Attracting Younger People

Les Rootsey is selecting stories for "The Australian Naturist" magazine to appeal to younger people.

"We are looking at some of the more alternative new features of naturism, like fire dancing," says Les Rootsey, the magazine's publisher based at Runaway Bayon the Gold Coast.

In Queensland, the problems in attracting younger nudists is exacerbated by the fact that nudity is illegal, and there are no official nude beaches, much like most of the United States. In order to remain lawful, nudists must restrict their clothes-free activities to the home or private resorts.

Lisa says the movement is "extremely healthy", but admits most active nudists are in their 50s. She says the only younger people their retreat attracts are Europeans, in particular Dutch, Swedish and Danish travellers.

The struggle to promote nudism as a normal and healthy lifestyle faces an uphill battle in societies swamped by pornography and sexualized images of the human body pervasive in all forms of media. Australia seems to be much like the United States when it comes to the public's general inability to separate nudism and pornography. It could well be that the lack of interest by younger people in the naturist movement is directly related to the rise of exposure to pornography on the Internet, and at a much younger age. It's hard to convince people that different body types are perfectly normal and acceptable when the only images of nude men and women show oversized penises and breasts. It's becoming increasingly difficult for anyone exposed to sexual imagery to maintain a healthy self-image and body acceptance.

This is the message nudist and naturists must repeat over and over, that the human body is beautiful in it's diversity. How we all overcome the damages done by unrealistic sexualized imagery that bombard young people every day is an unknown. But we have to keep on trying.

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