bodily individuality”. From a social perspective, the “nudist demand” is “one of the most profound and conscious manifestations of individual freedom”.
The paragraph about the “protest” is worth quoting even more extensively. After all, it is about defending and practicing the freedom to get naked interpreted as a protest against “any dogma, law, or custom that establishes a hierarchy of body parts”. The point is that society imposes the “classification of different body parts into noble and ignoble categories” according to which “showing the face, hands, arms, or throat is more decent, more moral, more respectable than exposing the buttocks, breasts, belly, or the pubic area”. That is, a person is obliged “to wear clothes because it pleases another”.
And finally, “liberation from wearing clothes”is supposed to change the distorted state of affairs when “what covers the body” — accessory — is more important than the body itself. The author suggests imagining “the general, the bishop, the ambassador, the academic, the prison guard, the warden” naked and is sure that this will hit their prestige. He writes about the release “from the prejudice of modesty, which is nothing but “shame of one’s body.””
The article concludes with a defense against “the critics of nudism — moralists or conservative hygienists of the State or Church” — who “suppose that the sight of nudity, or the regular association of nudists of both sexes, exalts erotic desire”. First of all, “this is not always the case”. Secondly, it is more natural than “the artificial excitement of the half-naked, the gallant in revealing clothes, and all the artifices of make-up relied on in the dressed, half-dressed, or barely dressed milieu in which we currently operate”.
Almost all of the lines I have quoted remain surprisingly relevant today. Perhaps with the exception of bishops and ambassadors, who have largely lost their prestige even with their clothing on.
References
[1] nudism noun – Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/nudism?q=nudism
[2] Émile Armand. Revolutionary Nudism (1934) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emile-armand-revolutionary-nudism
[3] Émile Armand – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile Armand
.jpg)
.jpg)
Vadimage Blog 