NATURISM HISTORY

Bourbons Bar is the only man-only bar in all of Spain dedicated to naturism lovers!
Every night the entrance is allowed only naked or in jockstrap or in underwear … with thematic evening parties!

HISTORY OF NATURISM

( By Gary Mussell President & Founder AANR-WestNudist)

For most of human history, nudity was a natural and normal part of life. People were nude when environment and conditions favored it. The true foundations of nude recreation and social nudism started in Ancient Egypt under Pharaoh Akhen-Aton (1385 – 1353 B.C.). It was during these times that students in Greece exercised and received their education in the nude. Also, most athletes played in the nude including the early Olympic Games in Greece. It is this proof that might lead one to assume that the Greeks and Romans lived in a clothing-optional society.

Before the Judeo-Christian-Moslem concept of body shame, most of the tropical and temperate world was one big nudist camp. Greeks and Romans wore clothing when necessary or for certain social functions, but bathing and sports were openly enjoyed while naked. As exhibited by their sculpture and ceramics, the Greeks revered youth and physical fitness. To them the body was truly a work of divinity to be admired in its entirety.

The Olympics were an offering of the best young athletes, unencumbered by restrictive and concealing clothes. Gymnos, or naked, was how the athlete trained and competed. The Olympic Games came to an end in 393 A.D. when a Christian emperor banned them because he thought they were Pagan. It wasn’t until the Renaissance period that nudity was truly accepted again. In these times nudity was seen as a form of art. Back in Europe, the Renaissance had reawakened the body-acceptance and art of the ancients. Humanism and the celebration of the body were back, and even the reluctant Church had to accept the idea that God created man in his own image and thought the work looked good.

A 16th century Christian group of Puritans strongly opposed the religious tolerance of the Church of England. With their exile to New England, they became the non-pleasure, morality enforcing people associated with Puritanism. They were so afraid of the lust that they refrained from bathing, because in their eyes, it promoted nudity. (Many religions that are outraged at nudity avoid the fact that Jesus was naked at his baptism.)

In the late 18th and early 19th Century, Benjamin Franklin and Henry David Thoreau helped the American public come to terms with nudity for a while. Thoreau had daily naked walks which he called “air baths.” Other nudists of note included President John Quncy Adams, who regularly bathed nude in the Potomac. It was common for Americans who lived in the frontier west to use the local creek or “swimming hole” to take care of the daily dirt. Mark Twain’s beloved fictional characters Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn skinny-dipped with joy and abandon, capturing the era perfectly. Bathing suits and brassieres were not yet invented, so it was common for groups of co-workers, siblings, or friends to go down to a nearby lake, pond, or river after a hard day’s work, separate themselves by gender to different designated locations out of sight from one another, then strip off their clothes and swim naked.

The Victorian Era that followed was not as accepting of nudity. In these times it was common to cover a person’s legs, a piano’s legs, even a chair’s legs in order to prevent sexual arousal. The first domestic swimsuit designed for “decency” appeared in 1830 in France, but did not become popular in America until the 1890’s. These first bathing suits covered nearly the entire body of both men and women, so going all the way from the wrists to the ankles and up to the mid neck. In the 1890’s the invention of the indoor toilet had an unintended effect on this nude tradition.

Until then, it was common practice for the family bathtub to be located in the kitchen area, near where the necessary hot water was heated on the stove. Once or twice a week the entire family would strip one at a time and use the same bath water. When outhouses became outmoded, new houses were re-designed so that plumbing was directed to a separate room where the toilet and bathtub could share a common water pipe. With the ability to close a door for privacy, family members rarely saw each other naked anymore. The human body became an object of shame to be hidden and shaped by layers and layers of clothing.

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